Brainbombs- Urge to Kill

It's strange, but the era in which we live seems to be one in which both everything and nothing is sacred.  This means for example, that if a song is enjoyed by more than a few thousand people it will at some point inevitably played ad nauseam on commercial radio before being thrown into advertisements for tennis shoes and luxury cars, and then just generally milked until the point at which it not only feels nearly impossible to achieve or maintain any real connection with the damned thing, but also begins to give the feeling that it's impossible that anyone ever had a real connection with it (think Iggy Pop's 'The Passenger', the entire Dark Side of the Moon LP, and pretty much everything the Stones ever recorded).

On the other hand of course, this means that a long-forgotten band with virtually no following whatsoever can be re-discovered and then given the royal treatment by taste-making, culture revising indie labels who awkwardly hold up and herald their discoveries as engenius stalwarts, always far ahead of their time; it's a mixed blessing to say the least.  The Brainbombs, out of Sweden, are kind of like one of those bands; the only things that really separate them from the others are the fact that in their case the taste-making label they're attached to, Load Records, has been releasing their records since the late nineties, and that for the last twenty five years, the band has remained constantly extant. 

I've personally been seeing the Brainbombs' name around for several years, but never really did much about it until recently when I was being rushed out of a record store having only made it halfway through the B section of the LP's (I'd already scoured both the new and used bins of 7"s of course).  Furiously, flipping as quickly as I could, looking for any piece of 12" vinyl which seemed the least bit appropriate to buy, I finally seized upon a re-issue of the Breeders' Pod, a record I love; sitting right behind it was Load's recent vinyl issue of the Brainbombs' 1999 album Urge To Kill.  Without hesitation, I grabbed it as well and ran for the register, checking out in just the right amount of time to not be abandoned at the store.

On Urge to Kill, as well as in general, the Brainbombs traffic in a sort of slowed down, messier, detuned version of garage punk, comparable somewhat to other bands of the mid to late eighties (the Brainbombs were founded in 1985) with a similar slow, noisy sound such as Fang or Steel Pole Bathtub.  The songs are often quite long by punk standards, often topping five minutes, and have few changes.  The band is at their best in my opinion, when they beat a riff so hard into the ground for so long it sort of creates a trance like tension.  Over the grinding pulse of the drums, bass, and gnarled guitar, a trumpeter belts out sour notes left and right and some asshole yells a lot about raping and murdering women.                 

Though this is a great record musically and I've enjoyed listening to it, all the stuff about rape and hurting women really turned me off.  I normally try to keep to the policy that I should judge the art and not the artist; some people say that's bullshit, and I understand their point of view but I feel my politics lie in my personal choices and actions, not the music I listen to.  Still, it's strange, I can watch violent movies all day long, listen to black metal made by (and for) racists, and even dig music insensitive to the plight of rape by other artists if I feel they're doing something especially unique (Whitehouse and the Geto Boys come to mind immediately), and it doesn't really bother me much; but something about the way the Brainbombs exploit rape really bums me out.  It reminds me of the way boring death metal bands like Cannibal Corpse approach the subject, using it only for shock value, or shits and giggles, never bothering to consider whether or not their lyrics have anything to do with the tone of the music they're making, no real thought process behind it, just trotting out some uncreative bullshit because they think it will make them sound mean and tough.  If you're going that route, why not just sing about children dying of cancer?  It would at least be something new....           

I guess that's not a very shining endorsement, but it is what it is.  I don't really think it's my place to judge an artist personally on the basis of their art; all I'm doing on this blog (and all anyone does on any music blog for that matter) is giving subjective assessments of records that have entered my life through one facet or another; I prefer to remain truthful and have no interest in pretending to not have been into the music or bothered by the lyrical content on this record in order to save face.  So there.      

...anyway, if you can stomach the lyrical content and need a dose of totally discordant punk noise, I don't discourage you from checking it out here.  If you want to buy the record or would like to write an angry letter, go here.