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Poison Idea - Feel The Darkness (American Leather/Vinyl Solution pressing) pt. II

Fuck it… I’m writing about the b-side of Feel The Darkness today because I listened to it  like 3 times while driving around town yesterday, and for the here and now it fits right into my life.

I got pretty serious about the album yesterday when posting and I still feel pretty good about all that I said. The B-side though really is only a hair less perfect than the A. It opens with Alan’s On Fire, which is some real darkness. Heavy, midpaced, and hateful spring to mind as Jerry details a suicide where the victim sets himself on fire for all his family to see. It’s some low spirits shit, but it’s also sincere in the anger that comes across.

Step on me I’m here for you to see
I hope you choke as I go up in flames
I told you my problems but you never heard a word
This is the moment for once in my life I will be heard
I know there must be a better way but I don’t know how
You’ve lied to me and you’ve ignored me
but you won’t now

This is arguably the most bleak and desperate moment on a record that’s dark as they come. It just chills your spine and makes you feel sick.

The album doesn’t totally sink into the murk from here, there’s still more bellowing anger to go around. Welcome To Krell, though not what I’d call a signature track has a cool main riff that skips up and down the frets kinda start-stop-like, and keeps things running at a hardcore/Kings Of Punk type clip. Nation of Finks follows quickly and laments the way the code of the streetshas fallen to the wayside as well as the rise of constant surveillance of private citizens. Backstab Gospel probably comes the closest to a filler track on an album like this. It doesn’t have tuneful and catchy delivery of most of the other tracks, and would sound more at home on one of the previous Poison Idea lps (it might be a hold over from War All The Time), but I mean, that’s not a complaint. War All The Time is just as much a 5 star album in my book.

Painkiller follows, and it’s a classic PI drug and drink anthem. I can’t really relate, but they do a great job of stirring up the sound of addicted isolation, which as depraved and unsavory as it might be, was the reality that these guys lived (and some of them still do - R.I.P. Pig). I think part of what makes Poison Idea one of the greatest rock bands ever is that they always played music from the heart. Sometimes that meant they weren’t the most punk sounding band on the block, and sometimes that meant the words came from a pretty black place in Jerry’s soul, but that’s what makes it worth a shit.

Yesterday Judd posted this in the comments section about the title track and closing song:

Judd said: (November 7th, 2008 at 2:34 am)
Cosigned on this entire post. Also, supposedly the title track is about one of Jerry’s prostitute girlfriends who was murdered by a serial killer in Oregon, Dayton Leroy Rogers. “A sad description, five feet minus (two)” is a reference to the fact that Rogers would sometimes saw off the feet of his victims. Heavy shit.

I’m not really sure what insight I can supplement that with. It’s one of several PI tracks that start with someone opening and drinking a can of beer. It’s a slow and tortured song, clocking in at about 6 minutes, and it’s one of my favorite PI numbers, but that knowledge drapes quite a shroud on the whole thing, and also sort of brings into focus what this album’s really all about — the absolute most depraved and depth-sunk levels of American life. That’s nothing new on a rock album, but there’s only a few I can think of that paint the picture as vividly as this one.

At midnight my black heart’s fading - blue
A sad description, five feet minus - two
I can’t think about running back to - you
You started with nothing,but you ended up with less

We miss you Pig.

Poison Idea - Feel The Darkness (American Leather/Vinyl Solution pressing) 

Pound for pound, track for track, I fully believe Poison Idea’s finest hour is Feel The Darkness. This is the common opinion of many folks, but there are those that think it’s overblown and weighed down by its bombast. It’s certainly not the same band that made Pick Your King an early hardcore classic, but it’s in my eyes, a perfect mix of Punk, Metal, and Hard Rock. In their ‘88-’92 phase, Poision Idea had this vibe dialed. They were crossing boundaries and making records that people of all interests could appreciate. Their execution was powerful and their songwriting is to this day matched by few and surpassed by none.

Feel The Darkness opens with the signature P.I. track, arguably what you could even call THE Poison Idea song, Plastic Bomb. The song itself begins with a furious piano intro which is hardly how you would expect a classic hardcore punk album to begin, but after the ivory sets the dramatic tone, the guitars and drums crash in for an intro roughly the size of Mechagodzilla. It sounds a bit like the beginning to an Iron Maiden song, but soon the familiar PI riffing takes over with pronounced debts to the likes of Discharge and the Germs. The lyrics are dark and they start with little more of a spoken delivery, but as the song wears on Jerry A’s anger starts to mount and the tension starts coming to a head. When the cavernous ‘whoaaas’ of the chorus take effect and are then answered by Pig Champion’s ripshit axe shredding, there’s no doubt you’ll never forget this track. This is one of the greatest most perfectly crafted rock songs of the last 30 years. It’s an epic that plays like a pop song right down to being on that magic 3 minute mark, and it’s just track 1.

When Deep Sleep starts, it’s clear that things are going places. Jerry growls his way through a number about chronically sleeping in order to cope with his low spirits and misery. It rocks like Motorhead but it’s more combustible than Flag. It’s as simple as this — it’s a perfectly crafted hardcore song. I can’t break it down to a science, it just has the right stuff. The Badge is next working another sleazed up Motorhead type groove, this time with a bit less speed, but maybe even more anger. Yea, it’s a “hate the police” song, but it’s no pose. Poison Idea really do hate the police and the way they infringe on their lives. They hate the abuse and the corruption, and they hate the badge and what it really stands for. Like Jerry belows in the chorus, “some still call him pig”.

Just to Get Away is next, another alltime classic of a PI track. A true shitkicker for every fed up, let down, end of the rope person out there. It starts with a great set of drum breaks. It’s a song about being in love with your car, and leaving behind a mundane life in hopes that you can feel alive again. It’s also a song with one of the meanest main riffs in history ever. Ideally you should be smoking a cigarette or drinking a beer, starting a fight, or at least blasting this song out of a Camaro when listening to it.

Quit my job, told my boss to stand aside
Grabbed a gun, a fifth of booze, jumped in my ride
I got my girl, she’s sixteen and she’s really special
I can’t slow down, I’ve got a date with the devil
Two tons of steel, one hundred miles an hour
No looking back, grooving on the power
Responsibility made me quit
I’m sick of this motherfucking goddamn shit
There’s a road, beyond it lies, I don’t know
I just gotta run, I just gotta go

This is real punk rock and roll. This is real anger and bile and desperation. I mean this is basically the greatest song ever that’s not sung by Lemmy, Ozzy, Bon Scott, or a young Mick Jagger.

Gone For Good and Death Of An Idiot Blues give you a little room to breathe after 4 stone cold classics. It’s not that they’re not good, or even great, but they only get A’s instead of A+’s. Taken By Surprise closes out the A-side though and it has the kind of pop perfection that a breakup song needs, and the anger that Poison Idea doesn’t show up without. I firmly believe this is one of the 10 best breakup songs of any genre, any era ever. You will never write a song this good. Simple as that, this deserved to top the charts.

 I think I’m going to stop here at the end of side A today, which is a shame because some of the best tracks are on side B. You should already know this. This is one of the great American guitar albums. Feel The Darkness.

So this here is an early 90’s bootleg of the Abused demo but it’s a great example of how to make a cool bootleg. Most of the songs on here aren’t found on the Loud and Clear 7″ that the Abused recorded after this. The stuff on here isn’t quite as hardcore as their 7″, and while it’s still definitely in that camp, some of the vocals remind me of Fear’s Lee Ving (see: We Need A War). Some of the riffs mix in a bit of Fear too, although maybe a more apt comparison would be NYC’s The Mob. The riffing is just a little bit more simple and punky.

• I Don’t Know You is a great example of this with a couple of simple 3 chord riffs, that pummel along for about 30 seconds or so. Maybe unremarkable compared to some other Abused songs, but still pretty good.
• Rule On You opens with a total rocked out guitar solo that could come right out of a Dictators song, just thuggish NYC rock ‘n roll style. After a few seconds though, the boys switch to the hardcore speed and the chanted choruses of “rule on you /rule on you/rule on youuuu”.
• Senseless has an frantic start stop beginning and when the full song comes in works an atonal Discharge type progression. Driving, hard, and just power loaded to the max.
• Psycho Lies has random noisy runs up the frets of the guitar and rips off some Minor Threat lyrics too (I Don’t Wanna Hear It - Nothing But Bullshit). This makes me wonder if the rumor that The Abused first heard hardcore by stealing a car with a Minor Threat tape in the front seat is true. Probably not…
• We Need A War as mentioned before is basically just Fear’s Let’s Have a War devolved into a straight hardcore number. Hey WHY NOT right?

There’s also a song that I’ve heard on a different bootleg of this session called Kill and Destroy which is pretty ripping, thrash. Almost YDI/SOA style but it seems like it’s not on this one. This has a cool glued sleeve and a couple good photos of the band if I recall correctly. One of my favorite boots from the 90s.

Well, here in the USA we’re picking our new overlord, and so I’ve got 3 recs lined up here today so that no matter who you’re casting your vote for you can feel a part of the election day fun.

For all you liberal minded folk, I offer: Discharge - Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing on VAP records w/ Obi strip. This thing is lookin NICE, and is the coolest way to own Discharge’s last truly great statement. As a left leaning individual you’ll no doubt lean towards the pacifist, anti-war, anti-authoritarian message that is on display here.

For those of a more conservative mind, how about Agnostic Front’s - Liberty and Justice. BTW this one has a great buy it now price and is the best of AF’s metal era by far. While AF confront many of the same problems as Discharge on this album, they put emphasis on love of country and constitutional rights, as well as elimination of government fat cats.

Then there’s those of you who are voting for a third party, sooo since you like wasting your vote (just kidding votes don’t count anyway), here’s something on which you can waste your money: Fastbreak’s 1st 7″ on THIRD PARTY records. What to say about a 7″ I haven’t even listened to in the last 8 years… this sounds like Up Front with less good songs in my memory. SORRY FASTBREAK. Still… I would take this 100 times over the era in which their sound “matured” by going “pop-punk”…because adults sit around listening to 3rd teir Lifetime clones.