Start playing guitar How to choose a guitar for beginners?
Alt Reviews

Punk as radical honesty: Bad Buzz and The Slime reviewed for Alt77

Bad Buzz and The Slime

The Slime – Circling

Did the original rock bands know what they were doing when they were wasting perfectly good nouns on naming some of their lousy, lazy beat groups? Even the Beatles opted to go for a misspelling. Rock may not have been deemed worthy of too long life expectancy, but decades on, all the good names are taken. 

It takes brilliance and a fair deal of luck to end up with a short, concise, correctly spelt name in this day and age. Take our website for example. Had we waited a few more months and we would have to resort to adding a few more 7s to the moniker. Imagine selling merch with a name that looks like a European license plate.

One group that has inexplicably fallen upon a glorious group name, and one that summarizes their sound to boot, is the Slime. They make punishing, noisy punk-rock that sounds like cops metronomically beating batons on your skull. The band is passionate, wet behind the ears. And, because of that, their variety of thrash-punk is a real treat to hear. 


Bad Buzz – A Million Things

I grew up around very entertaining neighbourhoods. Conservative wisdom would label these as bad. It wasn’t just the criminal element, it was also the lack of ambition. Poverty, you see, seems to beat people down one way or another. I quite enjoyed the company of those people though, albeit never felt I wanted to mirror their behaviour. 

Role models are hard to come by, and reasons to feel depressed are a dime a dozen. Rock music often mines this for personal gain. After all, most young songwriters will begin their careers by writing songs of self-loathing. Rock stars parade around as elegantly wasted, too-cool-to-care cartoons. 

That’s why I try not to buy into cynicism anymore and treasure a find like Bad Buzz. Contrary to their name, this rock band has a lot of soul, a good deal of hope, and even nascent romanticism that they do not hide behind their earnest punk rock. They play like a band that could open for any of the great pop-punk bands of the 90s, but they sound too nice and determined to ever become as fat and bloated as those professional screw-ups. 

Related posts
7.8
Alt Reviews

SONIC BOMB and Mapache Reviewed

8.0
Alt Reviews

The Shattered Mind Machine and Jim Lomonaco Reviewed

Album ReviewsAlt Reviews

Bilardo - “Tarpaulin” Review

8.0
Alt Reviews

Chac Xol and Who Killed James Reviewed

Be part of the Alt77 community

Leave a Reply