EP Review: ‘All My Friends Are Dead’ – the new release from Italy’s Dead Miranda shows their anarchic electro punk world is ever expanding.

We have been following the anarchic chaotic output of Luca Zotti from Dead Miranda (f.k.a. Unruly Girls) with relish for years now. The output is without fail utterly compelling as it is brash and outrageous – pure punk sensibilities and rotting chaos in every release, pushing boundaries and entertaining in the process. Now, the band (consisting of duo Zotti and Luigi Limongelli) have taken one step further and released an EP collaborating with a collection of their friends and musicians in a morbidly humorous treatise on death. In Zotti’s words:

…it’s a concept album about friendship kidding with dark humor and irony about death. It’s about 6 tracks performed by 6 six friends and musician we love. We wrote the music, they wrote lyrics and melodies.

There are some collaborators I am familiar with – Bryce Bourdeau from the US band Lunar Twin (another Backseat Mafia favourite) and Johnny Jay who the duo have worked with before – but the combination as a whole has a consistency and vibrancy we come to expect from Dead Miranda.

Opening track ‘Happy Ending’ with YXIS is a sombre orchestral piece, imperial and majestic with a slight sneering twist like some nightmare fairy tale and sonic glitches that seem to echo and distort. Pablo Zollo is YXIS, also known as Hermit Vega, who also directed the video with his girlfriend Fruzsina Uhlar. It’s a dark, close almost claustrophobic piece – sensual and visceral:

Boudreau’s collaboration comes next – ‘The River’ is something more sonically accessible and fitting in with Boudreau’s dream pop/shoegaze oeuvre with Lunar Twin. It is an anthemic and statuesque piece, haunting and visceral, bold and theatrical and filled with atmosphere. It’s a beautiful track that positively shimmers.

The dial on the radio turns to ‘The Disappearing’ with glitchy sounds a precursor to a drone like intro before the song launches over the top into a sixties-flavoured jingle jangle melodic track. The singing is by Vincenzo, the lyrics by Concino – and the result is something quite psychedelic and hazy with a chemically-induced fog. This fugue continues in the Johnny Jay collaboration ‘The Depht of Love’ (not sure if the spelling is deliberate!).

‘Sly Men Lie in the Rye feat. Alessio Del Donno’ is a haywire alt. country missive that twists and turns with a twang while ‘Dangerous Falling feat. Andrea Perrotta’ ends the EP with a reverberated droning piece with echoing vocals.

‘All My Friends Are Dead’ is pure Dead Miranda – challenging at times, statuesque and imperial at other times, threaded through with a morbid sense of humour and a visceral sense of chaos and decay. They continue to be a band that challenges and confronts, exhibiting a creativity and limitless energy that is refreshing.