I was a bit anxious about the second Narkose LP 'cos i just loved that previous record so much but knew full well the exact same thing wouldn't work a second time around and it felt like kind of a gamble if and how this group could change things up without losing the essence that makes them so special in the current german punk landscape. Glad to say they found a way to make it work! Some slightly slicker production values give considerable structural support to their sound dialing down some the dark '80s anarcho vibe in favor of a tiny bit more contemporary sounding post punk and -core vibe with tunes like Keine Ziele kinda transporting a bit of that 2010s british post punk and noise rock school that was flourishing in the years before the current hegemony of slick broccoli-haired mumblecore punkfluencers won out in the hype war. The equally heavy and catchy-ass hooks are hitting more precise than ever before here, with the reasonably tidied-up aesthetics laying bare an increasing Wipers-feel to the guitar work of these tunes while the lyrical content is still among the most bleak, concise and well-considered things you'll find in german languange punk right now, rubbing salt in the wounds of a rapidly unravelling europe with a bluntness and urgency that may sometimes just feel like a bit too much if it hits you at the wrong moment but really, it's just the constant background hum of a fracturing society any conscious mind has to cope with right now anyway and basically there's always some healing force to the cathartic energy that unfolds when some dudes of way superior lyrical abilities compared to the petty standards of a notoriously dumbed-down and linguistically challenged deutschpunk landscape, just refuse to mince any words here.