Word: albums
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Stranglers do manage to generate some interest in those songs augmented by a horn section, creating sound textures not usually heard in synth-pop. The best of these tunes is "Mayan Skies," an impressionistic little piece that is the album's least pretentious effort...
...hamburger-shaped disc, and "Was It You?," which name-drops controversial topics as if in a shopping list. "The bullets and the hatred, was it you?/The famine and the genital disease, was it you?" is the strongest Statement the Stranglers can muster in this song--and on this album...
...rest of the album continues in much the same vein, with occasional diversions into pseudo-blues on "Slake Train Comin" and Ramones-style hard-core on "Kick The Kat." Squirrelbait's chief appeal lies in their dissemblage of traditional rock music through volume and intensity, where (if you care to think about it) Husker Du's original and only appeal also lay. In fact, despite an atrocious sense of grammar and punctuation, Squirrelbait is better than their precursor because their sound is not burdened with the Husker's tendency towards artistic pretension and lyrical sappiness...
...material on the second Breaking Circus album, The Ice Machine, is less jarring than Big Black and more atmospheric than Naked Raygun, but the group still throws a powerful, if somewhat subtle punch. On "Song Of The South," Steve Bjorklund's guitar twists around the recited vocals, alternately merging with and remaining distant from the words. Initially, Breaking Circus almost sounds minimalist: one can hear area of silence between the guitar and the industrial beat of the rhythm section. Ice starts to crank up, though, with the desperation and fury of "Laid So Low" and a total sound begins...
...this way, the album gains momentum. From "Took A Hammering" to "Evil Last Night," this disc progresses like a slow spiral into psychosis. However, like the best of Big Black and Naked Raygun, Ice is also triumphant and redemptive in the sheer force with which its pessimistic sentiments are lamented. If ever there were a good argument for the benefits of primal scream therapy, this trio of Chicago bands...