No, the message from GREAT RESIGNATION is not exactly news. The times are dark, the prospects are even bleaker, and even if you “wanted everything, gave everything,” the sobering conclusion remains: “We haven’t freed ourselves from anything.” The song comes at the very end of Pogendroblem’s new, fourth album, which attempts to square punk: the desperate fight against the system now turns into somehow still somewhat combative desperation.
Editorial recommendations
You could call this a modernization of the genre, but it feels more like a swansong. Even the guitar strumming, which the Cologne band bravely upholds as if 1977 were just yesterday, seems like an act of desperation in its awkward anti-grooviness or at least like a tired but still active attempt to change something, even if it only succeeds in “pushing a few yuppies out of the neighborhood”.
Because: What else do you have left? And that’s probably what punk can still achieve in 2025. The pre-release single is representative of this, in which the story of a love is told, but the message can also be applied to the big questions: We may have made ourselves comfortable with our head on the shoulder of our loved one, but “It can’t go on like this forever”. Pogendroblem don’t know how things could continue, and punk isn’t a solution either, but in four-four time, always on the twelve, that always works somehow.
This review first appeared in Musikexpress 11/2025.