Customer Reviews

V2

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When this album came out in '78 I kept a copy of it in my jacket pocket and emediatly thrust it into the nearest cassete player everywhere I would go. "tevdras" is soooo wrong about V2. Trying too hard? This was 1978, mainstream music was comatose. If it was not for bands like the Vibrators "trying hard" we would still be doomed to bands like Bostan and Journey. This cd oozes energy all the way through. Flying Duck Theory has been stuck in my head for 27 years!! Pure Mania and Automatic Lover are perfect examples of early British punk. And as far as the album being an import, back in the day the best stuff was usually found in the import section. Why do you think bands like the Ramones and the Stooges never made it big or got air time on the radio? Americans for the most part are clueless when it comes to good music. This cd is a punk classic and should be in your collection allready if you know anything about early punk rock. Check it out or you will be missing out.

This is such a great album, much better than their first which was very one-dimensional and almost a parody of punk. This record sees a more assured band pushing their boundaries without ever over-stretching or losing their focus. The opening track puts their first effort behind them in a blitzkreig of guitar and cut-up sounds and lyrical snippets that threatens to overwhelm but never quite does. And its fast, really fast. It sets the perfect tone for the rest of the album which has hardly an ordinary song on it. Stand-outs for me are the opening Pure Mania, Flying Duck Theory, Nazi-Baby [which features the Berlin Symphonia doing orchestral strings] and Troops of Tomorrow, which has been covered a couple of times. There is a lot more variety on this album than on their first release but the staples are hard and fast, just as good punk should be.
The artwork is senstaional and pretty much exactly like the original LP [which I still have]. This album gets just as much time in my CD player as early Wire, Buzzcocks or Ruts does but I think I enjoy it more because it was such a long time coming.

I have to disagree with the reviewer from Houston. V2 isn't a patch on Pure Mania. "Nazi Baby", "Destroy", etc - it was fun on the first album but it comes off as "trying to hard to shock" on the second. There's a reason it was never released in the US in 1978 and is still an import on CD. You're better off with a best of that includes non-LP singles and better songs from V2 (and of course, Pure Mania).