These bent safety pins on the sleeve should be the first clue as to where this single from Violent Change is headed and flipping this over, the titles like “Suck on the Gun” would probably convince you on the spot to pick this up or not. What you wouldn’t know from just imagining the damaged possible speed hardcore you’re getting into is the demo psych-pop side that Gladys Bleyle is also kicking around these tracks. The guys from Melters Records love Gladys’ previous work with the Sopors and basically started the label to release this single of his 8-track cassette recordings under his new project “Violent Change”.
A-Side “Suck on the Gun” is straight, dirty, pop punk that takes me right back into the millions of Useless Eaters records with a similar level of huge scuzz and hiss embedded right into the tape, filling these grooves to the brim with static. Matthew Melton could have been behind the engineer’s glass, monitoring these grimy steel guitars and burying the drums under low-end levels of EQ. This is speeding along with plenty of echo on the vocals, messing with the dials, bringing this in an out of audibility through crashing reverbs, fighting a three chord melt down. Like The Lime Spiders, Midnight Snaxxx, all that Floridas Dying, Total Punk stuff would be proud, take those sounds head over to middle of the country through rusty Detroit style, and tie some country or blues to this before you get back to the Bay area. "Feeding in the Dark" takes an outsider ramshackle turn and piles on a sweet hint of harmony and a late '70s jangle-psych. A dense, thick blanket like the Resonars or Mike Rep (I can throw that Rep reference around now?) and a piercing surface crackle like it's been played a million times. A garage harmony tribute from an Adverts cover band, or better yet the Reatards, all the stuff they didn’t get a chance… or want to came back to.
B-Side’s "Violent change" is a dark and fast echo of indecipherability with manic spazz drumming, recorded in the basement and slow crunch gated after the fact. A dirty mean riff, this is snarling and weird when it comes to your standard punky fare. Being the title of the band track, this would have confirmed all suspicions if it lead the A-Side.
"Southern Agrarians" switches into Eric’s Trip/Kinks harmony focused, AM radio lost transmission, this is really perfect… just plain weird. The way he’s swapping genres like this is nuts, getting a whole different sound each song, like they were created in a whole other world or era. Wood block solo reverbed in that echo chamber, this is a nice damaged ballad like White Fence’s Francisco sound. Sounds like laid back, night and the memories of the ocean are far off, those surf sounds have slowed into nearly passing out.
Get this from Melters Records
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