The Weirdos
Destroy All Music

In Los Angeles of 1977, a dirty, degraded, and dangerous city, punk found the perfect ground to thrive with bands like the Germs, X, and the fantastic, but less known, at least today, Weirdos.
Just like other punk bands of the era, it took only two exceptional singles "Destroy All Music" and "We Got The Neutron Bomb" – among the very best in punk – and the excellent EP "Who? What? When? Where? Why?" (the other EP of the time, "Action Design," is definitely inferior) to enter among the legends of punk rock.

After this last EP, in 1981 the Weirdos disbanded, only to sporadically reform and record, in 1988, the dispensable album "Condor", but what really matters is the overwhelming music they made in those first four years, collected in albums like "Weird World Vol1" and "Weird World Vol. 2", which mix scattered material respectively up to 1981 and up to 1989, and in this "Destroy All Music".

The Weirdos play warm and enveloping punk, with that touch of melody typical of Californian punk while remaining at the same time raw and rough; the Weirdos' punk is still original and very personal and is made even more fascinating by the beautiful voice of John Denney, deep and powerful.

Returning to the album, "Destroy All Music" includes the first demos, which show a band still raw, but already with very high potential. It then moves on to the homonymous single, a true gem, one of the very best in punk! The title track is then a bomb: a rough and fast-paced rhythm guitar, bass and drums keeping a high but not excessive pace, while the frantic lead guitar churns out a hypnotic and engaging riff for the entire duration of the song, alternating with John's deep and raspy voice. Why Do You Exist? follows the same standards, while A Life Of Crime is a sickly and high-speed blues, dominated again by the lead guitar that churns out the same twisted riff throughout the piece without a moment of respite.

Then it's time for "Who? What? When? Where? Why?" which, while remaining an excellent punk record, is slightly inferior to the single; the rhythms slightly drop, the sound is cleaner, the timings are stretched, and one feels the influence of new wave right from the first track Happy People and also of a certain British punk, one name above all Adverts - listen to Hit Man - and generally an expansion of musical influences as evidenced by Jungle Rock, a rockabilly track that seems played by the Cramps. In any case, the pace is always high, and Fort U.S.A., among the best of the Weirdos, is there to prove it.

In short, "Destroy All Music" collects the best material, already published but hard to find, of one of the best 77 punk rock bands, and even just for the presence of the first single (only partially released in the Weird World collections) it should be sought after, despite the blameworthy and inexplicable absence of the other exceptional single We Got The Neutron Bomb.

Ah, obviously this is also a GAZ review!