Some bands play songs. torpedo — Lausanne’s noise-rock/post-punk/psych disruptors torpedo — stage full-blown sonic exorcisms. Their latest release, What the Fucked Do We All Do Now? | – Lights, out via Broken Clover Records, isn’t here to soothe. It’s here to challenge, confront, and possibly haunt you.
Part protest, part fever dream, the record smashes genres together like burning cars: noise rock’s serrated edges, industrial’s mechanical dread, psychedelia’s warped haze, post-rock’s vast sprawl. Across 47 minutes, the trio crafts a sound both relentless and hypnotic — political without sloganeering. The manifesto is in the frequencies themselves: feminist, non-binary, ecological, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, anti-war. Or, as the band puts it: “We ask the bonds unifying everything be beautified and healed.”
torpedo’s path to ‘Lights’ has been slow-burning but explosive: from the psychedelic shimmer of ‘Sphynx’ (2019) to the sprawling pandemic-born ‘Orpheo_Nebula’ (2022), plus two U.S. West Coast tours and a string of restless singles (« HOPE | DREAM », « La Mer Ondulée »). Each step has sharpened their edges.
‘What the Fucked Do We All Do Now?’ doesn’t pretend to answer its own question. It simply demands you listen, feel, and act — before the noise is all that’s left.
For fans of Black Mountain, Swans, Patti Smith, Sonic Youth, and Godspeed You! Black Emperor, this is familiar territory — but torpedo’s voice is their own. They don’t just echo influences being relics from a DIY era when music came with tangible rebellion. Part II follows later this year on 10″ vinyl, promising another dose of raw urgency; they detonate them and rearrange the debris into something jaggedly beautiful.
‘What the Fucked Do We All Do Now?’ doesn’t pretend to answer its own question. It simply demands you listen, feel, and act — before the noise becomes all that’s left.
