THE BLACK HALOS
The Violent Years (Sub Pop)
Reviewed by Holly Day

---

Cool, retro, noisy, garage punk rock drawing heavily on the foundation the Ramones and the New York Dolls laid down, with lots of big cock attitude and awesome, sloppy lead guitar that barely stretches past the three-chord limit of these songs. The songs are fun to listen to, but it's sometimes hard to tell one song from the next, they're so similar (excluding the notable cover of Joy Division's "Warsaw," which is, to be honest, an awfully hard song to fuck up), and even have similar themes running through them, most notably, the idea that "the underground isn't the underground any more" and numerous references to people selling out, almost as if these songs are the bitter, sarcastic answer to the questions of identity and culture posed by the first generation of punk rock.

© 2001 - Holly Day