T.S.O.L.
Dance With Me

LA RECENSIONE

The T.S.O.L. ("True Sounds Of Liberty") are the degenerate offspring of '70s punk. They added a morbid love for the macabre in many of their lyrics and an underlying gloom that lingers in the songs, contributing to the development of horror punk along with bands like the Misfits.

This "Dance With Me" is their first creation and can immediately be classified as a manifesto of the movement and perhaps a pinnacle of their career, which, albeit sporadically, has reached our days and consists of eleven albums. Not to forget the handful of excellent records by Joykiller (two quarters of T.S.O.L.) created starting from the '90s, musically very akin to them.

Moreover, we must not forget that this debut dates back to 1981 and that, being punk, it has a respectable production and sound that has aged better than many of its peers.

The band's leader, later the leader of the Joykiller as well, Jack Grisham, is the priest officiating the gloomy ritual. A ceremony where one effortlessly transitions from the furious punk vein reminiscent of the Sex Pistols in "Code Blue" (their greatest success), full of irreverent irony dictated by the praise of necrophilia, to the very dark "The Triangle", an oppressive, effective noir-tinted story that succeeds in making the chill of death felt, as experienced by the story's protagonist.

In between, many other short sketches sometimes take unexpected and positive paths like the echoes of solo Iggy Pop that punctuate "Silent Scream", or sometimes less successful like the lament of lost love in "Love Story".

While traces of the self-titled debut E.P. remain, heavily politicized, in the socio-political critique of "I'm Tired Of Life" and in the superb silver bullet of "Die For Me".

An album that over time has become a small great classic of punk, the more artistic kind if you will, steeped in the gothic imagery of horror films and featuring a spectral, comic-book cover that immediately sets the listener in the right mood.

P.S. The leader Jack Grisham used to employ a different pseudonym for each release. It's said he did this both as a whim and to hide his identity from the police. Here he goes by Alex Morgon.