Not particularly angry and definitely not from Samoa, the Angry Samoans were hardcore’s greatest crack-ups, singing about finding Adolf Hitler’s cock under a rock, drinking toilet water, and poking your eyes out with a fork because it’s the latest teen fad. Don’t try this at home, kids.
Fronted by two former rock scribes (“Metal Mike” Saunders and Gregg Turner) the Angry Samoans had both the sarcastic smarts and musical chops to put them near the top of the hardcore heap, but they’ve never gotten their fair due because, like the Dictators before them, they were too fond of a good joke to be taken seriously by their respective audiences.
You pay a price for playing with a friendly smirk when everyone around you is dead serious. The Dictators rubbed elbows with Patti Smith and Television, the Angry Samoans with the likes of Minor Threat, SS Decontrol, and TSOL. The old adage (slightly altered) of baseball’s Leo Durocher is true–funny guys finish last.
On their 1982 full-length debut Back from Samoa the band thrash out 14 songs in less than eighteen minutes, obviously in a hurry to outrage the listening public before the good folks at Triple X Records (or the cops) could burst into the studio and destroy the tapes. The Village Voice’s Robert Christgau called Back from Samoa “the most offensive album I’ve ever liked,” adding, “almost every one (of its songs) ‘give me a laugh.” I couldn’t agree more.
The Angry Samoans played a before-its-time metal-hardcore hybrid that lent them both muscle and velocity, which was probably due to Saunders and Turner having been writing about heavy metal when most of their hardcore peers were in kindergarten. When it came to attitude, they fit the angry punk mold, but they were far too smart, cynical, and self-amused to take any of its tenets seriously.
When Christgau calls Back from Samoa the most offensive album he’s ever liked he speaks the truth, particularly when it comes to such songs as the get-out-of-the-closet “Homo-Sexual” and “The Ballad of Jerry Curlan,” which should offend all sentient beings with such inspired passages as “Pukes through his nose drinks toilet water!!!/Sucks his mother’s asshole licks his sister’s pussy!!/Buttfucks his father buttfucks his brother/Sucks dog dick sucks horsey dick is a queer!!!” The song goes so for over the top it’s breathtaking, but despite the better angels of my nature I laugh every time.
The best of the songs on Back from Samoa include the teen fad parody “Lights Out” (“Everything looks better when the world is black/Grab a fork, make the first attack/Lights out!/Poke poke, poke your eyes out!”) and “I Saved Hitler’s Cock,” which plumbs the depths of absurdity with such lines as “If Hitler’s cock could choose its mate/It would ask for Sharon Tate” and “Hitler’s cock is on the loose/And now I’m scared of what it can do!”
Other classics include “My Old Man’s a Fatso,” a teenage lament along the lines of the Beastie Boys’ “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!).” “My old man’s a fatso,” they sing, “He’s got a potbelly for a mouth/Baby my old man’s a fatso/But you know he owns this house.” And then there’s “You Stupid Jerk,” which clocks in at a succinct 23 seconds but rivals anything by early Black Flag. “Gas Chamber” is the Stooges “No Fun” ramped up to 1,000 miles per hour. Bottom line: “I’m in my room/All the time/I’m trapped inside/This fucking mind!/No action/No no!”
Two final mentions. “Not of This Earth” has something to do with killing a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman and putting his head in a milk bottle, while “Time Has Come Today” is indeed a cover of the Chambers Brothers classic and the only song on Back from Samoa that goes full metal. It even comes complete with an honest to god guitar solo.
Back from Samoa isn’t for everyone and probably shouldn’t be for anyone, But there’s dumb offensive (think the Mentors) and smart offensive, and anyone who could come up with “Lights Out” isn’t an F student. I’ve always preferred bands who make me laugh to those who don’t, which is why I’ll take the Angry Samoans over 99 percent of the hardcore bands of the early eighties. In bad taste, most definitely. Good unclean fun, for sure. And the fact they could play like motherfuckers doesn’t hurt. Now excuse while I go find a fork. Have to keep up with the kids, you know?
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
