Electro Hippies
The Only Good Punk

The Electric Hippies, what a fantastic name for a hardcore band!

In the second half of the '80s, in England, amidst napalm death, the terror of extreme noise (???), deviant instincts, the chaos of the United Kingdom, there were also electric hippies (but also the stupid, The Stupids, but that's another story). The Electro Hippies existed from '85 to '89 and were a cross-genre band in the sense that they didn't play the nascent grindcore/crust nor the more typical politicized English hardcore but their own blend of ultra-fast and schizoid hc, dark slowdowns where the voice becomes hoarse like in crust, and occasionally, but never overdoing it, hinted at a slightly more melodic touch. Clear as day, however, that in the CD in question, composed of 40 tracks (all or almost all of their production plus live tracks), it is the exaggerated speed that dominates the sound wall of our crazy Thatcherian hippies.

In this adventure, which at the time was defined as speedcore, they were not alone but in the company of other fantastic (and little-known) bands like Heresy, Intense Degree, Mutant Dogs, Active Minds, and another handful of groups, unfortunately or fortunately, overshadowed by the emerging sacred monsters of grind/crust like Napalm Death, Carcass, Bolt Thrower, Extreme Noise Terror, Doom (definitely the closest to our heroes in everything)...

For me, this anthology CD is worth at least the last 7 - 8 works of Napalm, the entire discography of Carcass apart from the first 3, more or less the same for E.N.T. I gladly save Doom not because they are more "pure," but because, well, time hasn't made them tacky. Note that in the lineup of our heroes was also that red-faced Jeff Walker before forming Carcass.