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The Consumers | All My Friends Are Dead

In The Red reissue this long-lost punk nugget.
CD, In The Red/Konkurrent

Tekst: Bob Hammond

Publicatiedatum: 08 juli 2002

Take the Sex Pistols and plant them in Phoenix, surrounded by desert, and your result is The Consumers. Recorded in 1977, but not finding its way on to CD until last year, The Consumers' sole album, All My Friends Are Dead, has all the qualities of a solid punk album. With the album package sporting ransom-style print and Xerox-quality collages and the liner note ramblings proclaiming the band as "liars, cheats, and thieves; guardians of the holy triumvirate of radio, television, stereo," you couldn't ask for a better artefact from the beginnings of the genre. Not to mention the actual music, which consists of more than a handful of killer punk anthems. Believe me when I say that some of these songs aren't just good with respect to other obscure punk nuggets, but they can hold their own when compared to such classics as Anarchy In The UK and New Rose. In fact, if I were to compile an anthology of what I considered to be the greatest punk songs of all time, Anti, Anti, Anti, the clear highlight of All My Friends Are Dead, would be a serious candidate for inclusion. Frenetic guitar thrashing and snotty Rottenesque vocals pervade the rest of the album, and each song follows more or less the same pattern. This repetition never becomes monotony, however, as All My Friends Are Dead's eleven songs are crammed in under 19 minutes, so neither the music nor the listener loses any steam before its conclusion. Plus, the formula that The Consumers use is a great one and works well throughout the album's entirety.

One possible caveat to consider before picking up a copy of All My Friends Are Dead is its inability to distinguish itself within the punk genre. Lyrically, All My Friends Are Dead does not deviate much from traditional topics, with anarchy, anti-media sentiment, and nihilism all getting ample coverage. Also, like so many other bands of The Consumers' era, the Sex Pistols are a primary influence, and the sound of those punk pioneers is well represented throughout the album. As a result, if The Consumers are absent from your record collection, you admittedly are not ignoring any vital aspect of the genre. However, All My Friends Are Dead does add a few more great songs to the punk canon. Casual fans may want to skip over The Consumers in favour of more well-established and highly regarded artists, but if punk is your genre, All My Friends Are Dead is an album that will frequently find its way on to your stereo.

http://www.kindamuzik.net/recensie/the-consumers/all-my-friends-are-dead/1684/
Meer The Consumers op KindaMuzik: http://www.kindamuzik.net/artiest/the-consumers