Métal Urbain
Panik

These days on DeBaser, dedications are raining down as if it were Radio Latte E Miele, so I calmly go with the flow and dedicate this to Genital Grinder, so ignorant that he'd bet on the Metal Urbain being heavy metal, and Lector, who can't distinguish the cover of "Rocket To Russia" from "Road To Ruin," and anyway because every time I come across them, they make me burst out with crazy laughter, and that's a great thing.

And anyway, no, Metal Urbain is not another band that plagues this world with beastly growls; they would play punk if it weren't for the fact that no rational being could ever include them in the same category as the Sex Pistols.

If you were cultured in the field—not just the two mentioned above, but all of you who frequent this desolate site—I could manage with a demanding parallel between Metal Urbain and Screamers, but if you know the Screamers, then I am Santa Claus and I have the sleigh in the garage and the reindeer grazing in the garden.

It is thanks to the Screamers, in fact, that I landed on Metal Urbain.

How I came to the Screamers is another story altogether and brings me to Ms. Laura Du Plenty in Claudio Sorge and the know-it-all braggart as part of the rock'n'roll sect I am honored to participate in—there's always one, without fail—who one day takes me aside and in great secret spills that no, that's not the last name of the lady but an epithet adopted in honor of Tomata Du Plenty who is the voice of the Screamers.

Personally, I've always experienced the Screamers as a mysterious cult because, hey, they're "The best unrecorded rock'n'roll band" according to Jello Biafra, and for years I keep wondering how the braggart knows them if they never recorded anything; and every time I ask him to let me hear them, he is vague, changes the subject, and leaves for an unavoidable appointment.

Yet, whenever he praises the fate of the Screamers, inevitably he brings up only one name: "Ehhhhh, but if you like the Screamers, you can't not know the Metal Urbain."

What do I know, I've never heard the Screamers; let alone if I know the Metal Urbain: as usual, I beg him to let me hear something, and he has an appointment in five minutes, so goodbye, handsome.

Guys, it's the late '80s, and just like with the Nerves, this time there's no Google or Wikipedia to give me a hand in filling my abysmal and proverbial ignorance.

But this time it really takes a long damn time because even in the early years of the internet you can't find much about Metal Urbain online, and I have to wait until 2004 when the splendid collection "Anarchy In Paris!" comes out to listen for the first time after almost twenty years to what the hell kind of music the Metal Urbain play.

A bit of history, first of all …

Primarily, the Metal Urbain are French, from Paris, and already this shocks me quite a bit because until then for me punk is a thing of England and the United States, and Mont De Marsan doesn't even exist on the map, and people like Marc Zermati and Jean Luc Stote are as familiar to me as the magnificent frigate of the Galapagos. And as they are French, they sing in French too, and how great is it to hear punk sung in a language other than English, so much so that I am sure that that is the moment when I lose my head for punk bands that sing in Spanish, Yugoslavian, Swedish and other similar oddities. Because if punk is direct contact and immediacy, then it is much easier to understand what a cousin from across the Alps is yelling at you rather than a cowboy from overseas; and then it is known that French is easy, it's like Italian and you just have to put the accent always on the last syllable, just like that.

At the beginning, it's Clode Panik on vocals, Rikky Darling on guitar, and Eric Debris and Zip Zinc on synthesizers; yes, you read that right, no bass or drums but synthesizers instead.

At a certain point, Rikky Darling leaves, but the others don't give up; on the contrary, they double down, and two come in to replace the guitarist, Hermann Schwartz and Pat Luger.

It's 1977, and with this lineup, the Metal Urbain manage to put their first work on vinyl, the stunning single "Panik / Lady Coca Cola."

"Panik," in particular, immediately rises to the rank of a punk classic, obscure as much as you like but a classic without a doubt. And if you find it hard to imagine a synthesizer in the classic punk instrumentation, I understand because these are my same perplexities when for the first time I pop into the player the CD "Anarchy In Paris!"; but when the first notes start, there's no time for any empty philosophy, swept away by the heavy riff of the two guitars and then immediately the synthesizer, that synthesizer that drills into your brain and even your intestines, more so than those two guitars that continue to hammer ceaselessly, and above all, there is that voice that screams about a city attacked, violated, and destroyed, panic, metal, and anarchy.

Absolutely, one of the most violent punk tracks I've ever heard, and the anarchy sung in London seems a flash in the pan compared to the fire started by these four Parisian thugs; and even if you think that "Anarchy In The U.K." is the most transgressive thing that has been pressed on a piece of vinyl, listen to their version, appropriately renamed "Anarchie En France," and then we'll talk.

On the b-side, "Lady Coca Cola": the rhythms are decidedly slowed, but if possible even more disturbing because here any trace of a melody line disappears, the guitars don't intertwine riffs but something very similar to noise without head or tail and always that synthesizer marking the slow slow time, and it seems like that hospital machine on the verge of ceasing the transmission of any life signal. Another killer track, certainly less immediate and devastating than "Panik," but this too would deserve a place in the small history of that fantastic music that I persist in defining as punk.

The Metal Urbain did little else, in their lifetime.

A second single, "Paris Maquis / Cle De Contact," still of exceptional value and also the first licensed by the historic Rought Trade label, and a third, "Hysterie Connective / Pas Poubelle," slightly inferior.

Then, it's 1978, and it's already time to write the word end to an extraordinary story.

Not even a year has passed since their debut, and so much material remains in the drawer for decades until in 2003 the collection "Chef D'Oeuvre" and in 2004 the sister "Anarchy In Paris," more compact—but still 24 tracks—bring all that goodness to light.

A simply grand band, Metal Urbain, nothing else to write about it.

And if you need points of reference, Stooges, Sex Pistols, Suicide, all mixed together … along with the great Screamers, of course.