God Bless snotty punk rockers and their rabid fascination with such puerile topics as pizza, paranoia and people going postal. These Bostonians have been hamming up their brand of mongoloid street punk since 1998 and their second record for TKO is as sincere, sarcastic and satisfying a punk rock outing as you could reasonably hope to find. The Terrors play fast 'n' loud, piss 'n' vinegar punk that avoids trendy pogo-friendly anthems and metal-tinged whatever-core; instead, borrowing from the likes of The Dictators, Slaughter and the Dogs and Cock Sparrer, Tommy and The Terrors pipe out classic tales of alienation like "I, Barcode", "Get Away" and "Death To You", addressing familiar themes like anti-conformity and corporate hatred. The brawny "Welcome to the Graveyard" and the temperamental bust-your-skull rocker "Chum" will riddle your body with angsty aggression, giving you a reason to jump into the middle of the raging pit, raise your elbows and start the bloodshed. The band's mixture of simpleton power chords and plebian lyrics may not win them any
Guitar Magazine awards or poetry prizes, but together they make for some outrageously good tunes.
Either the band has too much THC in the membrane or The Fuzz is really out to get them. "Under Surveillance" and "Still the Enemy" harp on authority; the former's hilariously shouted lyrics -- "A van outside my house / That nobody's ever in / It never moves a fucking inch / But the engine's always on" -- drive the point home. The instant classic "Breakdown, Breakdown" is the album's high point; the song's slacker manifesto, "My own life is killing me", is shouted multiple times, but the song's main character never does a damn thing about it.
If you can get past the cartoonish cover art, with its cameo appearances by Wonder Woman, a whiskey-carrying Ted Kennedy and a fightin' leprechaun, there's some great blue-collar music behind this Fury. These beer-swillin', guitar-wieldin' hell-raisers know what it takes to write a gut-wrenching punk rock tune. They even get a pop culture gold star for paying homage to Domino's former advertising mascot in "Avoid the Noid". Now that's punk rock!
