Album Reflection: Death Church

This album didn't come into my life until much later than I would have liked. But perhaps I wasn't ready for it until I had been entirely shredded by the modern American system of marriage, 9 to 5, go to church, conform, be a good girl, tuck in your shirt, eat your meat, shut up and take it, don't do your music as more than a hobby, accept the presidential options presented, your vote doesn't count, beauracratic clusterfuck of barbed electric fences keeping me from moving any which way without severe opposition. 

Growing up, I had a punk friend. He was a rarity in our town. We grew up in the same church. He had a giant Mohawk he would dye with kool-aid, a padlock he'd wear on a chain around his neck. He always looked so intense as a teen until he moved to Berkeley and got more the subtle Neurosis punk look of black band shirt, black jeans and dyed black hair. He was also very, very tall. He grew to be 6'4."

In his room out in the sticks, where we lived, he would corner me by the snake cages lining his walls and tell me what bands I should listen to. I hated to be told what to do, ever, especially by some dude who was almost 7' tall with Mohawk (INTENSE!) so I disregarded all of his advice. He burnt me a mix tape once, and asked me to meet him under the bridge. I guess I never showed up, and when I moved back to Oakland years and years later, he started up contact again, said he had the tape. I asked for it, and he told me it was broken. Also, he said, it probably has a bunch of pop punk on it, like Screaming Weasel. I'll likely never know what was on that tape, but the record collection of this long-lost fellow punk dude from my childhood was intense, so I got to work on learning his collection. We had the same taste in music to the point that everything he liked I felt like I should have already known because it was perfect, just perfect.

Including Rudimentary Peni. He had the trademark RP image, the fetus with umbilical cord, tattooed on his stomach, he was that into them. I was curious about this band he would talk about with hushed reverence, as if he were in a temple for punk when speaking their name. He told me about the lead singer,Nick  Blinko, and how he did all these crazy drawings for the albums and ended up in an insane asylum at some point. As I looked at the liner notes and drawings I felt happy, the whole DIY creative self-expression attitude that forms the core of any self-proclaiming punk with a backbone was represented on visual aspect alone. 

Death Church, of all the Peni albums, is the one I connect with most. The sound of the guitar alone on the entire album is crystalline thick fuzz bliss. Add to that some melodic complicated bass lines and poignant solid heavy-hitting drums with Blinko's voice raging out over it all in his British accent, screaming and shouting or in contrast speaking sometimes in monotone subdued manner, and you've got punk heaven. The chords, sound and lyrics are dark and intense, to the point where if you are bummed or in a rage or mad at the system crushing you in, this is the album you gravitate towards immediately. I can't believe it sounds like it does as just a three-piece.  

"Why is it that rock stars always seem to lie so much. Joe Strummer said he cared, but he never really have a fuck." 

Songs like Rotten to The Core and Inside ("No longer want to suffer this pain inside...") make my heart swell in punk solidarity. I can't get enough of the whole album. All the things I have a hard time explaining to people, like why I don't eat meat, are examined in Pig In A Blanket where Blinko rips a new asshole for those who engage in the animal abuse rampant today. Punk to me was always about getting people to open their eyes and pay attention. The songs on Death Church combine rage with shame with righteous indignation in a visceral one-two punch to your face kind of way.

I could gush about Rudimentary Peni for days, but let's leave it at this. If this album is not in your arsenal, go out and fucking get it. You're missing out.