Wednesday, February 11, 2009

RECORD REVIEW: VICIOUS CIRCLE


From today's Clevescene:

Zero Boys
Vicious Circle
(Secretly Canadian)


Whenever something as potently pugnacious as Vicious Circle gets a reissue and dissemination to a larger audience, you've gotta wonder: How many thousands of forgotten, anthemic three-chord gems languish in Reagan-era obscurity, awaiting a triumphant rebirth? Like every third punk group, Indianapolis' Zero Boys flickered, crashed and burned quickly, leaving a mere handful of recordings reminiscent of Stiff Little Fingers and the Misfits in its wake. Originally issued in 1982, Vicious Circle was the second of these, supercolliding mercurial punk-pop dynamics with hardcore's abrupt brevity and outsider stance. That means 16 songs hurtling by in less than a half hour with no quarter taken none given, and topical bases hit with the I'm-in-a-rush velocity of a speed-dating session. A refutation of the era they were stuck in, "Livin' in the '80s" dabbles in rockabilly and finds frontman Paul Mahern unleashing the sort of cavernous yawp that Perry Farrell would perfect with Jane's Addiction in later years.

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