Negative FX s/t LP (1984)
Disregarding their popularity, about which I know nothing, Negative FX never seem to fit into any of the great narratives of early US hardcore. Maybe because they didn’t play out much, released their album posthumously, were not on the great Boston HC compilation LP, were not on XClaim!, were overshadowed by Choke’s later career in Slapshot, their “album” is less than 18 minutes long, etc. Anyways, I’ll never understand Boston, so let’s get into this great album.
One problem with fast music is that the faster it becomes, the less distinguishable is every song. In the historical development of hardcore, once blazingly fast and not-at-all-memorable music became a basic feature of life, this problem disappeared as a problem of composition or enjoyment by making the ratio of songs/minute an end in itself.
However, it is routinely true of the earliest fast hardcore that the songs are very memorable. To merely say the name of the Middle Class song “Out of Vogue” is to get it stuck in your head; I know every word to the Bad Brains’ “Pay to Cum”; every early D.R.I. song is a discrete entity that is heard separately and can be evaluated separately; the songs that Mob 47 sing in English are a testament to how catchy and distinct even the fastest hardcore can be. [Of course, the Swedish Mob 47 songs are catchy, too, but they are only ever “the one that goes like this…” to me, since they cannot be conjured up linguistically.]
In other words, fast hardcore should not have to give up the principle of individual songs. That hardcore in the 1990s resolved itself into a purely quantitative basis is strictly analogous to hardcore in 2010’s confusing itself with an entirely qualitative effect of production, dissonance, and “damaged” posturing, in which every song sounds the same for *these* reasons. Dynamics is obliterated in both cases, just as in grunge music the loud/soft dynamic deprives itself of dynamic effect.
How does Negative FX deal with this problem? I think a modern listener is jarred by the presence of some extremely primitive, almost OI!-style songs scattered amongst the fast hardcore songs here, or sometimes recast as (basically unrelated) parts of those songs. The first song, “Feel Like a Man,” has an ambling chorus that would not be out of place at a Boston pub, while “Mind Control” and “Turn Your Back” are positively halting, basically serving as platforms for rants by singer Choke. (“VFW,” on the other hand, is just one of the simplest punk songs, its slow section comparable with Iron Cross for its astonishing crudity.) These songs are undeniably the most memorable on the album, and it is a matter of some internal dispute whether they break up the fast songs, to give the listener “breathing room,” or—and I am inclined to think this is the real genius of the album—that the fast songs rather serve this function of breathing room for the claustrophobic, full-on anxiety of the slow songs!
For the fast songs, Negative FX use every trick at their disposal to make the songs distinct: group chants (“Together,” “Negative FX”), dropping out the guitar to shout the name of the song (“Hazardous Waste”), an emphatic slow part (“Citizen’s Arrest”), catch phrases (“IDNTFS”—I Don’t Need This Fucking Shit). I don’t want to suggest that these geniuses were straining their brains to *distinguish* these songs from each other, after the fact: the way these songs are memorably distinct IS their ontology, just as much as the melody of a Kinks song is its being.That it had not settled down into a formula yet, and comes across as rather unhinged and like bottled-lightning, is not incidental to the record’s charms.
For the most part, the songs are held together purely by charisma and the incredibly controlled drumming. Charisma is not often discussed in punk record reviews, but just as much as a Bob Dylan record is inseparable from his aura on tape, early hardcore was marked by strong personalities that defined records. H.R, Gary Floyd, Henry Rollins, Milo Aukerman, Jello Biafra, Choke… it’s no coincidence that these are household names. As great as bands like The Fix or Koro are, their obscurity must in some small way be due to the fact that no larger-than-life personality resides behind the music. To name only my favorite hardcore band, The Misfits, will alone suffice to make this distinction clear.
Choke is unbelievable on this record. While the drumming effortlessly keeps pace and calls to mind the “let’s pretend we can’t play” virtuosity of Darkthrone, Choke gives the fast songs the feeling of breathless, furious intensity that vanishes from fast hardcore at some later point; while, to the slow songs, every word resonates with an individuality that—however demented—is truly heartening. No, I won’t let them tell me what to think, EITHER!, my inner 14-year-old responds.
This record is so short, I find myself playing it several times whenever I take it out, and however many bands/zines take their names from its song titles, it is still unique and probably inimitable. The final effect of its pissed-off attack on the world (don’t forget: Charles Manson is on the album cover!) is, strangely, a very cuddly and endearing record that is more profoundly, resolutely “feel-good” than cheaply disillusioning and depressing. Is this goal of great art? At the risk of answering that question positively with reference to a record with a dripping pseudo-swastika as the band’s logo, let me stop with this review.
[Recommended]
