Dü Unto Others

I grab the rope in front of me
It keeps slipping through my hands
I try to climb with all of my strength
But it trickles through like sand

Life, eh? plenty of it right here, lived with an unflinching blowtorch intensity of thought and feeling, welcome to Hüsker Dü Metal Circus.

Weighing in at 21 seconds shorter than Hüsker Dü’s debut LP, Metal Circus is an 18-minute EP of rare power, marking where the band evolved from playing hardcore punk into something more sophisticated and melodic, slightly.

I find Metal Circus a bit overwhelming* at times as that unique sheet metal guitar sound is pushed right up in your sensibilities from the first. It takes a couple of listens to gain your Dü legs and then over the next couple you start to understand the complexity and rare completeness of these songs; each is a world in and of itself.

I'm goin' out
Out on a limb

The lyrics on Metal Circus are so strong, Bob Mould and Grant Hart more than match the music’s power by keeping them simple without ever erring into punk simplicity, they hit home. Whether the songs are about the futility of protest, empty punk rhetoric, trying to stay afloat, alcoholism, murder or just the fear that being different engenders, there really are whole worlds in here. That the band sound so utterly invested in every second, just amps up the sense of consequence that makes Metal Circus sound so fucking vital in every sense.

It’s astonishing that a song like ‘Deadly Skies’ is only 1:48 long, far from giving the sense of administering a good Ramonesing the band pack in so much it could be a symphony of outrage complete with instrumental passages.

Grant Hart almost steals the show with his two writes, ‘It’s Not Funny Anymore’ and ‘Diane’. The latter is a chilling impactful true story of a local lady killed by a serial killer, that it has in this context an almost sweetly enticing, detached feel makes everything nastier, the howling of her name hurls you into all the despair and waste the story merits**. The former though is a poppy/preppy sounding calling out of a toxic relationship/ bad situation, in it I hear a plea for someone to admit their true sexuality – to themselves? others? its ambiguous^.

The tracks that smite me hardest are ‘Lifeline’ about life struggles and entrenched positions and the closing snarl of ‘Out On A Limb’ which reads as very much about the risks of a life lived outside the mainstream in all sorts of ways.

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The playing throughout is intense, a compacted metallic screed which mostly blurs bass and guitar, a clever production by the band and Spot which still maintains the rhythmic drive of Greg Norton’s drumming that anchors it all.

That Hüsker Dü followed Metal Circus with the epochal Zen Arcade a mere 9-months later is quite the thing. That they birthed the sound of my beloved Leatherface right here is another.

If you like yourself, buy Metal Circus. If you don’t like yourself then just buy a copy and don’t listen to it, that’ll show you.

1312 Down.

*in a good way.

**this track definitely begat Nirvana’s ‘Polly’.

^worlds within worlds within these 18 minutes.