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Lightening up a tad today, here’s Adrenalin O.D.’s debut lp, the masterpiece known as “The Wacky Hijinks of Adrenalin O.D.”

A.O.D. were a jokey band yes, and it’s common knowledge that joke bands suck, but honestly this band is no joke. I mean they’re funny, but they shred with the best of them. Need any proof just give a spin to A.O.D. vs. Godzilla, the album’s opening cut. An absolutely furious thrashing intro which my outside consultants (DFJ, Cooch) agree has the fastest straight forward (i.e. non-blast beat/paddle beat) hardcore drumming ever. By the way aside from being fast it has a great riff, and eventually gives way to an awesome mosh part too.

Most of the record holds down a similar feel, sometimes tuneful, often thrashy USHC with some really hard mosh parts for a band singing about like, White Castle burgers and shit (the song White Hassle is mandatory HB-Struting). I mean it is a goof-off fun-time album, but if you’re looking for deep meaning in every hardcore record, you’ve got this shit all wrong, (and you’re probably a really jackass in real life). Still though, there’s something about Wacky Hijinks fixation on daily banalities and American Junk Culture that’s truer to the spirit of the “Reagan Era” than your Dead Kennedys lps, or what have you. The truth is hardcore moved out of the cities and into the suburbs fast, and in the suburbs nothing that crazy happens. You go to White Castle, you drive around in your shitty used Trans-Am, you watch TV. No one in the ‘burbs is really rebelling or fucking with the system, least of all by listening to a “serious” recording. So in that way, A.O.D. just laid it down the way it was.

This is the original pressing from 1984 of course, on NJ’s own Buy-Our-Records label. It also got reissued this year as a 2xCD on Chunksaah this year which I highly suggest buying. The second disc has their 1st 7″, some comp tracks, and a live WFMU set from ‘82. One of the few CD’s I am actually willing to pay for at this point. Oh and in case you’re behind them times you can check out this famous you-tube vid of Darkthrone’s Fenriz wylin’ out to A.O.D.’s Rock n Roll Gas Station.

[CLICK]  (skip to about the 8 minute mark)

Well, Ron Asheton, founding member of the Stooges was discovered dead this morning. He was 60. Given the kind of drug consumption the Stooges were known for, it’s a wonder he lived this long. Asheton’s loose guitar mangling was a huge part of the foundation that the first 2 Stooges lps, 1969’s self-titled debut and 1970’s Funhouse exist on. In some ways he’s the first guitar player to really matter for punk, and by association, hardcore. He’s definitely the first guitar player that I care about whose abilities were minimal, but whose technique and creativity were limitless, a concept that a majority of the bands covered on this site owe a debt to. 

In the context of this site, the importance of the Stooges can’t really be understated. The Bad Brains “I” is essentially a re-write of Funhouse’s “1970″, which was covered on the first Damned lp, another (massive influence on the Bad Brains). Black Flag frequently name checked Fun House and Greg Ginn’s free-style guitar  shredding owes a large debt to the path that Asheton helped blaze before him. Negative Approach, were always proud of their Detroit rock roots, and were known to play Stooges classics like “I Got a Right” at gigs. John Brannon additionally had a pre-NA band, Static, that was said to have been heavily indebted to the Stooges. Ron Asheton himself was even briefly a member of cult favorites The State. When the State’s classic No Illusions 7″ came out in ‘83, Asheton himself was the producer of the sessions. (Side Note: No Illusions is #8 on my top 10 USHC 7″s ‘80-83. ) The reason I’m bringing all this up, is just in case there’s any question as to whether this shit matters here. It does. It matters a lot. You can draw a pretty clear line from the Stooges to any formative hardcore band, and at the end of the day it’s all Rock n Roll to me, and the Stooges were about the best there was for a minute. 

Then the drugs caught up with them. That and poor sales. Almost no one got the Stooges in their day. In fact the word is that the label wanted to drop them after their first lp tanked, but they were kept on Elektra because Iggy was considered as a potential replacement for Jim Morrison (his departure one way or another, already anticipated by ‘70). Thank god for that, because they were able to work up the material to Funhouse in that time, their finest hour for sure. After Funhouse sold even worse than their debut though they did get dropped, and they were all screwed up on dope, which is a bad way to be if you’re looking for work. It took 3 years to piece together a new album and get a record deal. By that time Ron Asheton had been demoted to bass, with the vastly inferior (though still competent) James Williamson now filling the guitar slot, and also the primary song writing position. The differences between Funhouse (Asheton’s finest musical moment), and Raw Power (a better known album that is about half as good) are massive. It’s full of sleazy shimmy-shake glitter garbage, that’s as good as the best Dolls shit, but when you put it up against the mean as hell insanity of say, TV Eye (which has possibly the best opening rock riff ever put to tape), it’s a fucking joke. Say what you want, but Williamson’s sheen and polish just don’t have the same kind of fire and menace that Ron Asheton did. I’ll save the side by side comparisons of pre-Williamson/post-Williamson Stooges for another time, both have their merits, but I’m of the firm belief that Ron Asheton was the only guitarist the Stooges ever really had. R.I.P. 

Welcome to 2009, hope all your holidays went well.

Anyway, back to the ‘ol Metal Monday feature that almost no one but me loves. I was going to do a Saint Vitus entry until I realized there were no good Vitus records for sale right now, and then I found this lost Finnish nugget:

Necropsy - Never to Be Forgotten 7″ on my favorite, Seraphic Decay records.

This one is absolute head-spinning death metal insanity. Real skull crushing power, that just lends itself to my theory that Finland is the most brutal death metal locale in Europe. First of all the vocals on this one are just absolutely first rate growling, throat shredding, and evil. Reminds me a bit of Johnny Hedlund from Unleashed, or at least in the same ballpark. Very deep but still very full and expressive sounding, not at all the kind of whispered gurgling employed by bands much shittier than this.

Musically Necropsy kind of tow the typical Finnish line which is a little bit darker/less melodic version of the typical Swedish/Euro death metal sound. Probably the best known of this style is Amoprhis (and their precursor Abhorrence), so if you know them picture a bit rougher version of that. Another thing that sets Necropsy apart for me is that their blasts are noticeably quite fast, although there isn’t a ton of blast beats on here, when they do use them they really dig in at top speed. Some of their earlier recordings made a little bit more use of blast beats and were a bit more influenced (at least in the drumming) by grind bands of the day.

Necropsy never managed a proper lp release, which is a goddamn shame, because I think it would have solidified them as a major contender in their day. They do have a split lp with Demigod (another of the Finnish greats), also on Seraphic Decay, and a slew of great demos which REALLY should get the discography treatment sometime before the end of this decade. Anyway, Never To Be Forgotten is one of the few records on Seraphic Decay that doesn’t look like a total bootleg (has a 2 color sleeve, and isn’t pressed on scrap vinyl), although from an email I got from one of the guitar players not too long ago, the “label” never bothered to actually give the band copies of it.