Korean Cars – #1 (Mini Album)
Release Date: 23rd May 2025
Label: Mas-Kina Recordings
Spotify
Genre: Alternative Post-Rock
FFO: Explosions In The Sky, American Football, Nordic Giants.
Review By: Ross Bowie
Korean Cars release their debut (mini) album, spanning 6 tracks which dive into post-hardcore, alternative and atmosphere, but aren’t scared to ramp up the tension when required. The band hails from Follo, Norway and the music has that sleek, yet crisp Scandinavian feel throughout. The music is incredibly textured and often melancholic, but the band aren’t scared to have their moments in the sun.
#1 opens with an instrumental track which really lets you hear the ability of all the musicians involved in the project, while having both a guitar and especially a bass tone to die for. The bass also takes a real high place in the mix, and the mini-album is all the better for it. Dromtorp kicks in with that chunky guitar tone to start before shifting into a beautiful atmospheric passage and, out-of-nowhere, vocals kick in, which came as a surprise as the band sounded so assured on the instrumental front, but the vocals are used expertly and only appear in small doses like extra seasoning on a nice meal. While the song leans into more clean and luscious passages with the vocals intertwining in and out of vocals, it’s hard not to draw comparisons to American Football’s masterpiece debut album. Similar to the Midwest emo classic, the mix is perfectly balanced, allowing you to focus on whatever element of the band’s sound you choose to draw attention to, and that includes when the vocals are soaring alongside the track.
Treeline Siren really shows what the band is all about with the bass taking over the main melody in the intro, and this man can play. The bass throughout the 6 tracks is often the highlight, but this is the crowning moment, effortlessly playing across the fretboard, supplying lead melodies and then locking in with the drums to allow the guitars and vocals to have their moment and the front of the line. The song digs more into the moody and immersive side of Korean Cars sound, with that underlying darkness that can only come from somewhere as cold as Norway. However, not to be outdone, the clean guitar melody has touches of Soothsayer by Buckethead in its chord progression, really driving its impact fullness into your soul, but it’s Cheese Me Macaroni that the guitarist gets his big rockstar moment at the mountain top with a total rockstar solo that really propels the song to that next level.
#1 has this good trick of building songs up from the second you hit play. Nothing starts immediately, but over time everything builds, and more layers are added as you get to that crescendo. The only real thing missing is more of those standout big climaxes like Cheese Me Macaroni. The songs are nice journeys and pleasantly take you along for the ride, but diving into that post-hardcore influence that is oozing throughout, it would be good to have more moments when the handbrake fully comes off and the band let fly.
It’s incredibly impressive to think that this is the first music the band have put out as they already seem so in sync with what each other are doing and some more time together some of those missing pieces will surely come together, drawing inspiration from the likes of Explosions In The Sky & Helmet you can get a sense of where this band are heading, and they certainly have all the tools to make it there while remaining true to themselves and putting their own spin on the sound, this isn’t an album full of throwback but rather a band tipping their hat to the past while adding their own take to it and propelling in to the future. The album is knowingly smart and well crafted, bursting with ideas and emotion and taking their template to a full-scale release will do the band a lot of good, allowing them to experiment that bit more and try some more off-the-wall ideas.
(4 / 5)
