The Only Good Punk Is A Dead One

One of the first releases on the Peaceville label, this was also the first album by England's Electro Hippies. They played an eccentric, hard-to-pin-down style of political crossover punk metal with odd, yelping vocals, at times branched off into proto-grindcore ("Run Ronald," "Scum"), at others veering into classic heavy metal turf, like on the shuffling Sabbath-isms that briefly pop on "B.P." and "Things of Beauty." All but four of the songs on the original 20-song album clock in at less than two minutes, with nine coming in at under one minute, and the pace is consistently fast, but there are a few breaks and variations, which help keep the flow from getting too monotonous. Worth noting is that the 2002 CD reissue of this album (whose title is abbreviated to simply The Only Good Punk) contains 20 bonus tracks, including six tracks taken from compilation album, and 14 songs taken from a 1989 live recording (simply entitled Electro Hippies Live). A "highlight" of these live tracks is the half-second-long "Mega Armageddon Death" and the five-second "extended remix," showing off the band's sarcastic sense of humor, as well as staking their claim to "world's shortest song" honors (with the possible exception of Napalm Death's "You Suffer"). ~ William York