Dead Kennedys - Plastic Surgery Disasters

Okay, so the vegetarian thing is working out pretty well so far. I've gone down about 10 pounds unfortunately, but damn do I look good in a skimpy, sheer negligee for my gentlemen callers. Also, I'm a faux-veggie. I forgot to mention that, likely because no one on the entire planet cares so I wasn't feeling much pressure: basically, I'll eat meat on the basis that animals tend to eat meat, but not corpses bloated with antibiotics and force-fed mono-crops conducive to a slew of illnesses. Either way, that's my irrelevant intro this review.

This album is amazing. I know a lot of people tend to lean towards Fresh Fruit... and Frankenchrist when picking favorites, but for me, this is the single best album the Dead Kennedys ever released. I'm not gonna go through the history again, but basically I transitioned from death metal and grindcore to powerviolence and crust punk to anarcho and theeeeeennnn... good buddy Steve (I'm one of 4 Steves) lends me this album and the progression finally hits the roots. Plastic Surgery Disasters was the second LP length release by the band, and a total embrace of the hardcore velocity they hinted at with their debut. As such, the ur, "musicality" is taken down a notch in order to crank up to jet-speed, but the songwriting is just as memorable as ever. Plus, the B-side is all slower songs if that's what drew you in on Fresh Fruit... assuming anyone has ever been drawn to a punk band by the relative slowness. I dunno. I'm not really feeling too focused on honing the literary elements of this review, today.
The production on this album has garnered some complaints over the years for being as tinny and rough on the ears as it is, but I for one think it's the cornerstone of appeal. The raw, messy, but coherent sound is the stuff of legends, and the kind of production style I found loads of affection for through countless grindcore/hardcore/early death metal listening benders. Apparently it was intentional, though, as Jello revealed in some old interview that they wanted the sound to be just as paranoid and ear-trashing as the lyrics and vocal histrionics. Fucking heroic stance. The band's musicianship shines through as great as ever, though, with tons of catchy riffs, melodies, and creative hooks - it's just noisier than most people are used to when approaching a classic hardcore/punk album.
I'm not sure I could really pick highlights from here since this album actually makes my top 10 albums of forever list, but if you've never heard it for some reason, downloading "Well Paid Scientist", "Halloween", the epic "Riot", and the surprisingly pleasant "Moon Over Marin" probably won't make you curse your ears for not being vestigial. Every track is gold, though, so you may as well just grab this linky below:

http://www.mediafire.com/?oy0jemvyjej

I just stole this link from google, so I have no idea whether it's the original master or not, or whether the In God We Trust Inc. EP is tacked on the back, but there 'ya go.

Operation Ivy - Energy

Just in case you didn't know: Energy is the name of the original 19 song LP from '89. The self-titled is the '91 reissue combining Energy with 1988's Hectic EP and the tracks from Maximumrocknroll's Turn It Around! compilation. Now that that's off the table, let's talk about the left hand corner's resident .jpeg image:

It might seem a little redundant to cover such a well known, ridiculously influential classic like Operation Ivy's sole LP, but whatever, I really, really, love this album and felt like talking about it. In fact, along with Slapstick's Lookit!, Gangster Fun's Time Flies When You're Gangster Fun, and Blue Meanies' Kiss Your Ass Goodbye, this album finally got me to pull the thorn of prejudice against ska-punk out of my side and embrace the complete whitewashing of a black originated genre. But hey, those are the absolute essentials of growing up, so we don't need to go into any more detail. Also: obligatory joke about ska's role in Christian youth in the 90's.

A lot of people refer to songs like "Knowledge", "Unity", "The Crowd", and "Caution" as Operation Ivy's classics, and while I'd agree that those are incredible tracks, the amount of praise heaped upon them sorta downplays the greatness of the rest of the album. There really isn't a single bad or even mediocre song here, and "Missionary" is probably one of the all time best closers - in league with "The Nautical Mile" and "Postures (Leave Your Body Behind)" as far as personal favorites go. I figure I don't really need to painstakingly describe these guys' sound if you stumbled upon this blog, but it's basically a mix of roughly produced East Bay pop punk and speedy ska guitar, the occasional horn, and vocal interplay provided by all four members (with Jesse Michaels at the helm, of course).
Man, do I not sound excited to be reviewing this. Try to ignore that please, I'm tired. I always take way too fuckin' long writing these entries and end up completely wiped out by the end and my writing gets slack as hell. Maybe blow up some balloons and throw confetti while you read it to synthesize my enthusiasm for this album.
Here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?nsxulenn0ue

I know ska is about as fashionable as pastel track pants nowadays, but if you somehow haven't heard this yet, give it a shot or two before you write it off. As far as the genre goes, this is it's masterpiece, and one of the most compulsively listenable albums I can think of. I'll probably cover this in a future post, but check out Jesse Michael's second full fledged band while you're at it - Common Rider. Their debut, Last Wave Rockers, is something I've probably spun more times than what could be considered healthy.

American Steel - s/t 1998

Alright, first real entry time.
Firstly, there isn't a single good picture of this album on the entire internet, and my camera's MIA at the moment, so it looks like we'll have to deal with this muddy, resized, P.O.S until further notice. Secondly, seeing as this ranks amongst my top 10 albums of all time, punk or otherwise, I felt it'd be a great way to kick off this high-crime blogging operation (ie a blog that offers downloadables sometimes).

American Steel started up back in '95 in West Oakland, playing shows all around the East Bay before swapping a bandmate or two, touring the shit out of this shit, and ending up in the studio in '98 with the heroic Kevin Army, producer of a metric fuckton of awesome Cali punk bands and uh, guitarist (?) for the Bomb Bassets. The result was this 17 song condensed epic of gritty melody, aggression, dual guttermouths, and even some ska punk. If you're familiar with any of the other American Steel records, you have to understand that this album sounds nothing like any of them, barring perhaps 1999's Rogue's March, which is dynamically similar, but quite a bit slower and way less gritty. The songwriting here is fantastic, balancing raw aggression and purty melodies in a way which one never detracts from the counterpart and typically results in a chest-thumping anthem.
If I had to make a comparison, I guess it sounds kind of indebted to Crimpshrine and Operation Ivy, but if the two collaborated on the recording and screwed around with the tape speeds. The amount of hooks and riffs in some of these songs makes it sound like half of them used to be 5 minute long compositions that got boiled down into 2 minute ones, keeping all the parts intact but careening between fast and slow parts like they were being charged by the minute. I know it sounds kind of awful in theory, but it's the complete opposite in practice.
Listen to "Cheer Up" for a good example of this.
Also: it kinda sounds like the band has been buried in sand, but it's still an awesome song:

For years I was under the impression that this album was super-duper difficult to come by, but as it turns out, it's just massively, depressingly, unloved at this junction in history. In fact, when you consider how much attention these guys get on punknews.org for their later records (particularly Jagged Thoughts and Destroy Their Future), it's kinda difficult to believe it hasn't been reissued by one of the bigger labels like Fat Wreck or No Idea yet. You can actually buy this sucker from New Disorder still:

try it here: http://www.mediafire.com/?znah1erheli6c2r
fulfill the capitalist agenda here: http://www.newdisorder.com/oneband.eml?band=American+Steel

I picked up this album in 2006 and I've been listening to consistently ever since. It's really an amazingly good album. Maybe not perfect, but so completely exuberant and raw. All of American Steel's stuff is worth checking out, but if you haven't heard them yet, start here and go in order. A few people I know have had a hard time getting into this one after starting with their more polished stuff, but STAY STRONG, it's worth getting into.
Just don't expect too much from Dear Friends And Gentle Hearts, though...