ZZZZZZ

Every now and then you run across an album that just exudes punk rock from every pore, but if you ask your local mohawk about it, he'll get a puzzled look on his face. Nation of Ulysses' "Plays Pretty For Baby," Gaunt's "Sob Story", Scared of Chaka's "Masonic Youth," Unsane's "Total Destruction," godheadSilo's "Elephantitus of the Night," these records might not follow the standard punk rock formula, but what embodies punk rock more than ditching the normal routine? There's nothing more exciting to me than a band that can embrace the punk aesthetic and at the same time rewrite the rules, and Skull Kontrol is one of those bands. Let's face it, punk rock has been around almost as long as traditional rock and roll, so any band that attempts to do something new with it deserves your money. If you need references to other bands to help you make an informed purchase, in this case, there's no hope for you. I hear bits and pieces of "Dirty"-era Sonic Youth, early Rudimentary Peni and even Plastic Bertrand, but hey, what good is looking towards the past when the future has infinitely more potential?

If only drugs were this to-the-point... Where little else but a boot to the noggin will do... Skull Kontrol shake the fillings out of your teeth. Too bad they broke up so soon. This was as good as hearing Fugazi for the first time. Calls to mind nothing so much as blood-crazed Mongol hordes thundering on horseback across the steppes. Loud, thundering, dense, with screeching M/F duet vocals in the best of cases, and entirely too short. But I don't think they could've pulled off a full-lengther without shaking themselves to pieces.

In the context of punk rock, all we have is the past to guide us. However, Skull Kontrol ditched this aesthetic to look into the future instead. How non-punk of them. Feedback noise has never sounded so good. This four-piece thrash through six songs with defiant, reckless fury. Too bad they broke up shortly after this EP was released.