DC Larson's JUKEBOX JURY

Saturday, July 12, 2025

The Brains

Crazy Monster vinyl, digital, and compact disc

(Cleopatra)

With Crazy Monster, Canadian, moon-shadowed The Brains - wreckers of stages the world 'round - assume the status of genre masters. Necromancers who are always good for a fresh round. For years, of course, they've clawed toward lofty situation. And with each successive issuance, they've ascended nearer.

Now that Rene de la Muerte and his morbid accomplices have plunged their crimson-smeared marker into that topmost plateau, one anticipates unending cursedness. Oh, happy day.

Recommended: "Evil," "One More Time," "Feel No Pain," "Crazy Monster," "Candy Apple Red," "Darkness," "Shakey Queen," "The Blood is Warm"

Videos: "Evil" "One More Time" "Feel No Pain" "Crazy Monster" "The Blood is Warm"

Plastic Section

Revenge

(Chaputa!)

Up-for-anything wild-siders raised by JDs, hunting kicks and slingshotting down highways first dug by 1950s dervishes. Amps are set to astronomical ranges, ensuring no one misses messages of heedless abandon. Club-crawling revelers are a surging expanse of pomps, quiffs, buzz-cuts, and razored neon explosions. Observers' only options are to leap aboard or dive ditchward.

Recommended: "Insane," "Party Crashers," "Din Daeng," "Breakin' Out," "Revenge," "Frenzy," "Make It Out Alive," "Deuces Wild"

Videos: "Insane" "Revenge" "Deuces Wild"

Drowned World Records

iMusic

Amazon

Forklift Assassins

Ripsnorter limited vinyl, limited CD, digital

(Self-issued)

Three jaws jutted, three brains honed. Opening moments feature sound bites from President Trump and James Stockdale, cluing jagged adherents in to the truth that, for all the brutally metallic, savage-underground lip-curling, the Forklift Assassins' world-knowledge extends beyond high-amped confrontationalism. Now, here's the turnaround: Despite that conciousness, the robust onslaught will likely hoist one aloft, deliver a sound thrashing, and leave eager victims demanding additional portions.

Recommended: "Lorem Ipsum," "Curse of the Mayans (Living on Borrowed Time)," "Brown Note," "Blink and You'll Miss It," "Something We Want," "Living on the Edge," "Wake Up (Rapid Eye Movement)"

Video: "Something We Want" / "Brown Note" (live)

Suitcase Records (May be sold out.)

Back in the Day, 1978

Sham 69

Tell Us the Truth

(Polydor / Polydor Japan)

Easily as non-negotiating as anything wrought by 1970s English spike-topped fellows. Giving a sound booting to the tedious indulgences annoyingly produced by navel-gazing hippies would by itself have been sufficient for celebration. But Jimmy Pursey and his surly flick-knife mates larded anthemic projectiles with enough prideful working-class glare to incite teenage malcontents to stomp down the cobblestones.

Recommended, live side: "We Got a Fight," "Rip Off," "George Davis Is Innocent," "They Don't Understand," "Borstal Breakout"

Recommended, studio side: "Family Life," "Hey Little Rich Boy," "I'm a Man, I'm a Boy," "What About the Lonely?," "Tell Us the Truth," "It's Never Too Late"

Videos: "We Got a Fight" "They Don't Understand" "Borstal Breakout" (live) "Family Life" "Hey, Little Rich Boy" "Tell Us the Truth"

Wednesday, July 9, 2025

The Stingrays

Stand By For Action

(Western Star)

There being no reason not to take up examples mounted by 1960s British Pop confectioners, the three involved here do so winningly and with beaming good cheer. (Inspiration arrives, too, from Gerry and Sylvia Anderson.) One marvels as spring-heeled melodies romp. Unanticipated twists ensure that matters hum steadily. The voices croon exultantly, and remind that lives lived with songs in heart and smiles wreathing faces know no grayness overhead.

Recommended: "It's Been Nice," "Why Little Girl," "Magic Carpet," "A Tribute to Buddy Holly," "Little Baby," "I'll Never Get Over You"

Videos: "It's Been Nice" "Why Little Girl" "Little Baby" "I'll Never Get Over You"

Collectors' Choice Music

Spotify

Dead Bollox

Go Mental!

(Katabomb Records)

France's Dead Bollox have demolished international stages, before top-of-bill, quiffed satyrs Demented Are Go and Mad Sin had opportunities to wreak gruesome pandemonium. So, throngs already know well what this album documents: that sledgehammering fulminations into the brains of blissful misfits engenders horrid-yet-savory impulses all-too-familiar to mental-health clinicians and armored riot squads.

Recommended: "I'm a Man," "Big Mouth," "Shake Your Bones," "Wicked," "Go Mental"

Videos: "I'm a Man" "Big Mouth" "Wicked"

Los Sex Sex Sex

Control 7" black vinyl EP or digital

(Slovenly Recordings)

I forsee no dissent, when I state this is precisely what Garage mavericks and leathered spiky sorts slapping hands in a back alley sounds like: a fierce union of LOUD outrush and uncultivated posturing. Walls collapse and windows shatter, as delinquent agitators knock all hell out of Rock'n'Roll that couldn't care less about wreckage it perpetrates.

Recommended: "Control," "Algo Salvaje," "Campos Mutantes"

Videos: "Control" "Algo Salvaje"