### Tessmarka: Tessmarka

#### 25/11/08 || The Duff

Tessmarka have released a self-titled effort, and from here the band’s ambition ends. I thought it couldn’t get worse than Sharp Practise, but it can. When Tessmarka get real heavy, they sound like Blink 182; we’re talking full throttle, “Oh shit, I don’t think Adam is going to make it playing 4/4 rhythms – he’s losing his fight against those entirely improvised drum fills he’s been working on for so long” – the most obvious influence is The Ramones, a band I could never stand; punk was never a style of music, it was a movement, an attitude, a way of life and all that testicules – I’ve never lived it, and I don’t know anything about it, but it takes all but three seconds to state with certainty that it is a musically void genre. These guys are from the UK, and have been cited as an Indie band (hence why they have no last names); I’m not surprised the sub-genre is getting such a bad rap, because what may have been slightly revolutionary at the time of The Ramones (like I said, I don’t know whatever the fuck they did – people who cite them as their favourite band are like people who drive beige Hondas) is now just fucken poor. Throw some The Offspring in there too.

Has anyone seen the episode of The Sopranos where the band that was Defiler (can’t remember what they became) is in the studio writing their most “Deep, introspective and balls-out emotional” song? Watching it, I thought “There can’t really be bands like this.”, but Tessmarka have proven me wrong, and David Chase just a little too close to the bone in humorously dissecting what some of us develop the passions to indulge in. That’s what this band reminds me of, and they did so in no time flat; they’ve been spotted by a record label scout on a mission to accrue young bands that have the potential to sell, and the head of said label has simply responded to the feedback by saying “Fuck it; snag ‘em all.” The money’s gone in to the record, and the advertising was to follow, but I doubt if even five people from the record label have even heard this thing, and so this band shall await it’s continuously delayed breakthrough hit all the while counting the number of its MySpace friends as an indicator for success; to give them credit, they play with more heart than Sharp Practice, but the musicianship is god-fucken-awful, an aspect salvaged by the many hours whoever the fuck signed these guys put in to make it presentable to people who don’t know any better.

1 please, no mores out of 10.

- Information
- Released: 2008
- Label: Rising Records
- Website: www.tessmarka.co.uk
- Band
- Ben: guitar, vocals
- Ian: guitar, vocals
- Mark: bass
- Adam: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. The reason
- 02. Miss imagination
- 03. Starting over
- 04. Better than you
- 05. Ready to roll
- 06. Committed