The Angry Samoans rock fucking hardcore. Or do they fucking rock hardcore? Either way, they were one of the first American punk bands, and all their recorded stuff is presented in this one CD for your listening pleasure. Now, this may not be your bag, but this kind of punk is basically home base for me. In fact it is kind of silly that I hadn’t fully listened to this album before. I suppose I got distracted.
Anyway, the album contains 43 tracks, some of which are different versions of the same song. Most songs clock in at around a minute and that is as it should be. The music is fast and loud, the lyrics are offensive, and flippantly vulgar (the extremely homo-erotic “They Saved Hitler’s Cock” is a personal favorite). Oddly enough, the production values are for the most part pretty good, which makes the songs much easier to love than the majority of Black Flag songs. The liner notes are great, with pictures of the various album covers and a very funny retrospective on the band by guitarist Gregg Turner, who concludes by cursing out his former band mates.
I’m not sure why the Angry Samoans aren’t more famous in punk circles. They were around for ten years and made a lot of connections – The Offspring, Greenday, and the Pogues opened for them at various points and the Bosstones covered one of their most famous songs, “Lights Out.” I suppose they didn’t do anything others weren’t also doing, and were not covering a variety of musical territories. Personally, I like the territory they inhabited and think they inhabited it particularly well. If you have even a passing fondness for punk this would be a great album to check out.
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