Dead At 24 – Blast Off Motherfucker – Ride the Snake [Album Review]

I’m getting to be such a whore for certain writers I’ll upchuck acres of green, stinky cash to get in on the magic they often say they’re experiencing. 

Doug Mosurock’s review of Blast Off Motherfucker! (buy it cheap HERE; $9!!!) talked about a Chicago scene I’ll never experience and — as it turns out — a band I’ll never experience, and now, goddamn it, I want to at least experience Dead At 24‘s simply disgusting dissection of punk and post-punk (and whatever else) if I can.

And, as always, Mos is right on the money. Blast Off Motherfucker! is to dirty, tonedeaf backward-jangle punk what “Kick Out the Jams” (motherfucker!) was to proto-punk. Not that I see a big future in continuing the legacy of DA24; you’re gonna have to wait another 10 years at least to hear stuff like this outside of the clandestine corners of the indie underground.

There’s a reason for that: BOM-Fucker is not for the weak. (And by “weak” I mean what I think my uncle meant when he called my father “weak” for leaving his religion; as ridiculous a claim as it was, I could see what he meant. He saw himself as strong for sticking to the same ol’ and viewed anyone who dared to step outside of his world “weak.” I mean, living in Modern America, I think a lot of people feel this way on a lot of topics. Let’s have coffee sometime and discuss it!)

Then again, maybe I’m just tooting my own horn (“I’m strong because I LOVE this and most people don’t,” that kind of thing). But I sincerely wish others heard what I hear in outright crudity. I hear not a mess of indistinguishable drill sounds, chanted vocals, slamming drums, squiggle effects, and string-stripping guitars but a Brave New World where musicians can rely fully on their instincts rather than what is construed as Right & Good by pretty much everyone.

That outright crudity I spoke of in the last paragraph? Yeah, it’s all over this LP like the light-muddy brown on its cardboard jacket. There are lights going on and off and speakers getting blown, and yes, at times Blast Off is like Bunny Brains, but simple.

At other times though, it bridges the gap between groups like Half Past Human — who veer just a little too far away from tunes in my estimation — and a ton of indie-rock bands like A Minor Forest and punkers like Eight Bucks Experiment.

I’d go into an in-depth examination of each track but I wouldn’t know where to begin; do I comment on the random intro, the half-assed not-verse, the not-even-invented-yet chorus or the synth-solo-in-reverse?

It’s all too much for me so at this point the best thing I can do is point you in their direction. It’s too bad we missed them the first time around and all, but reissues like this always seem to keep us close to the action.