Perfect Album Vol 1

From A Look At Tomorrow blog (alookattomorrow.blogspot.com)

"perfect
• adjective /perfikt/ 1 having all the required elements, qualities, or characteristics. 2 free from any flaw; faultless. 3 complete; absolute: it made perfect sense."


"I work at a job that requires very little thinking and a lot of sitting. Because of this I make a lot of lists to keep myself busy. "Classic" or "essential" albums can change and are always open to argument but "perfect" ones are purely subjective. This might not make sense to you but it does to me and that's what matters.
After a full shift of brainstorming I managed to come up with about 20 albums give or take that I deem to be flawless. I wouldn't change the artwork, I wouldn't make something quiter and something louder and I wouldn't take out a song or even a riff. In order to be considered for the list I worked out two rules for myself:
1) I can't have heard the album for the first time less than 2 years ago. This means that I can't look really cool by declaring something totally underground that I just downloaded from 7inchpunk or Soulseek "perfect."
2) The album can't have been released less than 5 years ago. 10 years ago is even better. Let's face it, people make a lot of claims to convince someone how good something is. Usually they're wrong. Plus music needs to age like a fine wine."





Makes sense to me too, seems simple enough. While I am firmly of the opinion that "Damaged" is the BEST album of all time, it's not perfect. Unfortunately our heroes decided to include what should have been a B-Side at best (TV Party). While this may have been excusable, 25 years of poseurs and try-hards saying that it's the best Flag song have made it unbearable. While some might call this needless nit-picking, it proves that the best need not be perfect.

Enough bullshit(don't you wish!), at Tyson's (the author of A Look At Tomorrow) request, I'll attempt to spoil the broth.




SUBHUMANS-THE DAY THE COUNTRY DIED LP (SPIDERLEG/BLUURG 19@T2)

When I was younger, I sorta passed on these guys . It must have had something to do with seeing some 90s punk explosion kids with SUBHUMANS next to EXPLOITED and the CLASH on their jackets. However sometime later I decided to give it a chance, eating my hat in the process. This record is everything that you could possibly want from a punk album.

Musically it's extremely original without falling victim to the "expanding horizons" of the dregs of the anarcho scene. It's planted firmly in punk, yet not afraid to throw bass noodleing, spoken word, drum rolls and guitar weirdness around. It's seething anger, melodic, short, memorable and loud. A lot of the UK bands were either playing standard 1-2 street punk or just completely going off the wall in attempts to out do each other. This takes the best parts of both of those, mixes them together and creates a sound unlike any other. At least until Instigators totally ripped the whole thing.

Lyrically it's nothing short of genius. Extremely political, never overly dogmatic or knee-jerk leftist like so much UK peace punk stuff. Not afraid to throw criticism at the clueless politicos or glue-headers. There is a sinister sense of humor and atmospheric presence to the lyrics, similar perhaps to the shinning moment of DEAD KENNEDYS(but not as silly). This is almost, for lack of better(or less abused) terminology a theme album. While DISCHARGE were screaming about how the bomb's gonna fall, SUBHUMANS were asking what's gonna happen next. While CONFLICT were screaming about
how the system's got to be overthrown, SUBHUMANS were asking the same question. This is not meant to be a slight against either of those bands, as they are essentially perfect themselves, but rather to illustrate that there was extreme care being placed in the lyrics.

The Day the Country Died is perfection.
Me=No Apologies.
You=No Excuses.

"It's 1984,
and there's gonna be a war"