Croatia 2025 - Marko Bošnjak - Poison Cake

 

(Click here for a rather dark confectionary…)

So there were we watching Croatia's Dora - the contest that finds their Eurovision entry - and there was one song that we decided was ripe for Apocalypsification. Dark and grim in places? Check! Sounds like the final project from a music technology course? Check! Mildly incomprehensible? Check Check Check!

And as there was seemingly no chance of actually winning the thing, we began to mentally draft our review. After all, this seemingly inexperienced young lad was up again Magazin - the biggest Croatian band there's ever been - and a whole batch of popular local professional acts across a whole range of styles. But somehow, and we're still not entirely sure how it happened, Poison Cake only went and beat the lot of them!

You could tell how surprised Marko himself was, by his shocked sweary mouthings throughout the scoring, and his stunned confusion when the result was finally called. Almost as confused as the massed ranks of EuroTwitter who were calling for "Anything but Poison Cake!" Whether this is a second-guessing hangover after Croatia's success with Baby Lasagna last year, or this thing is somehow better than we first thought, we don't know. But it's a rare event when something we thought was doomed to Apocalypse ignominy ends up as eventual victor, and we're not quite sure how to deal with that!

San Marino 2025 - Farmacy - Bæd

NOTE: CLICK ON THIS VIDEO PANEL AND GO TO 59:01 OTHERWISE YOU'LL HAVE TO WATCH THE WHOLE DANG SHOW. ALTERNATIVELY, CLICK THE LINK BELOW FOR A MORE DIRECT ROUTE TO THE SONG

(Click here for a more direct route to the nonsense...)

We don't know if we're finally at the maximum saturation point and we've seen enough of this old rot, or we're just a pair of grumpy old sods, but this year's Una Voce Per San Marino has been a bit of a slog. Hardly anything is either really good or really bad, instead it's all at slopping about at the low end of mediocre… it's like watching an everlasting local village hall version of Nobody's Got Talent, only with lashings more blandness. For the most part you know what you're about to get before they even walk up the steps after their awkward chat with a hostess who still hasn't worked out how microphones work. And there's a few rules of thumb to apply before the first pitchy squawks come out of each of their mouths.

If they've got two dancers, it's going to be a knuckle-gnawingly ordinary weak dance song. If they're wearing either a hat, a waistcoat or a white shirt, they're going to think they're a proper musician - and any combination of the three just magnifies their drear. If they're in a dress that goes down to the floor it's going to be a ballad so unmemorable that you'll think you've had a petit mal, if they're got fluro trousers on they're going to be a bit 'look how mad I am! Can you see?!!', and if they're holding some kind of an instrument, then just pop to the corner shop for some milk like you've been meaning to all day. If you don't, you'll wish you had.

Night after night of this endless parade of usual I've had good honest people sending me links saying "Come on, surely this one?!", and click the url excitedly, only to be met with a bunch of clodhoppers stamping listlessly about wearing what they think pop stars dress like, but that they actual found in the deeper recesses of Shein. Five nights in and the only song I'd managed to get through from start to end was a bunch of Luxembourgers singing hopefully about San Marino - and that was mainly to see if the singer ever took her comedy hat off. But then came this…

Witness three apparent Hungarians in their late youth, counting their steps and desperately trying to remember a lyric that appears to be about mucking about with farm animals. Marvel as they self-consciously loon about, trying to be wacky - but that's wacky with as many sets of inverted commas as you can muster around it. But then get a little confused, because somehow there seems to be a smidgeon of art behind all this try-hard cobblers. And you've got to grudgingly admire a song that contains the line "Come get your hooves out". To use a much used Apocalypse analogy, it's like a car accident or a bad wig - you know it's bloody awful, but you just can't stop looking at it.

Or was it just because everything else so far in this tournament has been so bloody poor that this most amateurish of performances appeared entertaining…

Sweden 2025 - Kaj - Bara Bada Bastu

 

(Click here if you fancy a good steaming…)

There's a most curious subplot bubbling up in this year's Melodifestivalen. It's long been assumed that the whole series of shows is nought but a long-winded anointment of a returning, ahem, hero. In fact, so sure has Eurovisionia been that Måns' somewhat asthmatic version concept of Revolution is going to win the whole dang shebang that it crept to favourite in the betting before anyone had heard a note of it. But now that it's finally been shown to the masses, there's been a grudging admission that even though it's not actually all that good, but it's probably going to be sending us back to somewhere expensive in Sweden again next year. We like to call it the Only Teardrops option - a song that no one really wholeheartedly liked, but assumed was going to win, so kind of willed it to win by an accidental collective consciousness.

But there is one small pocked of resistance building up a head of steam, and it came from the same heat in Malmö. It turns out that many folk are getting a bit weary of the same old same old that MelFest has been dealing us over the last few years. An endless parade of highly mid songs that sound a bit like more successful songs - a concept that's become a tad more post-modern, as Revolution sounds a little bit like Måns' last winner that sounded a bit like something else - only with every last semblance of fun squeezed coarsley out of it. Step forward three chaps from over the water in Ostrobothnia - a Swedish outpost on the West Coast of Finland that the Swedes like to call East Sweden. Their schtick is to perform in the Vörå dialect - a kind of mutant mix of Finnish and Swedish that hardly anyone else can entirely understand.

They might be bringing a curious argot with them, but they also bring a bit of fun - a commodity sadly lacking at MF over the last few years. Their jaunty song about having a sauna might not break too many originality boundaries, but it's a well put together performance by an act at the top of their game - and somehow more and more people are beginning to get behind it. We've long hoped that SVT would tire of delivering the same old successful slop year after year and let their hair down a bit, and there have been many missed opportunities in recent history. Swingfly, Panetoz, Medina and Eva and Ewa to name but a few. Songs that are there to add a light touch to a Saturday night light entertainment show for locals, but who would have been cracking options for the big show in and of their own right.

After the initial dismay of Måns, as lovely as he is, having seemingly rendered this year's contest a tad neutered, the resistance is building for the sauna boys and a head of steam is building behind them. And if they manage to pull this off, well, that would be the real revolution - not some smiling bloke in a long coat being eaten by the scenery as he sings the same meaningless word over and over and over again. We most definititely viva that particular revolution.

Germany 2025 - Feuerschwanz - Knightclub

(Click here if you can't see the panel above to get all medieval…)

We've already lost a couple of this year's likely noisy contenders, in some cases for reasons our lawyers would prefer not to mention, but you can always rely on specialist label Napalm Records to give we hirsute types something to hang out coats on, as they're one of the few genre labels who really seem to understand what this funny old contest is about. And in veteran medieval metallers Feuerschwanz you'd have though they'd delivered us a safe pain of hands. But sadly not quite, in our book.

Beloved of metal festival goers across the continent, we were quite looking forward to seeing what they were going to offer - especially as the song's title blatantly hinted that some armour-garbed humour might be involved. And it kicks off pretty promisingly, too. A nice calm intro jolting into a good old chuggy bit of Eurometal seemed like almost the perfect start. They even got the gag in early. The problem is though, that they kept hammering it home, ad infinitum, from start to finish. So when German rapper of note Dag von SDP burst into the middle eight if felt like we were finally off the mobius loop and into something more interesting.

But then he even kicked into repeating the chorus over and over again. And they say Germans are rubbish at comedy…

And it's such a shame, because there's almost something for anybody to enjoy ever. Meaty instruments for the real music mob to furtle over, a schalger-esque chorus for the pop fans, and even some actual singing for the "It's all just noise!" brigade (who frankly would get hospitalised if ever they put my creaking iPod on shuffle). I still reckon it's probably the right choice for them for Basel, as it's big and bold and fills a yawning gap in this year's line up. But the ESC edit does feel like an awfully long three minutes.

Of course, you can never second guess the German public, as they're prone to choose the plucky sweet-faced newcomer over a field of well-known internationally noted acts. And they selection process seems even more convoluted this year than ever, so who knows. Hopefully they've got something even more entertaining waiting in the wings that doesn't sound like the needle got stuck in the groove after the first thirty seconds.

Yes, Knightclub / Nightclub! We bloody get it!

Armenia 2025 - Arsen feat. Kamil - Will You Marry Me?

(Click here for the strangeness if you can't see the video panel above. Then update your browser…)

If, like us, you had nothing better to do on a Sunday late afternoon and were slumped on your sofas watching Armenia's Depi Evratesil show, you may have been puzzled by a song that popped up towards the end of the show. What looked like a pile of grey washing began singing a cruise ship disco tune in a curiously strained voice about the wish to get married, before a chap in a posh suit and slick hair burst out of the heap and began an answer verse in a gruff baritone. Eh?

This continued to alternate for a while - each time the singer's voice changing any time the pompoms went anywhere near their head - until the tables were turned and it was now the chap that wanted to get wed, and the grey heap was off on his, her or their heels. It really was perplexing. We were expecting tumbleweed from the audience, but of course the rapturous canned applause made this sound like the most popular thing on earth since lawnmowers. But it got stranger. When the unnecessary co-host was doing the inevitable rounds of the green room, the performer of this curio spoke with the confidence of somebody that was used to this kind of attention, rather than the awkward mutterings of most of the other contestants. But then it dawned on us…

Kamil? Funny voice? Curious garb? Flipping heck, this was Depi alumnus Kamil Show, played by actor Arsen Grigoryan having something of a coming out moment! "Who?" the younger and less attentive of you might be asking? Well, the Kamil Show was an act who took part in the 2018 running of the show who had everyone in a flurry. A hugely popular local drag act, their song Puerto Rico was pretty terrible, with the character Kamil stomping around with red and green hair, not doing all that much bar shouting the occasional line of nonsense and laughing in a grating cackle. Of course, all the usual old grumblers were apoplectic with worry that this would be bagging the ticket to Lisbon. But in the end, Qami beat Puerto Rico onto fourth, and everybody outside of Armenia forgot all about Kamil Show, until it suddenly dawned on me that afternoon.

All this just goes to show, if something totally weird happens in a Eurovision selection show in a language you don't understand there's usually a reason for it. But not always.

Let's refresh your memories and see what you could have won back in the twentyteens...

 

Lithuania 2025 - Katarsis – Tavo Akys

 

(Click here if the link above is too darned dark to see…)

Lithuania is a curious fish when it comes to this contest. Just when you think you're getting a handle on the kind of thing they like to send, they frequently confound your expectations by veering off in a completely unexpected direction. And they appear to have done exactly that with the song they eventually sent to Basel.

Now me and Mrs A go back a long way with Eurovision national finals. It used to be that if there was so much of a sniff of someone waving their hand about in front of a guitar it was a given that they were immediately doomed. It's a difficult mindset to completely scrub out of your brain, so when we both found ourself perched on the fronts of our respective sofas within about ten seconds of this song starting we automatically assumed the worst.

The chiming funereal guitars and slow-pounding primal drums lured us hypnotically into the song's sad post-punk reverie, as the moon-faced boy with the shaggy barnet out front prowled around the stage like an agitated marmot, luring us into his private gloom with the downbeat fairytale delivery. It's the kind of band that we're more used to seeing from an act second on a four band bill in some damp and dingy small town gig venue, and it's the kind of song that would have stopped us in our tracks, curtailing our conversation with the headliner's bass player to stop and stare at the glacial goth whirlwind that was starting to swirl in the two-inch stage in the corner.

It's the kind of song that we'll usually chuck on a Lost Songs of ESC - Dark Edition playlist and play it until it's tattooed on our ears, but we never in a million years imagined that it ever stood a chance of actually winning the ticket to the big show. Quite how it'll do there is impossible to guess, but one fears that it'll be too artsy for the juries and gloomy for the punters, and will probably struggle to even get out of its semi. But then again, that's pretty much what we thought of its chances of so much as getting out of their semi!

However it does, though,  it's in the canon now, and we've got a new favourite Lithuanian band!

Lithuania 2025 - Lion Ceccah – Drobė

 

(Click here if you can't see the video panel above on your aged device…)

You can always rely on Lithuania for the entertaining outliers, and our lad Lion here certainly delivered that last Saturday. One of those can't-take-your-eyes-off-it moments - a bit like a bad toupee or a motorway car accident - it starts with some mad-eyed folksy women singing in that fabulous flat East European tone, before the lad himself kicks in with quite a belt. 

There's so many mysteries here, that could possibly be explained if you know your Lithuanian, but we also suspect quite possibly not. What do they look like they've been recently beaten up? What's that weird little chip tune bit in the middle all about? Are they as deathly serious as they look, or is there a wry ironic wink hidden somewhere within its performance?

We're absolutely fascinated with it here at Apocalypse Towers, and we're still not sure what our favourite bit is, yet? That weird jolty straight-legged dance after he gets his robe off? That intense rolling march toward camera by the backing singers? Actually, any given five second chunk of the whole darned thing! But we're struggling to decide whether it's actually any good or not. There's definitely some art involved, but should it be hung in a gallery, or pinned to the front of a fridge with a magnet?

Finland 2025 - Erika Vikman – Ich Komme

 

(Click here for a proper grubby experience if you can't see the panel above…)

One for the Eurovision irregulars here. Hardcaore fandom will already know about Ms Vikman from her previous appearance in Finland's UMK, where she was swathed in pink latex and flanked by two dancing bears singing about an Italian porn actress. The first 14 seconds alone were better than almost anything you can imagine. At that point she was best known in Finland as the ex-partner of a local pensioner pop star who purportedly dumped her for being too old. But since then she's carved out a career pumping out left-handed smut fests and techno filth. And of course we're here for it.

And while we were only slightly whelmed upon our first listen, the live performance piled on the bump 'n' grind, and it ended up a complete no-brainer to send this to the big show. Looking every bit like the living embodiment of when you ask an eight-year-old boy to draw a sexy lady, she does unspeakable things to a mic stand throughout, before its massive Carry On Up The Smut pay off at the end.

It is, in short, a cracker, and the chorus alone is an immense monument to Finnish song shapes. Of course she's got her detractors (and you have no idea how hard it was not to go full Sid James on that last sentence clause), but heck, when a song's as anthemic as this, well you can't really go wrong. As the old boy Wogan may have said, it's one for the Dads. But can you imagine a whole arena pumping its fist and chanting the song's title? It's going to be a beautiful moment.

Ireland 2025 - Emmy - Laika Party

 

(Click here if you can't see the panel above for a right load of nonsense…)

Emmy, oh Emmy, you optimistic dreamer. Yes, it would be lovely to imagine that the Russian space pooch of which you sing is still having a lovely life up there. But sadly the reality is nowhere near as delightful, and I fear you ought to know the truth in a gentle friendly manner before the grown ups start shouting at you.

For starters, we hate to tell you this, but animals live considerably shorter lives, for the most part, than we humans. Laika was fired into the dark unknown in 1957, and was estimated to have been around three years old at the time. That would make her 71 years old at this point in history, which is just shy of 500 years in doggy terms. Quite an innings for a tree, let alone a medium-sized mammal.

On top of that, the poor lass was only given enough food for six days, and there was no heating in her tiny cramped cabin. So if she managed to survive the shock of the launch and the hypothermia of life in space, she would probably have only survived for about a fortnight at best, bless her. And as if all that wasn't enough, Sputnik 2, the craft of her sad demise, fell to back to Earth from its short orbit just over five months after its launch. So your chances of there being any kind of party going between Laika and all the various fruit flies, monkeys, mice and other pups that were up there even days after she first went up are pretty slim.  

And I must also take issue with some of your other statements, ma'am. It's doubtful that anyone cheered her off, as the Baikonur Cosmodrome was an ultra secret facility in the deserty wastes of Kazakhstan. And as for the supposition that if she hadn't flown, neither would the rest of us, am I to assume that the Wright Brothers mean nothing to you? Or Louis Blériot? The Montgolfiers, perhaps? Quite when do you imagine that powered flight began, ma'am? Or quite what they were up to when they kidnapped poor Laika from the cold streets of Moscow?

Oh Emmy. Sweet sweet Emmy. Remember that hamster you had that seemed to live for your entire childhood? That was actually seven different hamsters. Your parents carefully replaced each one after it passed away after about a year or so. And Timmy your lovely ginger cat that suddenly changed personalities strangely when you were around seven? That'll be Timmy #1 and Timmy #2 I'm afraid. The latter turned up after the former had a sad incident with a delivery van, but thankfully you never noticed. Perhaps that's why you seem to think that Laika could live forever in one of the most hostile environments known to life?

We hate to break it to you, Emmy, but we think you're old enough to understand now. Possibly…

Slovenia 2025 - Rai - Frederick's Dead

 

(Click here for the strangeness if you can't see the gurning baldie above…)

When we had our first cursory skim through the songs for EMA we quickly dismissed this one as the kind of arch wackiness that usually makes our skin crawl. But friends of the site assured us "No, you wait!" And we must confess that seeing these lads looking like proper metallists in the intro clip did pique our interest a tad more than we were expecting. I mean heck, we thought it was going to be a bunch of ironic muso lads in carnified stripy trews and wescots, but this lot look like they knew their wonky prog metal. heck, one of them was even wearing an Igorrr shirt! (Go look 'em up if your ears can take it!) This might actually be more interesting than we first imagined!

And what we got was truly odd if you're well versed in things prog-metallic. Half the band were stripped to the waist in proper black metal stances, offering us mere glimpses of the noodly tech metal they usually play, while the other half delivered a plinky-plonky sideshow waltz. It was a highly strange mash up of genres and cultures - so bewildering in fact that you almost forgot about the little baldie gremlin prowling about in front of the camera giving it the creepy faces.

I'd have loved to have been a fly on the wall during the writing session where someone in the band - probably the keyboard player - said "I'll tell you what, it'd be funny if we had a stab at the Eurovision with this one!" "Noooooo!" said most of the rest. "It'll ruin our cool kids of progressive image if we do that!" "But wait!" said the singer, "I've got a plan!"

And even more strangely it did alright on the night. It was clearly never going beat local telly god Klemen or this week's girl in her pants waving her hair about,  but it finished a respectable sixth from twelve. Let's just hope all the cool music snobs in the local prog noodle scene see it for the spot of fun it was…  

Portugal 2025 - Henka - I Wanna Destroy U

 

(Click here for noise if you can't see the video panel above…)

After all the drama for the last few days it was nice to sit down and have our traditional quiet chill out to all the Portuguese songs. One by one they lilted by like the gentlest Spring breeze, until… OH MY BLOODY DAYS! THIS HAPPENED!

In a move almost exactly nobody saw coming, RTP have elected to chuck some of the heaviest guitar-shaped things we've ever seen at this contest smack back in the middle of proceedings to wake up all the Nans in the shires. And flipping heck does this chug along nicely.

Taking the current vague trend for loud-quiet-very-loud song patterns at the moment, Henka here has made the very loud exceedingly loud, although she does give us the occasional metalcore cop out of clean vocals as something of a palate cleanser every now and again. And looking into her history she seems the real deal too, rather than some bandwagon jumper trying their luck.

Of course, there will be all the usual dullards listing a load of the more noisy songs of late from Ireland, Croatia and Finland and trying to say this is some kind of copy of them. But as usual they're quite quite wrong. This is its whole own thing, and we've absolutely no idea where it's going to come come FdC night - it could come absolutely anywhere from bottom to top!

Moldova 2025 - Tudor Bumbac - Pace Noi Vrem

 

(Click here if you can't see the splendid old gentleman above…)

For those sensible enough not to follow every last minute of Eurovision pre-qualifying TV - and that's probably all but six of you - the Moldovan live auditions have become a regular extra special landmark of joy. On it we get to see around thirty of what TRM consider to be the best songs that applied - although quite often it's less because artists clean forget to show up. But one chap who is a regular at this srage , and who has become a cult hero in Eurovisionia, the esteemed Tudor Bumbac.

You'll be surprised to learn that the lovely old boy isn't a professional musician, but a medic and lecturer who just happens to love music. He turns up most years with a lovely bit of folksy Balkan shuffle pop. So beloved is he that one of the characters in my Eurovision novel was a thinly-veiled version of him. 

This year was a bit different though. He'd mixed his style up a tad, delivering a more sedate waltz that loosely translates as We Want Peace. However, it wasn't the song that was most worthy of note, but the delivery. At one point during the instrumental break in the middle it looked every bit like he'd had a petit mal, or maybe even a mini-stroke. And we got even more concerned when his usually rock solid performance started to falter as he'd clearly forgotten the words… we hope.

We love Mr Bumbac here at Apocalypse, and we wonder if he has any idea what a cult hero he is across the continent. But he's starting to look frail, and we'd rather he stayed at home than risk his health entertaining us, bless him.

Moldova 2025 - Pizdofarm - Vin Da, Rusia Nu!

 

(Click here to help smash the system if you can't play the clip above…)

Like most of us, we'd kind of lazily assumed that TRM let absolutely any song that applied get to the live audition stage. I mean, they couldn't possibly have any kind of quality control process, going by the evidence of previous years. Well it turns out that they do, but in this case you can quite understand why they didn't want it on the telly.

Musically it's a pretty standard bit of Eastern Europop, and to be honest, weak as it is it's still more appealing that most of the songs we'll be seeing on that most awkward of selection shows. But it's the lyrical content that was probably the issue here. The title, you can probably work out, translates to Wine Yes, Russia No! - which probably isn't a message that anyone in Moldovan telly wants to risk considering the tensions with their former imperial overlord. And in naming the little orange fella, and giving a massive head nod to our Verka at the end, they probably wrote their own rejection letter before anyone even heard it.

But there's more. The act's name was also somewhat problematic, translating to either Pussy Farm, or Farm Of Kants, depending on which translator you use. Or at least that's what the latter one sounded like… Yeah, it was never going to happen, was it. But we're still a bit disappointed that we'll never get to find out just how far their actual appearance differs from them two on the lyric screen. Considerably, one expects.

United Kingdom 2025 - Franz Ferdinand - Hooked

 

(Click here for the first bit of silly UK tittle-tattle of the year…)

We're not just here for the declared national final entries and the quantifiable rumours, of course, but for all the outlandish early-season tittle-tattle as well. So when we started hearing sniffs from a number of different directions that they thought they knew for sure what the UK was going to be sending this year our ears certainly did prick up a little. "It's going to be a band!" some said with some certainty, "And one that most people will have heard of." Interesting. "It's got an eighties sound and is incredibly danceable" said some others. Very interesting. "It's Franz Ferdinand!" said a few more convinced mutterings. WHAT?

Yeah, that's what we thought. But is this rumour one worth pursuing? To be completely frank, we're not sure. True, Alex Kapranos has expressed interest in the contest in the past - but that was more aimed at sending something folky-stompy in for Greece, his ancestral homeland. But it's also very true that they have a new album out this week, with the song most folks are citing as the special one fitting very nicely into the 2020s Eurovision soundsphere. It's three minutes long, has that quirky-jerky post-Roop thing going on, and gets your head nodding at first listen. Surely not?

We suspect that this is either the product of someone joining a few genuine clues together and coming up with completely the wrong answer, or some mischief on the part of the band's supporters to help the album get a few more listens. But it's still interesting that an act of FF's stature is even getting mentioned in despatches in this way. Although do we really want a couple of fifty-plus-year-olds stomping creakily about on the Eurovision stage? Aren't we in enough trouble just lately?

If pressed on the matter we'd suspect that this whole tale is just a bit of wide-eyed wishful thinking. But if further asked whether we'd actually want this as our entry - well, to be honest, we really wouldn't complain that much…

Finland 2025 - One Morning Left – Puppy

(Click here for the ills…)

***STOP PRESS***

Turns out it emerged that evidence of the singer being a wrong 'un of such magnitude emerged that resulted in the song being withdrawn from the contest, the rest of the band leaving him on the spot, the label dropping them, and their parent limited company being wound up without another minute's notice. When a fun idea turns out to be no fun at all…

****************

In what is fast becoming a cast iron truism in Eurovisionia, you can always trust the Finns to put the biggest smile on your face at this time of year. And to be absolutely honest, I wasn't expecting it to come from One Morning Left, a band normally with such a minimal lick of metal in their bones you couldn't wrap a Kit-Kat in it. But heavens have they delivered the chunk here!

It's also that song with a quiet bit, then a noisy bit that'll leave you scraping your Nan off the back of the sofa, then a noise step drop out at the three quarter point before a whole slab of more silliness. Yep, it's been done a dozen times in these shires - and a thousand times more in my regular musical world - but you still can't help loving these cheeky scamps and their ode to their baby dogs.

It's abject cobblers, of course, but it's still a breath of fresh air in this year's increasingly dull slate of songs. One suspects the contest is Erika Vikman's to lose, but come on you Finns, give us one of the most dumb-assed entertaining three years of all time and pick this for Basel!