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|  Hazard
County Girls
Never No More
Kurt, the ghost of rock ‘n’ roll past, comes over
to my house and asks, “What do you miss about rock ‘n’
roll?”
I replied, “Courtney Love before Celebrity Skin came
out. Ed Hall painted white showing a video on themselves.
Phantom Creeps (Nashville Pussy, Candy Snatchers). Turning
on the radio and hearing a song I like. Obviously Nirvana.”
Kurt hands me the Hazard County Girls’ new album Never
No More, “Check this out, Sean Yseult (White Zombie,
Fabulous Monsters, Rock City Morgue) wrote some of the bass
lines, and Katielynn Campbell (Fabulous Monsters, Nashville
Pussy) used to be in the band. And this CD was produced by
none other than Daniel Rey (Ramones, Misfits, White Zombie).”
We go to the ghost of rock ‘n’ roll present’s
house to smoke weed. We listen to the CD, and Ozzy tells me
the Hazard County Girls currently live in New Orleans. “Three
lovely women touring around the country breaking hearts and
guitar strings! They give me the creeps, and I like it,”
he says raising an eyebrow. “This is their only album,
but I am hoping for more.”
In walks a young lady carrying a doll with no head. (They
tell me she is the ghost of rock ‘n’ roll future.)
“My band is playing at the Rank and Revue Anniversary
Party on January 16th at Room 710,”
she says. “We go on right after Crow. There might be
videos projected and sexy ghouls. You’ll be sorry if
you miss it.”
I don’t fuck with ghosts, but I’ll be there to
check out Crow, Hazard County Girls, Scott Biram,
Honky and Grady and to promote a brighter rock future
by buying a copy of Never No More at www.hazardcountygirls.com.
Happy Holidays Rockers!
–Beth
Sams
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|  Modey
Lemon
Thunder + Lightning
Birdman Records
Forget about a bass player. Bring on the MOOG. In Thunder
+ Lightning, the Modey Lemon’s follow-up to their 2002
self-titled debut on Anti-Flag’s A-F Records, this two-man
band is walking a fine line. Even the most sophisticated ear
might have a hard time distinguishing whether the musical
smorgasbord these Pittsburgh trash rockers deliver is modern
day genius or blatant theft of old art punk, a genre whose
day dawned long ago.
Add one part late ‘60s hard rock, one part ‘70s
garage rock, a pinch of psychedelic haze, and pour it through
a punk revolution strainer, circa early seventies Stooges,
and you have what we now know to be the Modey Lemon. Should
one lean towards the possibility that Philander Boyd (guitar,
vocals and everything else) and Paul Quattrone (drums) are
innocent innovators, then the fact that both of them are barely
twenty is nothing short of frightening. Their talent belies
this detail, and with its lunatic concentration, their playing
ability grabs on to the very essence of the cutting edge of
youth.
Quattrone navigates this dirty music with an intensity rarely
seen since the days of Moon and Jones’ invocation of
emotive impurity, while Boyd delivers vocals that reek of
a manic urgency layered over sonic synthetics. For the most
part, he hides behind metaphors in his lyrics but, every now
and again, he tears down the emotional barrier and exposes
raw pain. There is substance here. In this day and age where
it seems that, at least musically, everything has already
been done, then for these artists, it seems the logical solution
is to mix it ALL together and hit the puree button. With Thunder
+ Lightning, the Modey Lemon has whipped up one yummy brew,
but left themselves room to grow.
–Tammy
Moore |
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|  Thrall
“Lifer”
Alternative Tentacles
God
Bullies frontman Mike Hard leads this band Thrall, which also
includes members from Inside out and Overhead. Their latest
cd “Lifer on Jello Biafra’s Alternative Tentacles,
is a conspiracynut/societal dropout’s wet dream. The
opening song ‘Path of Initiation’ starts the album
out with pounding drums and bass with nerve jarring guitar
squeals before Hard launches into the first of many diatribes
against society in general and American society in specific.
Interspersed between the first five songs are sound bytes
of various people speaking on variegated societal issues such
as the byte in between ‘Petrochemical Pharmaceutical
Military Complex’ and ‘Kill It’, in which
some intellectual lectures an unseen audience about the false
promise of satisfaction from large amounts of money. ‘Petrochemical
Pharmaceutical Military Complex’ is a prime example
of Thrall’s obsession with getting the listener to see
the absurdity of American society and it’s unseen manipulators,
while ‘Kill it’ deals with drug abuse as a symptom
of the manipulation by the PPMC. The hard rocking somewhat
metal tinged music serves as an excellent backdrop for Hard’s
rants against “normal society”. Each song seems
crafted to stir an uneasy introspection upon our culture in
the listener. ‘Get Up and Go To Work’ is one of
my personal favorites on this disc, the futility of having
a “9-5 job” really hits home as Hard repeatedly
growls “Get up go to work, go home go to bed!”
The album as a whole iis a treat to listen to, each song a
new thought provoking experience, making on think about ones
culture and its seeming contradictions. Hey Mr. Jones are
you reading this?
-James
E
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 Rocket
From the Tombs-Rocket Redux 2003 (Smog Veil)
[The Day The Earth Met The] Rocket From the Tombs-Live From
Punk Ground Zero
1975/2002 (Smog Veil)
They
were just a ghost on the radar in ' 75 but now at the turn
of the century it appears the Earth is ready for a return
visit by Rocket From The Tombs. Touring and recording with
Television's Richard Lloyd claiming the space once held by
terminal visionary, Peter Laughner, the group has managed
to stay together long enough to retake a dozen of their strongest
songs for Rocket Redux. Written when the band formed in Cleveland
during the
psychological fallout of the Vietnam War and posthumously
exhumed in Lloyd's
New York studio, the songs emerge incredibly realized without
being
overproduced. With studied instinct, Lloyd flays "Life
Stinks" like a psychic surgeon, digging in with his guitar
and leaving the walls covered in steaming entrails, and David
Thomas sounds like Bon Scott stuck in a k-hole, especially
on "Down In Flames". Itself one of four immortal
Rockets songs co-written with Thomas that appear on Redux
and Ground Zero, claimed post mortem by Cheetah O'Connor for
the Dead Boys, who went on to inspire two generations of punk
rock and rollers.
Serving
as the only testament to their legacy and legend was a handful
of bootlegged live performances and demos gathering velocity
up through the decades finally resulting in the surfacing
of Live From Punk Ground Zero. They achieved uncharted realms
of noise by dragging Brian Eno through Alice Cooper's nightmare.
The songs stand up to most versions recorded since then because
the reaches of their own enlightened amateurism powered them
beyond the limitations of recording and time. On Ground Zero
Thomas and O'Connor still possessed Laughner's urgent bellow
of condemned youth missing from Rocket Redux. "30 Seconds
Over Tokyo" is 100 proof vitriol screeching and buckling
along in the face of a white light horizon. Surveying the
wreckage of a pivotal moment in their lives, the Rockets have
rebuilt a ship without a soul, but that never stopped Frankenstein
and it won't stop Crocus Behemoth.
-
Dave Roybal
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The
Sweethearts
L.U.V.
Mortville Records
Despite its homogenization, commercialization and hybridization,
punk rock is still alive and kicking - albeit a bit balding
and long in the tooth. However, the kids in the Sweethearts
have taken the old man, given his Doc Marten’s a spit
shine, reapplied the glue and egg yolks to his comb-over,
plied him with whiskey and sent him spinning and cavorting
right back into the mosh pit.
Young and aggressive, the band takes its cues from the X-Ray
Specs, the Descendents, Nirvana and yes, even the punkier
side of No Doubt, churning out eleven songs in under thirty
minutes. Short and sweet, L.U.V. is a litany of broken hearts,
teenage angst, and desperate cries for redemption, forgiveness
and an end to pain. Just as any good punk record should be.
L.U.V. doesn’t have quite the energy and abrasiveness
of the Sweethearts live onslaught, but the production more
than makes up for the lack of kinesis, illustrating the band’s
intelligence when selecting an engineer in the form of Frenchy
Smith. Although constantly on the road wowing European audiences
with Young Heart Attack, Smith has, without a doubt, one of
the best ears in Austin. He has taken a batch of songs that
might have come off as generic or trite in the hands of anyone
else and made damn sure the Sweethearts came off in a manner
befitting their talent.
See them, buy this, and thank me later.
-Trevor
Wallace
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