Berlin’s Pabst deliver
a set of consistently excellent punky power pop songs on their honed sophomore
outing. It’s a record that initially presents as an exercise in oik droogism
(NB: the video to one of the album’s standout tracks, ‘Legal Tender’, is
clearly heavily influenced
by A Clockwork Orange). But it’s more than that too. Pabst have
written some really grown up pop-rock here. The music often has more depth than
first it seems (case in point, ‘Wish.com’). The same can be said for the
lyrics, which, while playing the teenage carefree card, also slide into themes
like urban disillusionment (‘Skyline’) and the normalisation of drug use
(‘Ibuprofen’). Equally, at its core, Deus ex Machina is a hook
heavy bounce-fest, which mostly rockets from one memorable chorus to the
next. It’s a very fun ride. File under ‘sehr gut’.