90's Hit Parade #82

Killdozer - Peach Pie

I would like to take this opportunity to suggest an adjustment to the canon of 80's/90's noise rock: Killdozer over the Melvins. I understand the attention The Melvins get due to their geographic significance, but hear me out. The two bands have similar sounds (loud, slow, sludgey, Black Sabbath as filtered through Flipper), and came about around the same time. Like The Melvins, Killdozer don't really have much to offer in the way of songwriting, just the unbelievable power of their sound. But I'll give a slight advantage to Killdozer, because they're funny.* They called it quits, or at least went into hibernation, sometime around 1990, then emerged a few years later with a new communist schtick, releasing this album, Uncompromising War on Art Under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat (with faux soviet propaganda cover art and liner notes explaining how each song relates to the struggle of the working class). Their sound was stronger than ever, and contrary to what I just wrote a few sentences ago, they had some actual songs (see the example in the video posted above: "The Pig was Cool").

"Peach Pie" (embedded audio above) is a beautiful distillation of early heavy metal through a skronk-punk filter. Massive guitar chords ring out over a brontosaur plod of a drum beat, Blue Cheer heavy leads come in to fill the empty spaces, they speed up a bit for a jam when the guitar solo comes around. One wishes they'd gone a little heavier on the feedback (oh, to have seen this performed live!), but other than that, this hits the sweet spot.

Bonus beat: from 1988, their funniest song:



*And I'm not trying to knock The Melvins here. I saw them open for GWAR (a perfect bill, huh?), and they were fucking amazing. Maybe being constricted by the opening slot worked to their advantage. I heard plenty of horror stories about the monotony of their headlining sets, including the infamous 1991 40 Watt show where they played one chord for 30 minutes.