saccharine
trust
boston rock (1983)
For a long time there was a sentiment passed among the more pantywaisted
members of the pro wrestling community that "the heart punch should be
banned." Do-gooders and nitwits bandied this phrase around until
right-thinking folk felt encouraged to give every geek they say a solid
punch to the chest. Now I don't know this for a fact, but it seems likely
that the same group of morons would be (conscientiously) boycotting shows by
Saccharine Trust it they knew about them.
ST has always been an immensely powerful band. Baiza's screeching gtrwork
and the lyrical phantoms that fly around Brewer's head have always combined
to produce a dissonantly compelling aural firestorm, but since the advent of
their new rythm section they've been able to create and sustain levels of
fevered dream states (in both themselves and the audience) that are totally
without precendent. Most of their new material (soon to be recorded for a
second SST 12") is a lot faster than you're used to if you're familiar with
them from either their two Boston shows or their previous releases, and it
should, by all rights, astound you. Baiza's gtr playing veers between
patches of Morse code-like noise bursts (signaling a soul in distress) and
yowling white-outs that suck the air from your lungs. Brewer's implosive
stage persona (and wild decrials of the bestial hell that surrounds us)
recalls '76 era Roky Erickson for sheer possessed "otherness." And Speed
and Tercio (for some reason that's what Hodson and Cicero are called in this
article) pull a sharp reversal on Liberty and Holzman's structurally
simplistic approach by slapping the shit out of everything with an immense
writhing beat.
They are un-fuckin'-believable and you can call me a liar til' you've got
their next disk on your turntable and watch your room explode. As Cootchy
Cooty once said, "Grab your ankles, Amerika."
