Throw Rag - 13 Ft & Rising (CD)

All Music Guide

Hailing from the forsaken desert wilderness of California's Salton Sea, Throw Rag does something that surprisingly few other punk bands do these days: they sound an awful lot like the Dead Kennedys, circa 1980. Where most purveyors of nonmetal heavy music these days refer to themselves as "posthardcore," these guys are very definitely prehardcore. Listen to "Lil' Danny" and ask yourself how much it reminds you of "Police Truck", and check out the twisted cowpunk saga "So. 5th St. (Country in O.G.)" and picture the Pogues if Shane MacGowan had grown up in the Imperial Valley. It fits, doesn't it? The funny thing is that Throw Rag started out as an insane acoustic psychobilly outfit, and have gradually (over the course of eight years) turned into the sort of weirdoprehardcore monstrosity capable of attracting on its first album, mind you guest appearances from the likes of Jello Biafra (whose antiestablishment hysteria is starting to sound a bit tired, if you want to know the truth), f...ormer Black Flag/Circle Jerks frontman Keith Morris and the stillgodlike Lemmy Kilmister. Unfortunately, not even Lemmy can save the band's illconsidered misappropriation of homeboy Merle Haggard's "Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down", but the originals are all good, whackedout fun. Recommended to anyone who doesn't care about the state of his or her immortal soul. - Rick Anderson, All Music Guide Read more Less