Legendary Chattanooga punkers The Unsatisfied release a blistering new EP
It isn’t every day I get to write about punk royalty, but today is a good day and The Unsatisfied have released a new EP.
Street Shaman weighs in with four songs; two new, two re-recorded favorites from the nineties, and it is a sonic testament to the fact that one of the longest-running, most respected, most instantly recognizable acts from the region hasn’t lost their edge. To the contrary, the boys are sharper than ever.
While the band may be synonymous with the punk scene, their sound is more complex than that, running the gamut from punk to glam to prog rock to, in their words, “weird.”
I suppose that punk and glam aren’t that far removed from each other, but the prog angle is something else altogether. That combination of elements gives them plenty of room to move creatively and they use it to full effect.
I will admit that for a moment the opening bars of the first track, “Slug,” gave me a bit of a flashback to the first time I ever heard The Damned (on an episode of The Young Ones, of all places.)
That cool bass lick and Scealf’s vocals are pure, uncut '70s vintage. A bit of hi-hat and muted guitar lurk in the background and then...BAM!...the tune explodes and all at once you know what makes this band sound like this band and no other.
See, the one descriptor in the band’s bio I didn’t mention up front is a single word: Southern.To begin with I couldn’t figure out what exactly that was supposed to mean, musically speaking. Even now I can’t effectively describe it, but I know it when I hear it and when “Slug” hits the 18 second mark, it’s like a Jack Daniels bottle to the head. Sure, on paper it, like the prog rock component, seems almost counter-intuitive, but it’s the secret recipe that makes the band who they are; a group that has been consistently popular longer than this region's current wave of hot acts have been alive.
“Terrorist FM” is the second track, another new one, and the repeating and compounding melodic lines along with a non-standard but compelling chord progression reveal some of the deeper musicality of the band.
Wherever the music takes the song, the vocals bring it all back home again as Eric does what he’s best at, and he’s the best at what he does.
Last time I wrote about the band, I joked about the ageless quality of his voice. I’m not joking now. Why in the hell doesn’t this guy get older like the rest of us?
The final two songs, “Angelic Wall” and “White,” are newly recorded versions of Unsatisfied classics. The first two minutes of “Angelic Wall” are achingly gorgeous, reminiscent of the soundtrack from “Until the End of the World,” one of the greatest soundtracks of the nineties.
Just as you’re on the verge of getting carried too far away by the dreamlike quality of the intro, the band kicks in to full ass-kicking mode and releases a torrent of sound and fury that built their reputation in the first place. The dichotomy is brilliant.
The final track is pure industrial and, given its original recording date versus when Nine Inch Nails first achieved any real success, one suspects that Trent Reznor has some Unsatisfied bootlegs hidden in a safe-deposit box somewhere.
You don’t achieve the kind of notoriety, longevity or devoted fans The Unsatisfied has without being a seriously talented bunch of bastards and this EP manages to encapsulate more in four songs than a lesser band could do in a double album.
It’s seriously high-proof stuff and you can sample it now through CD Baby.