![]() And when I say “refined,” I mean “beat the living shit out of,” cuz these cats don’t mess around when it comes to inflicting damage. These dudes are one of the few bands that took the influence of a band like MCCLUSKY and further refined it. The London-based trio has been around for almost a decade now and their noise rock pummel still hits as hard as ever. The UK’s USA NAILS are the perfect complement to PSYCHIC GRAVEYARD. PSYCHIC GRAVEYARD’s side of this split is a surprisingly enjoyable trawl through a battered and beautiful landscape. If “Love My Skeleton Too” is what passes for romance in PSYCHIC GRAVEYARD’s world, then sign me up for the next speed-dating night. Singer Eric Paul lists the various permutations of this noxious blather with a withering tone. “Building You a Rainbow” is a suitably mellow-harshing recounting of whatever new age bullshit has crossed your path this week. Featuring some of the same key players, PSYCHIC GRAVEYARD delivers on the electro-punk promise of CHINESE STARS and pilots it straight into the eye of the hurricane. DOOMSDAY STUDENT was a good-enough rehash of ARAB ON RADAR, but to those who witnessed the first go-round, it wasn’t quite as much of an illicit thrill. They didn’t have the killer instinct of RADAR nor quite the methodical precision of SIX FINGER SATELLITE. Afterwards came CHINESE STARS, who I always found frustrating. And ARAB ON RADAR continued to deliver the goods up until they split. DEVO, US MAPLE, and BRAINIAC weren’t just getting thrown into the blender, they were swinging a lawnmower around, chopping up bodies Dead Alive -style. Maybe “scurried” is a better description. The entire crowd backtracked ten steps in two seconds flat. The first time I saw them-resplendent in their janitor uniforms-they hit “go” on the strobe light and the band jolted to life like Frankenstein’s monster. I’m not sure if people understand what a force ARAB ON RADAR was when they emerged before the turn of the millennium. By this point, BLATANT DISSENT had locked down its sound and it was only a matter of time until they would craft their aluminum guitars and solidify the sound of TAR. For obvious reasons, the 1986 sessions reveal a far tighter and more powerful band. “How Can I Lose?” and “Status Quo” are highlights, all nervous energy and killer hooks. “Eleven Days” shows how the band is able to give shape to the bleak, colorless days that dot the Midwestern calendar year. “Is There a Fear?” channels NAKED RAYGUN like they were born to it, while “My Hands Are Tied” opens with a PINK FLOYD-like acoustic bit before erupting into a tuneful swift kick that isn’t far removed from a late ’90s “melodic hardcore” band. Hell, “Undermine” is practically a straightedge anthem. Even the lyrical concerns, often addressing their fellow punks, echo these sentiments. What’s interesting is that a lot of the 1985 material isn’t that different from the sonic trademarks of Washington, DC’s concurrent Revolution Summer scene. The first side was recorded with famed engineer Iain Burgess, who recorded many classic T&G sides, while the ’86 side is the early work of one Steve Albini, who also remastered this material from the original tapes. ![]() This collection LP pulls together two different recording sessions that resulted in a couple 7”s and the Hold the Fat album, and includes unreleased versions of some tracks. But before TAR, most of the members learned their trade in the post-hardcore group BLATANT DISSENT. They even pulled a neat trick by having their final album, 1995’s Over and Out, be their finest work. But unlike, say, COWS or LAUGHING HYENAS, TAR was actually kind of a straight-ahead band, playing a sort of glum, deceptively hook-filled mid-tempo rock music. TAR was a kind of emblematic middle-of-America noise rock band-they constructed their guitars from aluminum and they put out records on labels like Touch and Go and Amphetamine Reptile. As a teenager growing up in the Midwest during the first half of the 1990s, it’s perhaps unsurprising that I enjoyed the rock band TAR. ![]()
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