Malice In Sunderland:Leatherface's Mush--90's Punk Supernova

Dead Industrial And So Austere

Leatherface is in my opinion one of the great punk bands of the last 20 years. I'm listening to the mighty Mush album right now and it still makes my heart race. They were a band recommended to the high heavens by The Big Takeover and after listening to Mush once, it was clear to me that all the accolades were spot on. In the 90's, when I first heard the name of the band, I jumped to the conclusion that they must be some dark heavy metal band. Today I would probably think the name would have something to do with Botox or Jersey Shore. As far as punk bands go, I can't think of any band that represents better than these guys. I think Leatherface should have been the one to have the Punk Opera instead of Green Day.

Because Mush is one of the top 5 albums of the 90's--the passionate hoarse vocals of Frankie Stubbs, the jackhammer rhythm section of Andrew Laing and Steven Charlton, the crushing twin guitar assault of Dickie Hammond and Stubbs. They are a sonic powerhouse. The topics of the songs cover so much ground also, you pigeonhole this music at your own peril. You can call it hardcore, but even with the gruff vocals and aggressive tempo and volume, the music is incredibly infectious. It's easy to say Leatherface is Lemmy from Motorhead (or Inflammable Material era Jake Burns of SLF) fronting Husker Du, those elements are there. I would say, however, that stylistically there is something else going on here. I don't think the killer version of Message In A Bottle at the end of the Cd is at all ironic. If you back and listen to the other songs, you can hear some elements of the Police here. In the passages between verses, you can hear those twin guitars mesh together with the rhythm section and I can hear it. And it is one of the best covers you could ever hope to hear.



Frankie Say Don't Relax

 The Police cover is almost like a statement of purpose for the band, just like Husker Du's reverent destruction of Eight Miles High by the Byrds. Taking the passion and raw power of punk rock and melding it with the melodious music of the 60's. And this flamethrower passion is what takes this record its relentless edge. The pace is exhausting--it beats you up. And this defiant strength runs through the whole gamut of life experience, from relationships, politics to ecology and philosophy. When you hear I Want The Moon you can hear the hunger in the bellow of his voice. In some way its like the hunger you can hear coming out of every pore of Oasis' Live Forever. But that hunger is the traditional hunger that I felt as a teenager wanting to be a rock star. Get rich, get girls, get famous, get adulation, break TV's, leave your pedestrian upbringing behind. Leatherface is more about living a good life, seeing some justice in this world, though you don't really have a lot of faith in all that. But you don't give up your ideals and personal decency, because it's the good fight.

You could say Frankie Stubbs is like an Everyman standing up to the world, but I don't think that this is accurate at all. It's a crappy insulting stereotype. When you peel back the curtain take a good hard look, it turns out that an Everyman is a somebody, with intelligence, pride, humor, strong opinions, sympathy for the downtrodden: in other words, a living breathing individual who doesn't suffer fools gladly. You may not be king of the world, but everyone's life is important, and what affects you is important, whether it is a new law passed, or a fight with your girlfriend. It's so obvious it sounds stupid when I say it. But I guess when I hear this music its like having an Avatar. You step into his shoes for a few minutes and you feel empowerment, in the same way when you hear Jake Burns sing "Everyone is Someone" in Nobody's Heroes.

But like the best bands you can hear the provenance of the music. Leatherface is from Sunderland in Northern England, and I imagine it being a bleak place, where people dreams don't get too far off the ground.  If you're stuck in a place and the jobs have all gone, what is your future and how are you going to deal with all that? Bowl of Flies seems to embody this despair in a nutshell. The real capper is the blowtorch Dead Industrial Atmosphere, fury directed at a whole society and way of life gone wrong, where people are simply beaten down by work, politics, religion, hypocrisy. Sometimes political songs are so preachy, but this song is simply amazing, a masterpiece of overwhelming conviction.

The songs also turn inward and deal with personal life--it seems that internal and external life aren't that separate here. You can hear the tremendous longing hurt and loneliness in Not A Day Goes By, where you lose someone for good--they are physically distant, yet always remain in your consciousness.Yet there is also the upbeat energy of a song like Springtime, which is another highlight, where Frankie looks back and reflects on happy times. Baked Potato is a poppier number also, where he reflects on people and their idle everyday chitchat, which to him seems like a form of living death. I Don't Want To Be The One To Say It, also roils against complacency. "I would rather die than while away the time of day", he sings. Dylan Thomas said as much in his poetry. "Everything under the Sun, must be for everyone" is the egalitarian sentiment in the anthem Pandora's Box, another scorcher.

Unfortunately this album may be a little tough to get right now, but it is one of the good ones. It seems that the British label Fire Records may be releasing this shortly, but I don't have any details about when that will happen. It is available as an mp3 file. There are plenty of cheaper places to jump in like Horsebox, Dog Disco, Minx ,The Last, Stormy Petrel, or the split Cd with Hot Water Music. All worthy albums. But Mush is punk rock firing on all four cylinders and another cornerstone of a great punk rock library.