There's a point late in the 1971 crime film Dirty Harry -- let's say around Act 4 -- where Scorpio goes out to some abandoned industrial site on the outskirts of San Francisco and pays some guy two hundred bucks to beat the everliving crap out of him. The guy takes the money -- and counts it! As if Scorpio being ten or twenty short wouldn't buy quite the deluxe junkyard package that had been bargained for. And they weren't even mad at one another. Toward the end of the appointment, Scorpio (apparently out of money) deals out a fairly pedestrian pigment oriented imprecation that earns him a backward impression of the words "Red Wing Boot Company" in his sternum, but really, that was done almost out of pity.
I think from our vantage point here in 2013 we can conclude with some degree of confidence that Scorpio had some (how might one say it?) "issues" with his (for lack of a better word) "personality." Director Don Siegel laced the film with subtle suggestions of this, for example, where Scorpio hijacked a school bus and told the children he would kill them if they stopped singing, but the most obvious sign is, again, paying two hundred 1971 US dollars to get his own ass beat. Frankly, the notion of this interferes with my ability to suspend disbelief.
What the hell is the point of all this? The point is, do you have eight bucks? Because if you do, then I invite you to go to the Don Giovanni Records online store and download Order of the New Age, the new album from Brooklyn (via Cleveland) punk trio Nuclear Santa Claust. That's right. For eight measly 2013 simoleons, this album will deliver every bit the asswhipping Scorpio got, and leave enough change for some rudimentary dental repair. The opening bass line of the first song sounds like Mike Tyson on a speedbag, and over the course of 12 songs, the abuse doesn't let up. Consider the sixth track, "Government Issued Acid Trip":
This is very old school sound to me. The staccato vocal style reminds me of some of the foundational NYC punk bands of the late 70s. The aggressively heavy instrumentation takes me back to that early-to-mid 80s Chicago sound associated with Naked Raygun (think early songs like "Potential Rapist" and "Rat Patrol"). And it's hard for me to think of higher praise for a punk band than to compare it to Raygun.
This record was released last month, and marks another excellent effort brought to us by the good folks at Don Giovanni (California X, Laura Stevenson, Screaming Females). Check out the last song, "Since I Woke Up (Berlin Wall)", with a ripping lead at the end of each verse. It's a firstrate sonic beatdown done efficiently and brutally.
Nuclear Santa Claust at Bandcamp / Soundcloud / Facebook.
Don Giovanni Records
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