First up is the brilliantly primitive 1982 demo from CHRONIC OUTBURSTS, four songs of haphazard UK punk with comedically gruff vocals and a torturously deliberate tempo that struggles to maintain its composure. "Religion Is A Con" is clearly the star on this tape, the chorus lurches into gear and for a moment you think they are about to unleash...until they don't. Dark dreary distorted punk, the way we like it.
And because I like you, here's a double shot of this rough shit: CHRONIC OUTBURSTS live and raw, playing three songs from the demo and eight others that never got a proper release (though I might be corrected on this point, it is a sad fact that I am sometimes wrong and/or ill informed). "Organized Chaos" and "Sgt. Barker" are my favorites from this set, though that might be simply because they are faster numbers, and if there is one complaint I have about CHRONIC OUTBURSTS it would be that their mid-tempo pace gets a touch drab after a while. This band probably didn't change anyone's life, and these tracks nearly 30 years later are probably not going to blow your mind, but it's solid UK punk, and a great document of one of hundreds of bands that sprouted up during punk's second wave. Many of those bands faded away into complete anonymity, but this one didn't.
2 comments:
Potted histoy of the Outbursts, they came from a sleepy little town in Bedfordshire, called Leighton Buzzard (LB). Most of the punks in the town played a part in the formation of the band, name check here ... Mad Dave (RIP) drums, Trogg vocals (originally Normski), and a myriad of guitarists/bass players names escape me. Mad Dave was the driving force behind the band with an unconventional way of drumming. When Subhumans played the town they were support along with another band from the town called The Absconded (the Fruit Machine Barmy Army were their followers) who were an Oi band. There were other bands from the town, Straight Corners, DV8 among them, I can't remember the names of all of them. Of course I've also got to mention that shit band Kajagoogoo and the even shittier Barron Knights. Interestingly the LB punks were big followers of UK Decay from Luton which is about 15 miles from LB and are name checked on a couple of UK Decay's single as LU7 PX (LU7 is part of the postcode Of LB) I believe Mad Dave is also named checked on their first album. The music scene was different then, every town had a punk band, some good some fucking awful, the Outbursts may not of been the best but the few gigs they played were memorable.
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