One of the many things that irritates me about much of metal and the fandom these days is that there is quite an air of pseudo intellectualism and pretension. I admit it myself, part of metal's appeal (even the old ass bands your UncleDaddy listens to) is that in order to play well one has to be a pretty solid musician. Speed, harmony, complicated timings and riffs, these are all super cool. But you know what else is cool? Being a goddamn neanderthal and blowing shit up.

The Plasmatics are an old school legendary punk band that play incredibly simplistic, yet powerful and commanding music. There's nothing musically astonishing about anything they do, however I will say that they play with a better melodic foundation and song structure than your average punk band. These are actual songs, entertaining songs even that have distinct parts to them and are not just haphazardly thrown together blurs of sound. The Plasmatics also know enough about scales and pentatonics to let loose some really raunchy and grimy guitar solos.

After a short and unnecessary intro song, Masterplan sets the tone of the album with a count in that goes, "one two, one two, fuck YOU" and the album is off with a bang. Most people know about The Plasmatics through singer Wendy O William's involvement and before we even get to the stage show, her singing voice fits the music to a T. She snarls and screams throughout Masterplan and even conveys a sense of sarcasm as well. Headbanger is a straight ahead ode to front row mayhem that you don't even need to hear to know what it's going to sound like. Things get a little interesting with Summer Nite, a punk cover of the hit song from Grease. Just kidding, Despite the title, this is a mournful song about Wendy and a friend going to a concert and having the friend (boyfriend?) getting jumped by four guys with baseball bats and chains and one of them had a knife and stabbed the shit out of her friend. So, an ambulance comes and takes him away, D.O.A. Following this surprisingly serious lyrical storm comes a few "silly" tracks and / or social commentary songs. Fast Food Service, Sex Junkie, Living Dead, and Nothing all hit that spot of aggressive and hard hitting caveman punk with lyrics dealing with more typical topics. A couple of live tracks are included here, Hitman which is pretty cool, and The Plasma Jam which is an instrumental and also due to the name, this makes me think the band was named after the practice of selling plasma for money. This makes me like them even more.

One can't do a review on The Plasmatics without mentioning their insane on stage antics. They were CBGB stalwarts at one of the sleaziest times in New York City, the early eighties. Part of the band's ethos was to be as shocking as possible and to be constantly pushing the limits and making people uncomfortable. To that end they did things like blow up shit onstage with pyro, chainsaw mannequins, while Wendy would have a giant mohawk and black tape covering her nips while she'd spray paint "FUCK" on a broken, busted car she would later explode. Their shows were just out and out spectacles and lordy I wish I coulda been at just one CBGB's blowout. Another area The Plasmatics excelled at were their cheap low budget videos that had Wendy putting her life in danger performing her own stunts. In the video for The Damned she drives a speeding school bus into a wall of TVs and climbs out to the roof before jumping off right before impact. Hell yea.

The Plasmatics are recommended for those that want aggression and not much else. As stated previously, this is not music to blast at a MENSA meeting while discussing world trade politics and philosophizing. If The Plasmatics were a meal, it would be that 52 oz steak and big ass baked potato those Texas restaurants do. There's no salad bar, there's no artisan bread, there's no delicate dessert pie. Just a heavy slab of angst fueled aggression and whole lot of "fuck you" attitude. I guess that's the potatoes. I actually like to take a piece of steak and dip it in the taters like it's some kind of dip. Especially with loaded baked potatoes.