Flipper
Generic Flipper

The group is composed of Bruce Lose (Vocals-Bass), Will Shatter (Vocals-Bass), Ted Falconi (Guitar), Steven De Pace (Drums). To define Flipper’s attitude, we can certainly say that they blend hardcore nastiness with the most intimate emotionality, spitting out a nihilism soured by years and marrying it with minimalist, sparse, and precise poetry. It's as if each member of Flipper had been asked to choose only one color to define the external and visceral world: they collectively opted for a pale and vivid purple at the same time. Introspective beasts thirsting for blood. We notice strong resonances of social criticism with Carpenter’s film “They Live,” the man sterilized by the television medium, happily dehumanized by the flux of images and sounds dealing with fashion, money, and fundamental hierarchical ambition. Flipper is passive in the face of all this; they coexist with heroin, and their voice manages to manifest in claustrophobic, heavy music with strong dark noise tinges, essentially pre-grunge (Mark Arm - Mudhoney, Kurt Cobain - Nirvana, Buzz Osborne - Melvins: they will consider this manifesto as a mine to exploit).

Often the two languid, anorexic basses repeat a single riff for entire minutes, until they oppress and drug the listener with a crepuscular and moribund slowness. Meanwhile, the guitar rumbles maliciously and often distances itself from punk for a dreamy and absent character. The two voices are rather rough, spitting angrily, and a sublime factor is the ability to unite the most sincere anger of the '77 season with a deep and Schopenhauerian analysis of oneself. “Have you ever seen a flower and hated it? Have you ever seen a couple kissing and it made you nauseous? Have you ever wished that the human race never existed, and then realized that you belong to it too?” Ever. Diabolic.

Every alternative artist must have at least marked this LP with their fingerprints: among the most seminal gems of modern rock music. Listen to “Big Long Now” by Nirvana on Incesticide and then “(I Saw You) Shine” on Generic Flipper, Ops Ops, it’s evident that the work in question contains every character of the most celebrated future movements. The Melvins, among the major influences of Stoner groups, somehow imitated that deadly slow setting of Flipper. Stoner and grunge in 1982? I think so. Five years after the publication of the work in question, Shatter will die of an overdose leaving as a legacy his passion, his dedication, total prostitution towards music. His testament is works of virulent and intelligent alienation like "Ha Ha Ha" and "Life Is Cheap."

After 8 invaluable rubies, the record closes with the serial killer "Sex Bomb." Silly and monotonous bass for about 8 minutes, the animalistic and subhuman scream alternates with the only words of the text “She’s a Sexy Bomb Yesssss, yes, YES, yessssssssssss” a sort of corrosive irony and imitation of a society in heat towards a plastic patina that surrounds individuals. Man and woman now rendered animals that mount and must be mounted along a trained path dictated by TV, both with mouths agape, until exhaustion and a manager’s heartbeat. Then they die, without ever waking from the torpor of modern society. They live...