Gentle readers let us calmly see out the remainder of January* with some light tunes and thoughtful meditations. I have just the thing right here. Yes, this LP with a cover picture of a cop being taken down by a pig and the title that translates as ‘Stop and fuck this!’. What tasteful delights could be behind the full-length gatefold picture of a tattooed gentleman, clad only in a scarf and headphones sat at a mixing desk?
Let us rock on gently.
‘you have the right to a bullet in the back of your head, if you cannot afford a bullet one will be provided for you” Stop Und Fick Dich!
Louder Than Death Stop Und Fick Dich! was bought the second I saw it in Probe Records on 20 June 2019, I actually snatched it out of the racks and held it close to me until I paid for it, in case one of the two other utterly disinterested customers tried to rob it off me.
My mental checkdown went:
- Rude/violent/intriguing cover? Tick.
- Quality record label? Tick.
- Titles involving swearing, or otherwise suggestive of sexual acts? Tick
- Ian Svenonius from Nation of Ulysses? TICK
- King Khan? TI-fucking-CK!
Yes! My favourite Berlin-based Indo-Canadian punk rocker recording with a new band. The short of it all is that Khan and regular bassist Fredovitch recorded Stop Und Fick Dich! with some Bordeaux-based musicians to make a real ’77 Cleveland-influenced punk LP.
Which is exactly what you get. albeit with some scratchy arty additions and some healthy goading of longhairs (‘Long n’ Wavy’). Stop Und Fick Dich! is an excellent punk record, cleverly mixing the really stupid and the clever in just the right quantities.
In a truly contrarian manner the first few songs are the least hooky on the LP, in no way bad but they lack the sugar to sweeten the medicine. But, almost in spite of themselves the band get poppier and more melodic the further into the album we get.
Among the real highlights for me are the hurtling out-of-tune-in-a-good-way ‘Born in ’77’, ‘Leather Boy’ just sounds like the logical conclusion to the Pistol’s ‘New York’ and ‘ABCs in Berlin’ sounds like a reanimated zombie Ramones.
I also love ‘Snot Queen’, celebrating the hourglass-shaped charms of a lady from Delaware and the insaniac likes of ‘No Brain No Pain’ and ‘Spicy Chicken’.
Best of MF-ing all though is ‘Baby Huey’, a summons-back-to-life aimed at Huey P. Newton, led by Ian Svenonius. Viva la revolución! It’s a swampy, cool, menacing séance of a tune. A reptilian call to arms (and a beret), it is the one track where Louder Than Death really aren’t joking around. Rise!
Stop Und Fick Dich! took me a little to get into which is unusual for anything I have heard King Khan in, but there’s a reason he’s royalty. The rest of the band are great particularly bassist Fredovitch and drummer Aggy Sonora.
This is a great LP, angry, disrespectful and mean – perfect for a bad-tempered don’t give a fucking fuck fuckity foo type of day. Like today, tomorrow and most of next week. In fact this is how we get through a locked down January.
Hey, hey leather boy With your tight pants on You wanna get some chicks Make a demon spawn?
Yes please!
1051 Down.
*the name of the month is actually derived from the Latin ‘Januanus‘, meaning ‘turd hole of a month, that lasts for ever because I spent all my money back in December’. True story. It’s a very compact language.