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Vampire Lezbos
Released by: Flat Field Records
Released on: 1/15/2013
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Though they took their name from a Cramps song (The Beautiful Garden, for those keeping score, which more than likely took inspiration from Jess Franco's Vampyro's Lesbos film), Spokane Washington's Vampire Lezbos (yep, that is what it looks like - a somewhat up to date Angelfire website!) don't really sound much like Lux and Ivy's late, lamented greatest band of all fucking time. This sloppy punk rock four piece formed in 1984 and built up a decent following locally though according to the liner notes that accompany this album, lineup changes were pretty frequent in the early days, the one constant being lead guitar player and sometime vocalist Dave Whiting.
Starting in 1985 the band started touring the west coast of the United States and into Canada as well. They have some fame as the first of the Spokane bands to tour outside of their home town (for more on this, check out Spokanarchy - a really great documentary about the punk rock scene that grew out of that unlikely town in the 1980s). So yeah, people knew who they were. They never got super famous, and in the interest of full disclosure this writer had never heard of them until Spokanarchy hit DVD, but yeah, they were around. Shows were played, tours were booked, songs were sung and fans were made.
The band recorded their first album, a self titled effort, in 1987 and it was released in 1988 - and then it eventually went out of print. The good people at Flat Field Records have taken it upon themselves to reissue this beast, however, and we're all the better for it. The line up on this first proper album features Whiting on guitar and vocals, Joe Swanstrom on vocals and guitar, Spot on bass and Dave Delong Hill on drums.
This album is good. Very good. It's fast, snotty, politically incorrect but politically minded in the way that a lot of eighties era punk and hardcore was, sometimes without really realizing it. You can hear the influence of early British punk like The Clash here, but so too can you definitely hear the influence of Vancouver's mighty D.O.A., who the band had the privilege of playing with a few times in their early years. Where D.O.A. took things to a harder and faster extreme than a lot of the bands that preceded them, Vampire Lezbos follow suit. You can check out a cool history and Q&A with the band here, some neat archival pictures there too.
The thirteen tracks that make up the self titled album are as follows:
Plasma / Cop Magnet / monkey / Stop Killing The Seals / So What / Reds Use Poison Gas / Ogon Warrior / It Hurts / Phone Soliciter (sic) / What The Fucks / Queen Spuma / Worm / Macho Fag
Plasma starts off with a guitar bit that almost sounds like an air raid siren - it's high pitched, loud and it gets your attention. From there the fuzzed out guitars kick in alongside some bass and drum, creating a fuller sound over which some screaming vocals kick out. There's a surf punk influence in this opening track, but at one minute mark it turns into a hardcore track, blisteringly fast and pissed off. Cop Magnet is up next, and man, fuck the police. It's fast, angry and it does not like the way the cops are hassling the punk kids. Deal with it. It's catchy, it's got a simple chorus you can sing along to and it's pretty great. Monkey starts off slow, some jungle noises over a chunking guitar, a little instrumental bit to set the mood… what have we got here? It sounds nothing like the tracks that came before - until we hit the 0:50 mark, at which point the door gets kicked down and we're in Poison Idea style angry hardcore territory. Stop Killing The Seals also has a semi-lengthy instrumental intro, but it too kicks into high gear and turns out to be a ripping super fast song about a young man's friendship with seals that are being killed hence his aversion to seeing them killed. It's hard to tell if they're serious or not.
So What and Reds Use Poison Gas follow suit - they're fast, they're angry, they feature a break down here and there but mostly they go full steam ahead, coming close to thrash punk territory in spots. It's easy to imagine this stuff going over really, really well in a live environment back when it was new. Ogon Warrior starts out with a weird, almost jazz sounding riff, but that only lasts a few seconds, after which it starts alternating between that riff and some hardcore blasts, before the blasts take over and the band plow through the fastest song on the album (fastest, not shortest). It Hurts comes next and it's another fast hardcore style track but compared to Ogon Warrior it almost sounds like a ballad. It's not though, it's pretty aggressive though notably sloppier than some of the other reasonably tight tracks on the disc. Phone Soliciter (that's how they spell it) has a guitar bit that starts off the song sounding a bit like the theme from Peter Gunn with a more ominous tone to it. Forty seconds later, the feedback comes into the mix, the bass and drums erupt and we're in 100mph territory again. It alternates, going back to the weird slower bits, then throwing the super fast stuff back in your face again. This makes the song stand out from the rest of the tracks on the disc.
As the album comes to a close, What The Fucks is the shortest song on the album at 1:41, and it starts off as almost a pop song, mid-tempo stuff with a pleasant guitar sound, but thirty seconds later the band is singing so fast that you can't really understand him. Then it slows down. This one reminds me of D.R.I.'s I'd Rather Be Sleeping, and that's a good thing. Queen Spuma, like the opening track, has some surf style guitar going on in it, it's a bit deceiving because after that intro it uses feedback and really fast playing to take you by surprise… sort of (see, a lot of the songs on this album do that - they start slow, make you think they're going to be kind of mellow, then KAPOW, they punch you in the dick). Worm has a slower intro, but you know it's going to get fast - and it does, but it gets loud first. The vocals are almost spoken here, there's not singing, though the chorus has a bit more melody to it. Last but not least is
Macho Fag, it starts out with some slow, smooth jazz with the sounds of someone moaning orgasmic moans behind it. The lyrics talk about dirty movies and leather and kinky stuff, and then we're back in familiar super fast territory. It goes back and forth, with cheesy moaning sampled over the music when it slows down, it's a goofy over sexualized song obviously played for laughs and not to be taken in the least bit seriously.
But wait, there's more! The bonus tracks on this disc are:
It Hurts / Monkey / Plasma / Macho Fag / Worm / Mikes Family / Phone Solicitor / What The Fucks / Disease / Gonad Warrior
These bonus tracks are taken from the first demo album recorded back in 1986 and are properly released for the first time ever on this CD. The line up at this point was Whiting on guitar and vocals, Rob Westergard on lead vocals, Jeff Duty on bass and Mike hill on drums. The sound quality isn't as good here but the alternate versions are different enough that they're worth listening to.
All in all, this is a pretty cool re-issue. Flat Field have presented the original album sounding quite good. There aren't any serious issues with tape hiss or anything like that, the mix is solid - and we get a bunch of exclusive bonus tracks and a quick page of liner notes too. The band is a lot of fun. If you dig sloppy, super fast eighties era hardcore give it a shot.
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