Death " ... For The Whole World To See"
Drag City, 2009 (originally issued in 1974)
'Tis a tale o' three brave lads from the merry town of Detroit: David, Bobby, and Dannis Hackney. The three boys, courageous as can be, decided to form a band of the most glorious persuasion, reinterpreting what their elders (by a few years) of the MC5 or the Stooges had presented to the world to express their rage and frustration.
Don Davis was pleased with what he heard, and decided that a band such as Death should not be left unrecorded. After an adventure, United Studios were made the band's headquarters', and songs now regrouped on ... For The Whole World To See were recorded. A few LPs were issued, then the record slowly fell in the abysses of commercial oblivion.
Skip forward 35 years: the few copies of this record have attained a legendary status, collectors asking for prices ridiculously high for a circular slab of plastic. Drag City, sensing the commercial opportunity (or actually considering the disk musically worth reissuing ?) decides to re-edit the LP in 2009, making this album enjoyable by all willing to give it a shot.
And you should.
Death's obvious affiliations to the bands mentioned above should be enough to interest any appreciator of fast and raucous rock'n'roll. However, their main feat is the ability to transcend the then developing punk format: of course, their album is only twenty-six minutes and nineteen seconds long, with most of the album being played with the metronome around what seems to be 130 bpm. "Politicians In My Eyes" is obvious in its engaged statements, and what would later become classic punk beats and hooks are present here. But throw in a drum solo here, a little melody there, slow the tempo a couple of times, give this riff a little groove, and all this "proto-punk" stuff hits you in the face ten times harder than the Sex Pistols ever did. One might even add that not only does this album makes the connoisseur's delight, it also serves as a rockin' introduction to the one that stumbles upon the treasures of seventies Detroit music. Which you've heard here before: I'm definitely trying to introduce varied subscenes of musical history through this blog.
Of course, the formula has been exhausted to death (...) by more recent bands. Green Day, Blink 182 and other Offspings have sucked the life out of rock-inflicted punk and turned it into this questionnable enterprise (that I'll sometimes enjoy, for middle school nostalgia's sake). Rest assured, honorable reader of this scarcely visited website, that Death were close to the first, and if calling them the best is a matter of personnal opinion, then I'll call them the artistically honest: they refused to change their name, losing them a deal with Columbia, and accepted to wait 35 years to see their record decently released.
Probably their best move: the fact that this record comes out only today is like a big, smiling, ironic middle finger to all the people who make music without any soul or integrity today: "Here's how you're supposed to do it, you dumbnut". Hopefully they'll understand.
Hey, look, the cover art is killer!
Death... killer artwork... get it?
Sorry.
JNCT
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