WAR AND PAIN

This album is as progressive as eating a fresh hot bowl of spaghetti using only your bare hands, and it's just about as fun too. After a quick spooky intro, the album surges forth from raw punkish thrash anthem to raw punkish thrash anthem with a willful and reckless abandon. There's a lot of "D beat" tempos and hoarse croaking vocals by the lead vocalist, as well as some surprising creativity in the guitar playing department. The lyrics deserve a mention as well, being some of the stupidest and unintentionally hilarious in the history or rock & roll...although in the end it was most likely a wise choice not to write prose for their music in their native language (French of the Canadian kind).

I'll bring up the good stuff right away. Denis was already on his way to being an unheralded guitar hero at this point. Yes, the music here is straightforward, but you can sense the space rock appreciation hidden inside Denis (aka 'Piggy' at this point of time'as dark and threatening a one word moniker as I've ever heard) yearning to burst forth in all its non- thrashy glory, particularly in the guitar solos, which range from bluesy to psychedelic' especially considering his generous use of the digital delay pedal. I've heard complaints that the recording would have been considerably improved by having a rhythm and separate lead guitar tracks to give the album a fuller sound, but personally I enjoy listening to Piggy sweat it out by having to bust out some quick solos while filling out the rhythm section along with the bass player. The album sounds rawer and somewhat more bare- bones than a number of the emerging big names in the developing thrash scene, but its frantic approach and stronger influences derived from punk and a bit of acid rock gave the album a unique sound for its time. Granted, singer 'Snake' utilizes a vocal approach that conjures an impression that he's attempting to squeeze out a spherical poop the size of a cantaloupe from betwixt his buttocks cheeks, and I'm thinking the band probably blushes a bit concerning their lyrics back in the day, considering two of the songs are entitled 'Suck Your Bone' and 'Blower' respectively, but it's the energy that matters here. As for prog'you won't find much, although there are traces to be found here and there, particularly within the last two tracks. The playing is generally sloppy, but the youthful enthusiasm sort of makes up for it in this case'not so on their next album, which was a regression of sorts into a more primitive sound, if you can imagine that after hearing this album.

Finally, 'Iron Gang' is a scorcher. Fast as hell, hilarious singing and lyrics and a busy rhythm section with Piggy punctuating riff changes with quick bluesy licks, I consider this, as well as much of the rest of this debut, to be a noisy but reasonably decent adventure away from the more classically inclined musical avenues.