NAZTI SKINZ
SIC SEMPER TYRANIS (SEVEN-INCH EP)
YOUTH ATTACK RECORDS
Before you get all riled-up, we should tell you that the Nazti Skinz were a joke band—no real-life Nazties or skins knuckling around to take the fun out of things. But before you breathe a sigh of relief, we should also tell you the punch line: for a fuck-off outfit that took itself as seriously as Dick Cheney takes his ability to achieve erection, the Nazties, not long after they broke up in January, left us a record to be reckoned with. As far as we can tell, these ex-members of the most eminently eBay-able punk band to shamble out of Long Beach since Rhino 39 (Le Shok, of course, augmented here by longtime scenester luminaries from Fast Forward and Monorchid) were shooting for a piss-take on bonehead hardcore, the kind of bands that clogged up many a Mystic Records compilation with almost self-parodic blink-and-you-missed-it riffs on society's tendency to suck. But the joke's on them because this single just rips: classic South Bay bands like Black Flag and the Circle Jerks are smeared all over this—mixed with a tiny bit of Red Cross and some of that old-time Bad Religion. Peel the guitars off Jealous Again, that jagged bass off Nervous Breakdown and the lyrical inspiration off every band that cut their hair real damn short (how can we possibly transmit the sheer genius of a song called “Criminal Crime?”), and you'll know right where the Nazties were coming from. The funny thing is that “serious” bands try really hard to put out songs like this but end up just being bad jokes themselves—and the Nazties probably did it all by accident. It's the best argument for not giving a fuck we've heard this week.
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