Monocled Alchemist

vintage music press reviews

CHARGED GBH ‘City Baby Attacked By Rats’ (Clay CLAY LP 4)***** | NO APOLOGIES to Waller for the ‘extravagant’ five star rating. Any lover of Noise, and I do mean Total Noise, will find this outrageously over the top collection of bludgeon bop a joy to destroy brain cells to.

No doubt about it, GBH are the punk’s answer to Motorhead. No pretentions, no niceties — this is heads-down no nonsense mindless cacophony from the word go.

Punk? HM? Nothing so tidy. Taken to their extremes, the difference is only a haircut. It’s like discussing the finer points of different makes of land mines. The end result is the same, and don’t this office know it!

“God what a horrible ghastly din,” sneers La Belle Millar, “about as much fun as subbing a Don Dokken feature.” While Big Dave Lewis covers his ears and pronounces it “just a row, musical subtitles for the deaf.”

Charged GBH | City Baby Attacked By Rats | (Clay) 1982

Translation: Thirteen tracks of high-energy hardcore racket. Sometimes numbers start with a gutsy guitar figure, sometimes with a pounding drum, sometimes with a stomping build-up and once with a ticking time bomb.

Sometimes the chorus goes “Shit”, sometimes “Maniac”. Always the song ends up a raging 100mph “Yeeearghh”. Or, in the case of the twice as long piece-de-resistance ‘Bellend Bop’, Yeeeeaaarrrggh”.

This is the sort of music the pogo was invented for, and one thing you won’t be able to do to it is sit down to it. You’ll either hurl yourself around the room, throw things at the turntable or run like hell.

Charged GBH | City Baby Attacked By Rats | (Clay) 1982

True connoisseurs of GBH‘s crude clarion calls will know already that the band’s roots lie more with the musical riots of early Damned and Slaughter than the less chaotic though equally skull-crushing roar of the Lemming (a small but important distinction).

This album is Slaughter cranked up even higher, and GBH acknowledge their roots with an awesome rendition of the demonic Dogs’ ‘Boston Babies’.

Like their predecessors, our bludgeoning Brummie heroes also maintain a neat sense of humour. Check out ‘Sick Boy’ (the only previously available track here, and even this is a new, better version), ‘Passenger On The Menu’ or the elongated romp ‘Bellend Bop’ which is littered with tearaway guitar and just doesn’t want to stop.

And when it does it segues into a rather odd singsong of “I wish I had a willie” which is the Prime Minister’s thought in Attila’s outrageous ‘Willie Whitelaw’s Willie’, but I digress . . .

My only regret about this whole aural overkill avalanche is the absence of the band’s anthem and manifesto‘Big Women’, though when I manage to decipher the lyrics of‘Heavy Discipline’, I don’t reckon I’ll be disappointed. Hit me with your rhythm stick — yeehaw. (Sounds 31/07/82)

Oh my poor ears! Readers have pity. Your favourite journalist has just undergone 40 minutes of pure hell. The aptly named GBH had me cowering in my bedroom, cotton wool stuffed in my ears, hands twitching nervously as they contemplated the total destruction of my record player. But I survived.

GBH take the bare minimalism of the Ramones, the crazy noise of Motorhead and the lyrical twist of J. Pursey, to produce a wall of sound that’s as fast as a premature ejaculation and about as pleasing as piles.

Still, as I write said group have shot into the LP chart, so there must be somebody out there who likes this earache. On investigation, I find little here to please the listener, unless he/she is a gibbering psycho or a construction manager searching for music to drill roads with.

The song titles “Sickboy”, “Slut”, “Maniac”, “Gunned Down” tell the story, GBH’s is a world peopled by sick cartoon characters, mindless violence, mysogyny and dumb “all right with the boys” bravado.

The playing lacks style, grace (though I expect GBH would regard this as a compliment) and panache. Playing fast and loud, doesn’t necessarily mean threat and aggression, more often than not it is simply a substitute for lack of ideas.

I believe GBH are from Birmingham – that is their only excuse. * (Record Mirror, 07/08/82) 

City Baby Attacked By Rats (Clay)

“Perpetual torture from those we love to hate.”

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY rocks the GBH war cry as yet another crass compendium of punky gobbledygook strains against the shaky low-fi. Just a minute . . . how’s about the ‘innocent until proven guilty’ bullshit? Alright. Charged GBH. How do you plead?

“There’s only one place where you can rock. Come on let’s go dancing down at the bellend bop.”

It would seem, your honour, that old Lurkers’ riffs never die. They just get assimilated into the stained refrains of the Subs/Slaughter/SLF genre for this blander blast of nonsense called GBH. Continue please.

“There’s no escape from this social rape. You’ve gotta pay for being young today.”

I believe this is an example of a phenomenon commonly diagnosed as ‘Heavy punk discipline’, m’Iord. Chapter 653 states quite distinctly that the obligatory ten-a-penny social commentaries must be stressed beneath a characteristic aural rape.

“We’re a bunch of desperados, a brave and fearless crew.”

Objection, your honour. Desperate is the correct descriptive element in the prosecution’s view. They’re obviously just another bunch of dados pushing a duff sex and tough violence ticket.

Objection sustained.

“Your brain is getting eaten away by the rat living in your skull.”

Point of order: it is not George Orwell being charged for GBH.

“So I’ve failed in my quest of crime, my one and only vice.”

Charged with GBH is nothing to be proud of. It’s not the sort of thing decent folk want on record.

“I’m strapped into my bed. I’ve got electrodes in my head. I’m a sick boy and there’s no cure.”

Pleading diminished responsibility will not aid in avoiding the true course of justice. Sick boys like you ought to be sent down, and not spared.

“I wanted you ‘cos of your bust. And now I want a night of lust.”

Sicker, boys, sicker.

“There were people dressed as Batman, they really looked a mess. Then to my amazement I found it was a fancy dress.”

Contempt of court is not advisable. This situation is becoming increasingly farcical, your worship. The prosecution demands a verdict of guilty on all counts.

VERDICT: GUILTY.

Has the defence anything to say before sentence is passed?

“Boston baby, Boston baby walking down the street.”

Where have all the boot boys gone? They’re here kicking the shit out of old Slaughter songs, your honour.

JUDGE’S COMMENT:

There was a time when the act of releasing an atrocity like ‘City Baby Attacked By Rats’ would have warranted a hanging . . . as it is GBH deserve leniency (a suspended sentence?) for the undeniable sense of naivete that courses through this product. When Clay Records — the home of Discharge—reveal the blueprints for GBH’s next LP, there is no doubt in my mind that we’ll hear saxes and synths bleeping and wailing the cliche blues away, but ‘City Baby . . . ‘ is just criminal. (NME, 16/10/82)