Thursday 10 May 2012

The 2kDozen 500: #172 - Off!, "Off!"

Ex-Black Flag, ex-Circle Jerks: OK, fill me in. I know near-as-to-fuck-all about that period/scene, all those DC straight edge intense types. Henry Rollins' neck; that's all I know about them.

His voice sounds pretty middle-aged, as I guess ALL punks are now. I was too young for punk proper and I'm practically forty years of old. He sounds a wee bit like a Mike Myers character. And the tunes are all as short and sharp as you might expect. He seems pretty wee too; Napoleonic punk fucker, the anti-Thurston.


I amn't sure who or what the "King Kong Brigade" might be, but I like the cut of the musical jib beneath them. It's like all the other jibs on the album only there are more of them and they're slightly more intense; "Learning to shoot/Before they can read." It ends with a sound like angry yappy little dogs. Neither am I sure of the "Jet Black Girls", but I like the chorus; "Out in the night/Immortality calls".

It seems a tight and simple format for the tunes, which blunts the impact of the messages. Unless you don't think there are messages, but one long, angry, buzzsaw guitar message to get across. Unless you're tuned unto the formula and I suspect tens of thousands are, banging their greying heads into nostalgic oblivion. But what else are the guys to do? It's their them-ness.

Rating: Angry Ratman out of Bloody-Mindedness

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