Techno-Animal - Ghosts - Melody Maker - August 24 1991

 

Bomb the Bass - Unknown Territory - August 17 1991 - Melody Maker

 

Negative Approach - Tied Down - Melody Maker - March 16 1991

 

plus bonus Laughing Hyenas bashing from this Spin review 1995 paired with Royal Trux

ROYAL TRUX 

Thank You (Virgin)       

LAUGHING HYENAS 

Hard Times (Touch & Go)  

     Where could US underground rock 'go', after Sonic 

Youth's "Daydream Nation" reached the outer-limits of 

'reinvention of the guitar'? Why, back to 'the source', of 

course--black R&B (and the late '60s/early 70s white 

appropriations thereof), in a quest to relearn the lost 

fundamentals of 'groove' and 'feel'. 

Hence the backwards journey taken by a new breed of blues fundamentalists like 

The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Come and Mule (formed, 

coincidentally, by two refugees from Laughing Hyenas). I can 

only marvel at the timelag syndrome that bedevils Amerindie's 

relationship with black music: unlike British bands, US 

rockers only seem comfortable venerating African-American pop 

when it's dead and buried, e.g. Big Chief vis-a-vis early 

Funkadelic. Doubtless, we'll have to wait twenty years before 

the US underground wakes up to the booty-coercing futurism of 

SWV, Craig Mack and Underground Resistance. 

Just to make sure we know exactly where they're coming 

from, Laughing Hyenas namecheck Howling Wolf and John Lee 

Hooker in interviews, and insert the word 'blues' into not 

one but TWO songs on their new LP--'Hard Time Blues', with 

its risible "I bin down since I could crawl" line, and the 

maudlin, country-inflected "Home of the Blues". The Hyenas 

used to be a noise-core outfit, whose sole distinguishing 

feature was the flamethrower vocals of John Brannon (who used 

to sear ears in the ultra-taut hardcore unit Negative 

Approach). 

Despite their blues affectations, the Hyenas 

purvey what used to be called 'high-octane rock'n'roll', 

firmly rooted in the late '60s sound of their native Detroit; 

Brennon now sounds like Iggy if he'd been fixated on Jagger 

rather than Jim Morrison. 

While the band can't swing for toffee, they do rumble 

effectively. But Brannon's slurred roar ('take me fo' a 

ride', 'reach out yo' han'', ad nauseam) has less to do with 

Robert Johnson than with The Stooges of "I'm Sick Of You" and 

"Not Right".  If heavily-amplified, fuzzed-to-fuck self-pity 

is your particular cup of poison, drink deep. Me, I'll take 

my blooze bastardisation from those who take Ozzy rather than 

Muddy as blues-print, i.e. Alice In Chains (who could really 

make something of Hyena titles like 'Slump' and 'Each Dawn I 

Die').... 

Bad Brains - Melody Maker - March 16 1991

 

BAD BRAINS / BAMBI SLAM / THE STUPIDS

Clarendon, Hammersmith, London

Melody Maker, May 16th 1987

by Simon Reynolds 

Live the Stupids are never quite as monstrous as on record. Tonight, hampered by the nonappearance of guitarist Marty Tuff, their frantic thrashing stirred up a strangely immobile cloud of noise that loomed in the distance rather than sweeping over to engulf us. Hard core should drown.

Bambi Slam songs are Pebbles tantrums. Sixties punk with tweaks of feedback and a beat like a little brat stamping its feet on the spot, or the Glitter Band at 78rpm. Interesting, but unfortunately made to seem puny and flat-footed by the noise and majesty of what followed.

Bad Brains double-stun with a tidal wave of their sound and the shock of their incongruity — imagine Burning Spear playing Anthrax. But the link-up of Rasta and speed core is totally appropriate; both sub-cultures have a total vision of the world, as unremitting tribulation and slavery, both imagine liberation in the form of apocalypse. Bad Brains' music similarly seems to consist in absolutes — of gravity, velocity, heat, cold. Blacks invented rock 'n' roll in the first place, so it's fitting that they're here at its outer limits, presiding over its ultimate super-nova, its whitest white-out. Their singer slashes out the beat with an outstretched arm, and it's like he's conducting the orbit of planets.

The shows are slick, as tautly rehearsed, as the Temptations or Zapp, right down to glib inter-song chat. An intensely glamorous bunch — the singer lashes the air with his dreadlocks, the guitarist wears a permanent gape of joy at his own brilliance, the bassist's bug eyes and Clinton eyebrows say "I can't believe we're doing this!" In a way, there's nothing of themselves in the music, it's anti-authentic: Bad Brains take the form of hardcore and perfect (exaggerate) it to the point where it's abstract art.

Such a fastidious assault, so exact, so exacting. Bad Brains are about astounding musicianship crammed within rigid parameters and so blazing all the more brightly. (The singer brings an almost scat feel to the straight-ahead melodies, throws in all manner of swerves and dips.) Similarly the emotional intensity of Bad Brains, of hard core in general, comes from when energy is caged, ricochets off the walls.

Bad Brains were like a visitation, a bolt from the heavens, and the vast sexless apocalypse of their music left even the grubbiest, most lumpen members of their congregation cleansed, elevated, re-born.