Waltari - Monk Punk (1991) - The spirit of party - 79% (03/04/12)

With their very first album that presents a potpourri of songs from early demos and smaller releases plus a few new tracks, Waltari definitely introduce themselves as a party band. These guys don't take themselves too serious and you should be open to different kinds of music from dirty funk over fast paced punk to alternative rock. There are also some more metal orientated tracks with some hevay and thrash bits but they are not very numerous on this release. This band doesn’t give a damn about genre limits, logical flows or mainstream accessibility. The Beatles cover “Help!” is a beautiful example for this rebellious attitude.

The band definitely delivers more than just a few surprises on this album. Some tracks are inspired by punk bands such as the Finnish Terveet Kädet as in "I Was Born In The Wrong Decade", other tracks definitely sound like the contemporary records of the Red Hot Chili Peppers like "Rap Your Body Beat" and some more progressive songs have a certain experimental Voivod touch like "Ride". At some points, the band reminds me of the modern and very diversified Japanese alternative metal band Monkey Pirates or the Canadian alternative rock scene around bands such as Groovy Aardvark.

To keep it short, this record is quite diversified and never gets boring. After some confusing moments in the beginning one gets used to weird potpourri of styles that the band offers on this release. On the other side, the band doesn't sound coherent, profound and unique enough to convince and still seems to look for its very own identity on this first release. Surprisingly, the calmer tracks like "Sad Song" or "Universal Song" turn even out to have the best potential on this album in my humble opinion even or maybe because they don't quite sound like the rest and are hard to be compared to other bands.

Anyway, this album is highly entertaining if you like open-minded rock music of all kinds and is definitely worth to be checked out. I will probably put this record on for my next party and am sure that nobody will hate it as everybody might find something he or she likes on this crazy release. This release is far from being perfect but a hell load of fun and merits a solid rating after all and ultimately convinced me more than I initially expected.