Lowlife – “Stranded On Retard Island”
Lowlife is a song off Public Image Limited’s first album, which was Johnny Rotten’s band after The Sex Pistols- meaning they were almost as important as Barry White’s Love Unlimited Orchestra.
A lowlife is a person of disreputable means, while a highlife is a person of corporate mergers and blood sucking greed who will gladly sell his grandma into sex slavery for a few extra bucks while accepting proclamations of his grandness from the masses.
I guess I haven’t talked about the band yet, let alone the CD.
I can tell you I saw them play once at The Blood Clinic in Providence, an actual blood clinic where they sometimes have shows. I left the Saturday Midway Matinee to drive to Providence, already stopping once to pee at a Dunkin’ Donuts; I purchased a coffee there but then had to go again.
I pull off an exit, duck into a closed bank parking lot where they say they have surveillance cameras, ditch the coffee and relieve myself into the plastic cup. (Wondering if the cameras were picking up on this).
I drive safely to the Blood Clinic with my piss sample safely secured in my cup holder beside me. I park in a mini-mall parking lot across the street, next to a McDonalds where some lady is yelping, “Call 911, call 911, he’s not breathing, someone help.”So someone is O.D.-ing in the McDonalds parking lot and I think to help but I really don’t know where the fuck I am in Providence, just somewhere in Providence with a clean piss sample. I think of giving it to the lady of the O.D. victim, you never know, it could come in help.
I head toward the building where a taco truck is perched outside. I eat one, of course. I go in to get a beer from the make-shift bar. They have no change so you get another beer on credit. And the bathroom door doesn’t lock so you have to keep one foot on the door to keep it closed.
I still haven’t talked about Lowlife, have I?
So a two man koo-koo experimental band is playing, (they have a name but I don’t think“bands” with two people deserve names, should be named like Horace and his friend Marvin, or some-such) and their music is making me wish I was O.D.-ing in the McDonalds parking lot instead of listening here. They sounded a little like this.
But then The Red Line Rebels who are great play but no one comes inside. There’s only three people, I’m moshing with Little Red Ryann Hood who is probably only a hundred pounds and the only one I know I can safely mosh with. I guard the bathroom door while she pees and get silly string shot into my eyes during “Snot Rocket”their progressive/techno/fusion song.
People finally saunter in after their set and it turns out the lady I noticed earlier, with the Chihuahua and halter top is a prostitute who banged her car into the owner’s sister’s car outside in the parking lot and the police came and that’s why everyone else was outside.
Lowlife would never write a review like this, as probably no one else would either, because they are a straight ahead, intense, screaming hardcore band that pulls your entrails up through your stomach, out through your throat and then smashes them-hard against the wall. Hard hitting, no bull-shitting, vicious, thrash’n’core. “Having babies, let’s perpetuate/ Living a life that you hate/ Let’s do it again, angel/ Let’s do it again.
[audio:https://www.thrashnbang.com/wp-content/music/01 – Cesspool City.mp3|titles=Cesspool City]
“Dead Idiot” has lots of stops and starts and the beat is full of intensity- “Fuck your life, you wasted it. Drunk, drugged, loser fuck.” It questions our idolatry of fame and should we worship Thrash N Bang quite so much.
[audio:https://www.thrashnbang.com/wp-content/music/05 – Dead Idiot.mp3|titles=Dead Idiot]
Are we reviewing the Lowlife CD yet? Oh, yes, it appears we are!
“Lavaswim Marathon,”opens with one sustained chord and maybe a few more tossed in, then we’re off on a relentless beat with a scream that sounds like the singers spleen is being extracted. Guitars are growling, basses are bashing and the vocals are regurgitating bile and disgust all over your nice clean speakers. “And I hope you hate yourself as much as I hate you/ And I know you do.”
[audio:https://www.thrashnbang.com/wp-content/music/06 – Lavaswim Marathon.mp3|titles=Lavaswim Marathon]
A couple of nice guitar licks, a moderately fast beat and then we’re thrown into the onslaught again. Changing rhythms, rolling drums, angry, insinuating vocals; theydescribe their style as “punk/thrash/pissed off’ and that sounds about right. Some more love lyrics: “I wish I’d tear your eye out/ I wish you fucking died/ Then maybe I’d give a shit about your horrible life.”
[audio:https://www.thrashnbang.com/wp-content/music/08 – Blowhole.mp3|titles=Blowhole]
Lowlife is a bunch of honest, passionate, hardcore thrashin’ punks with truthful, unflinching lyrics that should hit a light-bulb in your mind while the music is sending anelectrical shock up your spine. I’ve told my funny story, my little “ha ha ha”but peer inside these tracks and the real passion and substance and yes, art, is there for your observance and pleasure and it will be there no matter what I say.
Enjoy. Barry wants you to.
(Slimedog)
