vBoogieman Rock and Metal News

Alrightee, folks, let’s see what chaos ensues this Wednesday, eh?

Usual chaos at home with wifey and I both recovering from injuries. Poor lass crashed down a flight of steps and twisted her ankle, then tripped on her crutches and bent my arm back when I caught her. Always sucks when you’re parents to a little one and both busted up, but I’d say our determination has given us the juice to conquer this quickly, so on to the next round of shit!

Last night I enjoyed the pleasure of conversing with Tyler Mane, aka Michael Myers of Rob Zombie’s current two Halloween flicks and other film credits such as X-Men, Punisher and Troy, not to mention he’s a former WCW pro wrassler from the early nineties you might’ve remembered as Nitro.

So you take your pleasure with the pain as Paul Stanley does in “Room Service” and you keep movin’ and groovin’. That being said, let’s cut the chatter this week and sling out the playlists and see if we can all play nicely in the sandbox, k?

Whiplash – Unborn Again
Shrinebuilder – s/t
The Few Against Many – SOT
Ahab – The Divinity of Oceans
Halloween II (Rob Zombie) original soundtrack
Dag Nasty – Can I Say / Wig Out at Denkos
Dag Nasty – Field Day
Dag Nasty – Minority of One
Government Issue – You
Deep Purple – Stormbringer
Ride – Nowhere
My Bloody Valentine – Loveless
Joe Jackson – I’m the Man
Joe Jackson – Look Sharp
Diablo Swing Orchestra – Sing Along Songs for the Damned and Delirious
Foreigner – Can’t Slow Down
Guilt Machine – On This Perfect Day
Demilitia – s/t

A night where legendary punk legends return to the road after a 15 year layoff, the atmosphere was all hardcore, all punk, intensity growing as each of the five bands took the stage. Naked Raygun were more lean and settled into a set filled with midtempo to fast numbers from their earlier catalog.

Representatives from the time-honored DC punk and hardcore scene were on-hand (it was cool meeting John Stabb of Government Issue on the floor) in a venue-packed Ottabar to pay witness to one of the greats, who gave a pretty solid performance and kept the air of nostalgia swirling about the club. Old meets new on a memorable evening filled with passion and respect.

Paint it Black nearly stole the show as you’ll see by these action-flailed shots, and Naked Raygun’s John Pezzazi even stepped out with them for their closing number, a moment which Paint it Black’s Dan Yemin noted before leaving the stage as being “the greatest moment of my adult life.”

Paint it Black:

with John Pezzati of Naked Raygun:

Naked Raygun:

Subhumans – Worlds Apart reissue
2008 Southern Records
Ray Van Horn, Jr.

Rare is the album of any genre which achieves not just one but two high standards of excellence and in turn becomes a pivotal recording of its time. Icing on the cake is when said album stands the test of time on the values of unyielding passion and lyrical integrity.

UK punk legends the Subhumans enjoyed a marathon run from the early to mid eighties courtesy of explosive counterculture music redefining the genre in grossly understated modes. Understated when you consider their most-recognized body of work 1982′s The Day the Country Died is one of hardcore’s earliest prototypes from which it prospered underground through the eighites in the future company of JFA, Agnostic Front, Youth of Today and The Exploited.

The mark of true genius comes in evolution. Thus the Subhumans would have to be considered gifted beyond words to initiate a hypogeal riot of social conscience set to the agitated expedition of their early EPs and The Day the Country Died, only to leave that school of thought immediately behind thereafter.

For this writer’s purposes, hearing the adverse direction DC punk stalwarts Government Issue took from the ear-scraping Boycott Stabb to the more melodic upswing of You and Crash was a prime example of savvy reinvention, a maneuver naturally staked out ahead of them courtesy of the Subhumans by the time they released From the Cradle to the Grave and their scene-altering masterpiece, Worlds Apart.

As the Subhumans snugly propped themselves upon the soapbox for societal overhaul during their boisterous career, they became not only more proficient with their asphalt-cracked and chain-fenced preachery, but wowzers, what ardent musicians they became as of Worlds Apart in 1985!

Very few punkers were fielding what the Subhumans bravely–and energetically–stamped down upon the punk scene with the completion of Worlds Apart. Some may argue the sheer ferocity of The Day the World Ended is the true sound of the Subhumans. Certainly the global destruction fear factor lingering over The Day the World Ended makes its own proposal as deciding when the Subhumans were at their best.

Undeniably the thumb-empowered Cold War made the Subhumans their most abrasive and alarming with The Day the World Ended, yet considering the slew of hardcore bands trailing after the Subhumans and other early pioneers, this writer would submit the about-face you hear on Worlds Apart is far more urgent in nature. Listen to the opening bars of aggrandizing commotion of “Carry On Laughing” for evidence.

Though nowhere near as fast save for a wonderful speedy breakaway after two-thirds of steady bump on “Heads of State,” Worlds Apart nonetheless moves paces beyond mid-tempo (and with dozens of unpredictable time signature swaps, to-boot) for darned near the entire ride, prompting one of the grooviest punk albums ever recorded.

Still spiking at the handcuffed world around them on snaggletoothed tunes such as “Apathy,” “Businessmen,” “Fade Away,” “Someone is Lying” and “Carry On Laughing,” the Subhumans continue their streetwise litanies in deference to the downtrodden while in the same breath concocting a punk album unlike any of its ilk.

The risks taken by the Subhumans on Worlds Apart are relayed by a change from mosh tempo to a ride-cymbal clanging gallop on “Businessmen” to the mixup of Clash-loving reggae-ska to an abrupt sonic din on “Fade Away.” The siren-like guitar beacons scattered throughout the verses of “Someone is Lying” is ground-breaking for its time, much less the switch towards crunchy and lofty choruses and the note-inflicted bridge reminiscent of Killing Joke. Either rate, “Someone is Lying” is compactly epic within four-and-a-half minutes versus the 17-minute odyssey of “From the Cradle to the Grave” an album prior.

Particularly thrilling about Worlds Apart is how this album moves and shakes with an unbelievable barrage of hooks and steady throbs on “Can’t Hear the Words,” “”Get to Work On Time,” “British Disease” and “Heads of State.” The energy level hardly ceases in the latter part of the album as the Subhumans lay the foundations not only for future punk but also alternative rock with “Straightline Thinking” and the ska struts on “Powergames.”

Bruce’s guitars are the most stellar they’ve been in the Subhumans on Worlds Apart while Phil clumps and clangs his bass with his usual snug candor. Trotsky’s drum playing is likely stepped up to near-perfection, particularly impressive on the complicated punk-turned-ska-turned-militant march of the sellout indictment “Ex-Teenage Rebel.”

Dick Lucas is his usual rowdy self vocally, but there rings even deeper conviction on Worlds Apart than on the Subhumans’ earlier work, not that Lucas ever skimped. He historically roasts his own trademark sloshed caterwauling throughout the Subhumans’ catalog, which is always one of his subtle charms. Despite, the raw angst sliding out his sniggering pipes on “Apathy” elevates a line such as “Drink, sex, cigarettes, Ford Cortina, household pets. Bombs? War? Famine? Death? An apathetic public couldn’t care less” to something Dylan-esque of its kind.

That, friends is the true essence of the Subhumans, relayed to sheer perfection in one of the finest punk albums ever played and sprayed. The scene was never the same once Worlds Apart arrived, even if an equally important title song manifested later on the Subhumans’ 29:29 Split Vision. Nearly as important as he Bad Brains’ Rock for Light and I Against I…

Rating: *****

Subhumans – From the Cradle to the Grave reissue
2008 Southern Records
Ray Van Horn, Jr.

Somewhere in the course of punk’s rebirth, disenfranchised future proletariats have been left to grouse in isolation, namely the frightened youth heaped with the burden of carrying society on their strong yet suspicious shoulders. Where is the band to hail their quietly-panicked voices, particularly in a world growing more complex by the year?

Just as you will hear the baby boomers and those within reach of that generation make comment we live in such a politically correct society we’ve lost our sense of humor at cost, so too has punk rock traded its responsibility towards watchdogging society at the cost of being either mallrat effervescent or conservatively strong-in-numbers.

The Subhumans have somehow in the course of history been forgotten for their contributions to not only punk rock but for being champions of the free-thinking anti-establishment youth brigade. Though most people familiar with the Subhumans know their most-popular album The Day the Country Died, much of what the rest of this intelligent and boundary-pushing group created bears even more substance.

A good friend of mine correctly noted the Subhumans gave punk rock two of its “most amazing albums,” those being 1985′s Worlds Apart and 1983′s From the Cradle to the Grave. The former might’ve been the album which changed the tide from the Sex Pistols’ carefree gutter swine screech to a more artistic yet driving mode with which to deliver their sociologically poignant messages warning against selling yourself out to the soul-grinding machine.

Worlds Apart is hypothetically the catalyst for what All, Government Issue, Uniform Choice and ultimately Fugazi would drift towards sound-wise. From the Cradle to the Grave, however, is still a Subhumans in somewhat raw form yet they were already ascending towards a deeper extraction of near anti-punk theory to include punctuated reverb and progressive swings, largely on the 17-minute title track. A punk rock epic? How absurd, you might think, but sit down and listen to Dick Lucas outlay a prolonged examination of the birth-to-death process–as if the Subhumans hadn’t already joyously thrown down at their listeners earlier in the album with the Buzzcocks-kissed story-of-your-life, “Waste of Breath.”

Almost never since has such depth been attempted in punk rock as what the Subhumans accomplished with “From the Cradle to the Grave” which is a bit of a genre take on Catch-22. The scared youth grows up under governmental control (i.e. school and religion), according to Lucas, and is forced on a course of conformity which finds his muse courted by the establishment to join rank–in this case a literal one in the form of the army. With lyrics spanning three pages, the Subhumans cast their most venomous indictment against controlled order, positing at “From the Cradle to the Grave’s” conclusion that allowing yourself to be dictated begins the cycle anew for the ensuing generation.

This is mind-blowing stuff, particulary for the early eighties in the midst of continued threat of a nuclear holocaust. In this sense, consider the Subhumans one of the genuine Cold War bands who did their part to coax the youth not to fall into the traps leading to annihilation. Changing the modes of musical attack from ripping hardcore velocities to alternative rock chugs and strums and swaying ska (you can count on every Subhuman album to bear at least one ska-reggae tune like their more commercially popular kindred The Police), “From the Cradle to the Grave” is punk rock’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” or psychedelic rock’s “Monster” (ala Steppenwolf) only the Subhumans focused their energies towards changing the course of humankind’s dialed inclination to destroy at will by the provocation of the government.

The Subhumans have always been considered an anarchy band, yet if you dissect their lyrics and take a good bit of what they say to heart, you will find this band to be one of the most well-meaning of its ilk. Yeah, “Waste of Breath” is insulting in nature with its attack on posers, but in the same breath, the Subhumans serve up “Us Fish Must Swim Together,” which rings louder than anything contemporary hardcore’s “unity” decrees have to offer. “You need support to keep you alive, us fish must swim together,” so says Dick Lucas and he’s spot-on. Even us lone wolves who reject the mainstream (as the Subhumans most assuredly do) need to recognize it’s going to take cooperation with the mainstream and especially with its own in order to move this world forward into the hands of the next youth who hopefully won’t need to make the terrifying decision to enlist with the state, which will forge their hands into harbingers of destruction.

As socially-conscious as any punk band receiving its proper due, the Subhumans deserve far more credit than they’re given. As From the Cradle to the Grave rockets through the first batch of songs with wonderfully dizzying and melodic aplomb (such as the blitzed speed representing the inflicted chaos of our hurried world on “Reality is Waiting For a Bus”), its ultimate purpose with the title song is to serve as a bible for the alienated youth and those coming into question what their future purpose is. It’s amazing an album almost three decades old contains such far-reaching wisdom…

Rating: ****1/2