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Record Reviews1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 | 0-9| A| B| C| D| E| F| G| H| I| J| K| L| M | | N| O| P| Q| R| S| T| U| V| W| X| Y| Z| < Prev Section | Next Section >  RSS Feed
GATSBYS AMERICAN DREAM:
Why We Fight: LP
This is a reissue the first Gatsbys American Dream record from 2002. All profits apparently go to benefit the charity Water.org. (I think they work to provide clean drinking water to third world countries or something like that.) I may be mistaken, but I think this is the first time this album has seen a vinyl release. I always thought Gatsbys American Dream was one of those New Found Glory-type pop punk bands that sprouted up around the turn of the century and made life unbearable for all of us for awhile there. The (very) tiny amount of research I did in order to review this has led me to believe that they grew out of that style and got more “challenging,” though I didn’t actually listen to any of their other records to confirm this. This record is basically really slick pop punk with a few musical twists and turns thrown in. I must be goin’ soft in my old age because I didn’t just want to chuck this out the window. Some of the songs are okay. I don’t think I’m ever gonna throw it on the turntable again, but if you were a fan and always wanted this on vinyl, here you go. The gatefold packaging is really nice and the clear/splatter LP looks great. The money goes to a good cause, too.
–Ryan Horky (Overdue Collection Agency, overduecollection.com)
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GATSBYS AMERICAN DREAM:
Ribbons & Sugar: LP
The internet told me this was originally released by a Seattle band in 2003 and has been reissued on vinyl this year. The internet also told me this was Gatsbys American Dream’s second album and is a concept record loosely based on George Orwell’s important book Animal Farm. In turn, my brain warned me that ninety-five percent of concept albums are pretentious piles of shit and my ears confirmed this important axiom upon dropping the needle: a sprawling crap field of progressive punk emo with shifting time signatures and ill-advised songwriting twists and turns that never allowed any quality hooks to emerge. Avoid this at all costs unless complexity in rock and roll is your bag.
–Jake Shut (Overdue Collection Agency)
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GAURITHOTH:
Perverse: CD
I’m not a fanatic, but I love black metal, death metal, and all the other thrashy hybrids of the genre. So, when I get something to review that fits into one of those notches, I get excited. This band from Finland throws down some mean-ass thrashing. Taking a quick look at their website, they play the part with the white make-up, black eyeliner, and fake blood. The music is the key here. It’s not all modern and downtuned, but straight-ahead pummeling. With strong elements of punk in their mid tempo parts, the single note guitar riffs that make the thrash parts sound evil lets you know that metal is where they want to be. The screamed vocals are mixed up with the cookie monster growls. The drummer sounds like a machine that is programmed to bash out beats with precision. The guitars are bright in an ‘80s type of recording style. I can’t see many fans of this genre to be disappointed by this.
–Donofthedead (Crimes Against Humanity)
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GAY BLACK REPUBLICAN:
Capitol Wave: CD
Was a wee bit disappointed ’cause they sounded nothing like what my head envisioned, based on the band’s name. With a name like that, one expects heaps of weirdo-friendly punk with oodles of sarcasm dripping off every lyric, you know? What they do sound like is a band that takes quite a few of their cues from very early hardcore, minus for the most part the thrash beats, with (so far as I can tell) sarcastic lyrics. In the end, this ain’t something I’m going nuts over, but it ain’t exactly hurtin’ my ears or anything.
–Jimmy Alvarado (www.gayblackrepublican.com)
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GAY CITY ROLLERS:
Too Poor to Rock: CD-R
Energetic Ramones type upbeat rock from Italy. Then they had to stomp on my buzz with song number five. A Poison cover. UGH! No song titles or lyrics that I can enlighten you with. Okay, they redeem themselves by track seven by covering “Starry Eyes” by The Records. That still does not forgive the hair metal atrocity they hoisted upon me.
–Sean Koepenick (Demo)
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GAY COWBOYS IN BONDAGE:
The Complete Silly Discography (1983-84): CD
I remember first seeing this band’s name on the Flipside Vinyl Fanzine Vol. 1 LP and thinking to myself, “That is a pretty funny name. They probably get a lot of shit for that.” Listening to the song “Domestic Battlefield” that is the first track here and was on the comp, brings back memories of an undefined scene. A punk band was a punk band and the scene was new, not segregated in sub-genres and it was exciting hearing about bands from other cities or countries. It was also easier being a goofball of a band without so many people getting uptight about it. I never did get any of this band’s output, which basically from what I can find, is a demo and a 7”. But being graciously chosen by Sir Bob Suren of Sound Idea/Burrito Records fame to be sent a review copy made me one happy camper! It’s got thirty-four tracks which include the infamous demo, 7” and live tracks to round things out. You can tell in their songs that they were out for a good time and nerds and outcasts knew how to have fun. This is not just for the old guys so they can listen and cry into their beer mugs. If you enjoy the silliness of the Dickies or the Descendents, this should be right up your alley. Order them direct because Bob is selling them on the cheap! Six bucks is one hella deal!
–Donofthedead (Burrito)
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GAY FOR JOHNNY DEPP:
Erotically Charged Dance Songs for the Desperate: CD
Nine short blasts of skronk, not unlike yer average Locust record, minus the cool titles and wicked fast drumbeats. Although I dug the band name and the title, I can't say I was all that impressed with the music itself.
–Jimmy Alvarado (Firefly)
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GAY KISS:
Dumpster Rules : 7”
Pummeling, twisted hardcore from the scorching soil of Tempe, Arizona. Sometimes noisy, sometimes fast, always demented. I saw them play and the guitarist had about a million effects pedals so I started to get worried, but he actually knows how to use them! And he knows how to use them really well! Pigeon Religion, Avon Ladies, Elders, and now Gay Kiss? Man, the Tempe/Phoenix area is fucked. Get on this shit.
–Daryl Gussin (Anxiety Machine, anxietymachine@gmail.com)
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GAY KISS:
Fault: LP
At their core (no pun intended), these guys are a hardcore act, but they approach it from such an atonal angle that what results is mid-tempo thrash that’d likely appeal to the average noise rock enthusiast as well. I’m concerned the singer’s gonna get throat polyps long before he reaches his next birthday.
–Jimmy Alvarado (Anxiety Machine, anxietymachinerecords.com)
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GAY TASTEE:
Gayest Hits: 2xCD
I can’t believe someone spent the money to put out a double CD of this shit! The worst part of it, I’m having to listen to it! Sounds like a boombox recording of a bi-polar street musician.
–Donofthedead (Hoex)
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GAY WITCH ABORTION:
Maverick: CD
First things first, this has to be one of the most absurd band names ever. Musically, this duo sounds like some forgotten, late-period SST jam band. Or more currently, some band with an opening slot at the Relax Bar. The songs are loud, and a bit bombastic, but they don’t flat-out rock. The songs ramble, soar at points, and get noodly. And yet nothing really takes hold. Ehhh....
–Matt Average (Learning Curve)
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GAY WITCH ABORTION:
Maverick: CD
This is Gay Witch Abortion’s first release. It’s easy to view the album as more of an afterthought of theirs—like making 1” buttons—since ninety-five percent of their existence has been spent playing shows, making ears bleed, girls swoon (girl, actually… one I know), running a relay, and definitely not putting out records. In a way, it’s something we should be thankful for: they have been busy playing shows that many have had the good fortune to see. And now that there is a record of it we can be thankful for that, too. It is a solid recreation, and fully captures the cephalic vibratos and punk with meth teeth of their band. If someone could make having your face lacerated by a guitar and getting gut shot by a drumstick into a jazz, they would probably call it Gay Witch Abortion.
–Andrew Flanagan (Self-released, Myspace.com/gaywitchabortion)
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GAY, GAY, GAY, GAY BONERZ:
Self-titled: 7” EP
This band is actually lightyears tighter and more competent than one’d imagine a band called “The Gay, Gay, Gay, Gay Bonerz” who do songs named “Trees are Bonerz” should be; then again, aren’t boners—er, bonerz—the sworn enemy of “tight?” I mean, in the grand Ro-Sham-Bo of sexual affairs, TIGHT compels MOUTH; MOUTH covers BONER, and BONER wrecks TIGHT. Where do these guys imagine they’ve heard different? And the line in “Trees are Bonerz” that mentions a “vagina in the sky”—dude, that is the most ass-backward thing i’ve heard since i booty-called Zatanna. Trees ARE bonerz, of course ((everybody knows that)), but they are fucking the EARTH. I mean, look at the top of any given tree. THAT is UNQUESTIONABLY the pubic hair part, not the dinghole part. AM I NOT CORRECT IN THESE ASSERTIONS??? Further, what kind of band calls themselves “The Gay, Gay, Gay, Gay Bonerz” and then has double-tracked guitar solos with a different guitar part in each channel? I’m no expert on the situation, but that doesn’t seem very Gay, Gay, Gay, Gay Bonery to me. Whatever it is this band thinks they’re doing, they seem to have mastered—all the same, i’ll probably give these bonerz a lick and a promise until they release a record worthy of their great promise—like a split with the Fearless Iranians From Hell or something. BEST SONG: “Precum” BEST SONG TITLE: “Trees are Bonerz” FANTASTIC AMAZING TRIVIA FACT: Band’s name is misspelled “Gay, Gay, Gay, Gay BONERS” on the front cover. Gay.
–Rev. Norb (Diva Haus)
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GAY, THE:
You Know the Rules: CD
Cutesy girlie pop that simultaneously made my toes curl, my stomach turn and my head miss the Runaways that much more.
–Jimmy Alvarado (Mint)
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GAY, THE:
Self-titled: CDEP
Ten minutes and thirteen seconds divided into three songs of such excruciatingly banal, drippy indy rock that you'll want to pull your own head off and hurl it at the speakers until the bad noise goes away or you bleed to death. Everything you've ever hated about college radio boiled down to its horrible essence and stamped onto this disc belched up from a bowel of hell I don't even want to think about. God save us.
–aphid (Mint)
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GAYE BLADES:
I’d Brave Anything for You: 7”
Good time, bathhouse rock’n’roll from the sexy, shirtless, and unshaven Gaye Blades, Jared Swilley of the Black Lips (holding an appropriately phallic sawed off shotgun on the record sleeve), and Bobby Ubangi of the Lids. The song titles are winningly hysterical—“Whore Hunt,” “Treat Me Like a Man,” “Pulling Out,” and “Keep Your Hands (Off of My Baby)”—and any one of them could have appeared on Swilley’s and Ubangi’s other musical projects’ albums. “Treat Me Like a Man” is in the same vein as the Black Lips “Dirty Hands,” and “Pulling Out” could have been a hidden track on the Lids Rip Off album. The homoerotic shtick is carried through to full effect with both band members writing the other a love letter, but it doesn’t overshadow the simple catchiness of the tunes.
–Josh Benke (Rob’s House / Die Slaughterhaus, www.robshouserecords.com / www.dislaughterhausrecords.com)
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GAYE BLADES, THE:
Self-titled: LP
Gentleman Jesse plus a Black Lip and two other dudes whose names I don’t recognize. Overall, the album sounds like Gentleman Jesse fronting a cleaner (in sound, not lyrical content) Black Lips. This is a good thing. Songs about heartbreak (“Pretty Boy” and “Don’t Get Married”) and despair (“We Are Only Gunna Die”). Part of me really wishes “I Wanna Join the James Gang” was about Joe Walsh’s pre-Eagles band, but I don’t know why.
–Sal Lucci (Norton)
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GAZA STRIPPERS:
1000 Watt Confessions: CD
Damn fine amped-up rock ’n’ roll with loads of attitude, loud-ass geetars and hooks that are guaranteed to make your backside move around a bit.
–Jimmy Alvarado (Lookout, PO Box 11374, Berkeley, CA 94712-2374)
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GAZPACHO:
The Demo/98: 7"EP
Although they don't really sound like them, they remind me a little of Uniform Choice, which I guess means they remind me a little of Minor Threat. Hardcore with a slight metal sound in the guitar work that's pretty good overall, but just doesn't seem to have enough "oomph" to take me over the top. I'd really like to hear what they've done lately, though.
–Jimmy Alvarado (Headline)
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GBH:
City Baby Attacked by Rats: CD
GBH is one of those second-wave British punk bands that seems to have had a lot of influence on current hardcore music. It’s hard to tell how much influence, though. Sometimes I wonder if bands like the Exploited and GBH are more popular now for their music or for their cool t-shirts and patches. So I don’t really want to get into a history lesson and debate the band’s place in punk rock history. What I’m more concerned with is how this, their first full-length album, measures up today. Because I know that the Exploited and Crass were awesome, but I just can’t get myself to listen to them anymore. So what about GBH? Well, listening to this re-issue of City Baby Attacked by Rats twenty years after its first release, I’m glad to find that it still holds up. Sure, there are a few too many wanking, metal guitar riffs, and sometimes the singer gets too close to belting out a Ronnie James Dio-style scream. But the songs are still fast as hell and the drummer keeps a tight control on the tempo of the songs. And if you have a heartbeat, this’ll make you want to pogo. So, yeah, it’s still good. With all the great hardcore that came out last year, though, I can think of about three dozen CDs I’d spend my money on before buying this twenty-year-old album. But since I got this one for free, I’m all for it.
–Sean Carswell (Captain Oi)
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GBH:
No Need to Panic: CD
By the time this one came out, I, and most of those I hung out with at the time, had pretty much written off GBH as yet another once-good band who’d sold their soul to rock’n’roll and stopped payin’ attention to ‘em (to be honest, today is the most GBH I’ve heard in one sitting in more than a decade). Damn shame I didn’t stick around for one more album, ‘cause this one is actually better than its predecessor. The metal is kept pretty much in check, the songs are pretty good and the tempos sometimes reach the speed of their Sick Boy days. Excuse me while I eat another heaping mouthful of crow.
–Jimmy Alvarado (Captain Oi)
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GBH:
A Fridge Too Far, From Here to Reality, Church of the Truly Warped: CDs
By the time this trio of albums saw the light of day, I had pretty much written GBH off as another casualty to the dreaded “crossover” trend of punk, so listening to the Captain Oi’s recent spate of reissues from their back catalogue has been an interesting crash course in what I missed the first time ’round. While the two albums that followed City Baby’s Revenge were serviceable compared to the band’s “classic” period, the first of the three albums being discussed here, A Fridge Too Far, is actually quite solid, recalling earlier efforts by delivering solid punk tunes with a surprising level of aggression, given they’d been slogging it out for nigh on eight years by the time it was recorded. There was also at this point precious little of the “metal” that portended so many of their peers’ descent into the maelstrom of utter suckdom during the same time period. Sadly, the same cannot be said about their next release, From Here to Reality. Although their lyrical content remained firmly rooted in both the topical and the absurd rather than the obtusely satanic, musically they finally embraced the metal influence with open arms, a move which by some would be argued as “progression,” but by others would be viewed as a complete reversion to the very tenets punk rock was reacting against. While their efforts in the world of metal weren’t abysmal, per se, it just wasn’t GBH any more than glam metal was Discharge. By the time of the last of these releases, Church of the Truly Warped, they were a totally different kinda band, one that these ears find considerably less interesting, and though they’ve recently reverted to a more “punk” sound, they just ain’t been the same since. All is not lost, however, for although they did, indeed, slide down the slippery metal slope, they apparently did manage to crank out three more albums of note between City Baby’s Revenge and From Here to Reality than previously thought, upping the ante to five albums upon which they can hang their legacy.
–Jimmy Alvarado (Captain Oi)
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GBH:
Punk Junkies: CD
Okay, I’ll be the first to admit that this is not as bad as I thought it was eight years ago, when I first heard it and proclaimed it the biggest pile of, uh, aural misery I’d ever heard. I will also be the first to admit that I still don’t think it’s very good. The driving punk that made GBH so special had given way to mediocre heavy metal by this time this came out, and this is rife with fully realized chugga-chugga anthems sure to make the dirtheads pleased as punch but the punk rock punters perpetually perplexed. If you’re new to the GBH thang, stick to their early stuff, from Leather Bristles to City Baby’s Revenge and proceed with extreme caution from that point forward.
–Jimmy Alvarado (Captain Oi)
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GBH:
Cruel & Unusual: CD
Goddamn, how many times are they gonna keep releasing “Punk Rock Ambulance” on assorted discs until they realize it just ain’t meant to be a hit? A reissue with six pedestrian songs recorded between 1987 and 2000, including a pointless cover of the Rezillos’ “No,” are put together with live versions of four of their classic tunes to illustrate on one disc how good their songs once were and how utterly uninteresting they’ve become.
–Jimmy Alvarado (Idol)
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GBH:
City Baby Attacked by Rats: CD
GBH is one of those second-wave British punk bands that seems to have had a lot of influence on current hardcore music. It’s hard to tell how much influence, though. Sometimes I wonder if bands like the Exploited and GBH are more popular now for their music or for their cool t-shirts and patches. So I don’t really want to get into a history lesson and debate the band’s place in punk rock history. What I’m more concerned with is how this, their first full-length album, measures up today. Because I know that the Exploited and Crass were awesome, but I just can’t get myself to listen to them anymore. So what about GBH? Well, listening to this re-issue of City Baby Attacked by Rats twenty years after its first release, I’m glad to find that it still holds up. Sure, there are a few too many wanking, metal guitar riffs, and sometimes the singer gets too close to belting out a Ronnie James Dio-style scream. But the songs are still fast as hell and the drummer keeps a tight control on the tempo of the songs. And if you have a heartbeat, this’ll make you want to pogo. So, yeah, it’s still good. With all the great hardcore that came out last year, though, I can think of about three dozen CDs I’d spend my money on before buying this twenty-year-old album. But since I got this one for free, I’m all for it.
–Sean Carswell (Captain Oi)
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