The Middle Class-Homeland LP (1982)

 Top contenders for the pointless title of "the first American hardcore band," Santa Ana's Middle Class was miles ahead of their peers in every sense. In 1978, while most American bands were still ripping off "Anarchy in the UK" and "White Riot," they were cranking out true blitzkrieg bop, frantic enough to put the Ramones to shame. By the time everyone else was stealing from Greg Ginn and Dr. Know around 1980, Middle Class  had slowed down and grooved out, leaving the hardcore goon squad eating their dust.**

Between 1980's Scavenged Luxury EP and 1982's Homeland, the band slowed down and developed a sense of rhythm: dark, even somber, but rhythmic, almost funky at times. Widely reviled by hardcore kids when it was first released, this LP has slowly been making the internet rounds and the band's finally (I hope) getting their due as unsung path-breakers in the move away from hardcore punk and towards something more considered and intelligent. Mission of Burma are usually held up as the standardbearers of U.S. art punk, along with the No Wave crowd, but Middle Class' musical progression is quite impressive: hailing from a suburban backwater, they defied the nullnode, idiotic simplicity of the California punk scene to jump straight in the deep end of UK-style post-punk with this LP.

The LP opens with "The Call": a glacial piece of postpunk framed by an ominous bassline and distant, lumbering drumwork. Jeff Atta's voice has done a 180" from 1979's Out of Vogue: there, he hollered and shouted over the impossibly rapid guitar, trying to keep up with the rhythm section. Here, Atta's presence is funereal, almost sepulchral: his voice echoes in and around the instrumentation, speaking allegorically and obliquely of frigidity, miscommunication, tension. There's anxiety everywhere, a sense of imminent crisis. "A Skeleton at the Feast" ratchets up the tension  a notch, as Mike Patton slams out a bit of cold riddim. The chorus injects a bit of light, with cymbals crashing over Atta's injunction to "split the night right open/see all the secrets there...."

One of the strange coincidences of post-punk is that Middle Class was slowing down and grooving out while Gang of Four, comparatively at least, started rocking out on 1981's Solid Gold. "Mosque" is midway between the jerky post-punk of early Gang and the solemnity of Homeland's darker tracks: an ambiguous tale of revolution in the Islamic world ("sins of all the fathers/visited upon the sons....a plague of liberation, a plague of liberation"), the music is jerky, writhing within a tightly controlled framework. "Ritual and Deceit," with its effects-laden, gothic opening, marks the beginning of the end, marking time until the majestically sparten closer, "Everything."

It's fitting that this was the band's last recording. There's a sense of finality here, that the Middle Class had come full circle from the impassioned savagery of Out of Vogue to the glacial reserve of Homeland. From the tentative, groping basslines of "The Call" to the chanted chorus of the closer, "Everything" ("I've got a lot to learn/about the price of dreams/I've got a lot to lose/I've got everything...."), this LP is the sounds of doors slamming, people dancing nervously as night falls, of lights going out everywhere.

To conclude an overly long review: this is one of the (heretofore) forgotten classics of the U.S. underground of the 1980s. If you don't believe me, download the LP and find out for yourself. As far as I know, no one has re-pressed the LP.

You should, however, buy the benefit LP that Frontier Records recently released; proceeds go to Mike Atta's cancer fund. Help the dude out, he helped found hardcore, kiddies!

*EDIT, 4.2.14: I fixed the link, the file should work now.*

*None of this is to besmirch the Bad Brains, who were equally adept at breaking out of the hardcore ghetto, besides being about a million times more talented, musically, than 99.99% of all other musicians of the 1980s; throw on I Against I if you dunno what I'm talkin' about, punk!

Beast Fiend-Beast Fiend Rules! EP (2014)

Back when I lived in Chicago I used to drink at a bar called Medusa's from time to time. Those of you familiar with the frozen hell I call home probably know Medusa's quite well. If not, let me describe it: Medusa's is (was? Fuck it) a bar on the second floor of a walk-up in what used to be a shithole neighborhood now given over to yuppies and other true shithole-dwellers (i.e., not punks).

Tuesday nights were punk nights at Medusa's, but that didn't mean weirdos, outcasts and cranky commies such as me and you, dear readers. Instead it meant a smorgasboard of assholes from the nether regions of Chicago's white suburban sprawl: by that I mean you had the full range of shittiness from apolitical '77 punks, through anti-racist yet patriotic, misogynistic, and homophobic SHARP skins, down through Republipunks (such a thing does indeed exist) all the way to members of FSU and outright, dyed-in-the-wool Nazis. This cranky commie usually kept mum and tipped generously when his friends would wanna go there, for obvious reasons.

None of this has anything to do with Beast Fiend, a punk band from San Francisco; they just sound like the sort of loud, howling punk raucousness that would be playing when the chairs go flying at a shithole like Medusa's. Actually this EP's fun and melodic punk in a slightly soulful note.

You can listen to Beast Fiend here.

Vaguess--I Hate Rock 'n' Roll EP (2013)

This dood beats himself at his own game every time out. 2013's Back off Warchild EP was a perfect slice of bratpunk from the sunny slums of Southern California: how can you hate someone who writes songs about "Cali Swag" (yeah, that's a thing)? It just gets better on I Hate Rock 'n' Roll. Kicking off with a killer riff and a brilliantly dumb organ line, the title track is pure teen spite from start to finish.

I love this whole EP, in fact, but "I'm Bad" is the best track here. Opening with a stomping, raunchy rhythm that sounds like the New York Dolls on speed, the tune hums and hollers and sleazes its way to your heart in no time flat. Vinny chants along to what sounds like a hummed harmonic line somewhere in the background. It's a perfect piece of jangle pop filtered through Southern California sleaze, and closes with one of the best lyrics I've heard in a long time:  "I don't wanna be a deviant/but I'm always gonna be a pile of shit".

Other song topics include hating school, getting fucked up on the beach, and hatred of reading. On that note, further description is pointless: like I said in my review of this guy's debut LP, if you hate Vaguess, you're a stupid asshole who hates rock 'n' roll (even though Vaguess does, too). And this EP is even better than that LP was: these are songs! With choruses! And refrains! And identifiable instruments mixed separately!

So go find someone who can stand being around you for ten minutes, get her/him drunk enough to dance, and ROCK THE FUCK OUT to this bit of sunny slime!

Whirr-Pipe Dreams LP (2012)

Sacramento's hometown heroes dropped one of last year's best LPs, and I completely missed it. Since I got back it's all I've been listening to. Along with Broken Water and Psychic Blood, Whirr is one of the only bands worth a damn, as far as the '90s-revival thing goes. Instead of simply crushing you to death with colossal Mascis-style riffs or drowning you in MBV tone, Whirr seduces you. Effects-laden guitar dreamworks and sedate synthesizer lines waft in and out of focus through, perpetuating the initial impression I had of Whirr: they sound like falling in love feels.

I'm too out of it right now to elaborate on that, so just go ahead and check it out for yourself. Then go buy a copy at Tee Pee Records!

*EDIT, 9.9.14: I re'up'd the file, you can get Pipe Dreams HERE! *

The Shrills-Ghoul Kids

In case you're wondering why I stopped accepting new releases for review recently, this is a good example: it's a great record I received for review about a year and a half ago, and never listened to because it was buried in a pile of other submissions (in addition, I still pretend to have a social life while acting like an adult at times to earn a paycheck).

If you come to DrugPunk for the dirtyassrock'n'roll and loath my forays into other genres, you'll love this. Shrills is as much fun as making out in a bar bathroom after your eighth beer of the night. "Coconuts" is as sweet as the aforementioned fruit. It blatantly rips off a punk song whose title I can't think of. There's nothing complex about this band: it's just direct, unabashed garage punk that I'm pretty sure Californians were great at before they all started listening to Drake and Lady Gaga (or whatever it is my students love currently). There are moments of complexity-"Pink Hotel" veers dangerously close to Sex Church as far as guitars go-but this is mainly just straightahead garage fun. "Chthulu," however, is in a world of its own: it's six minutes of menacing, slow-motion cinematic tension that slowly segues into lurching, heavy caveman rock a la Bleach-era Nirvana. Totally makes the kids go crazy, I'm guessing.

Put quite simply, if I had gotten around to listening to this it woulda been in my Top 10 for 2011.
I dunno if any physical copies of the tape are left, but if so, BUY IT HERE!!!!

Middle Class-Out of Vogue 7" (1978)

Until the advent of online file-sharing, Santa Ana, California's Middle Class were one of those legendary early punk/HC bands that most punks had heard of without hearing (myself included). Regardless of whether this was the first "hardcore" record or not (and really, why does it matter?), this is a classic that I'm happy to be sharing with you lumpen masses.

Opening with an impossibly taut, frantically repeated guitar riff and wobbly bass line, "Out of Vogue" careens through a Ramonesclone song structure, dragging you along as singer Jeff Ata intones against the brave new world of mass media: "we don't need your magazines/we don't need your fashion show/we don't need your TV/we don't wanna know!" The music is so fast, the shouted words are like a ritual incantation at breakneck speed. The song ends with a clipped "OUT OF!..."

"You Belong" starts off slower, building up momentum until the crushing transition to more sonic oblivion; Ata's singing is even more rushed as the Middle Class careen through a tale of...I dunno, the words are incoherent. The beginning drumfill of "Situation" is killer, holding you in suspense until the divebomber bass line and savagely strummed guitar hover into focus. The song is slower than the first two, effectively slowing down and intensifying the groove so that you can almost make out Ata's words: "no use in trying..." The slow down only sets the scene for "Insurgence," which flies by at one minute, one second. The whole band gallops along at top speed, trying to beat its own pace; there's no center to the song, it's pure rush: Johnny Rotten's "I just speed/that's all I need!" dictum taken literally.

This EP blew me away when I first heard it, and I still spin it at least twice a week. It's the essence of punk as a musical genre, condensed and compressed to the point where form becomes content: a formalist's wetdream. Yet this isn't retarded, inept, slipshod thrash in the tradition of the early harDCore bands like Teen Idles, SOA et. al. Middle Class were great songwriters, and would go on to prove their deft handling of tempo, rhythm and harmonies on their next outing, 1980's Scavenged Luxury EP. "Out of Vogue" was a perfect statement and on Scavenged Luxury they were already headed in the direction of 1982's LP, "Homeland": tense, despondent goth in the vein of early Fall or Joy Division.

Basically, if you don't like this EP, you don't like punk or hardcore. YOU BELONG  You can buy a repressing of the 7", or an LP-length collection of the first two EPs plus outtakes and demos, at Frontier Records. You should also read an interesting 2011 interview with all the original members, here.

*Edit, 9.10.12: Reup'd the file, get it HERE. *

*Edit, 1.6.13: Re'up'd it again, AGAINAGAIN.*