When you finally fought through the pain
and hate.
Why not celebrate?
The modern age, if we can even call it modern, is a circus of absurdities teetering between tragedy and vaudeville. Repeat, a Stockholm punk/post-punk duo (occasionally joined live by bassist Sanna), confront this chaos head-on with their new EP Celebrate. Recorded at Studio Sickan in Malmö, the five tracks play like clenched fists and uneasy laughs—short, sharp bursts of refusal that channel monotony, political absurdity, and personal struggle into anthems that dare the listener to keep moving.
“Celebrate is about facing all the absurdity and frustration we carry, but also about refusing to give in,” the band explains. “It’s a record about holding on.” That insistence comes through not as sentimentality, but as stubborn resistance: sarcastic, brash, and brimming with the spirit of punk dissent.
The title track launches the EP with distorted guitars and bombastic drums that evoke the sound of the Buzzcocks and Sex Pistols. Lyrically, it’s about survival in the face of dismissal: “Said you were nothing, tried to cut you short… Why not celebrate?” The refrain insists on victory through endurance, twisting pain into a rallying cry. Rather than a hollow cheer, “Celebrate” feels like sarcasm sharpened into protest—punk irony and punk triumph in the same breath.
Built around a catchy riff and buoyant vocal melody, “Nothing New” skewers the recycling of lies and the endless spin cycle of distorted narratives. The lyrics (“Painting the picture / Telling us lies now / Running in circles”) condemn the spectacle of repetition as stagnation, echoing both Euro-punk sneer and L.A. punk venom. Its chorus—“Sick of it all, spinning lies and pictures, knowing that this is nothing new”—becomes a bitter anthem for the information-saturated present.
The most propulsive pogo-ready track of the bunch, “Frames” channels the dive-bar squat-show energy of early Buzzcocks. Though its lyrics are clipped and direct, their thrust is clear: pressure, guilt, and the suffocating structures that box us in. Musically tight and lyrically confrontational, it delivers catharsis through raw insistence.
Driven by a galloping rhythm, “Day After Day” evokes the intensity of early Gun Club crossed with the fury of Dead Kennedys. Its lyrics hammer at cycles of struggle: “Day after day it’s the battle you can’t escape… Again, again, the defeat when it’s losing control.” This is repetition as punishment, monotony as a weapon. The song becomes a soundtrack to alienated labor, its relentless refrain mocking the grind even as it mirrors it.
The EP closes with its shortest, sharpest jab. “Me and Paul Auster” almost veers into pop territory with its infectious melody, but its brevity and absurdity flip into protest by parody. Like a grunge-inflected chant, the track collapses the existential cycles hinted at throughout the EP into a wink and a punchline, refusing closure while delivering one last shock of energy.
Listen to the EP below or on Spotify, and order it via Bandcamp.
While guitars buzz and drums pound, the politics lie in the refusal to soften edges. Celebrate thrives on brevity, abrasiveness, and an unwillingness to be commodified. It’s a record that insists frustration can be sculpted into form, not wasted in nihilism. Repeat sit in dialogue with traditions stretching from The Clash to Killing Joke, yet their voice is distinctly contemporary: bound to absurd cycles and sharpened into urgent survival.
Tour Dates:
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5 September – Malmö, Sweden – NBGB
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19 September – Malmö, Sweden – Rundgång
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17 October – Hollen, Germany – Seker Huus
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18 October – Hamburg, Germany – Rondenbarg/Wagenplatz
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24 October – Lübeck, Germany – VeB
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25 October – Hoorn, Netherlands – Swaf
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20 November – Helsinki, Finland – Playhouse
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21 November – Lohja, Finland – Nelja
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22 November – Tampere, Finland – Vastavirta
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19 December – Meschede, Germany – Tröte
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20 December – Lund, Sweden – Mejeriet
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