Mung

Vow of Poverty (Big Rig)
by Joshua Brown

This has gotta be the best punk rock record to come out of Boston since Rabid Reaction by the Freeze. Not since then have I heard so much honesty and emotion poured into one album. What makes Mung work so well is that they unite the hookiness of Naked Raygun (though probably unintentionally) with the fundamentals of stripped-down hardcore punk that Boston used to be famous for. This backbone is provided by drummer Wally, who used to play for Gang Green and the Straw Dogs, bands who helped put this city on the map.

The most memorable of the six tracks on Vow of Povery, “Fatty,” is a bittersweet anthem about being the lonely one. “Fall” is the one I most remember from Mung’s live set. It’s an all-too-real tale about someone who’s made a stab at living the American Dream but is now forced to come to terms with himself through his “fall from grace” which left him on the streets to fend for himself. The song also packs enough “whoa-oa” power to have you stumbling for those scratched, dust-ridden early 7-Seconds records. Mung have been rocking the Boston scene for a decade without releasing an album. My guess is that it was all the radio-friendly shit that’s saturating the so-called “punk” scene these days that finally made them decide to take us back to school.