The Banger's Embrace

Consider this the spiritual flipside to my Punk'd post. While it's hardly remarkable for grind and metal bands to cover punk songs, there's not much traffic the other direction. However, it has been known to happen. And punk bands really have a fondness for Judas Priest for some reason. Here's four examples of punks who harbor secret feelings for the heshers.


A Venom Well Designed



Anyone surprised by Propagandhi's increasingly metallic bent since John K. Samson split for the Weakerthans either wasn't paying close enough attention to Chris Hannah's double picked riffing on the first two albums or is unfamiliar with Todd "the Rod" Kowalski's history in short lived grind band Swallowing Shit and seminal (heh) Manitoba punkers I Spy. The band telegraphed their love of '80s metal on the early efforts collection Where Quantity is Job #1 with a straight faced version of Venom's "Stand Up and Be Counted."




Sabbat, Weird Ass Sabbat



And just for good measure Propagandhi snuck a cover of Black Widow's 1969 psych-metal oddball "Come to the Sabbat" on to the end of Supporting Caste as a secret bonus track. That's just plain fuckin' weird.



Leatherface



I barely blinked when New Jersey punks Buzzkill covered Adrenaline Overdose's "Rock 'n' Roll Gas Station" on 1996 debut Up. I mean, sure why not? But I wasn't really prepared for an is-it-serious-or-is-it-ironic cover of Judas Priest's "Hell Bent for Leather." Not quite the same without the twin guitars, but an admirable effort nonetheless.



Breaking the ... Terms of Copyright Law



Finally, Meet the Virus, which formed out of the rubble of Naked Aggression, hid a cover of Judas Priest's "Breaking the Law" as a bonus track on their self-titled debut album. Jump to the 4:20 mark for Priestly goodness. It's an unexpected outing from a band whose members exemplified mid-90s gutter punk aesthetic.

Also, I need to say a quick public thanks to Albert from Know Records. That's the label that put out the Meet the Virus album. SoundCloud had originally blocked my attempt to upload the song because it said I was violating his copyright. I contacted Albert and with his kind permission I was able to get the song uploaded. Thanks to him for being very cool.



And Another Thing



Hopefully you're not totally Propagandhi-ed out at this point. "With Friends Like These Who the Fuck Needs Cointelpro?" isn't a true metal cover, but pay close attention to the 1:36 mark where Chris Hannah screams "You've got another thing coming." With all the metal influences Propgandhi's already shown, try and tell me that's not a deliberate Judas Priest reference.

A D-Beat Dilemma

Dun dat.
Dun dun dat.
Dun dat.
Dun dun dat.

Punk and metal types have been meditating over that percussive koan for the better part of three decades now without exhausting the zen depths of the deceptively simple drum pattern.
I doubt Discharge could have ever foreseen the staying power of their signature sound 30 years ago when they were banging out crusty punk classics in a squalid London squat. Born of a punk frustration with rampant unemployment with no prospect of a better future under the velvet frocked grip of England’s Iron Lady (the Sex Pistols were not exaggerating when they wailed they had “no future”), Discharge, unlike many of their predecessors and contemporaries, distilled that hard scrabble frustration into 90 second screeds driven by one of the most infectious and propulsive punk beats ever devised.

Discharge – “It’s No TV Sketch”

But here comes my dilemma: for all of Discharge’s range and staying power over the past decades, they were not a band that I ever heard mentioned when I ran with bored, disaffected American suburban punks. In fact, it wasn’t until I got heavily into grindcore that the British progenitors ever got name-checked with any kind of regularity or reverence. For a band that’s been so influential – they spawned their own devoted, vibrant and ongoing cult of soundalikes, ferfuckssake – it’s a troubling lacuna in traditional punk circles.

Anti Cimex – “Victims of a Bombraid”

Perhaps that was just a function of the particular punk circles in which I traveled. (Keeping in mind, of course, we're dealing with a sampling size of n=1.) While we never embarrassed ourselves like some of our forerunners by busting out the Union Jack as a fashion statement, we were heavily into British punk: Sex Pistols, the Clash, Rudimentary Peni, Subhumans, Exploited. But no Discharge.

Doom – “Nazi Die”

I have a deep, deep love for the Dead Kennedys, the first punk band to really capture my imagination and address my desire to engage real-world problems in a direct way rather than the generic sloganeering that characterized so much of punk and thrash at the time. Rivaled only by Rudimentary Peni, Jello and crew are probably still my favorite punk band. Generic claims to “stop war” and “fuck the system” just don’t have the same bite as calling out the perpetrators by name. But for all their influence, you don’t see DK's idiosyncrasies endlessly aped the way you do with Discharge.

Warcry – “White Flag”

I don’t know what it is about Discharge that has so captured our collective imaginations. There’s just something compelling about their simplicity and singlemindedness and it becomes blindingly obvious why they have such a hold over grindcore and the other punky, speed-obsessed fringes of the metal world. But those traits should translate to traditional punks as well.

Venomous Concept – “A Case of the Mondays”

Is my experience an isolated event, a strange confluence of influences and circumstances? Are there punk circles where Discharge are regularly given their due (outside of Scandinavia?)? My experience has been metalheads tend to be more open-minded about punk than the other way around, a strange inversion of where things generally stood during the crossover heyday of the late 1980s. Why does Discharge seem to have greater prominence among the metallic hordes than the punk throngs? Anybody got an answer?

Resistant Culture – “Hear Nothing, See Nothing, Say Nothing”

G&P review: Venomous Concept

Venomous Concept
Poisoned Apple
Century Media
According to Poisoned Apple’s seventh track, principle songwriter Shane Embury has “A Case of the Mondays.” Other than affirming his love for the collected works of Mike Judge, the Poison Idea inflected tune (Venomous Concept --> Poison Idea – Get it?) gets to the poisoned apple at the center of the band’s second long player, which never manages to move beyond workaday grumbling into out and out rage.
Embury has rotated to guitar while Danny Lilker has slotted into the bass position after Melvins mastermind Buzz Osbourne bid adieu (and wouldn’t ya know it, after Osbourne buzzed off, the band unleash their most Melvinsy cover art: an Apocalypse Now horroscape of aspoloded, bleeding bunnies that will have your kids checking their Easter baskets for IEDs). Danny Herrera (who unleashes some of his better blasts in recent memory) and Kevin Sharp round out the all star ensemble.
The membership musical chairs has meant a slight change in songwriting. Poisoned Apple sounds like post-Earache Napalm Death (especially the Century albums) gone hardcore. Sharp’s roar is as rasping and forceful as ever, boding well for the rumors Brutal Truth may return to the studio (with Lethargy/Kalibas/Sulaco’s Erik Burke standing in for the MIA Brent “Gurn” McCarty). Sharp and Embury give all the usual suspects a thorough lyrical beatdown: war sucks, conformity blows, jobs – who wants those? Yada Yada Yada. But VC are not meant to be boundary pushers but rather a loving tribute to the crusty hardcore that went before. So keeping in mind these trailblazers' best Lewis-and-Clarking years are behind them, there’s actually an enjoyable if derivative half an hour music to be had here.