Dead Kennedys – Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death (comp. 1987)

Chronologically I probably should have included this in the early 80s because that’s where most of the material from this compilation comes from, but whatevz. Anyway it’s a compilation of various non-album material including singles, b-sides, outtakes, live tracks, etc.

Now I’d say this qualifies as “better than most” for this type of compilation. There is some real classic shit here that isn’t available on their major albums, like the hilarious “Too Drunk to Fuck” or “Police Truck” which, in typical Dead Kennedys fashion, is a gleefully sarcastic romp about police beating people up and raping them.

Minor but interesting curiosities abound here. The lyrics to the short song “A Child and His Lawnmower” are about an actual news report about a guy who literally shot his lawnmower with a gun, lmao. Classic. There’s an updated version of “I Fought the Law” in which “the law won” becomes “I won”, referring to the cop who shot Harvey Milk and George Moscone in 1978, and got away with it.

There are some pretty good over-the-top joke tracks here, stuff that wouldn’t have fit on a serious ~album~ but which you’ll want to hear if you like this band. One of them, “Pull My Strings”, is from a time in 1980 when the Dead Kennedys were invited to play at the Bay Area Music Awards, and apparently the organizers had no understanding of punk rock and told the band they were there to lend the event some “new wave credibility”. So Biafra writes this song specially for the occasion, a ridiculous sarcastic “new wave” song about being a new wave band who is only in it for the money. At one point he starts singing “my payola” to the tune of “My Sharona”. Then he tries (and fails, lmao) to get the crowd to do a chant of the song’s refrain: “Is my cock big enough / Is my brain small enough / For you to make me a star?” Lmao it rules.

There’s also a pretty hilarious track that is like a fake conversation between Reagan and the British prime minister, about starting a new war in order to “stimulate the economy”. It might be just a “joke track” but it lays out a pretty representative summary of Biafra’s thoughts on world politics. And it’s legitimately funny as hell

Apparently when this album came out there was a bonus “flexi-disc” included, which was like a super cheap plastic 45″. These two tracks are less than essential tbh. One of them is just a dumb story Biafra tells about getting into a scuffle with some rich jock kids.

Not everything here is essential – there are definitely some lesser/filler tracks – but there’s also lots of great stuff too, and by and large it’s a pretty damn solid album in the ~odds ‘n’ ends~ format. The only 2 discography redundancies are the singles “California Über Alles” and “Holiday in Cambodia” but tbh those are two of their best songs ever, so I didn’t mind listening to them again. Plus I think they might be alternate recordings (not sure)

Does Bang want to listen to this? YES.

The Cure – Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me (1987)

It was inevitable folks, a double LP by the Cure. Here’s a band I haven’t been too keen on, releasing a long ass album with a cringe inducing album title and cover art. I’m sure to hate this, right?

WRONG. Actually this is my favorite Cure album yet. Leaving their early 80s “gloom” phase behind, this one continues more in line with The Head on the Door, featuring a wide variety of different styles and moods that actually feels like it justifies its length.

And there’s a sense of musical ambition here that really grabs me, more than anything the Cure had done before. The very first track “The Kiss” is the perfect opener for this album – a sprawling 6-minute track that focuses on a slow, gradual, and menacing instrumental buildup. The vocals don’t even enter until 4 minutes into the song. What is this, prog rock?

In fact many of these songs focus heavily on lengthy instrumental grooves, with the vocals taking a backseat. Perhaps this is why I’m more drawn to this than to other Cure albums, as Robert Smith’s voice has always been the biggest sticking point for me – I find his singing style to be overly affected and pretentious sounding. That’s not any different here, but there is so much else to listen to on each track that it doesn’t bother me as much.

Some of the best stuff here is shit like “If Only Tonight We Could Sleep” which is like a creepy eastern-tinged groove with some really excellent & creative drum work, that reminds me of Tool actually (not joking). There’s a couple other tracks in this sort of vein, namely “The Snakepit” and “Like Cockatoos”. In fact Boris Williams’s drumming throughout the entire album is fantastic, employing all kinds of different rhythms, and he really contributes to the way the songs feel varied and distinct from one another.

Don’t expect all instrumental grooves though because of course there are also some shorter, more pop-focused tracks, in fact I believe “Just Like Heaven” was their most popular single to date.

Really what makes this album succeed for me overall is how they keep throwing different stuff at you and you never know what to expect. Like who would have expected the Cure to do a silly funk jam called “Hot Hot Hot!!!” (yes the exclamation points are part of that dumbass song title). Lmao this track is actually hilarious as the band does their best Prince impression and Robert Smith delivers an incredibly dumb and cringe-worthy vocal performance, but somehow it’s the weird unexpected shit like this that makes it seem the Cure is letting down their over-serious facade a little bit, and showing more sides of themselves.

I’ve always been partial to sprawling double albums, and this one successfully takes advantage of the medium imo. It’s an album that showcases a band’s range more than a more concise album could have. At its best it contains some truly great and creative stuff – and even at its worst it still shows a creative band willing to take risks.

Does Bang want to listen to this? Yeah

The Replacements – Pleased to Meet Me (1987)

This here is the Replacements’ most popular and famous album, and tbh I’m gonna go ahead and say it’s my favorite. Even though 2nd guitarist Bob Stinson was kicked out of the band prior to this (there’s even a song about it, “Never Mind” :nirvana: ) this is the album where it feels like their musical ambitions came together with their sense of humor and fun in perfect harmony, and they produced this SOLID and really terrific album imo.

First of all this is the album where the Replacements fully embraced their heavy riff-rock/hard-rock leanings. These leanings were always present but here it’s brought to the foreground and since this kind of sound is more in my wheelhouse, perhaps I’m predisposed to like this album the best. It opens with one hell of a rockin bang triplet, including one that is a lyrical tribute to one of Paul Westerberg’s musical idols, Alex Chilton of the band Big Star. These 3 tracks absolutely BURN with hard rock energy. It doesn’t hurt that this is easily the band’s best produced album ever, incorporating varied instrumentation such as saxophones (in moderation) but overall just featuring a huge, full, heavy, hard-hitting sound that brings out the best in this band.

Actually the entire first album side (first 5 songs) is an absolute A+. In addition to the ferocious opening rockers you have “Nightclub Jitters” which is like a lounge jazz song, but rather than just being a novelty concept, it actually works unironically with a strong melody and committed performances. And then you have “The Ledge”, a song about suicide that was supposedly banned from MTV, with a truly menacing atmosphere fitting to the topic at hand. These 5 songs are like the culmination of everything the Replacements had been working towards.

The back half of the album continues to be strong as well, I particularly love the hard rocking bar-rock tune “Shooting Dirty Pool”, some pretty nasty riffing on that one iyam. “Skyway” is a pretty little acoustic tune about the Minneapolis/St Paul skyway system between the buildings, with a here-comes-the-sun-esque guitar part. And then to close it out you got the pop-rock culmination “Can’t Hardly Wait” with a horn section and a fucking string section too, that might sound over the top but it’s perfect.

This album is short (just over a half hour) and consistent as hell. The closest thing to a throwaway track might be “Red Red Wine” but it’s saved by some hilarious lyrics about gettin’ drunk on wine.

Anyway these guys have a couple more albums that have a somewhat lower reputation, so I’m gonna skip them. It’s funny because actually their highest rated albums (Let It Be and Tim) were actually my least favorites. Not that they are bad, I liked them, but I’m most partial to their early hardcore albums, as well as this one here which is easily the best of their “alt-rock” phase imo and one of the best albums I’ve come across in this volume of the project eod.

Does Bang want to listen to this? YES.

Hüsker Dü – Warehouse: Songs and Stories (1987)

Hüsker Dü was actually pretty short-lived but they were incredibly prolific during the time they were active. This is their last album, and it’s another double LP – meaning this band released 8 LPs worth of new material in 5 years.

Inevitably this is the culmination of the band’s turn toward a more accessible alt-rock sound. The production is more lavish than ever (although the album is self-produced) with lots of overdubs, with layers of different guitar tones, added percussion, backing vocals, and there’s even like bells or some shit on a couple tracks. One of the songs has a quite out-of-character lead synth part that I actually like tbh. But throughout it all is those characteristic distorted strummed chords and vocals that still are not properly sung into the microphone half the time, lol (that’s their punk cred I guess).

This album also pretty much completes the trajectory of the separation in style between Mould and Hart which had been apparent for a few albums now but here it’s more obvious than ever. To be honest I find myself preferring Hart’s songs overall, as Mould seems more comfortable to stick to a consistent “sound” while Hart’s songs are a little less homogeneous. So in between Mould’s sad/confessional midtempo 4/4 tunes, my ears perked up the most when Hart would throw in some different shit like the silly boogie-rock “Actual Condition” or the waltzing “She Floated Away”. Although this doesn’t always play out perfectly because we have the song “You Can Live at Home” on which the bass and drums attempt a weird, clumsy funk groove while the guitar just hammers away at typical husker-du-chords like usual, and it doesn’t really work that well tbh. But hey at least he’s trying something different.

Mould’s songs really tend to blend together for me, although I’m happy he has abandoned the shitty acoustic songs at this point. In fact that reason alone is a big part of why this album is a better and more consistent listen than Candy Apple Grey. And actually Mould has my favorite song on the whole album which is “Ice Cold Ice”, which features the best and most interesting rhythm guitar playing we’ve heard in a while from this band.

Anyway Gloob will be happy to know that we’re done with Hüsker Dü at this point, since this was their last album. Overall these guys are definitely a great and influential band although I don’t love the direction they went in after their first few albums. For me Zen Arcade is quite obviously and plainly the best Hüsker Dü album by far. Anyway Mould and Hart both apparently have some decent solo albums but I will not be exploring them.

Does Bang want to listen to this? Sure.

Big Black – Atomizer (1986)

So this is Steve Albini’s band, before he was Steve Albini the record producer. Basically he founded the band completely by himself, in fact there are some early demo recordings where it’s just him playing every instrument. But here on Big Black’s debut LP Atomizer he’s got a 2nd guitarist and a bassist playing with him – but they still famously used a drum machine (drums are credited as “Roland” on all their releases, and apparently it’s all programmed by Albini himself). So as a result this music has an “industrial” feel and actually at times doesn’t sound too different from like, Ministry or something.

Steve Albini’s concept of songwriting is fucking hilarious actually. Basically every song intentionally covers a ~controversial~ topic, it’s like this guy set out to make the most controversial album in history (not sure it worked though). The very first track, “Jordan, Minnesota” is about a news report from the titular town about some kind of incest child abuse, lmao that’s the FIRST song on the album, not wasting any time. And the topic is not exactly covered in a modest or discreet way, with Albini screaming “SUCK DADDY!” by the end of the song. :backout:

Pick your ~controversial topic~ and it’s probably covered here. How about race? “Passing Complexion” is about an interracial couple where the black guy has light skin and can “pass” as white. Domestic violence? Well there’s a song called “Fists of Love”. You have “Big Money” about police violence, “Kerosene” about being a pyromaniac and starting fires due to boredom, “Stinking Drunk” about relapsing into alcoholism. There’s even a song “Cables” which is apparently about slaughtering cattle, lmao.

As for the music itself, it’s pretty awesome iyam. Basically all these songs consist of heavy, noisy industrial grooves. Basically almost everything is distorted – not just the guitars, but the bass often has distortion, as well as the vocals. So the overall effect is extremely noisy. This isn’t an album where you’re gonna hear a lot of instrumental showmanship, it’s all about those sick, dirty grooves.

For me the best tracks are on the first half, although the album is pretty consistent throughout. But damn that fucking groove on “Passing Complexion” is pretty insane. Probably my favorite on the album iyam.

Does Bang want to listen to this? YES.

Scratch Acid – The Greatest Gift (1984, 1986, & 1987)

This a relatively short-lived band from Austin Texas, and here we have a Minor-Threat-esque “complete discography” on one CD, containing all 3 of their releases – 2 EPs and an LP. (There’s also one early demo track at the end of the compilation.)

Where do I even start with this band lol. These guys are absolutely INSANE. There’s a lot of music here – 75 minutes – and it’s really explosively creative front to back. Every track is a brand new idea, these guys basically never repeat themselves. Presented (mostly) chronologically here, it’s also interesting to see the band’s development. But as much as they experimented with all kinds of different shit, they retained a really consistent and unmistakable identity throughout.

The debut s/t EP is the first 8 songs here. Right from the getgo this guys are NOT fucking around. Their sound is completely wild, explosive, and manic (and HEAVY). It’s also next to impossible to describe. The term “noise rock” comes up when you search for this band, which makes sense I guess. Certainly the guitar is played quite noisily, with lots of clashing dissonances, ringing open strings, whammy bar abuse, and fast picking. And the vocalist David Yow screams wildly in a style a bit reminiscent of the guy from Pere Ubu imo, but even more over-the-top. He doesn’t do anything even approximating a melody or even a steady rhythm. And the lyrics are notable too for being absurdly grotesque and shocking – any death metal band would be happy to use some of these lyrics. “Cannibal” for example is about exactly what it sounds like. And the titular “Greatest Gift” is about dead bodies buried in a graveyard – “The greatest gift from life itself / lies the food for the worms” :immortal: Or how about this repeated refrain from “Lay Screaming” – “The dead princess lay screaming and her cunt’s ripped!” :backout:

I have to point out also that this band is extremely technically accomplished, especially the bass and drums. These guys are constantly not just executing tricky and detailed rhythms, but doing it with a powerful and natural rhythmic sense, and also varying their feel widely from song to song. This powerful backbone is a huge reason why this band’s sound succeeds so well imo.

This band is constantly full of surprises. Just when you think you’ve got them figured out they throw in “Owner’s Lament” with a sweeping, rolling rhythm and an actual string ensemble(!) that pushes this song into almost prog-rock. It’s one of my favorite songs on the whole set ftr. But then right after that you have the brutal intensity of “She Said” which strongly leans toward heavy metal territory.

On the later releases (the LP Just Keep Eating and then the EP Berserker) the band continues to experiment and push their music into new territory. Notably on these releases they back off the extreme intensity, in favor of more musical experimentation. Also notably Yow’s vocals are far less understandable on the later releases, due to heavy reverb and delay effects. This is my biggest criticism of this later stuff – I strongly preferred the more up-front sound the vocals had on the first EP. So you have a story-song “Crazy Dan” about a guy who kills his wife, but you have to read the lyrics online in order to understand the story.

But other than that unfortunate production decision, I really appreciate the continued focus on musical variety. The band plays around with a weird kind of blues-rock on a couple of tracks. Then there’s a song “Cheese Plug” with a heavy funk groove that feels a bit like the stuff from the “funk metal” scene around that time. There’s even a borderline prog-rock instrumental with soaring synthesizer, “Albino Slug”.

But I can’t proceed in this fashion, giving genre labels to the various tracks, because most of the stuff here can’t even be defined. All this stuff is really just weird and wonderful. What is the genre category of a track like “Flying Houses” that lyrically and musically depicts a tornado ravaging a town? It can’t be defined, but it’s AWESOME.

This compilation took me a couple listens to fully grab me, maybe because it was so unfamiliar at first. But these guys are definitely a fascinating and highly original band and this is an unmissable collection for anyone who likes weird music.

Does Bang want to listen to this? YES.

Hüsker Dü – Candy Apple Grey (1986)

This album is on a MAJOR LABEL, it was released on Warner Bros, so this is the moment when Hüsker Dü finally sold their souls to the man. Nah just kidding (or at least mostly kidding). In fact most of this album sounds very similar to their previous album Flip Your Wig. In fact at this point it’s starting to get a bit predictable – I’m not sure I’m totally thrilled about another album filled with fuzzed-out strummed chords, mid-paced rock beats, and pop-rock melodies.

The very first song “Crystal” is a little deceptive actually, as the instrumentals are doing a fairly standard chord-based thing like we’re used to, but Bob Mould screams and gurgles out the lyrics in a way we haven’t heard maybe since a couple albums ago. It’s almost like they put this one first on purpose, to tell everyone “hey look, see, we didn’t sell out”.

But then after that everything becomes much more predictable. I must say that at this point I think Grant Hart became the better songwriter. In fact the 2 best songs here, which are the 2 singles, are both by Hart: “Don’t Want to Know If You Are Lonely” and “Sorry Somehow”. The guy has a knack for writing a solid/catchy rock tune. He also has another p good one on the second side, “Dead Set on Destruction”. But much of the rest of the album is somewhat less exciting.

Another thing that must be mentioned is the ACOUSTIC tracks, uh-oh, here we go. This includes the middle two tracks here, both by Bob Mould, “Too Far Down” and “Hardly Getting Over It”. Now you know that generic 90s acoustic style that was all over rock radio, and like, that guy in your high school played with his acoustic guitar at the school talent show? Tbh I can’t even name specific artists because I always avoided this kind of lame ass music, but like… Ben Folds, I guess? idk. Now the difference here is that this was just 1986 so Hüsker Dü were the ~innovators~ of this style, not followers like all the lame 90s bands, but it’s still not a style of music that appeals to me at all, and it’s honestly a disappointing direction for this band to go in. Grant Hart’s piano ballad “No Promise Have I Made” is in a similar vein, although it’s a little more entertaining due to a ridiculously over-the-top vocal climax where he hits these absurd screaming high notes, it’s kind of hilarious actually lol. But maybe not in a good way. At least these guys’ vocals were always ~rough around the edges~ even when they were producing more mainstream-palatable kinds of music.

Anyway also notable is that this is the first album where Hüsker Dü does NOT include any like weird instrumentals or experiments, which they had been moving away from but their last two albums still contained at least a couple of tracks each like that. And that’s disappointing too because those were always among my favorite tracks on those albums.

Does Bang want to listen to this? Somewhat, sure, I guess.

The Clash – Cut the Crap (1985)

Lmao you guys know I am strangely drawn to albums that are widely maligned/hated (see also: Born Again) so surely you can grant me ONE of these out of my entire list of 178 albums. Plus this is the only Clash album I haven’t covered, so it made sense to see their entire discography through, since they’re basically THE most major/important British punk band. Right? Right? Ok.

So first of all the first thing you should know is that this is arguably not even really the Clash, because Topper Headon and even more importantly Mick Jones were kicked out of the band. So really this is just Joe Strummer with the bassist Paul Simonon, plus a couple other hired hands. Which makes it funnier that there’s a song here called “We Are the Clash” :chinrub:

Of all the weird, confused garbage on this album, there really is no better example than the very first track, “Dictator”. As soon as the album begins you are assaulted with a fucking armada of noise. The fuzzed-out/processed guitar, bass, drums, and vocals are all smothered in echo and reverb of course, since ~this is the 80s now~ I guess. But it’s not just that. On top of that, there’s a noisy extra synth-percussion track. And most bizarrely of all, there are these absolutely ABSURD fake synth horn-blasts that aren’t even playing notes in the key of the song, like it’s literally just random sounding discordant notes. And the volume of the horn blasts isn’t even consistent, like some of them are quieter and some of them are really loud, seemingly at random. And then on TOP of that there’s ANOTHER track of like an audio clip of a radio voice, talking in the background of the whole thing. There are so many things going on at the same time, all of them are super noisy, and none of them work together with anything else. This track is so bizarrely incoherent that I can’t even believe it was released on a major record label. I’m tempted to say this is secretly an avant-garde surrealist masterpiece, but in my heart I know better unfortunately.

What makes that even weirder is that the rest of the album is considerably toned down, and there’s nothing else on the album truly like the adventure of that first track. Still, the basic sound of echoey over-processed guitar, bad drum-machine, and cheesy synths does persist throughout the album. There really are some truly baffling production decisions on this album, like in one part of one song there’s this ridiculous phase-shifter effect on the bass, it’s turned up to fucking 11, “wheeeeooooeeeeooooeeeoooo” and it just sounds so out of place in the context of the song.

Anyway in terms of the actual musical content, they continue to do some of the genres you’d expect from them at this point. Some “rockers” (none of which actually rock), as well as like a ska song, some “funk”, some weird bad reggae, etc. “Life Is Wild” is like a worse version of their previous classic song “Clampdown”.

The song “This Is England” is sometimes called the “last great Clash song”, although “great” is going a bit far lmao. Certainly it is without a doubt the best and most listenable song on the album, not that that’s saying a whole lot. Strummer delivers a good set of his signature cynical political lyrics, and the anthemic chorus of “this is England…” is catchy. If this song had better production it could have been a good track on like Sandinista or something. But you really have to use your imagination to imagine what it would have sounded like on a different album.

The Clash is definitely my favorite British punk group (I know I know, such an OBVIOUS choice) and it’s sad to see them go out in this embarrassing manner. There really is no defending this album, as much as I’d like to see the good in it. Apparently Joe Strummer has some pretty good solo albums later on, I’m not gonna get into those though, maybe I’ll check them out sometime in the future. For now it’s goodbye to the Clash.

Does Bang want to listen to this? NO.

The Replacements – Tim (1985)

The Replacements already left their hardcore roots behind on their previous album Let It Be. Here is another album in a similar vein, and for me I like it even a little bit more. More so than their local rivals Hüsker Dü (who had a similar career trajectory), these guys really branch out in lots of different ways throughout these songs, making the album really varied and lively.

So for example you got a few tracks that are like straight catchy-ass pop-rock, the best one being the opener “Hold My Life” (“Hold my life until I’m ready to use it / Hold my life because I just might lose it” – A+ chorus hook right there iyam). And you have the deceptively (ironically) titled “Swingin Party” which doesn’t sound anything like a swingin party, in fact it’s based on a nice, breezy melody. These were the songs and style that was getting popular on college radio – something I haven’t really mentioned yet but which was a huge factor in the rise of alternative rock. Anyway here is a natural place to mention it because there’s a song “Left of the Dial” which is a tribute to college radio stations.

But the Replacements always had an old fashioned cock rock streak in them, lmao, let’s not forget they covered Kiss on their previous album. And here again they have a sort of Kiss style-tribute, a song about cocaine called “Dose of Thunder” which is just dumb, raucous fun.

And here, more than ever, they’re reaching back into like Stones-y rock n roll territory, which I think is great but a lot of ~punks~ probably were iffy about. Like “I’ll Buy” is straight up country rock. Or “Bastards of Young”, another Stones-y rocker. This leads to one very interesting song, “Lay It Down Clown”, which establishes a country-rock tone with piano and bottleneck guitar during the verses, but then the chorus features some unconventional harmonies that sound like straight-up Nirvana, like something off In Utero. (Doesn’t hurt that Paul Westerberg was such an obvious direct influence on Cobain’s vocal style.) But I guess this track is like a microcosm of how the Replacements simultaneously were reaching into the past for influences, but also into the future toward the grunge movement.

The final song on the album is a slow, anthemic acoustic guitar song called “Here Comes a Regular” about being a “regular” at a local bar. The thing is it’s a BLATANT ripoff of “Knockin on Heaven’s Door”, lmfao, but it’s still good eod

You guys know I’m partial to albums that feature a ~variety~ of musical approaches and styles, and this is a real good one imo. If you liked Let It Be then this one’s a no-brainer.

Does Bang want to listen to this? YES.

Hüsker Dü – Flip Your Wig (1985)

Damn these guys put out a lot of albums. This is their 2nd album of 1985, coming out just 8 months after New Day Rising.

In many ways it is very similar to that album – more of a focus on pop-rock songs and melodic hooks than on hardcore riffing or musical experimentation. Although here the difference is probably even more pronounced. For one thing the vocals are sung more traditionally than ever, with much less mumbling or screaming (although there is still some of each). Although these guys still don’t sing into the microphone properly lol, making many of the lyrics as unintelligible as ever. It’s hard to tell whether this is done on purpose to score punk points or if they actually just blow at singing, lol.

Anyway you have shit like “Green Eyes” which is their most unironic straight-up pop-rock yet. This is also getting into the sound that we identify with “alternative rock” of the 90s (although this is still ’85). Big, ringing guitar chords and strong melodies. Tbh these guys really do have a good, strong sense of melody that comes out in most of these songs. Even though I find the repetitive “Hate Paper Doll” kind of annoying, other than that this is a pretty damn strong set of tunes.

Possibly my favorite song here is “Find Me” which brings back that “haunting” feel of some of Hüsker Dü’s earlier sound, with a rich atmosphere built from dark guitar layers. And lmao they follow this right up with “The Baby Song”, a 45-second joke song with slide whistle that would bring any of Fizz’s parties to a screeching halt.

As on New Day Rising, these guys saved their weirdest and most musically ambitious material for last. The last 2 songs on the album are both instrumental, and they’re my favorite tracks on the album (along with “Find Me”). “The Wit and the Wisdom” is the only track here that shows any kind of connection to the band’s hardcore origins, with a CRUSHING heavy riff, pounding drums, and spastic guitar noise. It absolutely rules. Then the album closes with the short psychedelic piece “Don’t Know Yet” featuring swirling layers of backwards piano and guitar, just like something off Zen Arcade.

I’m always gonna prefer Zen Arcade to any more “pop” focused direction, but lbh this stuff isn’t really pop other than the fact that it uses pop-rock song structures. It’s not like this was getting played on the mainstream radio. You can’t really blame the guys for trying to reach a wider audience anyway. And Flip Your Wig ultimately is a really solid and enjoyable album.

Does Bang want to listen to this? YES.