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March 24, 2017

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Censorship, miscelaneous articles, music, political correctness, politics, punk rock, racism, Social Justice Warriors

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The Alt-Right, Punk Rock and Fake Boobs: An Analysis

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The worst thing about people who are full of shit is when they become fans of things that you both enjoy and are a much, much greater expert on. I think I’m in some position of authority to state that most punk rockers don’t know as much as I do about the Alternative Right or the general umbrella of the new right. And similarly I think it’s safe to say that most people on the Alternative Right have only a cursory knowledge of punk rock. So, as someone who is a damn near expert on both of these topics – not saying I was ever on the vanguard of either of these movements – I think I’m at least qualified to call bullshit on a recent article published by Playboy magazine.

But before I even analyze the recent Playboy piece “5 Punk Rockers Explain Why the Alt-Right’s ‘Punk Movement’ is Garbage“, let’s ALL put on our bullshit detectors.

Is Playboy not the magazine that 13 year old boys jerked off to for the first time? Is it not the “classy” boobie mag that was started by a pipe smoking, middle aged-cum (no pun intended)-dirty old pervert, who would feature pictorials of attractive women with their beach blonde hair and big, fake boobs? Wasn’t Hugh himself the subject of the wrath of second wave feminists?

Yeah, I know… Playboy has articles too; and there are people who actually read the articles, rather make their fathers question why all the pages in his books are stuck together. And, from my understanding, there was even an era when Playboy actually had good articles from “legit” writers like Woody Allen – who, liberal as he might be, bless his soul, never became a feminist or stopped being a pussy chasing dog – and Gore Vidal. But that was the 60s, and you had to feign intellectualism in those days.

Regardless of its praising of certain liberal causes, Playboy has long since been just a porn mag-lite (no beaver shots), known for launching the careers of airheads like Jenny McArthy and Pamela Anderson.

So why, all of a sudden, do they fancy themselves the authority on punk rock and feel that they can decide that “the Alt-Right’s ‘Punk Movement’ is Garbage”?

First of all, there IS no AltRight punk movement, because if there was, then my name would be in the article. Not only am I the guy who printed the first ever Punks for Trump t-shirts (only 50 left as of this writing; BUY BUY BUY!!!), but that’s Matt Forney, one of the definitive AltRighters, in the picture below wearing one.

forney_with_chicks

But, even if the article’s writer, Michael Tedder, was aware of this fact, he still misses the point entirely:

Members of the alt-right have of late made the argument that “conservatism is the new punk” and that gadflies like Alex Jones and Milo Yiannopoulos are the modern day truth-telling equivalents of the Sex Pistols and the Clash, pushing back against social justice warriors and political correctness culture. In their eyes, their old, retrograde ideas—which inevitably manifest as fear and outrage at attempts to curb white male privilege—have suddenly become avant-garde because of…safe spaces or something.

Neither Alex Jones nor Milo Yiannopoulos are “AltRight.” They’re libertarians. They’ve adopted some of the less extreme views of the AltRight – that cultural Marxism sucks, that SJWs of all stripes and shades are stupid and that Islam is a threat to Western civilization – but they were never considered part of the movement; to call them AltRight would be like calling the Cars a punk band. Sure the Venn diagrams overlap, but they’re not one and the same. To be honest, I’m not considered “AltRight” by some of the more radical elements either because I’m not a White Nationalist, I don’t believe that all ethnic groups need to be separated at all costs and I don’t fit the proper genetic stock. The AltRight actually has quite a bit of diversity of thought under its umbrella, but a person on the left will never take the time to investigate any of this.

But I digress. As far as the “new right” (which includes the AltRight) being considered “the new punk rock”, well… I suppose that depends on how you define “punk rock.” And that’s where we get to the meat, spikes, leather and chains of the article; unless, of course, you’re a modern day vegan-feminist-hippie-crust-punk, who dodges showers the way the hippies dodged the draft. Then you probably think the original punks were fascists for wearing and eating dead cow.

Most AltRighters don’t know that much about punk and all of the bands it produced or its various sub-genres and their spin-offs. If ANYTHING, while AltRighters might espouse the general, “offend the easily offended” attitude of the Sex Pistols, and while I think Trump is pissing off all the right people, AltRighters specifically probably have more in common with the Oi! band 4Skins, who wrote this wonderful anti-immigrant slam “One Law for Them”, in which they quote the “rivers of blood” speech by Enoch Powell, or the Canadian punk band Forgotten Rebels, who have the hilarious “Bomb the Boat and Feed the Fish”, in which they advocate a rather more, um, violent solution to the problem of mass immigration from third world countries. Hell, I’d even say they have more in common with hardcore punk bands like Agnostic Front, who have the anti-welfare screed “Public Assistance”, which got them in a heap of shit with the PC brigade, or Minor Threat, who mince no words in “Guilty of Being White”, or Black Flag, who sing about the changing ethnic demographic in Southern California in “White Minority” (oh, but they’re being ironic, cantcha tell?!).

But, instead Playboy claims they found the TRUE representatives of punk rock, and these people, who quite obviously have next to no knowledge of the AltRight, explain why someone on the AltRight can’t be punk.

First they get a quote from Victoria Ruiz from some band called the Downtown Boys. (And if you leftist fags say, “uh, what a POSER, you’ve never heard of the Downtown Boys?”, I’ll say, “go fuck yourself, you’ve never heard of Aryan Disgrace, Metal Urbain or the Mentally Ill.”)

Alice Bag, who has actually done the work of being a punk rock star, recently said via Facebook: “Punk has been portrayed as music by and for angry white males, but in its inception, it was a rebellion against all rock cliches. Gender, ethnic, sexual and class taboos were all challenged by our early punk community and that is a story which is not very often told. People of color, queer folk, women—all were present from the very beginning of Punk.”

Yeah, fine, Alice Bag and the Bags are actually really good – how can they not be? They had Geza X on guitar! – but Republican Johnny Ramone has done WAY more work of being a punk rock star. Not to mention Lee Ving of Fear, who wrote the classic “The Mouth Don’t Stop (the Trouble with Women).” And so has leftist clown Jello Biafra. So what? Okay, fine, Darby Crash, the singer of the Germs, was a fag. And their guitarist Pat Smear is black. And Ivan Julian, the rhythm guitarist for Richard Hell and the Voidoids, is also black. And the Bad Brains are all black and were known for their queer-bashing because they “be Rasta, mon, and Rasta don’ like no bloodclot faggots!” Again, so what? That changes precisely what again? The answer is coming; wait for it:

I think that this is exactly why it is nonsense when the alt-right strings together vapid words to try and incite a playground fight with those of us who put blood, sweat and tears into creating an expression that is the antithesis of everything that these alt-right meatheads represent. They are simply a distraction to the women, femmes, queers and people of color filling the columns of Spin, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, the New York Times and numerous other publications that report on culture. I don’t see actual alt-right bands headlining Coachella, I see Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar—two of the most punk in terms of crystallizing dissent about the status quo —artists taking the stage. Real punk is and will always be a total threat to the alt-right and their culture, which is based on white supremacy. Otherwise it isn’t real punk. The alt-right’s tactics are FAKE PUNK. The alt-white (I mean right) want us to sip tea, but we are drinking fresh water from a firehose.

In other words, according to this person, the AltRight DOESN’T represent the punk rock ethos because they AREN’T represented in corporate mainstream media and DON’T perform at corporately sponsored music festivals. I think even the old timey leftists at Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll would raise an eyebrow at that. But more specifically, AltRighters and anyone who espouses views that are heretical to the PC establishment need to be purged from all mainstream discourse. Also probably the main reason no “AltRight bands” have ever performed at Coachella is because THERE ARE NO ALT-RIGHT BANDS to speak of. And even if there were, they wouldn’t be invited to play these festivals. In fact corporately sponsored festivals like the Scion Rock Fest has dumped bands when they were suspected of having “nefarious” connections. But apparently Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar are totally punk as fuck, man.

Next we have Chris Freeman of Pansy Division, the only name on the list I recognize. Feel free to read his lengthy, bitchy diatribe yourself. The only thing that stuck with me was this:

Punk rock for me was about free-thinking more than free speech, and I say that not to minimize free speech but to point out how robotic life had become in the 1970s.

Uh, oookay…. moving right along then…

Well, what do we have here? Erika M. Anderson seems to be the only person of the bunch with a brain!

I think if you define punk as simply being a group of angry young men wanting to say “fuck you” to dominant societal norms and current values, then the roots of the alt-right are definitely one of the most punk things going on right now.

AGREED… but:

But that’s like narrowing your definition of punk down to the Sex Pistols—which was basically a boy band put together by a pair of London clothing designers who wanted to use shock tactics to promote their fashion line. I much prefer Crass (who were anarchists, feminists, environmentalists and better songwriters!), X-Ray Spex or even Pansy Division. But my guess is that if you are truly invested in the theory of alt-right as new punk, then facts about the diversity of the movement aren’t really going to appeal to you.

Oo, calling the Sex Pistols a boy band… them’s fightin’ words! Julian Temple’s 2000 documentary The Filth and the Fury puts that myth to rest. Plus, even if it were true, that doesn’t change the fact that “No Feelings” is one of the best songs ever. To be fair, Crass makes some pretty righteous noise even if they’re views are stupid, and X-Ray Spex tear it up with their noisy, bleating sax and Poly Styrene’s caterwauling; I don’t think I’ve ever heard Pansy Division. Regardless, I AM invested in parts of the alt-right, but as proven above, I’m aware that there were black, gay and gurl punks. Her rant concludes with this:

Indeed, it’s all keks and lulz until a con man takes office and fills his cabinet with incompetent billionaires who don’t actually care about free speech, poverty, or really anything but themselves. Turns out there is a thin line between being punk and getting punk’d.

Oo, she’s clever!

Some guy named Andy Nelson at least gets one thing right:

It is no great secret that for all its posturing and incremental progress over the years, underground punk is still, regrettably, a culture dominated by straight whites males.

I wouldn’t say “regrettably”, but:

The notion that expressing all the hateful bigotry that the entirety of American society has been reinforcing forever would resemble the anti-establishment in any form is a premise so asinine and feeble-minded it is nearly beyond comprehension. Insofar as “Alt-Right Punk” is a real thing, I remind you that we’ve seen this type of thing before, and we’ve seen how it ends: Just ask Dave Smalley and Michael Graves what kind of traffic that moronic website ConservativePunk.com is getting these days.

Hey, if you don’t like it in the United States, you’re free to live in such tolerant countries as Iran and Saudi Arabia. As for Dave Smalley and Michael Graves, I’m not sure what kind of traffic they get on their moronic website these days, and I’m too lazy to check.

And finally Patrick Stickles of some band called Titus Andronicus (isn’t Shakespeare racist or something?) begins with:

In determining if conservatism/“alt-right” is the “new punk” or “political punk rock” or whatever they are saying, we must first address the distinction between “punk,” the ideology, “punks,” who practice said ideology, and “punk rock,” the musical genre/fashion template with which we associate acts like the Sex Pistols or Ramones or Black Flag and “punk rockers,” those who adhere to those templates.

No, we mustn’t. Well,you can if ya want, but I’m going to listen to this here Dictators song and have myself a vodka/diet coke mixer.

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May 28, 2016

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Islam, miscelaneous articles, political correctness, politics, racism

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White Trumps on Dope, an Open Letter to Jello Biafra

jello_biafra_trumpIf you were ever 14 and didn’t go through a Dead Kennedys phase, you are one sad kid.  The Dead Kennedys are a wicked, sick killer band.  Their songs are ferociously hooky, and the musicianship of guitarist East Bay Ray, bassist Klaus Flouride and drummers Ted (a.k.a. Bruce Slesinger) and D.H. Pelligro eschews the notion that “punk bands can’t play.”  On top of all that, you have liberal loudmouth yahoo, Eric “Jello Biafra” Bouchard’s quivering, clown like vibrato caustically waxing about a dystopic future dominated by corporate interests, where the average American is nothing more than a cog in a machine and enters the workforce only to be spit out the other end when his productivity has expired.

In addition to bashing corporations and Republicans, Biafra takes swipes at “jocks”, “goons”, “hicks”, “racists” and basically anybody who is white and male.  Before I even read The Redneck Manifesto, I found it strange that, for someone who allegedly cares about the “everyman”, Biafra sure likes to make low-ball attacks on the po’ white folk in songs like “Winnebago Warrior” or “Goons of Hazard.”  Hell the latest album by his current band, Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine (oh, ho ho!), is called White People and the Damage Done.  What’s with the formalities?  Why not just call it Kill All the White People?  Or maybe that’s so unsubtle that people would think it’s a joke.

But, I do respect the man and his band’s uphill struggle against censorship.  I also find it ironic that it’s someone on the left who tried to destroy his career after the Dead Kennedys inserted the H.R. Giger painting, Landscape XX, into the sleeve of the Frankencrhist LP.  I found it doubly ironic that he’s spent his career defending free speech in an era when it was people on his side that are trying to kill it with political correctness.

And then he pulls this shit.  “Nazi Trump Fuck Off”?!  Like are you fucking serious?  For those not in the know, the Dead Kennedys song “Nazi Punks Fuck Off”, a minute long blast of raging hardcore that attacked assholes on the scene who liked to start fights and beat people up in the pit, was originally released on their 1981 EP In God We Trust, Inc.  Later on, as Nazi Skinheads became a regular fixture in the punk, hardcore and metal scenes of the 80s and 90s, the song seemed actually kind of prescient and important.  By 2016, as occurrences of neo-Nazi gang beatings are practically non-existent in most punk scenes, the song has lost all relevance outside of being a fun blast of hardcore with a well meaning, but otherwise, completely safe message.

So, then I have to ask: is Biafra THAT stupid or is he so damn desperate to keep the pulse on the finger of the young “punx”, a subculture that’s nearing its fortieth year and has all but been turned into a leftist recruitment tool, that he’s willing to pull out Godwin’s law, internet-meme level, stupid tropes like “Trump’s a Nazi” in order to keep the spiky haired fan base tuned in?  And on top of that, are they so stupid that they actually believe him?

Don’t answer that question.

Anyone who pays attention to what Trump has said knows that that man is not only NOT a Nazi, he doesn’t even care about abortions, gay marriage, marijuana or transgender issues;  he literally answers questions about all of these topics with something along the lines of, “I will, but I won’t, but I care, but I don’t.”  Translation: “I just want close the border, end trade deals and not let Syrian refugees in the country.  Other than that, do whatever the heck you want.”  In fact, many strict, hard-liner evangelicals say he’s not conservative enough.

Trump’s contentious views regard illegal immigrants, most of whom are Mexican, and Syrian “refugees”, most of whom are male and Muslim.  No matter how Biafra wants to cut and slice it, most Americans feel the immigration system is broken; they don’t like sanctuary cities, immediate citizenship upon birth or how their cities are turning into Spanish speaking barrios; they wouldn’t like it if their cities were turning into Polish speaking ghettos either.  On top of that, many Americans don’t feel comfortable with letting 10,000 Syrian refugees, people who have values quite different from those of the West as evidenced by, oh, I dunno, incidents in Europe ranging from the raping of a bunch of women in Cologne to the blowing up of the Bataclan in Paris, into the United States.  It’s apparently “racist” now to want to keep your family safe.  Except that Islam isn’t a race; it’s a religion.  Wasn’t it Jello Biafra who wrote “Religious Vomit”?

All religions make me wanna throw up
All religions make me sick
All religions make me wanna throw up
All religions suck
They all claim that they have the truth
That’ll set you free
Just give ’em all your money and they’ll set you free
Free for a fee

They all claim that they have ‘the Answer’
When they don’t even know the Question
They’re just a bunch of liars
They just want your money
They just want your consciousness

[Chorus]
All religions suck
All religions make me wanna throw up
All religions suck
All religions make me wanna BLEAH

They really make me sick
They really make me sick
They really make me sick
They really make me sick
They really make me sick
They really make me ILL

ALL religions, Jello.  I get it; in your estimation, ALL religions just means “Christianity and ALL of its derivations.”  But to us, Jello, that is, the people who aren’t brainwashed by cultural Marxism, “ALL religions” means you can’t play favorites.  As far as we’re concerned, there’s ONE religion that we need to watch out for.  Here, let me give you a hint there, buddy:

muhammad

See that guy?  If you’re a gay person or a woman, that guy is not on your side.  If you’re a Jew, Christian or atheist, that guy is especially not on your side.  Trump wants to ban 10,000 people who believe in that guy from entering the United States, and he’s the Nazi?

I really love the Dead Kennedys.  In fact I think the rest of the band are a bunch of buffoons for hiring scabs like Brandon Cruz, Jeff Penalty and that one guy from that one band to take your spot.  I really love the records you made with Mojo Nixon, Tumor Circus, Nomeansno, D.O.A., the Melvins and even your latest band with the really stupid name.  Hell, I saw you guys twice, and Andrew Weiss killed it!  Jello, if you read this, I’m the guy who was at the show at Small’s in 2010, whose mouth you stuffed one of your rubber gloves into and then rudely shoved a mic in my face asking if I had anything “intelligent” to say.  Well, I didn’t at the time, but I do now.

You’re a coward.  Your buddies in Conflict, who wrote that great, anti-Muslim song “An Option”, on the other hand, might share your retarded, anti-Capitalist sentiment, but they at least understand that letting more Muslims into their country will increase the risk of getting killed.

The Eagles of Death Metal were performing at the Bataclan and watched people get blown up.  Gavin McInnes interviewed vocalist Jesse Hughes, who some publications have banned because of his contentious views towards Muslims.  HE WATCHED PEOPLE DIE, and now people are calling him racist.  He’s pro-Trump and he’s anti-Muslim, which means, in this day and age, he’s anti-death and pro-survival.  He’s got balls, and you don’t.

I know you’ve got a career to maintain, but, if you’re going to take on the easiest, wussiest, least edgy political stance of all time in order to keep fourteen year old kids coming to your shows, can you at least not insult my intelligence with your bullshit?

 

 

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April 14, 2016

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20 Punk Songs Your Newbie Poser Ass Hasn’t Heard

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Rolling Stone magazine released this list of the top 40 punk albums.  Unsurprisingly their list has a few questionable choices and seems intended to appeal more to the casual interloper, rather than the hardcore fan (and I don’t necessarily mean the fan of hardcore punk).  Then THIS guy had a bitch fit over it, babbling like a nerdy, bespectacled hipster about how certain bands don’t sufficiently count as punk rock and are actually part of sub-genres like ball-scratching-disco-wave or proto-post-riot-grrrl-menstro-core.  After that he claims the Stranglers, who sound like the Doors with an Oi! singer, ARE punk, while Gang of Four and Devo are not.  What are his criteria?  Who cares?  If you don’t know these songs, you’re not punk.

“Killer Man” – Gasoline

“Suck Suck” – X

“Freeze” – The Models

“I Wanna Be Rich” – Coldcock

“Rather See You Dead” – Legionaire’s Disease

“Ain’t Been to No Music School” – The Nosebleeds

“A Life of Our Own” – The Undead

“Can’t Stand the Midwest” – Dow Jones and the Industrials

“Hijack the Radio” – Nervebreakers

“Cola Freaks” – Lost Kids

“You’re Full of Shit” – The Electric Eels

“Dead End America” – The Pagans

“I’m a Bug” – The Urinals

“Faggot in the Family” – Aryan Disgrace

“Amerikan Story” – Cult Heroes

“Amerika First” – Gizmos

“Hillside Strangler” – The Hollywood Squares

“Gacy’s Place” – The Mentally Ill

“I Hate Punks” – Geza X and the Mommymen

“Kill the Hippies” – The Deadbeats

“Suicide a Go Go” – Big in Japan

“Panik” – Metal Urbain

“Slash Your Face” – The Dogs

“Baby You’re So Repulsive” – Crime

I think that might me twenty-two; fuck you!  Also, don’t cry to mommy about the Aryan Discrace song; the singer for the Cult Heroes is gay and black, so like, lighten up, fag.

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March 19, 2016

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Did Reagan and Thatcher Really Keep Punk Alive?

reagan_punk_flyerIn the opening scene of the the 2006 documentary, American Hardcore, which was adapted from Steven Blush’s 1999 tome, middle-aged, bald Vic Bondie from Chicago based hardcore punk band, Articles of Faith says something to the effect of, “Reagan was saying it’s morning in America.  It’s fucking MIDNIGHT, MAN!”  This was his way of saying that, in November 1980, when Ronald Reagan was elected President of these here United States, EVERYTHING changed!

It was like Germany 1933 all over again.  Only THIS TIME, there would be REAL opposition to the Nazis in the form of a bunch of 15 – 18 year old kids with crew cuts, combat boots, black denim and cutoff band t-shirts idiotically slamming into one another while a band of middling talent provided the loud, fast, aggressive soundtrack.  Sure a few casualties were rounded up in the form of split heads and severed ears – Jack Grisham of T.S.O.L. admits to slicing kids’ ears off with the spur of his engineer boot – but this was the sound of the YOUTH, a true left-wing opposition to the rising tide of Reaganite fascism.

This of course paralleled the opposition to the equally fascist government of Margaret Thatcher in England, where much more fashion conscious, mohawk wearing punks like the Exploited didn’t waste a moment to call Margaret Thatcher a “cunt.”

By the mid-80s, metal bands like Metallica, Slayer, Anthrax and Megadeth heard the rallying cry of the punks and joined along.  Now the anti-oppressive, anti-fascist message would have better distortion, longer songs and more guitar solos!

By the end of the 80s, the U.S. elected a moderate, slightly less fascist President in George Bush, and, in 1992, fascism was finally crushed – at least, until 2000 – when MTV rocked the vote and President Clinton was elected.  The remaining hardcore punk bands, those that hadn’t broken up, were forced to scratch their heads about what they could possibly sing about.  They had the duel challenge that their righteous, anti-fascist message was now being sold to MILLIONS of people thanks to commie, rap rockers Rage Against the Machine and the fact that, well, Clinton wasn’t a Republican.

So, THANK GOD, that, in 2000, George W. Bush was elected and the bands could get righteous again.

I got the inspiration for this piece when I read Gavin McInnes’ article about how comedians hate Donald Trump and, without him, they’d have a dearth of things to mock, as if the dysfunction of their own lives isn’t good enough.  This same line of reasoning has been parroted about punk rock and, especially its louder, faster offshoot hardcore punk; the 70s might have had some problems, but with the election of Ronald Reagan, now they REALLY had something to complain about, or as the Dead Kennedys sang, “We’ve got a bigger problem now.”

That’s of course if you think music, and punk rock especially, is something more than just a form of entertainment, a loud, fun, raucous way to “get the lead out.”  And unfortunately, for a bunch of free-loading, smelly Anarcho/crust punks, this is the case.

Although there were precursors to punk, bands such as the Velvet Underground, the Stooges, the MC5, the New York Dolls and the Modern Lovers, the general rule of thumb is that the first modern sounding punk rock album was the self titled debut from the Ramones, released in April of 1976.  Johnny Ramone was a Republican who felt that his often copied, down-strumming, “da-da-da” approach was meant to mimic the shooting of an AK-47.  A hippie he was not.

With the exception of maybe the MC5, who largely disavowed their pro-Maoist views, left-wing style revolution was never the first thing on the minds of any of these bands.  Punk, in general, was predicated upon bands who made their stake at being fuck-ups with catchy songs.

By 1977, the major labels gambled on these lovable miscreants and officially called their music “punk rock.”  These new rock groups had funny, sometimes indecent names like the Sex Pistols, the Dead Boys, the Dictators, the Saints, the Clash, the Damned, the Ruts, the Boomtown Rats, the Buzzcocks, the Heartbreakers (not the Tom Petty band!!!), the Vibrators, the Stranglers, the Adverts, the Rezillos, X-Ray Spex, Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Slits and Richard Hell and the Voidoids.

They wrote fuck-up songs for fuck-up kids about fuck-up topics, or, as Johnny Ramone said, “we just want to write about sick topics.”  Punks sang about serial killers, Nazis, rapists, horror movies, beating people up, boredom, juvenile delinquency and, well, being a fuck-up, while bashing out wonderfully juvenile, short and catchy songs that hearkened back to 1950s rock ‘n’ roll, albeit with much louder distortion and snottier vocals.  They also wore funny clothes, making “anti-fashion” statements with torn t-shirts, spiky hair, safety pins, smeared makeup, leather jackets and even swastikas.  Many disguised their attempts at obnoxiousness as “artistic statements.”  Some on the mainstream saw them as a threat; many more saw them as just the new thing the kids are into.

Occasionally a band like the Clash would sing about being on the dole, working in a factory or rioting against “the man.”  Occasionally a group of so-called Anarchists such as Crass would try to make you feel bad for everything you enjoy.  Leather jacket?  That’s made out of an animal!  And soon a movement based upon their principles emerged, saying that punk could no longer be about having fun being a fuck-up. NOW punk had to have a message!

Meanwhile, in the United States, by 1979, major labels like Sire (actually Sire was a much smaller label, but it was bought by Warner Bros., bumping it up to major status) had grown tired of their fuck-up bands.  The Ramones, the Dead Boys and Richard Hell and Voidoids weren’t selling millions of their fuck-up records to millions of fuck-up kids like they had hoped.  Instead, the majority of Americans prefered Animals by Pink Floyd, Rumours by Fleetwood Mac or the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack.

So, the fuck-up bands either had to break up or change their approach for commercial appeal, giving us the closest to punk crossover hits with the Patti Smith/Bruce Springsteen duet “Because the Night”, catchy as hell pop songs by Blondie and “Whip It” by Devo.  Meanwhile, the underground was bubbling with activity and new labels such as Slash and Dangerhouse emerged with new fuck-up bands with names like the Weirdos, the Germs, X, the Bags, the Deadbeats, the Controllers and the Dils.

But, just being a fuck-up with really great songs wasn’t good enough.  The Dead Kennedys formed in 1978 in San Francisco and their singer, agent provocateur Jello Biafra had a real message to sell to the kids.  Punk rock wasn’t about fun!  We have to change the world, man!  We have to take the world back from its evil obsession with capitalism.

The irony is that the first Dead Kennedys album, Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, released in 1980, primarily attacked limousine liberals like Jane Fonda (“Kill the Poor”), rich black people who claim they have a connection with ghetto black people (“Holiday in Cambodia”), shady landlords (“Let’s Lynch the Landlord”) and ultra-liberal San Francisco governor Jerry Brown (“California Uber Alles”).

With the exception of maybe “Chemical Warfare” and “When You Get Drafted”, one could make an argument that Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables was just politically ambiguous satire with no leftist agenda.  Hell the track “Holiday in Cambodia” has the line “bragging that you know how the niggers feel cold/and the slums got so much soul” before bashing Pol Pot, the Communist dictator of Cambodia.  The track “I Kill Children” is just supposed to be shock punk with no message and “Your Emotions” is just Jello telling some broad, “your emotions make you a monster.”

The point?

By 1980, with the death of major label interest in “punk rock” and the rise of “new wave” and “power pop” or the so called skinny tie bands, a younger, angrier, MUCH more antisocial wave of punks hit the scene.  Anorexic, heroin addicted, twenty-something art school types, who spiked their hair up and wore torn blazers with safety pins, were replaced by line-backer sized, beer guzzling, suburban surf jocks, who shaved their heads and wore black jeans with chains for belts and engineer boots.  Safe pogoing (jumping up and down to the beat) was replaced by vicious slam dancing (or the mosh pit, if you will), and hardcore punk was born.

Does any of that sound like the beginnings of a leftist political movement?  None of the music on any of the records by Black Flag, Minor Threat, Circle Jerks, the Misfits, Fear or Bad Brains had a single mention of Ronald Reagan.  Personal turmoil, angst, self-hatred, hatred for society and, in the case of the Misfits, horror movies, were typical themes.

Were there leftist bands?  Sure.  Following the election of Reagan, the Dead Kennedys sang several songs about “cowboy Ronnie forking out his tongue at human rights”, D.O.A. sang “Fucked Up Ronnie”, D.R.I. did “Reaganomics” and Suicidal Tendencies even sang “I Shot the Devil”  about shooting the man, a rather tasteful statement considering the recent attempt on his life (to be fair, the song also talks about shooting Anwar Sadat and John Lennon).  Other bands, with names like Reagan Youth, Corrosion of Conformity, Millions of Dead Cops, the Dicks and the Crucifucks, sang more generic leftist lyrics, typically bashing war, politicians, cops, Christians, teachers, jocks and heavy metal bands; basically anyone that didn’t adhere to their narrow minded view of life.

As a side note, I talked with Paul Bakija of Reagan Youth at a gig they did in Cleveland, and you best believe he collected a princely sum for selling their song “Degenerated” to a Hollywood studio to use in the 1994 comedy film Airheads, starring Brendan Fraser, Steve Buscemi and Adam Sandler as members of a goofy punk metal kinda band called the Loan Rangers.

But, it was mainly Tim Yohannan, an ex-Yippie, who was essentially the Saul Alinsky of the punk scene, that tried to fashion hardcore punk into some sort of left wing opposition movement.  His magazine, the ultra popular, Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll deliberately bashed any bands who didn’t adhere to a strident leftist way of life and, as the 80s progressed, punk rules got more stringent;  being “true” and not being a “sellout” or a “poser” became more difficult with each passing generation, to the point where you have bands today who have the strictest of attitudes of what constitutes “punk.”  Punk isn’t about music, man!  It’s a way of life!  I actually got yelled at by some punks for listening to Bad Brains because, in the 80s, they referred to openly gay bands like the Big Boys and the Dicks as “bloodclot faggots.”  “You just think it’s about if you like the music and don’t care at all what they stand for?”  I’m not kidding.

By 1986, there was both a political and musical backlash; political in the form of New York Hardcore bands like Agnostic Front, Cro-Mags and Murphy’s Law, who blatantly supported Ronald Reagan and musical as hardcore bands moved away from their core sound and tried other approaches.  Black Flag became sludgier and helped invent grunge, the Meat Puppets became a sort of country punk hybrid, Husker Du turned into a melodic rock band, the Replacements became the Tom Petty of the underground. Early bands like Misfits, Minor Threat and Negative Approach broke up so that their singers could form more expansive, experimental bands.

How much of this had anything to do with Ronald Reagan?  I’d say none of it, but I’d be lying, because, in Reagan America, that awful, fascist place where people were oppressed, these bands had the freedom, the wherewithal, the extra capital from lower taxes and the chutzpah to launch their own labels, their own scene and their own little world apart from the major label and corporate/liberal media.  To be fair, labels like SST and Alternative Tentacles were started in 1978 and 1979 respectively, but, at very least, Reagan didn’t prevent these labels from functioning.  They were examples of capitalism at its finest.

The irony is that, in 1986, the Dead Kennedys’ career wasn’t killed by Ronald Reagan and his “oppressive”, right wing regime, but by Tipper Gore, wife of Al “An Inconvenient Truth” Gore, a Democrat, who felt that the insert for their 1985 Frankenchrist LP, the H.R. Giger painting, Landscape XX, a supposed metaphor for corporate America’s alleged fucking of its workers, was obscene.  In other words, it was the leftist liberal Democrat who killed the art.

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March 16, 2016

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miscelaneous articles, Movies, political correctness, racism

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SavageHippie’s Top Ten Worst Films of All Time

Film-Reels-1986

Note: I’m no longer in L.A.  The rest of article remains the same.

I’m still in L.A. and I’m trying to figure out how to get to the Museum of Death, but, in the meantime, since I am in the home of the American film industry, I decided to list off the ten absolute worst films of all time.  Now, I watch a lot of movies that would be considered “bad” by normal person metrics; exploitation, Eurotrash, old horror, the entire Something Weird filmography, so my threshold is different from most people’s.

That means that, for me to consider a movie legitimately bad, it has to actively offend me.  In that way, I’m no different from Roger Ebert  or Gene Siskel, who award “zero stars” to films which are not “bad” in the traditional way, but offend whatever moral code they prescribe to.  Of course their ideas of morality and justice are different from mine in a lot of ways, so I’ve actually enjoyed many of their “zero star” films, among which include the mondo Africa addio, the futuristic race car splatter classic Death Race 2000, the rape/revenge flick I Spit on Your Grave and the Bob Guccioni produced Caligula.  Hell, Quentin Tarantino said rather enthusiastically that one of their “zero star” films, the slavery drama Mandingo, is the only exploitation flick ever produced by a major Hollywood studio.  And you best believe that Taraninto’s inclusion of Mandingo fighters in Django Unchained had little to do with attempting to be historically accurate and more to do with paying homage to the 1975 film.

So, what are MY “zero star” films?  What films are so stupid, awful and offensive that I would award them a grade of zero if I were to write film reviews for a major newspaper?  Read on and see!

10.) Crash (2005)

Not to be confused with David Cronenberg’s 1996 film of the same name, which is about sex and car crashes and based upon a work by J.G. Ballard, the 2005 film, which was directed by Paul Haggis, is one of the most idiotic, pedantic and in your face treatises ’bout dat racism.

It’s hard for me not to like a movie where a big time rapper says, “dawg, there’s a dead Chinaman under your car”, but somehow, this movie managed to elicit that response.  It’s just an Altman-esque pastiche of interweaving stories, all of which involve major Hollywood actors yelling lines where they say a bunch of generic “racist” stereotypes.  There is almost no real acting involved in any of it and the stories are so damn stupid and predictable, that you wonder if this wasn’t intended to be a made for TV special.  For instance, Matt Dillon plays a racist cop, who then saves a black woman.  Why is he racist?  He just is, ya know.  Did saving the black woman’s life make him un-racist?  I dunno, maybe.

9.) Dead Man Walking (1995)

This two hour anti-capital punishment propaganda film was directed by Tim Robbins and stars Sean Penn and big boobed commie pinko, Susan Sarandon.  Sarandon is the nun and tries to comfort Sean Penn, who is a neo-Nazi about to be killed on death row for murdering someone.  At first you think Penn is a bad guy because he killed someone, but then you realize he’s also a human being, so he deserves sympathy.  Sarandon tries to drag this sympathy out of the victim’s family.  Why would she do such an obviously inappropriate thing?  I dunno, because he’s got blood and veins and eyeballs and bones and feet and hands and skin.  Oh and he said he’s cool with Martin Luther King, Jr., so he can’t be all bad.

8.) Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967)

It’s hard for me to really hate this movie since it’s pretty entertaining, but the message from antiquated, ’60s liberal Stanley Kramer is so dumb and obvious, that I feel the movie doesn’t have a right to be so fun to watch.  Sidney Poitier is a black doctor who wants to marry a white woman played by Katherine Houghton.  Houghton’s San Francisco dwelling, liberal parents, Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn, are challenged by the notion of their white daughter marrying a black man.

Eventually everything works out, but what’s really grating is the notion that the only challenge the movie presents is skin color, which the white liberal family (and, to some extent, the black family) needed to “overcome”; their fairy tale narrative involves a woman marrying a doctor, not say, a member of the a Black Panthers.  And while, I’m not saying every black person is a member of the Black Panthers or is some kind of shifty, shady character who whites distrust, I am saying that I highly doubt liberal parents care THAT MUCH about skin color and skin color alone, with something like the Watts or Detroit riots fresh on their minds.  Be honest here; is the black/white divide based purely on skin pigmentation and on one group of people simply not liking the other because of it?  Is that REALLY the issue here?  Who knows; maybe it was more relevant then and parents really did say, “you’re bringing home a b-b-black?!”

7.) Forrest Gump (1994)

I have a feeling the lovable retard, Forrest Gump, as portrayed by Tom Hanks, is really supposed to be the everyman.  Don’t think for yourself, just let yourself be guided through life and everything will work out fine.  On the other hand, if you do think for yourself, you will die of AIDS.  Nowadays, given our modern zeitgeist, Forrest Gump might be remade with the roles of Gump and Jenny switched.

6.) Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)

Considered an all time classic of American cinema, in which quiver-voiced James Stewart stands in front of the evil, mean-spirited, probably Republican senate for twenty hours and doesn’t back down until they decide to build a camp for boys.  What the camp is for, I’d rather not guess.  Apparently not wanting to spend tax payer dollars on this camp rather than a dam is what is considered “political corruption” by the standards of even then liberal Hollywood.  I’m not a huge James Stewart fan; I often times find him to be more annoying than charming, but he’s been in some classics, such as Hitchcock’s Rear Window, The Man Who Knew too Much and Vertigo, George Cukor’s comedy classic The Philadelphia Story and Capra’s very own It’s a Wonderful Life, but this overly long, preachy, one-sided pile of propaganda is not one of them.

I scrolled through six IMDB pages of 8 to 10 star reviews before I found this two star review from an IMDB user named “lutheranchick”, who writes:

This film is a study of a Good Guy, who wants funding to start a national boys’ camp for the “Boy Rangers”, going against the Bad Guys, who want to build a dam on the same land only for their own selfish interests (not hydro-electricity or anything, you fool). You may ask why taxpayers would want to pay for a camp only a few of the nation’s boys could live near; you may ask why the camp couldn’t be built on a different piece of land; you may ask why a private organization should get federal funds; you may ask if there were any issues that constituents would have found more pressing. Well, apparently that’s because you’re one of the Bad Guys too.

Couldn’t have said it better myself!

5.) Bamboozled (2000)

I really despise Spike Lee and his race baiting bullshit.  As much as I enjoyed Do the Right Thing, I DO NOT feel that Mooky “did the right thing” by throwing a garbage can into the window of the pizza shop, and neither do several of my otherwise, sympathetic liberal friends who will run mental gymnastics to rationalize how “that’s not what Spike Lee meant.”  Sorry kiddos, Spike done think you haven’t self-flagellated enough.

Bamboozled is basically a loose remake of the 1976 Sidney Lumet classic, Network, only it’s loaded with old-timey, black racial stereotypes.  This is apparently to send a message that not much has changed and blacks “iz still enslaved to the white man” (well, actually Jewish man according to Spike Lee, but now he’s relegated to saying “white” instead of “Jewish” because we taught him what’s what when he complained about how Jews control Hollywood… only 61% of Hollywood, sheesh).  I actually like old-timey looking stuff, such as old toys, post-cards and cartoons, that have stereotypes of blacks and Asians, not to mention old Nazi propaganda with the hook nosed, Jewish ogre guy, so I guess I got the wrong message out of the movie.

4.) Every white teacher in an inner city school movie ever except for The Principal

Whether it’s Blackboard Jungle from 1955 or Dangerous Minds from 1995, the story is the same.  A white teacher/principal/superintendent from the suburbs comes to an inner city school and learns that, for this bunch, education is the last thing on their minds.  At first the teacher is cynical because, gosh darn it, these kids JUST can’t be taught!  But, through patience and teaching things on their level, in a way they understand, we can turn around this depressing situation.

Of course, in all of these, there will be the bad apple who just can’t be reformed because these movies have to have an ounce of realism.  That’s why the only teacher movie I like is The Principal with Jim Belushi, where the bad kid is played by Michael Wright, who was later in the HBO prison show Oz and he’s REALLY bad.  He ties a kid to a rope by his feet and drops him through the glass ceiling.  Someone that homicidal can’t be reformed.

3.) American History X (1998)

I read somewhere that Edward Norton slammed in the pits of the early ’80s D.C. hardcore scene.  So, it’s not surprising that, just like Ian McKaye turned the hardcore scene into a humorless, PC cesspool, Edward Norton allegedly imposed his vision onto director Tony Kaye, or at least that’s what I’ve read.  I don’t know if, without Norton’s meddling, American History X would have been as good as the far superior Romper Stomper; it’s for damn sure not nearly as fun as Graydon Clark’s 1989 film, Skinheads: The Second Coming of Hate.  The point is a lot of people really like American History X.  The typical defenses for the movie are that it’s “powerful” and “bold” and “the performances are good.”  Well, yeah, Norton and Edward Furlong do a good job.  But at what?  A guy I went to college with named Kip told me that the movie “tricks you into being racist.”  What he meant was that, during the scene where the skinheads challenge the thugs at basketball, they dramatically pump up the music when Norton’s character takes the winning shot in order to make you feel like you’re rooting for him.  Wow, you’re racist now.

Basically the movie is a litmus test to see if you were duped by this stupid ass after school special.  Typical story, kid’s dad is murdered by blacks, becomes leader of neo-Nazi group, meets good black guy in prison, realizes not all blacks are bad – he was given six years in prison for dropping a TV during a robbery?  Why WAS he committing a robbery?  Yeeeahhhh – and then is no longer racist.  Of course the movie’s “big” scene is when Edward Norton curb-stomps someone who is trying to steal his car.  The car thief is black, Norton is white and has a big ol’ swastika tattooed on his chest, so, because he’s a mean, ol’ racist, Norton stomped the guy’s head into a curb.   Did Mr. Dindu-Thuggalicious deserve to have his head stomped into a curb?  No, of course not.  A couple bullets to the chest would have sufficed, as they would for the thugs in Detroit who twice stole my car.

2.) Schindler’s List (1993)

Am I so callous as to deny the world’s most successful filmmaker of all time, Steven Spielberg, his props for making such wickedly awesome films as Duel, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind or Raiders of the Lost Ark?  No, that would be foolish.  Those are great films in the action/horror/science fiction genres.  Hell, I even enjoyed Amistad solely for the violent opening scene where the slaves have the revolt and kill a bunch of people.  Spielberg, for all his child pandering bullshit, will put R worth violence on the screen.  Hell, the heart ripping scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was cause enough for the invention of the PG-13 rating.  Actually that makes me wonder if there is a conspiracy; rather than have his audience diminished by an R-rating, Spielberg gets a whole new, not quite R-rating invented for him?

Anyway, somewhere along the line, Spielberg decided to do the Holocaust in three acts.  Filmed in gorgeous black and white – and with a gorgeous set of bouncy tits somewhere in the middle of the movie –  with all of the movie’s budget clearly on the screen, Spielberg tells the tale of how Oscar Schindler (Liam Neeson), the Nazi with a soul, saved 200 Jews from the gas chambers.  Schindler’s foil is Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes), the evil, scary, “mwahahahaha”, Jew-killin’ super villain.  Stanley Kubrick complained that the movie focuses on the 200 Jews who were saved and not the 6,000,000 who were killed, but I think the real problem with the movie is that it’s basically a typical three act adventure story with every single Holocaust trope driven into your face for three obnoxious hours before it has an emotional orgasm of “I COULD HAVE SAVED MORE JEWS!!! I’M NOT AS GOOD AS I THOUGHT I WAS!!!  THIS IS THE PART OF THE MOVIE WHERE EVERYONE IS SUPPOSED TO HOLD EACH OTHER AND CRY!!!”  Of course, every tear jerking, white guilt fest needs to have its “crux” moment and, just like American History X had its curb stomping, Schindler’s List had the little girl wearing the red coat atop a pile of dead bodies.  That way you know, with ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY, that the Nazis weren’t just bad; they were REALLY bad!

1.) Higher Learning (1995)

John Singleton started out okay with the 1991, “you killed mah BABY!!!”, ghetto drama, Boyz n the Hood, then followed with Poetic Justice, which I haven’t seen, but there’s a reason why Singleton was eventually forced to direct crap like 2 Fast 2 Furious or the Shaft remake, and I believe the problem starts with Higher Learning.  Basically Higher Learning is like a Spike Lee film for retards.  Like Lee’s films, it has a whole bunch of characters doing a bunch of stuff and then it somehow comes together in the end.  Unlike Lee’s films, the characters are one-dimensional caricatures, whose plot trajectories leave one with the basic conclusion that “whity iz the devil.”  I mean, Lee’s films do the same, but they, at least, seem deeper.

Higher Learning takes place at a university, hence the clever title, but all that is learned is that Ice Cube is an asshole, which is okay, because he’s black, and he bullies Michael Rapaport, who, after banging a Kristy Swanson, who cries “rape” in the middle of sex and then becomes a lesbian at the guidance of Jennifer Connelly, turns into a neo-Nazi at the guidance of Cole Hauser, and goes on a shooting spree at the end.  Omar Epps, Tyra Banks, Jason Wiles, Laurence Fishburn, Busta Rhymes and Adam Goldberg round out the cast.

The thugs beat up the Nazis of course, because blacks are the heroes and whites are not only the villains, but also don’t have enough “street” to know how to REALLY fight.  Adam Goldberg has a gun pointed in his face and jumps around and whimpers because Jews are pussies.  The other white guy, Jason Wiles isn’t bad, but he’s naive of the black situation, just like every well-meaning white guy.  And Tyra Banks gets shot at the end because someone needed to get shot by the evil, gun-toting neo-Nazi, so why not make it her?

 

 

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March 7, 2016

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feminism, miscelaneous articles, political correctness, Social Justice Warriors

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Maybe Women Just Aren’t That Into Metal

nita_strauss

Nope, not thinking about how she looks at all!  Totally just admiring the playing of Alice Cooper’s guitarist, Ms. Nita Strauss!

What do comic books, science fiction, roll playing games, anime, video games and heavy metal all have in common?  Think really hard about it.  So, where most intelligent people, I would think accept the fact that men will outnumber women in all of these nerd intensive hobbies by default, there will still be that Social Justice parasite, that interloper that exists for the sole purpose of ruining the fun and joy that these things bring by accusing their practitioners of not being inclusive enough.

I stumbled upon this article titled “Metal’s Problem with Women Is Not Going Away Anytime Soon“, written by a Kristy Loye for the Houston Press.  With her obviously lazy research and her almost entirely complete lack of knowledge or insight, she levies some strong accusations against the metal genre and the people who listen to it.

In the article she concludes that:

Many bands either openly encourage violence against women or fail to support legitimate female fandom, but it certainly doesn’t end there. Female metal bands are rarely booked on national tours and practically ignored by the media — and worse, the ones who make it that far get ridiculed or sexualized.

In other words, as of November 11, 2015, according to the article, metal has their proverbial Jodi Fosters up against the pinball machines.  Now, how much does the article reflect reality?  Before one even gets to the actual article, there is a picture of a band called Halestrom, who feature three faggy looking guys with nice, swooping hair cuts and a hot broad with fantastic legs, wearing those hot patterned tights that do wonders for my libido.  Beneath the picture, the caption reads: “Question: how many metal bands featuring female members — besides Halestorm, shown above — can you name?”

Let’s see.  I can name Girlschool, Rock Goddess, Bitch, Bolt Thrower, White Zombie, Blood Ceremony, Kylesa, Electric Wizard, Acid King, Arch Enemy, Huntress, Demonic Christ, Triptykon, Nashville Pussy, Jucifer, Madam X, Lita Ford and, if we want to plumb the depths of shittyness, we can even dredge up nu-metal bands like Kittie and Otep just to prove this point.  But, what point are we trying to prove?  That metal music doesn’t have enough women participating in its creation?  That this in and of itself is some sort of indication that the metal genre, as a whole, is deliberately trying to keep women out?

She then continues with this “observation”:

Even metal fandom is exclusive. Women who are metal fans come under the constant scrutiny of male metal fans, and have their motives questioned. They’re either assumed to be a poser or a girlfriend, no more than a fan by association. Often they must prove their fandom to suspicious men who require authenticity. Ridiculous.

Is that how it is?  Because, this very weekend, I was at the mighty Detroit metal/hardcore/noise/whatever festival called Berserker fest, which a.) was run by Child Bite singer Shawn Knight and his wife Veronica, b.) had plenty of women at the gig, c.) had no instances that I recall where men accused women of not being “legit” and d.) involved me partying and drinking with two metal loving women, my friend Wendy and the mighty Dawnowar, former fan club operator for Manowar.  And if there’s one band a person can claim to be blatantly sexist, it’s them.  According to Dawnowar, her experience working with Manowar might have involved quite a bit of assholishness on the part of embarrassingly not-self aware bassist/spokesman Joey Demaio, but sexism and sexual harassment were not part of her experience.  And we’re talking about the band who wrote this song:

But, assuming that is the case, where women are scrutinized more heavily to see if they’re truly part of the club or not, that’s par for the course.  Metal – and we’re talking the more extreme side of metal, not mainstream hard rock bands like Def Leppard or Motley Crue – is an outsider form of music.  Outsider music, art and hobbies always attract more men than women.  Studies show this.  In fact, you’re more likely to find women who listen to extreme metal than who like the confusing, often messy sounding jazz-fusion noodlings of Frank Zappa or Captain Beefheart.  Sure, you will find women who are into these things, but, if we’re going by the law of large numbers, it’s not as likely.

Then of course the author brings up the obligatory “objectification” argument:

For many years, metal’s message to women has been one of assignment: you can be a groupie, but not a fan or serious musician. It has failed to support women in any capacity besides as live props — objects, not subjects. It’s also guilty of encouraging a Hooters-like, bikini-model, stripper-girl atmosphere in general.

Maybe that attitude was more prevalent among glam metal musicians, so she’s not even really attacking her intended target, since anyone can attest that none of what she described happens at thrash, death, doom or black metal concerts (I wish it did, though!), but, if they did, there’s two things to say about this. 1.) When women decide to strip onstage or expose their breasts while perched atop their boyfriends’ shoulders in the audience, that is their decision; the band doesn’t make them do this.  In fact, a member of the Scorpions said that it is only in North America where this occurs.  On top of that, the groupie phenomenon is another example of the genetic differences between men and women.  Women who become groupies want to be groupies.  Popularity makes a man more desirable; or as Paul Stanley of Kiss once said, “we can do in one evening what several men spend weeks or months trying to accomplish.”  But, 2.) that “objectification” alone never prevented women from participating in music.  Lemmy, the biggest hornball of them all, still backed all girl band Girlschool simply because he liked them.  While, there aren’t many women in hard rock and heavy metal dating back to the 70s, except for maybe Heart, there has been considerably more involvement since then, and I still put the onus of becoming a musician and being in a band strictly on the women.

She continues with more tripe about female bands not headlining festivals and male fans not cheering for women.  Again, while the former is true; not many women headline metal festivals, it’s not out of some alleged discrimination; there just aren’t that many female musicians in metal and no festival promoter is going to top bill a band just to fill an affirmative action quota.  As for the second case, get over it; men cheer for bands they like regardless of the genitalia of the members.  If the members are attractive, then it’s a bonus.

And then comes the argument of the lyrics, which allegedly promote rape and violence towards women.  She makes some reasonable observations, siting some pretty damn violent lyrics by Cannibal Corpse.  But, does the band harbor an anti-woman agenda?  Are they trying to get their fans to rape and murder women?  Hardly.  I saw Cannibal Corpse once and singer George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher said onstage, “this one’s for all the ladies, it’s called ‘FUCKED… WITH… A… KNIFE!!!'”  Did the male audience members start fucking all of the women with knives?  No.  Did women feel that the male audience members would go and fuck them with knives in the parking lot?  No.  Has “Fucked with a Knife” by Cannibal Corpse led to a rise in husbands fucking all of their wives with knives?  No.  I maintain, that if you’re offended by what you hear, then don’t listen.

But, because the author of the article isn’t even good at cherry picking her “evidence” of a prevailing anti-female lyrical trend – I can find a few more examples of anti-female attitudes from metal bands, like the above Manowar song or just instances of violence towards women, such as in the rape themed, “Sex, Murder, Art” by Slayer – she sites the profanity free, PG-13 lyrics of Alice Cooper?!

The problem is nobody is taking offense to these violent lyrical themes. And if they are, they’re not speaking up about it. Alice Cooper was once quoted as saying, “There’s more blood in Macbeth than in my shows, and that’s required school reading.”

Yet there’s a stark contrast between the macabre theatrics of Cooper’s guillotine and lyrics that detail physically ripping open a woman through forced sexual contact and watching her die as a result. And even if Macbeth was bloody, it was a statement on the will to power and the attraction to corruption…and did Alice Cooper just compare himself to Shakespeare?

This last part about “forced sexual contact” is a lie.  The woman was dead for crying out loud!  And, on top of that, the theatrical piece was set to “Cold Ethyl”, a song about fucking a corpse.  So, if anything, her beef should be that Alice is promoting necrophilia!  But, on top of that, she has to throw in some slick, snarky condescension.  Alice indeed compared his show to Shakespeare, which was the popular entertainment of the Elizabethan era, and also featured some tasteless humor.  Alice has also been praised by Bob Dylan as an underrated songwriter, so you can take your “intellectual” credentials and shove ’em up yer arse!

Ah, but there’s hope after all!

Believe it or not, some bands do self-correct. Some men will stand up for women and understand that women can be equal partners in artistic expression, even in death metal. We love those men.

Speaking to Andy Marsh, guitarist for Thy Art Is Murder, he makes no attempts at backpedaling or defending the lyrical content of his band’s 2008 release, Infinite Death, which contains lyrics like, “I’m inflicting bloodshed upon bitches/ just because I hate the female race…women were born to be fucked.” In fact, he agrees they were abhorrent, and his level of discomfort with the band’s previous sexism was apparent.

Abhorrent?  How about just retarded?  But, feel free to “self-correct.”  Your lyrics will emancipate all of the women from this awful patriarchal society, in which women have their clits cut and are forced to wear burqas.

Even Whitechapel, due at Houston’s Scout Bar next Monday, has followed suit. The band responsible for such lyrics as “I ripped her fucking limb from limb,” from 2006 LP Somatic Defilement (“Vicer Exciser”), has now turned away from misogynistic lyrical content. It wasn’t easy move for a band named after the area of London where Jack the Ripper murdered at least five women, but the band felt it was a necessary move. (Right on.)

Right on!  Don’t ever sing about anything unless someone with a vagina approves of it.  You will be re-educated to think like them and they will arbitrate the correct things to sing about.

Metal is not alone in its ostracism of women — its close cousin, punk rock, was completely revamped 20 years ago. Back in the ’90s, female punk fans and musicians are credited for riding the third wave of feminism and forming their very own subgenre, Riot Grrrl, with bands like Bikini Kill, Bratmobile and L7, a spirit that even surfaced in Russia a generation later with the rise of Pussy Riot. When those women wanted opportunities in the punk scene that didn’t already exist, they simply created them. Yet even that scene wasn’t created in a vacuum.

This paragraph is a complete lie and further exemplifies the ignorance of the author.  Punk rock NEVER ostracized women and, since the mid ’70s, had more women involved than metal on both of sides of the Atlantic; Siouxsie and the Banshees, X-Ray Spex, the Adverts, the Rezillos, the Slits, Vice Squad, Penetration, the Runaways, Blondie, Patti Smith, X, the Germs, the Avengers and the Bags are just a few examples; those don’t even count New York noise rockers like Sonic Youth, Pussy Galore or Boss Hog.  Hell, if she wants to find the roots of all this turbo-slut, sex-positive feminist nonsense, she would do well to look up Lydia Lunch, the adorable looking, yet repulsively acting singer for Teenage Jesus and the Jerks.  The fact that the author makes such an audacious claim, yet doesn’t even know some of the bands I mentioned, makes me wonder if she even listens to music or if she’s just trying to ruin things with her Social Justice agenda.

And, in the final section of the piece, she mentions… ugh, War on Women.

It’s not just women who need to fight misogyny in music. War On Women’s Shawna Potter encourages men to take up the battle as well.

“While women [with people of color and the LGBQT community] must fight for our rights and humanity, men must also fight,” she says. “They must [fight] against the insulting notion that they are animals have no self-control. But first, they must see it as insulting, I suppose.

So that’s the name of the hot singer for War on Women, whose gyrations made me tight in the pants.

 

 

 

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March 6, 2016

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culture war, feminism, miscelaneous articles, political correctness, Social Justice Warriors

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Why Are Annoying Feminist Bands Not Allowed to Have Tomatoes Thrown at Them?

WaronWomen1CarlPocket

When I see the singer for the Baltimore based, feminist punk band War on Women (good fucking god), I don’t think about “smashing the patriarchy”, I think about smashing between the sheets.  Aside from those stupid, “tough grrrl” faces she makes, she’s got a good figure and made the smart choice of not doing her hair up in a punky style, letting it go all flowing and wavy. One would think a feminist punk band called War on Women would be some sort of parody, but this proselytizing, subtle as a sledge hammer nonsense is the real deal.  Watch this.

God, look at the leggings on that slut on the left.  And look at that all male rhythm section passionately bashing out a generic 4/4 pattern over which these sexy, young lasses can yell out their female rage.

Now, look, I’m all for the XX’s picking up the geetarz and bashing and smashing away just like the dudes do – I’m a fan of Girlschool, White Zombie, X-Ray Spex, the Slits, the Fall, Sonic Youth (even though their lyrics are retarded), the Adverts and the Rezillos, bands I listen to because of their music and not because of the genitalia of one or all of their members – but, once again, as the underground scene becomes more and more indoctrinated in Cultural Marxist, politically correct nonsense, the more we’re going to see bands like this who are “smashing” an imaginary patriarchy, when, in actuality, they’ve got Beta male orbiters just pining for their attention and white knights ready to protect them from “unwanted advances” at the drop of a hat.  In a scene that’s still dominated by men, being a woman, especially one that look like the ones pictured above, gives you unprecedented levels of control over the dicks of the men involved.

All that would be fine if they were just bloody honest about it!  Instead we get bogus articles such as this one from Bitchfork about the alleged “misogyny” in noise rock, singling out the band Rectal Hygienics, who I actually saw last night at Berserker Fest in Detroit.  I tend not to take an article seriously when it includes a line like this one:

As a person living in a genderfucked body that was assigned female identity at birth and has been mostly read as female by society since, Rectal Hygenics’ lyrics are exhausting and painful in a very visceral way.

Poor baby being born a WOMAN in a Western country where you don’t have to worry about having your clitoris cut, being forced to wear a burqa or becoming the victim of an honor killing.  She makes passing references to “Prayer to God” by Shellac and “No Pussy Blues” by Grinderman and acts as if respective singers Steve Albini and Nick Cave are doing something other than singing about praying to God that someone will kill his lying, cheating whore wife and her lover and the blues because he ain’t gettin’ no pussy. She then goes on to quote the “offending” lyrics of Rectal Hygienics:

“Spoiled fuck machine/ Think you’re on easy street/ You’re a slave to man and what he puts inside of you/ Stinking pack mule/ You smell like shit,”

Now these lyrics aren’t in the best of taste and I don’t know if they’re supposed to be for shock value or have a message or, in fact, even be understood at all because, when I saw them last night, I didn’t even hear lyrics; in fact, the singer wasn’t even facing the audience.  All I heard for 30 minutes was “vrrrrroooossshhh” and “pound, pound, pound.”  She does get one thing right though; they do seem like a blatant rip-off of tasteless Swedish noise rock gods, Brainbombs, who stole all of their lyrics from sick and tasteless “transgressive” shock writer Peter Sotos.  But that’s all besides the point.  Why shouldn’t “misogynistic” lyrics be allowed?  If she really stands by the mantra of “freedom of speech is not freedom from criticism”, then why is she trying to be the arbiter of what messages are “acceptable” in any genre of music?  Besides, what could she possibly have to complain about when she’s got a mangina band like Pissed Jeans emasculating themselves in the song “Male Gaze“?

it’s when a smile becomes a stare and it starts to burn
it’s when you ask him to knock it off and he doesn’t learn
the sad routine doesn’t change if he’s broke or a millionaire
there’s no getting through, that’s how it is
he’s never had to care
it’s when you’re judged before you even get to speak a word
it’s when you make the smartest point and it goes unheard
i’m not innocent – i’m guilty
i’m not innocent – but i’m sorry
it’s just the male gaze – it’s in me i know it
i feel it all around me – i wish i could destroy it
yeah it’s the male gaze – i’ve had it forever

Whoopdy-fuckin’-do!  Men look at women when they’re attractive!  Thanks for putting down your hammer on 100,000 years of evolutionary biology, ding bat!  On the other hand, Pissed Jeans is a solid AmRep revival band and I enjoyed seeing ’em live.  There was this super cute red head with glasses at the show in Detroit, but I was too much of a chicken to talk to her even though we shared a moment, making eye-contact, air guitaring and drumming in sync.  Chances are she probably would have accused me of trying to rape her if I talked to her, though.

But, at the end of the day, there is no “war on women.”  If you’re young and attractive and live in a Western country, the world is your oyster; if you don’t make stupid decisions, there is literally nothing easier than being a woman in Western society.  As Iggy Pop pointed out in “You’re Pretty Face Is Going to Hell”, you won’t be young and attractive forever, so, instead of complaining about how it’s a burden on your existence, why don’t you celebrate your privilege and sing about cool stuff like death and Satan?

She asks, “Are we supposed to sit back an [sic] appreciate this as ‘art’ for ‘art’s sake’?”  You’re not supposed to do anything.  In the words of Alice Cooper, “you are the only censor. If you don’t like what I’m saying, you can turn me off.”

And, for the guys, grow a pair and throw on Blood, Guts & Pussy by the Dwarves!

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March 5, 2016

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miscelaneous articles, political correctness, racism

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The Heavy Metal White Guilt Blame Game

phil_anselmoI was never an Anthrax fan.  Lord knows I’ve tried to like ’em because they sing about Judge Dredd and they had Mort Drucker from Mad magazine illustrate the back cover for their 1988 LP State of Euphoria.  But now I’m done with it.  Bald, goatee wearing, Jewish guitarist Scott Ian pretty much took the cake with his stupidity.  No, I’m not talking about how he’s a Bernie Sanders supporter “In spite how it’s throwing my vote away.”  I’m talking about his recent comment where he feels that former Pantera singer and fellow baldy Phil Anselmo should donate to the Simon Weisenthal Center to show he’s “sincerely sorry” (the article primarily features quotes from another goatee wearing baldy, guitarist Kerry King of Slayer, but Ian’s pathetic comments are at the end) for shouting “white power” and doing a Hitler salute at the end of the set at the latest Dimebash performance.

Now, in my humble opinion, doing a Hitler salute completely out of context in front of people you don’t know, many of whom may be of a darker skin tone, is a pretty boneheaded move.  Nobody is going to dispute that.  But, when you release a video such as the one below, where you’re practically groveling in the dirt and one step above kissing the boot of a black man in prison who is shouting, “who’s your daddy?” before bending you over as you shout “I deserve this!  I fucking deserve this!”, I think the matter should be completely forgotten.  I dunno, you be the judge:

Now, before I go on and continue to make my point about how stupid Scott Ian’s comments were, just take a look at this video.

Real great, huh?  Anthrax, the good time, non-serious, always smiling, party thrash band, shows that they’re ahead of the curve, they’re beyond mere political correctness, they’re so against racism, they’ll do a crossover music video with a notoriously racist and anti-semitic rap group called Public Enemy.  What’s that you say?  Public Enemy isn’t racist or anti-semitic; only Professor Griff is and they duly kicked him out?  Well, then why in the fucking hell is PE’s main man Chuck D singing “Farrakhan’s a prophet and I think you ought to listen to/What he can say to you, what you wanna do is follow for now”?  And yes, we’re talking Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Black Nationalist hate group, the Nation of Islam, who have nary a nice thing to say about white people and especially Jewish people.

Only the leftest of leftists will contest that it’s not a double standard that, if a white band were to sing “David Duke’s a prophet and I think you ought to listen to/What he can say to you, what you wanna do is follow for now”, that white band would look like this:

Catchy tune, eh?  Eh, not really.  I know some people who like this band in spite what they sing about, but I think they’re pretty lousy.  That’s not the point though.  The point is that, without a doubt, there’s a double standard, where someone like Ice Cube can get away with singing “Or your little chop suey ass’ll be a target of the nationwide boycott/Juice with the people, that’s what the boy got/So pay respect to the black fist/or we’ll burn your store, right down to a crisp” or Beyonce can perform at the Superbowl with women dressed like Black Panthers and only a few inquisitive pundits will ask,”but why is one okay and not the other?”

So, that brings us back to Scott Ian and metal in general.  Either Scott Ian is ignorant of who Louis Farrakhan is or he felt that, for a black group, it’s perfectly acceptable to praise anti-white bigots because like the system’s all rigged against them and shit.  Underground music has been getting lefter and lefter.  Whereas punk rock in the 70s and 80s had a few leftist bands that yelled the loudest and were the most popular (actually that’s not entirely true.  The Ramones, Black Flag and Minor Threat are apolitical for the most part, but the Clash introduced Marxist concepts into punk, Crass introduced “anarchism” and the Dead Kennedys were the Jon Stewarts of punk), leftist influence has pretty much dominated the genre in varying degrees, and, since many a punk people now want to enter the field of metal and spread messages of “Social Justice”, the metal scene has also been progressively moving into the realm of political correctness.

I’m a music fan, so I really don’t have the whole Metalgate beef with a band like Cattle Decapitation singing their pro-vegan screed, especially when you can’t even really understand what they’re saying.  What I DO have a problem with is someone like Scott Ian becoming the arbiter of morality and trying to guilt trip Phil Anselmo even more than Anselmo has guilt tripped himself.  For the record, I’m not a Pantera fan as their brand of “groove thrash” and Anselmo’s tough guy, Henry Rollins-esque delivery never really appealed to me, but I respect Anselmo a WHOLE heck of a lot for launching the Housecore label and signing weirdo bands like Author & Punisher and Child Bite, for bringing completely non-commercial underground bands like Neurosis, Morbid Angel and Anal Cunt on tour with them so they could play in front of tens of thousands of people and for spending his hard earned cash on the Housecore music and film festival, giving wider exposure to underground artists and bands.  For crying out loud, he got Goblin, the Italian prog band who did the soundtracks for Suspiria and Dawn of the Dead, into North America!  He should be given some sort of award for that alone!

Now look, I’m no psychic, so I can’t get into Phil Anselmo’s brain and see if he’s truly sorry or if he’s truly “racist” and I really don’t think it matters.  The fact is, he clearly doesn’t want to destroy what he’s worked for for nearly three decades, because, if he did, there IS a fringe industry of white power labels like Resistance who would LOVE to have an endorsement from someone as well known as Phil Anselmo.  The point is that we’ve come so far down this path, that we forget that Tommy Lee went to jail for beating his wife, Ozzy Osbourne the same, that Vince Neill drove drunk and murdered Razzel, the drummer of Hanoi Rocks, that Gene Simmons has pumped and dumped 4,000+ different women without so much as a thought about how it might affect the young lasses’ psyche, that so many musicians have fathered illegitimate children, overdosed on heroin or spread HIV, yet the only thing that really enrages people is the thought that someone might cross that proverbial line of being a “racist.”  Oh, I guess people were pretty outraged over Garry Glittler’s child porn collection, but, even listening to his music is more acceptable than listening to the first Skrewdriver album, the one that doesn’t have any racist lyrics on it.

Now I’m signing out and going back to listening to Manilla Road, reading my Conan books and heading out for night three of Berserker fest.  Cheers and please watch this video from Some Black Guy where he condemns Anselmo’s actions while also completely disputing the concept of “white privilege” in our society.  Good man!

 

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October 7, 2013

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The 20 Greatest American hardcore punk albums of all time

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L.A. Weekly posted a list of the 20 greatest hardcore albums of all time which I thought was pretty terrible since it wasn’t clear what exactly they considered “hardcore” and what the criteria were.  Some of the bands and/or albums they listed are good but they made me go “huh?”  I mean Rights Of Spring and  At The Drive In are good but if THAT’S “hardcore”, then why not include the Butthole Surfers, Melvins, Nirvana, Fugazi or Dinosaur Jr?  Like most of their music related articles (such as the 5 greatest punk guitarists), it doesn’t seem like they listened to a whole lot of music and just kind of arbitrarily made the list from  stuff they’d read.  Now, of course lists are subjective and I personally don’t even like making them since I can’t prioritize for shit but still, here is a REAL list of 20 greatest hardcore albums.

If you want MY definition, hardcore punk is that faster, more aggressive sub-genre of punk that began roughly in 1980 (although the first stereotypically sounding hardcore record was the “Out of Vogue” 45 by the Middle Class, which came out in 1978) and was stridently, willfully, anti-commercial, anti-big success and was all on dinky independent labels that grew huge through sheer perseverance while helping to launch a bazillion other genres.  But, even in the hardcore underground, there were plenty of bands who were weird and unique yet still considered part of the scene; some of which made this list!

This list only refers to American bands.  I have a soft spot for the Exploited, G.B.H., Discharge, Chron Gen, Anti-Pasti and Chaos U.K. but personally think those bands are a little goofy with their huge mohicans and intense punk rock posturing.  American bands always seemed a bit more intelligent and creative.

And I know some of my choices will make you tear your hair out by the route and yell, “are you out of your mind??!!” but these are my faves, ya know?  Here are a few runner-ups.  There were plenty more but these are the ones I could think of off the top of my head.  It was pretty tough coming up with just 20 but, alas, it had to be done.  These are all great but I simply went by which I listen to and enjoy most; also Kill from the Heart by the Dicks would have made the top  20 but they flubbed it up with that stupid 15 minute long jam at the end.

Dicks – Kill from the Heart – SST – 1982

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Fang – Landshark! – Boner – 1982

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Scream – Still Screaming – Dischord – 1981

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Adolescents – Adolescents – Frontier – 1981

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M.D.C. – Millions of Dead Cops – R Radical – 1982

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Necros – Conquest for Death – Touch and Go – 1983

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The Crucifucks – The Crucifucks – Alternative Tentacles – 1985

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And now for the list!!!

20.  T.S.O.L. – Dance with Me – Frontier – 1981

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West coast kings of goth punk, this is the shit you turn to when you want to wear your motorcycle jacket and engineer boots, paint your face white and pretend you’re part of the Return of the Living Dead crew.  T.S.O.L. put out their first E.P. in 1980; it has songs like “Abolish Government” and “World War III” but, by 1981, they probably realized there were enough groups who sang about those topics.  So they put on the “pancake” makeup, spiked up the hair and acted like vampires (with a bit of drag thrown in).  They’re not exactly the West Coast equivalent of the Misfits but they’re about the closest you’re gonna get to that mix of straight-forward, middle-upper tempo punk with that early, gothic “death rock” production (at least before Christian Death and 45 Grave came out).  Actually T.S.O.L. seem more like they’re trying to be the Damned with singer Jack Grisham sounding a bit like Dave Vanien and guitarist Ron Emory playing slashing punk chords, string bendy guitar solos and eerie, little melodies.  Bassist Mike Roche and drummer Todd Barnes make a solid, speedy rhythm section and the band create a fun soundtrack for breaking into your local cemetary and digging up a few graves.  The classic is the necrophilia anthem “Code Blue” which is the one that goes “I wanna fuck, I wanna fuck the dead/and I don’t even care how she died/but I like it better if she smells of formaldehyde” but the album also features such creepy tunes as “Sounds of Laughter”, “I’m Tired of Life”, “Silent Scream”, “Funeral March” and the awesome title track.  After Dance with Me, the band released the Weathered Statues EP before going in a more arty and gothic direction and releasing the solid Beneath the Shadow and Change Today LPs and then turning into a cheesy hair metal band albeit with almost an entirely different lineup.  Jack Grisham also pretty much confirmed that he was a HUGE dickhead in the early 80s, apparently slicing kids ears off with the spur on the back of his boot when he jumped atop the crowd.  I guess that matters not anymore since this is about the music.

19.  S.O.D. – Speak English or Die – Mega Force – 1985

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I guess most people would associate this more with metal but, as far as I’m concerned, this is the only New York crossover thrash I need to listen to because I think Agnostic Front and Cro-Mags are mediocre at best and I’d rather listen to a fun, funny and hooky album made by goofy metalheads than “serious” music made by macho skinheads.  S.O.D. consists of Anthrax members Scott Ian and Charlie Benante on guitar and drums respectively along with Dan Lilker – formerly of Anthrax, at the time in Nuclear Assault and later in grindcore gods Brutal Truth – on bass and New Jersey skin Billy Milano of some band called the Psychos on vocals.  Some people accused them of being racist but that’s bullshit.  They wrote hilariously rude tunes like “Kill Yourself”, “Pussy Whipped” and “Fuck the Middle East” along with good natured homages like “United Forces”, “Fist Banging Mania” and “Freddy Kruger” and let’s not forget those second long parody tunes “Ballad of Jimmy Hendrix” and “Diamonds and Rust (Extended Version).”  Thrash or die!!!

18.  The Meatmen – Stud Powercock: The Touch and Go Years 1981 – 1984 – 1990

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The first of what I believe to be four CD collections that I lazily threw on this list because I’m more of a quantity than quality person, Stud Powercock contains 39 tracks or the group’s entire recorded output for Touch and Go; a compilation track, the Blud Sausage and Crippled Children Suck 7″ EPs, the We’re the Meatmen and You Suck! album (which has Blud Sausage plus live tunes), the Crippled Children Suck album (which has the Crippled Children Suck EP plus outtakes, live tunes and demos) and the Dutch Hercules 12″ EP.  In Pitchfork’s Touch and Go best 25 list, they included releases by the Necros and Negative Approach but not the Meatmen and I think the reason for this is pretty freakin’ obvious.  Yes the Meatmen wrote some pretty puerile lyrics atop equally crude music but so what?  This IS punk rock, remember?  And Tesco Vee started the Touch and Go label along with writing same named zine so give credit where credit is due, k?  This comp starts with the earliest Meatmen where Tesco is joined by Ramsey brothers Greg on guitar and Rich on bass along with someone named Mr. X on drums.  This lineup unleashed tasteless classics like “Meatmen Stomp”, “Toolin’ for Anus” (both which appear on the CD three times each), “One Down, Three to Go” (about the then recent John Lennon assassination), “Blow Me Jah”, “Mr. Tapeworm”, “Orgy of One”, “Crippled Children Suck” and the amusing put-down “T.S.O.L. Are Sissies.”  Then Tesco moved to D.C., hooked up with former Minor Threat members Brian Baker and Lyle Preslar (lead and rhythm guitar respectively), Burt Quiroz from Youth Brigade and some other D.C. bands on bass and Richard Moore on drums and unleashed Meatmen mk II, the costumed, metal novelty years.  They also cover “Dance to the Music”!

17.  D.R.I. – Dealing with It! – Metal Blade – 1985

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Born in Huston, TX and relocated to San Francisco, D.R.I. were, according to Slayer, the fastest band of all time.  While Dealing with It! isn’t as “immediate” as their first album, Dirty Rotten LP, which blasts through 22 tracks in 17 minutes, it’s still a mighty righteous hardcore classic.  The production is improved but still raw and the group hasn’t totally morphed into a metal band – after all, Dealing with It! contains 25 songs and is only 35 minutes long so…  Kurt Brecht sounds awesome belting the lyrics out in his semi high pitched, teenage voice while Spike Cassidy plays killer riff after killer riff.  The album also includes four songs from Dirty Rotten LP including classics like “I Don’t Need Society” and “Reaganomics” and introduces 21 new scorchers like “I’d Rather Be Sleeping” and “Couch Slouch.”  Let’s not forget “Equal People”, the angriest “accept everyone” song you’re bound to hear.  If you must know, the rhythm section is Josh Pappe on bass and Felix Griffin on drums but I think Spike plays about half the bass parts anyway.  In a couple years, they’d grow their hair out and emerge as one of the premier crossover thrash bands but thankfully continued to play fast.

16.  Dwarves – Blood, Guts & Pussy – Sub Pop – 1990

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Keep in mind this tasteful collection of “fuck” songs was released by the same label and in the same era that introduced grunge to the angsty kids.  If you’re not familiar with the Dwarves, they began as a Nuggets influenced garage band called the Suburban Nightmare than morphed into an outrageous “shock core” band led by perverted lead singer Blag Dahlia and featured the likes of Mexican wrestling mask and jock strap wearing guitarist Hewhocannotbenamed, bassist Salt Peter and drummer Vadge Moore.  The group was like a cross between early and late period GG Allin but with a sense of irony.  Blag didn’t poop on stage but he still attacked audience members and the group’s shows were really short and violent; at least the first time around.  After they broke up and got back together, they played it more like a normal band.  Blood, Guts & Pussy is 14 minutes long and contains songs with titles like “Back Seat of My Car”, “Let’s Fuck”, “Skin Poppin’ Slut”, “Fuck You Up and Get High” and “Insect Whore.”  The album is fast and aggressive like hardcore but with garagy guitar tones and an obvious influence of 60s pop melody.  It’s really freakin’ good and short and you should listen to it a lot.  Followup albums Thank Heaven for Little Girls and Sugarfix are also great.

15.  Minutemen – Post-Mersh, Vol. 3 – SST – 1987

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Everyone else swears that Double Nickles on the Dime is the finest release from the Minutemen but I personally think the dinky, Paranoid Time E.P. is easily the best thing guitarist/singer D. Boone, bassist/singer Mike Watt and drummer George Hurley ever recorded and, since it’s an E.P. and not album, I included this dope ass Post-Mersh, Vol. 3 collection which has 46 songs on it and also contains the Joy E.P., the Bean Spill E.P., the The Politics of Time LP and the Tour Spiel E.P.  I mean, the Minutemen were sooo good; they played a bunch of minute long songs that alternate between speedy punk and danceable funk with D. Boon’s non-distorted guitar melodies dancing between and around Mike Watt’s noodly bass lines and George Hurley’s drumming holding it all together.  This shit is tight!  And it’s so melodic and catchy; at least the music is!  Boon just yells out lines like “I try to think of girls but keep thinking of World War III!” and other similar political musings.  Thus we have song titles like “Fascist”, “Joe McArthy’s Ghost”, “If Reagan Played Disco” but that’s only part of the picture.  The CD also includes covers of “Ain’t Talkin’ ’bout Love” by Van Halen, “The Red and the Black” by Blue Oyster Cult, “Green River” by John Fogerty and “Lost” by the Meat Puppets who you will find later on this here list!

14.  Fear – The Record – Slash – 1982

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Another band whose crass sense of humor – gross songs like “Beef Baloney” and “Fresh Flesh”, deliberately absurd right-wing anthems like “Let’s Have a War” and “Foreign Policy” and overall mean-spiritedness – was confused by the more sensitive punk people as being straight-forward commentary; but how seriously can you take lyrics like “let’s have a war/it can start in New Jersey/let’s have a war/give guns to the queers” or “New York’s all right if you like getting pushed in front of the subway/New York’s all right if you want to freeze to death/New York’s all right if you like art and jazz/New York’s all right if you’re a homosexual”?  The group started in 1977 and released their first single “I Love Living in the City”/”Now You’re Dead” in 1978 but, as hardcore was born and bands started playing faster and audiences got crazier, rather than being put off like X or the Germs, Fear said “go for it, kids!  Go nuts!”  The group sped up their sound while keeping their jazz-informed musical tightness firmly intact, playing tightly but using some strange drum patterns and arrangements that typical “learned yesterday” punks wouldn’t be able to handle.  Guitarist/singer Lee Ving led the charge and was joined by second guitarist Philo Cramer, bassist Derf Scratch and drummer Spit Stix.  The band exposed square America to hardcore with their controversial Saturday Night Live performance before releasing their first (some say only good) album, The Record.  The album contains straight forward hardcore punk like “I Don’t Care About You” and a faster take on “I Love Livin’ in the City” but is also joined by potentially annoying, stop/start jazzy parts in songs like “Disconnected” and their twisted cover of the Animals classic “We Gotta Get Out of This Place.”  Their next album More Beer is pretty good but then they broke up and Lee Ving “reformed” the band with all new people and pretty much lost everything that made them unique.  Also, for some stupid reason, they re-recorded The Record in 2012.

13.  Negative Approach – Total Recall – Touch and Go – 1992

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Yeah, yeah, it’s another collection containing what was then the entire catalog; a compilation track, a 10 song 7″ EP, a 10 song LP, and a bunch of demos and unlisenable live recordings; 38 songs total!… Negative Approach managed to be totally, typically hardcore yet still unique enough to skirt the stereotypes of the genre.  Sure singer John Brannon was another baldy with engineer boots barking in a mic and sure Rob McCulloch just played basic bar chords really fast and sure Rob’s older brother Graham just played the root notes of what Rob played and sure OP Moore just played basic punk and thrash beats but their songs were good and different enough from each other and catchy and fun and angry and they covered a couple oi songs and the self titled EP is more lo fi and punk while the Tied Down album is a bit more metally and “Can’t Tell No One” is one of the most awesomely catchy songs ever with its Ramonesy beat and “Lead Song” has an awesome two note guitar lead and they cover “Never Surrender” by Blitz and “Chaos” by 4Skins and “I Got a Right” by the Stooges and the song “Tied Down” totally RUUULLLLEEEZZZZ and “Evacuate” is like slow and sludgy and they have angry songs and they were angry and pissed.

Addendum: as of 2007, NA has become so stupidly popular that they’ve released a 7″ EP and two full length albums of live and demo stuff with even more songs and unreleased live versions.  Without a doubt, we need more and more Negative Approach stuff because 15 different recordings of “Why Be Something That You’re Not” just won’t do!!!

12.  Circle Jerks – Group Sex – Frontier – 1980

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Apparently Group Sex is considered by some to be the first hardcore punk album ever but that’s a pretty lofty claim considering GI by the Germs and Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables by DKs came out before Group Sex so I don’t know.  I do know that Group Sex rules!  14 songs in 15 minutes and all catchy, bratty punk and hardcore.  “World Up My Ass” and “Live Fast, Die Young” are punk.  “I Just Want Some Skank” and “Red Tape” are hardcore.  There are a few mid-tempo numbers for good measure.  “Deny Everything” is 30 seconds long.  “Don’t Care” and “Wasted” were Black Flag tunes that Keith Morris just took with him to Circle Jerks because why not?  Morris’ voice sounds nasal, snotty and very distinct (listen to Off!; he sounds like he hasn’t aged a bit!).  Greg Hetson (formerly of Redd Cross and currently of Bad Religion) plays guitar, Roger Dowding Rodgerson plays bass and Chet “Lucky” Lerer plays drums.  After Group Sex, the band went through a few rhythm sections and released the albums Wild in the Streets (1982) and Golden Shower of Hits (1983) which are good, Wunderful (1985) and VI (1987) which are a bit slower but okay, the live album Gig (1992), which is great and their only major label album Oddities, Abnormalities and Curiosities (1995), which stinks but has an awesome cover of “I Wanna Destroy You” by the Soft Boys.  Keith Morris is now tearing it up in Off! with Steve McDonald of Redd Cross, Dmitri Coats from Burning Brides on guitar and Mario Rubecalba from the Hot Snakes on drums.  He’s also singing for Flag but we’ll forgive him for that.

11.  Bad Brains – Rock for Light – Caroline – 1983

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Bad Brains started in 1978 and released the most influential hardcore single ever (“Pay to Cum”/”Stay Close to Me”) in 1980, a self-titled cassette album in 1982 and the awesome Rock for Light in 1983.  Rock for Light has 20 rippin’ tunes (or maybe that’s my CD reissue, still though).  The band was credited for an unprecedented level of proficiency on their instruments and a tendency towards ganja-fueled rasta themes.  In fact, promoting “jah” and bashing “Babylon” are about the only things H.R. sings about.  The songs are mainly hardcore but have metal parts and there are four reggae tunes on the album that don’t particularly fit but are pretty cool nonetheless.  Nobody could predict that, in a few years, they would play ENTIRE live shows of reggae jams and earn a reputation for being notorious homophobes, a view that they would later, thankfully recant.  Some of my favorites from Rock for Light include “The Big Takeover”, “Attitude”, “Sailin’ On”, “Rock for Light”, “Supertouch” and “Banned in D.C.”  H.R. was a powerful frontman, doing these crazy flips on stage while guitarist Dr. Know, bassist Darryl Jennifer and drummer Earl Hudson ripped through these tunes somethig fierce.  They went on to make the I Against I album for SST and many consider that a classic. I think it’s pretty good but prefer the earlier, faster stuff way more.  Then H.R. quit and they released another album.  They’re back now but not as good, I don’t think.

10.  The Replacements – Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash – Twin/Tone – 1981

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The Replacements were sort of like the Undead or Social Distortion of the mid-west in that they were a fun, rock ‘n’ roll influenced punk band surrounded by a bunch of pissed off hardcore dudes.  Eventually they would go on to be one of the most popular underground rock bands of the 80s and be considered one of the “alternative” bands that normal people would like.  But on Sorry Ma…, guitarist/singer Paul Westerberg, lead guitarist Bob Stinson, bassist Tommy Stinson and drummer Chris Mars let rip 18 wonderfully catchy, fast but not hardcore speed rock ‘n’ roll numbers dealing with life as a typical suburban teen in Minneapolis or just anywhere in America; basically 18 variations on songs about hanging out and having fun somewhere because you have nothing better to do.  The group’s philosophy is summed up in the classic “Careless” in the line “irresponsibility is my closest friend.”  I wanna say the group gets a little serious in the anti-heroine, Johnny Thunders bash “Johnny’s Gonna Die” but that’s about as deep as it gets.  But my favorite line is from the song “I Hate Music.”  It goes, “I hate music/sometimes I don’t/I hate music/it’s got too many notes.”

9.  Minor Threat – Complete Discography – Dischord- 1989

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The fourth and last compilation on this list, this is one that doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out.  Some of you might wonder why I placed it at #9 and not right at the top but, what can I say?  I don’t wanna be predictable and this is still MY opinion, not something taken out of Spin magazine.  Minor Threat needs no introduction.  After the Teen Idles broke up, D.C.’s leading scenester and “man with a message” Ian McKaye kept drummer Jeff Nelson and scored tight as hell musos Lyle Preslar on guitar and Brian Baker on bass and unleashed the Minor Threat and In My Eyes 7″ EPs which contain hardcore standards like “Filler”, “Straight Edge” and the needlessly controversial “Guilty of Being White.”  Then they brought in bassist Steve Hansgen, moved Baker to second guitar, released a mini LP titled Out of Step, which was a bit heavier and a bit more ahem… metal… then they dropped Hansgen, recorded a couple more songs and broke up because they all had different career aspirations.  Complete Discography has most of it (there’s a stupid EP of demos that’s not even worth mentioning); all 26 songs in 50 minutes starting with the rumbling bass line of “Filler”, ending with the melodic, chime filled, electric/acoustic melodic tune “Salad Days” and containing a whole lot of angry, classic tuneage in between; including covers of “Good Guys Don’t Wear White” by the Standells, “Steppin’ Stone” by the Monkees and “12XU” by Wire.  Flex your head!

8.  Meat Puppets – Meat Puppets – SST – 1982

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If you’ve wasted enough time to read this far down, you might be wondering if you’re ever going to see Husker Du on this list and I’m sorry; you’re not.  In spite showcasing other bands who belong in the “really great musicians who would tire of hardcore almost immediately after making their name in the genre” unlike the Minutemen, the Replacements and this here Arizona based power trio the Meat Puppets, I must admit, I’m not HUGE on Husker Du.  Anyway… the Meat Puppets classic lineup featured Curt Kirkwood on guitar and vocals, Chris Kirkwood on bass and vocals and Derek Bostrom on drums and the band’s claim to fame was introducing the first country influences into punk rock and hardcore.  These 14 songs (and now 32 thanks to the awesome CD reissue which includes the In a Car EP and a ton of comp tracks!!!) are all punk and hardcore speed but with Chris Kirkwood playing individual notes all over the place, deliberately slopping it up with country twang while Curt hilariously yells drunken and incomprehensible lyrics all to incredibly catchy effect.  And what great song titles!  “Love Offering”, “Blue-Green God”, “Electromud”… a cover of “Tumblin’ Tumbleweeds”… of course, this is the last album they made that sounded like this.  They soon moved on to a more melodic alterna-country hybrid and would become indie darlings for the rest of the decade but that’s another story for another time.

7.  Flipper – Album Generic Flipper – Subterranean – 1981

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Containing former members of San Fran punk band Negative Trend and not fitting the total hardcore tag, Flipper might be one of the most influential bands on musicians from the post-hardcore, noise and grunge world with either Will Shatter’s or Bruce Loose’s hypnotically, repetitive bass lines (they took turns singing and playing bass) Ted Falconi’s guitar noise and drummer Steve Depace’s solid, slow to mid-tempo beat.  Their deliberate attention to methodical repetition and not playing everything as fast as humanly possible made them targets by the nimrod skinheads who unfortunately made up a good part of the hardcore scene.  Album Generic Flipper (or some variant of those three words) is the most perfect representation of their world view both musically and lyrically.  And lyrically they were depressing!  I mean there was an obvious left of center political twist to it but really they just sang lyrics like “feeling so numb and I’m feeling so dead/just like someone just hit my head” and “feeling so empty and I feel so old/just waiting to feel the death like cold/feeding at my life ties/not really knowing and not caring why.”  Thankfully they lightened the mood with the deliberately silly “Sex Bomb” and present a positive message in “Life.”  The band would continue through the 80s with the excellent Gone Fishin’ and Public Flipper Limited albums before Will Shatter died of a drug overdose.  Years later they reformed with Kris Noveselic on bass.  They’re still around today I believe!

6.  Butthole Surfers – Butthole Surfers – Alternative Tentacles – 1983

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I know this is considered an EP and not a full-length album but, if I’m not mistaken, Butthole Surfers (later known as Brown Reason to Live) is about 17 minutes long and in hardcore, that’s pretty epic; it’s just that this thing only has seven songs on it.  A couple years after this release, San Antonio, TX acid casualty freaks the Butthole Surfers would become one of the highest selling and biggest draws in the indie/alternative underground with some of the weirdest, hookiest and experimental albums released up to that point and some far out live shows with flashing strobes, disturbing film projections and use of strange props.  But here Gibby Haynes (vocals/saxophone/guitar/bass) and Paul Leary (vocals/guitar) are just getting started with their deranged noise.  The bassist on here is Billy Jolly while long time drummer Jeff “King” Coffey only plays drums on two songs.  The rest were handled by Brad Perkins.  But what kind of band is/was this?  Thirty years later this is still some pretty out there stuff; a bunch of ugly guitar racket atop a hardcore deconstruction, a bass-heavy dub tune, a kind of rockabilly thing with the Tazmanian devil singing, a couple kinda normallish sounding tunes, some sax bleating, some voice-pitch manipulation and song titles like “The Shah Sleeps in Lee Harvey’s Grave”, Bar-B-Q Pope”, “Wichita Cathedral” and “The Revenge of Anus Presley.”  There are three others but they’re not as weird sounding.  The fact that the band presented such a bizarre style of music yet became commercially successful with a cut-throat business sense combined with actual musical skill speaks volumes.  Some people are still pissed over that Touch and Go incident way back in 1996 but, what can I say?  The Buttholes totally rule!

5.  Suicidal Tendencies – Suicidal Tendencies – Frontier – 1983

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It’s hard to believe that Suicidal Tendencies were as controversial as they were back in the 80s but alas, the group’s image with their bandanas combined with their name and reputation for being violent assholes followed them wherever they went.  On later albums they preached tolerance and positivity and generally lived clean, drug-free lifestyles.  However their self-titled debut is their most hardcore and violent.  Lead shouter and only band constant Mike Muir claimed that the lyrics come from personal experience but that doesn’t stop “I Saw Your Mommy” from sounding gratuitous, violent and awesome!  The lineup on this album also featured guitarist Grant Estes, bassist Louichi Mayorga and drummer Amery Smith and though it’s mostly a hardcore album with thrash beats and slashing riffs, that doesn’t stop the band from filling the songs with raging, metallic leads.  “Institutionalized” – with its rant versus and speedy choruses – was a surprise mega-hit on college radio and apparently all over MTV during 1984, spreading their brand of metal influenced hardcore to the masses.  Elsewhere Muir shouts about personal angst, the system’s corrupting forces, shooting Ronald Reagan and Anwar Sadat, asshole cops, telling some dumb broad how he won’t fall in love with her, being possessed by demons and suicide.  Many accused Suicidal of being a metal band in disguise and Suicidal kinda confirmed that fear when, a few years later, they released their speed metal/crossover thrash sophomore LP Join the Army. After that they signed a major label deal and emerged as a technically proficient, duel guitar metal band who played enormous venues and toured with mega mainstream thrashers like Megadeth and Metallica.  They even took Pantera out on their first national tour!

4.  Dead Kennedys – Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death – Alternative Tentacles – 1987

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Without a doubt the Dead Kennedys were the most popular band during the early days of American hardcore; Jello Biafra was crucial to developing hardcore by insisting on all ages shows in spite many of his peers criticizing him and the rest of the DKs for siding with hardcore.  It’s easy to see why; DKs formed in 1978 in San Francisco and undoubtedly were part of the intellectual set with collage artist Winston Smith designing their graphics and such and the rise of hardcore presented the antithesis to the arty, thinking person’s brand of music the DKs were making.  But Jello had faith that some of those underage kids were intelligent and had good ideas.  Some did and well, some became Agnostic Front :)… DKs of course were totally awesome; Jello Biafra’s creepy, quivering vibrato and paranoid, caustic lyrics about corporate domination along with guitarist East Bay Ray’s and drummer D.H. Pelliger wickedly tight and underrated playing were a fierce combination. I guess Jeff “Klaus” Flouride is a solid bass player as well.  Originally they had a second guitarist named 6025 and the original drummer was Bruce Slesinger (a.k.a. Ted).  This CD/LP contains a wide smattering of the DKs various tricks; early (and better) single versions of “California Uber Alles” and “Holiday in Cambodia”, straight forward punk rock of “The Man with the Dogs”, thrashing hardcore of “Life Sentence”, surf-punk of “Police Truck” and “Too Drunk to Fuck”, creepy lounge music of “The Prey”, Harvey Milk inspired cover of “I Fought the Law” and hilarious publicity stunt song “Pull My Strings” which the group used to bash the entire music industry at a San Francisco, Grammy-style award show!  Yeah, the group’s reputation has been tarnished with that law suit and new versions of this release are no longer released by the legendary Alternative Tentacles label but we can always remember one of the greatest bands of all time.  There will never be another, that’s for sure!

3.  Black Flag – Everything Went Black – SST – 1982

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Like the Dead Kennedys and Misfits, Black Flag isn’t just one of the greatest hardcore bands of all time, they’re simply one of the greatest bands period.  I realize that Everything Went Black seems like a strange choice for the third greatest hardcore album of all time especially since it doesn’t have “Nervous Breakdown” or “Rise Above” on it but here’s the thing; 1.) Black Flag have OTHER really great songs besides those two and 2.) Damaged is included on just about everybody’s list so I was trying to go the path less traveled.  Now, I love almost everything by Black Flag from their early punk rock/hardcore stuff to their sludgy and noisy stuff and I never felt Henry Rollins ruined the band when he joined.  I just feel Everything Went Black and The First Four Years are such great representations of this band when they were in their punk years.  And since Everything Went Black is longer… also, it’s such a neat release because it actually caused guitarist Greg Ginn and bassist Chuck Dukowski to be sentenced to jail for two weeks for breach of contract against former label Unicorn Records.  The group released it without the credits and just the performers listed but the judge counted that as a Black Flag release and thus a violation of contract and in the pokey they went.  Luckily Dukowski found enough in back tax evasion to bury the label and they eventually won all their rights back.  Everything Went Black is a double album which contains three sides of wicked outtakes from all of the group’s pre-Rollins singers – Keith Morris, Ron Reyes and Dez Cadena – and a fourth called “Crass Commercialism” which is a collection of fun radio spots.  The record showcases just how great of a songwriter Ginn was and also has neat earlier versions of Damaged songs like “Police Story”, “Depression” and “Gimme, Gimme, Gimme”, all of which appear on the album three times each.  Superfluous?  Maybe!  Other killer classics include “Clocked In”, “Jealous Again”, “I Don’t Care” (later to be stolen by Keith for Circle Jerks), “Revenge”, “White Minority”, “Louie Louie” and the Dez Cadena version of “Damaged I.”  Black Flag may not have been the fastest band in the world but damn were they powerful and catchy and don’t you just love Ginn’s crazy solos?  I’m not going to comment on the current Flag/Black Flag reunion debacle.

2.  Misfits – Wolf’s Blood/Earth A.D. – Aggressive Rock/Plan 9 – 1983

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Kids, there’s only one Misfits.  They existed from 1977 to 1983 and were led by an unstoppable singing/songwriting talent named Glenn Danzig who is 5’3″, sings in a killer Elvis/Jim Morrison baritone and apparently has some sort of Napoleon complex which makes him want to act like a macho tough guy in spite being a comic and toy collector.  Hey, nobody’s perfect.  100% of the Danzig-era Misfits is awesome; from their early days as a Doors-meets-Suicide keyboard band to the mid-tempo goth/doom punk, to lo fi Ramones inspired horror punk to their final days as a thrashing hardcore band.  They went through a few guitarists and drummers and the only other band constant next to Danzig was bassist Jerry “Only” Caifa, who usurped the Misfits name in 1994 to make money by releasing more and more garbage with a bunch of no-talent hacks; yeah I know Dez Cadena is currently in the Misfits, fuck you!  Anyway, I digress.  Many of the group’s fans felt they lost it when they moved away from their more melodic horror punk into straight-forward hardcore.  But I disagree.  First of all, that’s how they started to sound live anyway since they began playing faster for more aggressive audiences and secondly, devilocked Doyle plays catchy as hell riffs while former Black Flag drummer Robo plays fierce, tight thrash beats.  The American version of Wolf’s Blood/Earth A.D. has 9 songs and is 15 minutes long, the European version has 11 songs and is 19 minutes long and the 1996 Caroline reissue has 12 songs and is an epic 21 minutes long.  Of course you should get the longest version since it has “Die, Die, My Darling”, “We Bite” and “Mommy, Can I Go Out and Kill Tonight” on it.  But if you’re strictly into vinyl, you can’t go wrong with dark, scary, evil and violent tunes like “Earth A.D”, “Queen Wasp”, “Devilock”, “Death Comes Ripping”, “Green Hell”, “Wolf’s Blood”, “Demonomania”, “Hell Hound” and “Bloodfeast.”  Sad to say that Earth A.D. came out in the states a week or so after the Misfits acrimoniously split up but thankfully Danzig emerged with his equally awesome though more experimental Samhain the following year and eventually started his prosperous career in the big leagues.

1.  Corrosion Of Conformity – Eye for an Eye – No Core – 1983

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Everybody has his/her/its favorite and this one’s mine.  In the 90s 3/4 of this band would be joined by New Orleans bred guitarist/singer/songwriter Pepper Keenan and become popular with their big, major label debut Deliverance and its harder edged take on the Alice In Chains/Soundgarden brand of heavy grunge and that’s all fine and dandy and I still think “Clean My Wounds” is a great song but their first album is a doozy!  It’s hard to believe this is the same band, which it wasn’t totally after all.  Here they are at age 15 just tearing it up!  Guitarist Woody Weatherman, bassist Mike Dean and drummer Reed Mullin are joined by lead shouter Eric Eycke and the band blasts through 20 tunes in 35 minutes.  “Rabid Dogs” and “No Drunk” are 40 and 22 seconds long respectively.  “What?” sounds like a normallish punk song and “Green Manalishi” is indeed a Fleetwood Mac cover.  Elsewhere the band basically plays raging speed-core/thrash but with copious amounts of Sabbath and Priest riffs thrown in for good measure just because the band felt like putting them in there and had no problem expressing their love of both early metal and hardcore.  In fact “Redneckkk” is “Symptom of the Universe” played really fast and “College Town” uses the intro to “Cornucopia.”  Lyrically Eye for an Eye is somewhat political with titles like “Minds Are Controlled” and “Nothing’s Gonna Change” but it doesn’t matter too much since it’s nearly impossible to understand most of what Eric Eycke yells in his low, gruff voice.  Still though, this shit kills and it’s produced really dirty and it’s totally underrated so go and buy it.  On their next album, they’d lose Eycke and become a crossover thrash power trio with Mike Dean singing, then they’d get another singer, release another EP, break up for a while and emerge in the early 90s as a really heavy, stoner metal band that graced MTV’s Headbanger’s Ball, then they made Deliverance and had a bit of mainstream success right through the 90s and mid-oughts.  Now they’re back as a power trio with Dean singing lead again and are doing some sort of stoner metal/hardcore/thrash hybrid.