12 January 2010

SOCIAL ABUSE


SOCIAL ABUSE came from Falkirk, which is somewhere northish of Edinburgh, and they are punk as fucking shit.  They rely almost exclusively on the plodding floor tom heavy mid tempo UK punk beat, which is completely fine by me, but it's the vocals that make this six song demo totally indispensable... strained and insistent in the way that only a teenager can really be.  The songs are rudimentary and rather monotonous (this is a good thing) but well played, and fueled by the vocals there are some incredibly catchy bits on this tape.  "Society's Prisoner" gets my vote for punkest tune of the lot, with it's long winded howl "Did you have a nice day at the office deeeaaaarr?" while the band lumbers through the two notes that make up the entire song.  Yeah, it's brilliant.  This is from 82 or 83 (I think), and I don't believe they released anything other than this tape, so dig in.

9 comments:

Henk said...

just my cup of tea. thanks!

living in the 80s said...

omfg!! what an incredible sound!!
what an incredible voice in "soldier"
i have listen the demo around 10 times this night!!!
thanx a lot for this, never heard of them! thanx!!!

salute!!

P.D.: and what an incredible blog is this!! thanx again

livibng in the 80s said...

!!!!!!
i need the lyrics of "soldier" nowww
wanna do a cover with my band...hahaha

the wizard said...

i agree, i think the dude's voice is out of control!
i like this demo even more after listening on the bus ride home...thanks for the kind words all....

the wizard said...

ok...i just called on an expert. SOCIAL ABUSE were a very active part of the Central Scotland scene in the early 80s. my friend suggests that they perhaps played only a handful of gigs, and were "a bit older," which really just means that they might have been late teenagers, and that the singer "had his own flat." this probably seems pretty adult to a 15 year old from Edinburgh. The singer also had a song dedicated to him on a live POLITICAL ASYLUM cassette...which may have been their only claim to worldwide fame other than this demo.
these statements are all hearsay, but they were heard to be said by a dude who saw SOCAIL ABUSE and considered them his mates...so there you go. mystery not solved!

Henk said...

http://falkirkmusicscene.co.uk/socialabuse.html

the wizard said...

yep, I was going to link to the same site (it's really the only thing that comes up on a web search), but the band member info it contained did not synch with my friend's recollections so I opted for a firsthand account.
regardless, the falkirk site has an insane number of bands, from ALL genres, dating back for ages. easy to get lost there!
cheers...

SLAUGHTER OF INNOCENTS said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Henk said...

SLAUGHTER OF INNOCENTS <------- Buy him a beer from me if he find it.