AK-47 - The Badge Means You Suck LP
AK-47 - The Badge Means You Suck LP
Label: Splattered Records; Year: 2022; Format: Vinyl LP
AK-47 from Houston, Texas are one of those bands that many of us into obscure worldwide punk rock must have discovered through a Killed By Death compilation LP. I don't recall when I heard "The Badge Means You Suck" for the first time but it certainly has been a good while hence the band has fallen off my punk radar until a well written 2021 Texas Monthly article about the band's history and their fascinating connection to police brutality and killings from the past and present subsequently revived my interest in the band. It's only fitting that just a few days ago I visited my local record shop and found a copy of the already hard to find official reissue of the band's material collected on a Full-Length. While the two songs from the originally in 1980 released 7" are the ones many of us are after on vinyl I must say that the remaining eight songs are just as intriguing and good. The true gems on this record are the six songs that the band recorded in 1981 and put up on bandcamp in 2021 as "Singularities". These six songs previously unreleased on vinyl highlight the development of the band after the demise of their original singer and are in my opinion worth every penny spent on this LP. With the addition of Penny Smith on vocal duties it is widely believed that the band really found its style and peaked during that time. Songs like "Isaacs Social Disease" or "Brain on a Pillow" to name just two of the six take the band in all kinds of musical directions without ever losing their Art-Punk roots. Mix angular post-punk with some hard rock and new wave and you get an idea as to how those six songs sound like, and trust me you will not be disappointed. Two more songs recorded actually in recent times are to be found on this wonderful record, with one of them - Trumpelstilstkin - being proof that these Texans haven't lost their art of social commentary in the modern day and age. Get a copy of this record while you can!
