The Death Set’s ‘Michel Poiccard’: One of the best albums of 2011





Sorting through the massive amounts of musical goodness that flowed through my home wirelessly at 130 mbps in 2011, I would be remiss in not pulling The Death Set from the digitized stream to hold up like a glistening electronic baby in all its punkish glory for DM readers to behold.

Brief bio: founded by lead singer Johnny Siera and guitarist Beau Velasco (Black Panda) in the town of Gold Coast, Australia in 2005, The Death Set eventually ended up in Brooklyn after a period of time spent in Philadelphia and Baltimore. Their debut album Worldwide was released in 2008. The U.K. music magazine NME proclaimed them “the #1 biggest hope of the future.” But the future got heavy. The band’s name became sadly prophetic when Velasco died of a drug overdose in 2009.

Resurrection: Velasco’s death crushed Siera, but instead of throwing in the towel, Siera soldiered on and created one of 2011’s best records, Michel Poiccard (named after Belmondo’s character in Godard’s Breathless) - seventeen seering tracks in 36 minutes. Produced by XXXchange (Spank Rock, Kele, The Kills), the album is an onslaught of fast, thrashy, exhilarating mini-anthems that recall The Beastie Boys at their hardest-core, Buzzcocks, Minor Threat, Sigue Sigue Sputnik, The Skids and The Clash on Ritalin. Good solid punk rock with a dose of synthesizers, rhythm machines and hip hop samples.

The Death Set currently are Siera on vocals and Jahphet Landis playing drums and Daniel Walker on guitar and vocals.

Here’s “Chew It like a Gun Gum” from Michel Poiccard.

Video NSFW.

