THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “The oddball, synth-soaked world of German post-punk band Onyon is disorienting at first. The band’s herky-jerky rhythms operate in a familiar fashion to bands like Devo, The B-52’s, Kleenex/Liliput, or even modern punk firebrands Amyl & The Sniffers. But Maria Untheim’s woozy synth squiggles — which populate and punctuate the band’s songs — keep everything at arm’s length.
These songs flirt shamelessly and simultaneoulsy with the primitive cool of ’80s minimal-synth rock and the wire-haired cretinism of ’60s garage — especially on tunes like the manic Dogman or first single Alien, Alien. Guitarist Ilka Kellner’s six-string salvos rage unpretentiously with edges torn and frayed. Rarely (if ever) is there true soloing, but he’s never afraid to unleash a spindly lead line over Florian Schmidt’s rubbery bass lines and Mario Pongratz’s stuttering drum patterns — which phase in and out of time imperceptibly like a drunk doing their best to seem sober.
Meanwhile, Kellner and Untheim share vocal duties (in both English and German — sometimes in the same song). But the real magic comes when the two sing together, voices merging in loosely harmonic gang vocals; one deadpan, the other slightly unhinged. The group’s beguiling lyrics add to the mystique with their inscrutable neu-world fables about egg machines, ghosts, worms that talk, and urges to consume newspaper that ooze a rural, old-world understanding of life and the imperceptible spaces in between reality and fiction, transmuted thru a modernist sci-fi lens flare.”
