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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Better than Buger King, August 11, 2002
Back in the day, Earache ruled the land of Metal releasing such hit bands as Carcass, Morbid Angel, Terrorizer and Napalm Death. Phenomenal they may have been, but I've always found Earache's true legacy to be in bands like Lawnmower Deth, the mighty Naked City, (NAKED CITY!!!) O.L.D., Sore Throat and, yes, Spazztic Blurr. It was a sub-genre the English label seemed to specialize in at the time, intense and comedic metal, bands that leave your jaw dropped but manage to crack you up at the same time...Spazztic Blurr hailed from Portland, OR and contained guitarist and vocalist of NRR's thrash superstars Wehrmacht. This is their sole LP (well, not exactly true; Stop Torture Records released their demo on a split LP w/ Brutal Truth's last year. It's limited to 250 copies, so hurry up!!) and stands as one of my trans-genre top fifteen to this day. The drumming is a blur by all means, as they completely outperform Brian LeFehldt's work on any of Wehrmacht's releases. (LeFehldt's the drummer for Everclear now!) Likewise, the guitar riffs are faster and far more creative in Blurr than the Macht; not just because they jump from thrash to surf to ballad and back again, but because they actually are written far more maturely. But let me go back a bit. For those of you not familiar with Blurr, the whole "jumping" concept may need some explaining. They're extremely similar to old Naked City in this sense that one second they're pumping out extremely fast metal, the next you get a christmas carol (but don't count out Eric's brutal freakin' drumming during those silly parts!) and they're playing surf. It's unpredicatble. It's intense. It's fast. It's funny. The lyrics transcend random silliness with hilarious criticisms of the metal and punk scenes. They constantly urge others to "be creative" and warn that "if you're serious, you lose." There are numerous moments of resentment towards the ostracization of metalheads in the dominant punk scene as well as emphasized spite towards "generic punk." The Blurr truely were the prophets of their time. Additionally, a lot of seemingly inside jokes are included (Bouge Jonzin, He-Not-A-Home) and references to various aspects of 70s and 80s generational pop culture. It's stuff you can relate to. It's stuff you can reminesce with. It's just fun. The production suffers somewhat, though it's not horrible. The guitars can be a little muddy, as can the drums, but it's far better than "Reek of Putrefaction" or anything AC ever released. There is a lot of studio work, various sound effects and the like dropped in, and that also makes it a lot funner. In this sense, it's definitely an "album," the artist's actualized vision. The booklet to this CD version is supposedly packed with some extra pages, but I can't tell you much about that as I only have the LP. In other words, buy it. If you've heard of Spazztic Blurr and you're checking this out, I have little doubt that this album is for you. If Lawnmower Deth was too tame, if Naked City was too unlistenable, if DEVO just didn't touch enough of that Earache sound, then check out the Blurr, it's thrash the way it should have been played (so long as no one ever heard it.)
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