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Citizen Fish/Leftover Crack |
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Written by Brian Polk
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Friday, 04 May 2007 |
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V/A
Deadline
fatwreckchords.com A
 Can ska still be considered punk rock? If you ask anyone with a Misfits or Conflict back-patch, the answer will most certainly be no. But what if the ska is more punk rock than half of the bands branding themselves with the punk moniker? When Leftover Crack joined Citizen Fish for the ska-punk celebration, Deadline, the ensuing melee of vigorous Jamaican-influenced thrash and radical leftist politics—including scathing indictments of global warming, money, and cops, or in the words of Leftover Crack, “pigs”—has more punk in 15 seconds of one song than all the Hot Topics have in all the malls across the world. | Genre veterans, Citizen Fish, (fresh off from touring the world as its other band, Subhumans UK) offer its requisite amalgamation of punk-ska and intellectual assessment of personal and world politics. The album’s opener, “Working on the Inside,” confronts individual responsibility by denouncing corporate punks trying to take down the system from the within, while “Join the Dots” provocatively engages the worldviews of war and empire.
Members of the Crack Rock Steady Seven Collective (CRS7), Leftover Crack effectively utilize the shock value of the Sex Pistols and politicize it, making enemies all over the globe in the process. The song, “Baby Punchers” attacks every right wing fascist under the sun, and includes a rant from political punker uber alles, Jello Biafra. “…And Out Comes the N-Bomb” takes some sort of shot at the band Rancid while simultaneously aiming its hatred towards the haters: casual homophobes and racists.
Since both Citizen Fish and Leftover Crack have such extended histories, each band covers one of the other’s past songs, and a song from a past band. For example, Citizen Fish covers Leftover Crack’s “Clear Channel (Fuck Off!),” and Choking Victim’s “Money.” And Leftover Crack covers Citizen Fish’s “The Super Market Song,” and Subhumans’ “Reason For Existence.”
With all of its danceable politics, anger, and delightfully underproduced sensibility, Deadline proves that ska-rock can be punk as fuck. | | myspace.com/citizenfishofficial myspace.com/leftovercrackofficial |
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