trenddjakarta.com – After a convoluted process involving numerous twists and turns, the Jakarta-based rock band .Feast finally deliver their long-awaited album Membangun & Menghancurkan (Building & Destroying). Released by Sun Eater to digital music platforms on August 30, 2024 and including previously-released singles “Konsekuens” (“Consequences”), “Politrik” (“Politricks”) and “Nina”, the album sees Baskara Putra (vocals), Adnan Satyanugraha (guitar), Dicky Renanda (guitar) and Fadli Fikriawan (bass) reinventing themselves in collaboration with some of Indonesia’s most exciting music producers including Laleilmanino, Lafa Pratomo and Iga Massardi. “The old .Feast is dead.”
The above quote from Baskara Putra might sound like just another provocative soundbite from a musician whose career thus far has been full of them, for better or worse. But it also
accurately describes how the .Feast frontman and his bandmates went about the creation of their latest album Membangun & Menghancurkan. Before we get into the back story, here’s what the Jakarta-based band’s third full-length album is in a nutshell: it’s their most eclectic body of work to date and involves 12 producers from across the current Indonesian music spectrum bringing these 15 tracks to life. “Having all these producers gave us new perspectives while making this album, which was something that we really needed after being in .Feast for over 10 years,” says bassist Fadli “Awan” Fikriawan.
Those 15 tracks also comprise the band’s most personal and introspective material yet, as they lean less heavily on the sociopolitical issues that they were previously known for in favor of lyrics about fatherhood, mortality, hedonism, lust, self-recrimination and other topics that provide a more rounded portrait of these four adult men entering their thirties.
“When we were younger, our songs took more of a macro view on all sorts of topics whether or not we were qualified. We just wanted to give voice to what we felt. But now we’ve taken on a more micro view in which we talk about the things around and in front of us,” says guitarist Adnan Satyanugraha, who felt the urge to write the tender Vega Antares-produced ballad “Nina” for his daughter.
Adnan’s fellow guitarist Dicky Renanda, whose nightlife adventures in his youth inspired the track “Arteri” (“Artery”) that was co-written and produced by pop powerhouses
Laleilmanino, adds, “This album is about our journey, so we were feeling nostalgic when we were writing it.”
Interestingly, Membangun & Menghancurkan as it exists in 2024 wasn’t the album that .Feast set out to make way back in 2019 when they were trumpeting its impending arrival even
as they were riding the wave of their breakthrough EP from the previous year, Beberapa Orang Memaafkan (Some People Forgive). They had already released four singles from what the album was supposed to before the 2020 pandemic hit and led to the band pivoting to other projects, namely the more low-key EP Uang Muka (Down Payment) and their 2022 album Abdi Lara Insani (Servant of the People) which featured rewritten material that predated their 2017 debut album Multiverses. These diversions served to buy time for completing Membangun & Menghancurkan, with “Kawal Membangun dan Menghancurkan” (“Guard Membangun & Menghancurkan”) soon becoming a catchphrase among .Feast and their fans as a reminder for the band to finish the album.
And .Feast did finish Membangun & Menghancurkan. Or at least what it was originally intended to be. So what happened next? “We had some internal issues,” says Adnan. “Our hearts just weren’t into it anymore.” An example of the band’s malaise was their early 2023 tour. Ostensibly a celebration of .Feast’s decade-long journey together after forming the band in 2012 while studying at the University of Indonesia’s Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, it found the band going through the motions instead.
After taking time off after the tour, .Feast regrouped in mid-2023 and by the end of the year made a tough decision about what to do with the work they had already completed on
Membangun & Menghancurkan: scrap it and start over. “We destroyed it and rebuilt it. It turns out that names really are prayers,” says Dicky about the ironic fate of the album. Baskara elaborates, “We just felt we were no longer there and had reached a phase in our lives where there were many other things that we wanted to write about.” Though they had previously repurposed old material for Abdi Lara Insani, .Feast decided to go even further on Membangun & Menghancurkan by only keeping the album’s title and its two bookend tracks, “Membangun” and “Menghancurkan” that ended up being produced by Enrico Octaviano and Giovanni Rahmadeva respectively. For the rest of the album, they chose to
come up with entirely new material based on a fresh mindset.
According to Baskara, “We agreed to act as if we were just starting this band but with the skills that we have now: ‘If the previous .Feast discography didn’t exist and we had space for a dozen or so songs, what would it be like?’ That’s why we really started over.” Work on the reinvented Membangun & Menghancurkan took up the first half of 2024, with the band members gathering the material that they each had and then matching them with producers that they felt fit each song while liberating themselves from whether or not it sounded like the “old” .Feast. “We used to produce ourselves, which was good in a sense because it gave us an identity. But on the other hand, it made .Feast predictable. We had the means, the
connections and the opportunity, so why not use them?” says Adnan on working with those producers whose previous work they had admired. After much juggling of each producer’s schedules along with their own, the result is a .Feast album unlike any that they’ve made before. From the hard rock of the Pandu Fathoni- produced “Konsekuens” and “Politrik” to the softer and more sensuous touch brought by Lafa Pratomo to “Ouroboros” and “Langitruntuh” (“Falling Sky”) respectively, Membangun & Menghancurkan pushes the boundaries of the band’s music even further than it’s ever been.
According to Awan, who instigated “Langitruntuh”’s dilemma of wanting to spend time with one’s partner without worrying about outside chaos, “We were more open with each other’s tastes and input, which made the songs sound fresher but with a stronger and more honest identity for .Feast.” If the band’s lyrics in the past reflected their anger and disenchantment towards the outside world, on Membangun & Menghancurkan that same anger and disenchantment is now aimed mostly at themselves.
.Feast’s lyrics – still mostly penned by Baskara – remain as sharp as ever, whether recounting the aforementioned underwhelming tour on the Iga Massardi produced track “Masimarah” (“Still Angry”), tackling insecurities over public opinion on the Herald Reynaldo-helmed indie rocker “Metakritik” (“Metacritic”), or facing the loss of loved ones on “O, Tuan” (“O, Lord”) that features majestic production by Luthfi “Cosmicburp” Adianto and his team. Membangun & Menghancurkan is also a great showcase for Dias Widjajanto, .Feast’s live drummer who’s been playing with the band for the past year and provides a versatile range of styles including the old school .Feast aggression on the despairing “5” which was overseen by Haecal Benarivo, and the lightness of touch he brings to the optimistic trio of Rastafarian- produced tracks “Tarot”, Peralihan” (“Transition”) and “Drums”.
While Membangun & Menghancurkan may not be the album that .Feast set out to make, it’s the one they ended up making – and the band couldn’t be happier. “This is a monumental
album for me personally. After enduring numerous problems, this turned out to be a hard reset for us all in terms of mindset, work flow and even friendship,” says Dicky. Awan adds,
“Though it took much more effort compared to our previous work, especially after we scrapped almost all the old material, this album feels as exciting as when we were making our first one and it brought back the excitement that we’ve been missing in recent years.”
The members of .Feast also hope that listeners can pick up on the excitement they felt in creating Membangun & Menghancurkan. According to Baskara, “Finally, we once again have
something that we created with 100,000 percent of our hearts. We enjoyed making this album, and we hope that excitement spreads to whoever listens to it.” “Even if this were the last .Feast album, we’re very proud of Membangun & Menghancurkan. It’s one killer album,” says Adnan, before adding with tongue in cheek, “We spent a lot of money on it, so we hope people like it!” The old .Feast is dead. Long live the new .Feast.
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