Short reviews of boxes of records that were sitting around at my parents’ house for the past six years, pt. 1
Wolfbrigade: “Progression/Regression” LP
This is as corny and pretentious as movies like “300” or “Clash of the Titans.” A far cry from the absurdism of their Swedish hardcore forebears: not only were the Shitlickers named *that*, but their EP featured a cartoon punk ripping a cop in half. Wolfbrigade—with the picture disc as their canvas for expression—instead present an industrial nightmare of humanoids with barcodes for eyes, toiling in front of a mushroom cloud with a skull for its mushroom face (like in Disney’s “Fantasia,” where mushrooms dance the Chinese section of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite). Is this how anyone still experiences the political present? In the age of Wikileaks, drone wars, the reeling crises of capitalism, the death of “Europe,” and the explosions of revolutionary action in the Middle East and Latin America—the emo-ness of the social alienation felt by the members of Wolfbrigade is risibly dated. This singularly impoverished political vision informs this half-hour of bombastic and humorless Scandi-crust.
Descendents “Cool to Be You” LP
In theory, pop-punk is the greatest music there is: a bunch of catchy parts crammed together. The Buzzcocks and Green Day proved that it could be done. In practice, however, the Fat Wreck Chords/Epitaph bands must rely on a concept of melody and harmony that “studies show audiences deem to be the most pleasing,” because the aura of upbeat major-key energy never quite translates into memorable tunes. For this reason, pop-punk often reminds me of math rock or jazz-inflected death metal. This is not such a far-fetched comparison in the case of the Descendents, who are ridiculously talented musicians, cramming a lot of technical noodling into these songs about farts and girls. There are some interesting lyrical moments, but these songs lack grit, making me feel as uncool and old as the band itself. But then I know that even middle-age can be bitter and sharply painful, whereas this is bathed in a kind of warm California melancholy.
From Ashes Rise “Concrete and Steel” LP
Listening to a lot of the albums I bought during this era (2000-2006), I am struck by how pervasive was From Ashes Rise’s influence—not His Hero is Gone, not Tragedy, not the fashionable Japanese bands. But From Ashes Rise has aged the worst of the lot, with very few memorable riffs and a lot of unnecessary lumbering and/or “ambient” breaks just to indicate how serious and moody they are. As with the other bands in this circle (His Hero is Gone, Deathreat) there are some powerful points of view from the bottom rungs of a benighted society. In the song “Rung by Rung”: “Turn on the rest of the slaves for 50 cents? I don’t think so. No fucking way.” And I find their weird luddite suspicion of men in labcoats (“shadowed technicians”) charming. “Power gets the last word,” indeed. But just as often, this is merely bad poetry—“A litany of empires, a defining theme of castles and skylines erected and felled.” Yeesh. The anti-Christian songs would be more powerful directly in proportion to being more personal. It’s easy to see why, in the current of 90s hardcore, this dramatic and superficially lofty music seemed powerfully anthemic and become an influential touchstone. From today’s perspective, the songs simply bleed together and one really can’t say that they “did it best.”
