Fear - A hardcore scandal

“I wanna fuck you to death/ piss on your waning grace/ I just wanna come in your face/ I’ don’t care if you are dead” ("Fresh Flesh"). That's how Lee Ving introduced himself in 1982 with his Los Angeles outfit Fear, who among the handful of American hardcore bands of the era (Germs, Circle Jerks, Bad Religion, Bad Brains, Adolescents, Husker Du, Black Flag) were the least orthodox and ultimately the least hardcore, yet (ideologically speaking) the most punk. Musically, Fear (mirroring, albeit more fleetingly, what the Minutemen were doing) did to hardcore what the Clash had done to punk. Fear took the sonic "live fast and die young" creed, along with the speed and violence intrinsic to hardcore, and slotted them into performance schemes typical of jazz or folk. Fear are the one true, if sometimes overrated, father of Faith No More, having practically invented their "crossover" sound. Faith No More copied Fear in almost every respect. The Pixies, on the other hand, would take from Fear only the idea of re-signifying hardcore, varying and refining the way to do it; and they picked it up at second hand, after Mission of Burma first and Husker Du later had already made use of it, injecting pop into hardcore and treating that move as the genre's only means of survival.

Fear can be counted among those magical "only one album" bands capable of revolutionising or inventing a genre with a single record (to varying degrees): Sex Pistols, Germs, Adolescents, Mission of Burma, Squirrel Bait. Before arriving at this, effectively their only album, the Los Angeles band had to put in a hefty apprenticeship: dating back at least to 1978. And the scenes they played were among the most degraded and squalid imaginable. But for Fear, surviving in that context wasn't purely a matter of opposition or revolution: Fear didn't want to change things; instead, through tragic sarcasm (which can be seen as both their strength and their weakness) they stripped things of their weight and importance, and so made them bearable. Hence the mocking lightness of the jazz formula, set against hardcore's apocalyptic solemnity; and hence too a certain escapist strain of punk, sing-song and consoling - as in some Descendents or even Misfits tracks - bordering on mediocrity. Fear are alienated and bleakly tragic figures, yet they possess a (deliberate, and therefore fake) idiocy that saved them from self-destruction: and that's the secret weapon of their fake, or masked, hardcore.

Fear's album The Record (Slash, 1982) runs 27 minutes and contains 14 tracks. It's 20 years old, but it sounds like it was made today. Let's start with the more routine tracks. "Let's Have a War" explodes straight into a lysergic clatter propelled by an epically thuggish voice, alternating mumbled crescendos with near-falsetto flights of fancy. "Beef Bologna", after a demented, Zappa-esque stall, kicks off with a brisk, sing-song Germs-style hardcore that's fairly self-contained, though ennobled by an impressive, tightly concentrated run of guitar distortion. The rhythm section is almost as innovative as that of the Rolling Stones: syncopated, assertive, metal-jazz.

"New York's Alright If You Like Saxophones" glides on sax runs over the uncivil civic life of the metropolis. Innovative for its time (it does for hardcore what Zappa did for Merseybeat), it nonetheless indulges in a degree of rhetorical excess. "Gimme Some Action" is a minute of Circle Jerks-style missile fire, though not a cathartic one.

"We Destroy the Family", despite its title, is the album's most "subdued" and experimental track: a carpet of jazzed-up ethnic tribalism, barely spurred on by Lee Ving's warm, hoarse, thuggish voice.

"Disconnected" is Velvet Underground-style noise alternating with bursts of speed, its warning cry being "fuck religion". "We Gotta Get Out of This Place" basks in a thoroughly rational idiocy à la Captain Beefheart: it comes across as proto-punk. The step forward taken by Fear lies precisely in this return to late-60s proto-punk: it would be Faith No More who ferried it definitively towards what was no longer implosion but explosion - the grunge sound of the '90s.

"Getting the Brush" lingers in a distorted, self-referential sobbing, like cardiac arrest, a requiem, or a flat ECG line. "No More Nothing" is the closing track, a small hymn to a considered nihilism. Ving's syrupy, deep, powerful, devastated voice serves a final sing-song refrain.

Now for the masterpieces. "Camarillo" explodes into a mid-Latin hardcore (broken up by a Lusitanian guitar riff) that ultimately dissolves into a moment of moving precision, itself preceded by a tremendously powerful drum roll. One minute in total.

"I Don't Care About You (Fuck You)" is Fear's spiritual testament, and it earns its place through the violently blues-inflected backing, at times shot through with grunge intervals, given to the manifesto phrase of the title. "Foreign Policy" is already a full-blown Faith No More-era track: its sound is at least a decade ahead of its contemporaries, built on a grunge-style quiet-loud dynamic (cliff-edge then suspension). The band reaches dizzying heights of musicianship: it sounds like a chamber ensemble - albeit a hardcore one.

"I Love Live in the City" is the self-referential hymn to devastating metropolitan life ("people die on the street and I love live in the city"), and this time it works perfectly: a swift hit-and-run, then a galactic guitar solo, and finally Ving's cathartic roar. "Fresh Flesh" is the bestial, Oedipal, ritual summons back to a state of nature that is nothing other than the city in its degraded state: half hardcore, half noise.

In 1985 came More Beer, in 1995 Have Another Beer, and in 2001 American Beer, but by then the band had already accomplished its mission.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google