Swampy, fuzzy, KINKS-like rock’n’roll. Seems a little too produced to call it garage music. Tons of energy, for sure, but it seems sort of put-on to me. It’s also got this herky-jerky thing going on that I almost always find annoying. Other than a nice cover of the GUN CLUB’s “Sex Beat,” this is mostly forgettable for me.
It’s a little freak show on wax, with an A-side showcasing some Rip-Off Records-style garage spiked with the shadowy psych of the SCIENTISTS courtesy of L.A.’s HYPER MINDS. The PIZZA STAINS out of San Gabriel Valley occupy the B-side with two tracks of bass-heavy and bare-bones RAMONES-y rocking, no brains required. While not directly demonic, these sounds are sufficiently twisted for ass-shake-inducing Halloween party bumpage.
The FUZZ BOMBERS were a blink-and-you’ll-miss-them San Gabriel Valley band active circa 1998, built from ex-members of the JAWAS and future members of the TAKEDOWNS and BAD MOTIVATOR, among others—basically the extended universe of singer/label-runner Brian Von Wolfe. This tape pulls together two sessions from that year, and the results are classic no-budget garage punk: fast, loose, and sounding slightly better than recorded-on-a-boombox. There’s an early version of “Get Out Of,” later re-recorded by the TAKEDOWNS, but this one is faster and a shade more raw. None of this rewrites the genre playbook, but it’s a perfectly decent document of late-’90s punk ephemera. Maybe essential if you’re trying to fill out the Brian-adjacent family tree; otherwise, it’s probably not going to have a huge impact on anybody.
This is a two-song split with each band leaning in with their best. BAD MOTIVATOR’s is a jerky ’70s punk tune that lyrically pulls you into themes of “turn on, tune in, drop out.” “Information Overload” is budding with nervous energy that keeps you learning forward anxiously for the entire song. The flip with WOOLLY BANDITS caught me completely off guard. With an aural garage attack that blends the fierce lyrics of Christa Collins and the raw guitar energy of Rik Collins. “A.I. Must Die” balances between unharnessed Paisley Underground, a wall of ’60s proto-punk, and a ’70s punk sound, while managing to be on-topic and present. It takes guts to do a two-sider split but this wins. I’m gonna go check their other offerings.
