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Reviews and articles

Zitty Berlin, 1988, Nr. 14
“ The songs of VHK are growing towards a dreamlike ecstasy coming from the heart, the usual song-structure and singing style are completely missing, the magic dance-rhythm captures and raptures the audience, which you cannot find in the today’s stylised neon-coolness only at the natural tribes living in other era. Permanent rhythm-accelerations, abrupt speeding-up of the almost brutal-ancient drums, amorphous collage of the head-voices, animal voice playbacks and volcanically exploding guitar riffs - all these things are completed with an unconsciousness jungle of sounds in which you get lost and cannot come back easily, since the perception of time and space is changing into completely new forms.”

New York Times, February 28, 1990
“the Coroner’s music is basic and elemental and filled with obsessive, galvanizing passion.”

Forced Exposure, # 16, 1990 American fanzine:
“Had this LP come in ‘73 in a tiny enough press run, it’d be one of the most legendary “lost” record of that decade”.

Maximum Rock’N Roll (USA), July 1991, #98
“this band is equal in spirit and grit to faves like SONIC YOUTH or BIG BLACK but with an identity all its own.”

NMI & Messitsch, a German fanzine, July/August 1991
“In all moderation: this is the best record of last week, month, year, ...”.

The Melody Maker (U. K.), September 26, 1992 és October 10, 1992
“As the singer spins around inside the band’s mesmeric voodoo howl like whirling dervish the effect is almost hypnotising. Incredible. Watching them play in Cologne, I was fascinated, not just by the band’s performance (which was amazing) but by the frenzied reaction of the crowd. Seeing VHK, I realised just what a dangerous proposition rock’n’roll can be.”

NMI Messitsch (Germany), 08/92
“The VHK is definitively the best from the East. The Coroners are a musical excess, a 50 minutes trance. They are insane drums, overscrewn guitars, screaming Shamans. They are a dream. Listen it extreme loud. Get lost in it. Not come back anymore.”

Metal Hammer
“If this band is not a cult, I do not know what cult is.”

Various Artists, a German fanzine:
“This is a shamanistic ethno-punk. But it is more than music. It is a trip into the fourth dimension. Close your eyes, feel the Universe and you will find yourself in the infinite layer of passion again. You forget about your name, your background, your sex and, for sure, your ratio. What still counts, is the primal instinct. Here you can gratify it. Psychotherapy from vinyl. A band outer to everyday norms and conformity. A masterwork!”

VOLT-magazine, a Hungarian journal, 1994
“ The VHK is perhaps the only Hungarian band which is able to produce a cathartic musical attack.”

Rockinform, a Hungarian periodical, March 1995
“This recording is one of the highest points of the improvisative music”.

Bananafish, San Franciscan fanzine, 1995, No. 10
“ Each time I hear a new VHK record I relive this atavistic reverie - it’s like reentering the womb. VHK are so improbable, so wonderful and yet so seemingly necessary (were they not to exist they would have to be invented), that they function for me like my favourite fairy tales used to when I was a kid. When I first discovered their 1988 LP Teach Death a Lesson, I was bowled over by its combination of monastic psychedelia, rock’n’roll codpiece swagger and sheer alien abduction logical completeness, this wondering is with me yet. VHK sound like they’re from another world and another time.”

Moshable, a Danish fanzine, 1995
“ This band have been around for many years now and have played almost everywhere in Europe but still they remain one of Europe’s best kept secret. This is one of the most interesting bands you’re likely to come across this year.”

Oor, a Dutch music magazin, March 1996, Iggy Pop-interview
“ Do you follow the contemporary pop-scene?
- Yes. There are some new bands, like the VHK from Hungary, which I find good. The punk should sound as if it were invented today! I have to add, that I hear quite a few really new things. This is why I like VHK. They sound a bit strange, individual, but yet this is what punk is.”

Élet és Irodalom (Hungary), a Hungarian weekly journal on literature and art, May 3, 1996
“ The magmatic VHK-concert entitled “ Windwhirls and Dreamwells” seems to open new pathways in the history of the band. Their music is again determined by the pagan and cosmic power, the more bold instrumental improvisation, and the present-time stage concentration can raise their music to the ethereal heights.”

Rockinform (Hungary), 1997 March, a Hungarian periodical
Last year’s concerts already suggested, that the VHK preparing for a new big shot. Still it is surprising, how much it is fine, cleared, and at the same time a musically complex material that they produced...At the end of the record there is a real music delicacy. It is scarcely possible to describe it in words: as the finale of the more than 70 minutes VHK-music it gives a simply cathartic experience.

Nemzedéki Probléma (Generational Problem), Hungary, 1997 summer
The VHK is one of the most thrilling concert experiences, and they are also thrilling in their records. Instead of too much verbosity, I tell you that the song "Fatal Love" is a part of the Way, the solution of the human consciousness in the music.

Crohinga Well (Belgium), 1998, #14
Each Vagtazo Halottkemek album is a happening to look forward to but this one is so good it should be able to open some doors here and there...

Budapest Week, 1998 September
If you are looking for music that is both unique and characteristically Hungarian, there is hardly a better choice than VHK...When some archeologist from outer space digs this recording up from under the ruins of the Mammut shopping center thousands of years from now, he will think what a nice late-twentieth century folk song "Nincsen Távol" (It's not Far Away) was, and how sad it is that no one understood what the crazy dervish was talking about.

Mancs (Hungary), 2000 January 20
Ewvery time when listening a VHK record I am transferred to the place where the really important events set up, I am tending to believe that I will be able to stay at the surface of life, experience the real life...this is why it is always a holiday when a new VHK CD comes out, since for at least 74 minutes I feel myself to such a being, which I should be on every rotten day.