Black Angel's Death Song - Sinning With a Policy

While post-70's popular music was pretty much universally atrocious (with certain exceptions, of course), the LA underground scene in the 80's and 90's had a hugely diverse group of fantastic musicians playing a wide variety of incredible music to a devoted crowd of followers. Punk rock ethos infused just about every style of music possible, with some amazing results. Musicians overlapped, as well - a couple of these gents also powered Trash Can School - to create a crazily terrific time.

BADS were certainly influenced by the Velvet Underground, but much more, as well, and these variables join together for their hip, unique sound. This CD, released by Hell Yeah Records, a division of Dionysus, combined two previously released vinyl EPs. While they concentrated on the more psychedelic angle - "More" sounds practically like something Spacemen 3 might do - they would also tackle Germs-like punk rock ("Brothers and Sisters"), hard-edged, twisted riff-rock ("Brown Water/Nothing Remains"), a mellow ballad ("Bernadette"), an intense - musically and lyrically - bit of mid-tempo, anti-racist politicization in "N*gger" (today's racial insensitivity in the news is nothing new), a kinda/sorta Velvet-y dynamic number in "What Will It Take?", a powerful, stompin', repetitive riffer for "In These Times" and a highly original jammy take of the Doors' "The End" that closed their Sinning With a Policy vinyl release.

The Brett Sessions EP opens with an almost country-ish "Roller Coaster" (sounding almost nothing like their other material) but "Destroy the Evidence" is more like it with convoluted licks'n'rhythms in a mix of 70's punk'n'Devo, and "Nothing Equals Nothing" is my favorite song of theirs: a high-energy guitar riff interspersed with start'n'stop dynamics and sing-along chorus - only complaint is that it is far too short! "What Do You Mean" is nice'n'droney, in a melodic, psychedelic way, "12 Stations to Go" is simply a cool, Catholic School rocker, there's a touch of Dylan in "Spanish Cobras", s sad, Nick Cave-ish (or is that more Spacemen 3?) ballad in "Fall In the Fire" and it all concludes with a slow psych/country number appropriately titled "Are You Done?".

A bit of psych, a bit of punk, some hep noize, cool drones and just plain rock'n'roll all thrown together in this cement mixer of sounds. Dig it!