TDR Music Review: Thrash With Me

By Bradford Frese | Sunday, November 3, 2002

It's easy to get angry about what passes for punk rock nowadays, but it's even more frustrating to try to define the genre. When the three-chords-and-you're-done approach of bands like the Sex Pistols and the Ramones are lumped into a genre that's used to describe the wildly inventive rock of Fugazi and Quicksand, the label begins to be meaningless. At most, it stands for a blistering attack on the senses, and at its very least it signifies some sort of deconstructionism (perhaps even destruction), tied in with a fierce do-it-yourself attitude.

If, however, you stick with punk rock as a term that means nothing more than the sum of punk (rotten) and rock (an implement used by cavemen to bludgeon their prey) then Suicide Invoice by Hot Snakes is fantastic punk rock. The Hot Snakes come straight from San Diego, California and feature John Reis and Rick Froberg, the dual guitar team that gave hometown heroes Drive Like Jehu their signature angular-hardcore sound. Much like any Drive Like Jehu album, Suicide Invoice bludgeons the listener with twelve tracks filled with wiry, gritty guitars and pummeling rhythms, but unlike Drive Like Jehu the band never bothers building tension before exploding; the Hot Snakes waste no time in beating their listener to a pulp.

'I Hate The Kids' kicks off the album with a two-note guitar riff moving up and down a half step, building slowly until the rhythm section enters and turns these two notes into the sonic equivalent of a sewer pipe. As the song shifts into the verse, a trebly riff takes over to highlight Rick Froberg's yelps. 'Grab a spade, get in the dirt! The older you get the less you're worth!' he shouts, providing a slight ironic counterpoint to his mantra of 'I hate the kids' at the end of the song. Jason Kourkounis pounds his toms and snare with an ferocity that suggests he hates his skins as much as he hates the kids, and Gar Wood's bass sounds like it wants to get into the moshpit and throw some punches, too. Most surprisingly, however is that the song is fairly light on the distortion; the band relies on their melody and rhythm section to provide the sonic violence and not skyscraping feedback or overdriven guitars. In an age when a few powerchords and an overdriven amplifier are an acceptable expression of rage and angst, it's wonderful to hear a band that foregoes both and manages to sound better for the effort; 'I Hate The Kids' is one of the album's clear standouts.

The other clear standout is 'XOX,' which blasts off with a hot, metallic chord but soon subdues itself to bring Froberg's vocals into clear focus. But after just a few lines, the band brings out the blistering chords and technically complicated riffs until the guitars lock together in the chorus and start the thrash-fest. John Reis shouts out 'XOX' behind Froberg's yelps on top of a hard-hitting and blistering riff that recalls the rhythmically complex thrash of Helmet and Nirvana's sludgy punk. The tough-as-nails riffing helps Froberg's sneering, nonsensical, pissed-as-hell vocals along, and it comes to a stop just soon enough to keep the song from getting tired.

Froberg's lyrics are nothing special; most of the time he sticks to being pissed off at the world. Unlike so many of his ilk, though, his lyrics reveal a slight sense of humor. 'Paid In Cigarettes,' is a hilarious rant that demands, 'Pay the president in cigarettes...compensate him with filter tips,' and declares that 'He's worth every bit he's due.' Every once in a while, Froberg even manages to conjure up some empathy and emotion in his words, such as on 'Who Died' and 'Why Does It Hurt.' But even when he's lamenting the dead on 'Who Died,' he can't keep from sneering 'Your phone is dead \ You ain't home \ You ain't alive.' The constant cynicism gets a bit tiring by the end of the album, and Froberg seemed to recognize this since he refused to print the lyrics to some of the songs in the liner notes.

Beyond Froberg's words, though, the biggest problem with Suicide Invoice is that the music isn't terribly original in its sound. What the Hot Snakes lack in originality, however, they make up in refinement, swagger, and energy. Attempting to intellectualise this album is to miss the point, especially when the band's primary aim is to bludgeon the brains out of the listener with sharp riffs and driving rhythms. Attempting to dance to the Hot Snakes only works if one feels like thrashing in a mosh pit. Simply put, everyone should have at least one album that makes him thrash about like a monkey on amphetamines, and it would be hard to find one that served that purpose better than Suicide Invoice.

While the Hot Snakes have spent a great deal of time refining the threat of rock and roll into sweat, blood, and battery acid, Radio 4 starts with these elements and slathers thick layers of dance beats on top to neutralize them. While ostensibly a punk band, Radio 4 delves deeply into the world of post-punk, and as such they're less interested in deconstructing or stripping down rock with their music than using it to start the next party. More than any 'punk' album I've heard in the last few years, Radio 4 is bright, upbeat, and loaded with grooves that beg the listener to stand up and dance without injuring others. Yet for all the effort the band puts into their beats and basslines, they spend the majority of Gotham! swaying between highly derivative Eighties post-punk or pretension.

Radio 4 are definitely best when they're trying to mimic the sounds of other bands, and they usually do a pretty good job of appropriating certain sounds from their idols and weaving them into their music. The reverb-drenched, scratchy guitar riffs on 'Our Town' and 'Calling All Enthusiasts' recall The Clash; the high-pitched, spastic guitar work on 'Start A Fire,' 'Struggle,' and 'Certain Tragedy' are appropriated from Mission of Burma; the laid-back dub basslines on 'Red Lights' and 'Pipe Bomb' recall any song on Fugazi's Red Medicine; and the guitar lick on 'Eyes Wide Open' is practically lifted from Talking Head's 'Crosseyed and Painless.' What's really telling, though, is that I've just mentioned two-thirds of the songs without even mentioning Radio 4's most frequent comparison: Gang of Four. Radio 4's previous effort, The New Song & Dance, first won comparison to the Leeds, UK art-punks with its mix of brittle guitars and funky beats, and here, they offer up more of the same. These are all great bands—Radio 4 has chosen their altars of worship well—and Radio 4 pulls off the imitations with vigor and gusto. Unfortunately, this sort of blatant imitation invites all sorts of negative comparisons, and the only thing that makes this release worthwhile is that it somewhat updates the production.

The band's song writing is acceptable, but not particularly good; most of the songs have fairly catchy hooks that stick pleasantly in your head, and the melodies aren't terribly tired or overused. The bass lines try a little too hard to propel the dance grooves and come off sounding generic, but when the guitar locks into a groove with the rest of the band the results are compellingly funky. Anthony Roman's blistering vocals, are, unfortunately, wasted on lyrics that are the absolute worst thing about this album. On 'Struggle,' he spits 'The ruling class should not be the ruling ideas so get behind the struggle! Yeah, get behind the struggle!' on top of one of the disc's best dance grooves, to the point where the song induces so many cringes it's unlistenable. Most of the album's lyrics revolve around this sort of faux-political posturing, and the songs that don't contain even less depth than the others.

Unfortunately the production does almost nothing to help the songs. The focus is clearly on the beat and not on the guitars, and too often Tommy Williams's guitar is relegated to producing blasts of noise or twitchy two-note riffs that aren't that exciting. Producers Tim Goldsworthy and James Murphy (also known as DFA) often fill these spaces with synthesized noise—not synthesizers or keyboards, but noise—that grates continually at the nerves of the listener and weakens the songs. Most of the songs bear this 'post-punk by way of techno' sound; the dry, tinny snare and dull, thudding bass drum sound like samples (though they're actually live, acoustic instrumentation) and several of the songs use the band's keyboards as their only bass. The chorus on 'End Of The Rope' even bears a cheesy, Madonna-esque vocoder that transforms Andrew Roman's voice into an undecipherable series of bleeps and bloops—probably for the better.

Gotham! isn't painful to listen to, and at times it's a lot of fun, but at the same time it's thoroughly forgettable and inessential. With the exception of the overly long 'Pipe Bombs,' none of the tracks are awful; most of the record has a good beat, fun grooves, and is good for parties. At the same time, though, so are Liars, Talking Heads, Gang Of Four, The Clash, and even Fugazi. Radio 4's retro is best classified as a novelty, and as such is best classified in the 'Why Bother?' section.

While both bands are classified as 'punk,' both have markedly different approaches that set them apart. Suicide Invoice may not sound incredibly innovative or original, but this is part of the band's deconstructionist attitude. Hot Snakes have crafted a debut that distills the threat of rock music down to its basic elements—gut-pummeling rhythms, scabrous guitars, and barked vocals recorded in a garage—while maintaining a fresh and varied approach to keep things from getting boring. Radio 4, however, goes for all-out imitation. Gotham! mistakes studio wizardry for originality, and layering for depth. As a result, it wears itself out pretty quickly. Suicide Invoice delivers the same punch every time I listen.

TDR Music Review: Thrash With Me

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