Red Scare - Then There Were None

It’s Saturday evening and I thought I’d drop in a second post for the night owls out there. Nothing too fancy, or even well-known, but quite the opposite and refreshing from this afternoon’s post of squelching dance beats and electronic plink-plonking. So, let us see what the cat dragged in. Now I have no clue how this gang of Hollywood street urchins ended up so overlooked, an absolute classic piece of Hardcore Punk and Death Rock cross-over. Red Scare were a band from LA between 1982 and 1984, and then briefly again in the late 80’s before vocalist Bobbi Brat’s untimely passing at the age of 26 from cancer in 1988. Bobbi Brat is the standout performer here - she has a hell of a voice that compliments the aforementioned Hardcore Punk and Death Rock cross-over. Well worth investigating for anyone with a taste for underground U.S.A. rock of the era; fans of 45 Grave and/or Legal Weapon will almost certainly dig Red Scare.

Ripped to MP3 @ 320kbps

"One band I wasn’t into during the day but which has achieved almost legendary status is Red Scare.  Formed in 1982, Red Scare was one of the few punk/post-punk bands fronted by a woman, the amazing Bobbi Brat. None of their work is available on iTunes or as yet on Spotify but a few songs have been mercifully uploaded to YouTube from the 1984 album Then There were None. “Mind Inertia” has the zippy rhythm of classic Germs (think “What We Do Is Secret”) coupled with Bobbi’s high, shrieking vocals; this is a good blast of old school Hollywood/LA hardcore. “Don’t Look In the Basement” starts with an atonal, minor key piano noodling, which builds into a harsh, caterwauling music and vocal that sounds a lot like Juju-era Siouxsie and the Banshees. The lyrics draw upon the then-popular strain of horror rock particular to LA and best evidenced by bands like Vox Pop and Castration Squad. “Street Life” starts with an industrial squalling that evokes Throbbing Gristle but is rescued by a classic hardcore bass line that draws the song into its more traditional punk structure.  Still, the lyrics are less strident than on “Mind Inertia”; here Bobbi reminds me a little of Inger Lorre’s later work with the Nymphs. The music sounds amazingly similar to TSOL’s post-hardcore, pre-metal work on their album Change Today? in that it draws on traditional hardcore for its tempo but has a more complex sonic structure that pulls from post-punk influences like early Cure. The title track is a chugging, swirling post-punk confection that again shows influences from everything from Joy Division and Siouxsie to Die Kreuzen and P.I.L. This song really captures the spirit of mid-80’s LA post-punk. Right on its heels is “Flight 007”, which has a slower tempo and a repeating riff that shows how Red Scare could incorporate hard rock/metal influences but still swathe them in swirling post-punk guitar work.

A1 Last Request
A2 Don't Look in the Basement
A3 Mind Inertia
A4 Red Rum
A5 Looking for Why
A6 Then There Were None
B1 Flight 007
B2 Sunny
B3 Anything Goes
B4 (Title in Cyrillic) Way Out West
B5 Street Life