Steel Miners

All Hopped Up (Instant Mayhem)
by Jon Sarre

You hear Steel Miners for the first time and immediately you wanna go out and smash all the windows in the upscale, yuppified clothing store up the street. This is aggressive punk/scuzz rock that’s honed down to the most basic bass, drum and guitar equation. The music on this six-song EP is simple, powerful, and droning in-your-face. It’s almost as if they just started playing the first riffs that came to mind and planned on adding more to the songs, but then got drunk in the recording studio and figured “Fuck it! Changes are for pussies, anyway!” I’ve got to say that this is some of the best everybody-plays-the-same-riff-and-then-we-stop-when-the-singer-shuts-up stuff I’ve heard in a long time. I’ve listened to the whole thing three times in the last half hour, for Chrissakes!

As far as the subject matter goes, I’m really not sure what these Steel Miners guys are singing about, because the production chores (courtesy of Gumball/Velvet Monkeys/J. Mascis sideman Don Fleming) seem to have involved nothing more than setting up a couple of microphones and letting the band do their thing. But titles like “All Hopped Up” and “Sour Mash” and the cover photos of various drug paraphernalia seem to indicate a clear fondness for substance abuse. I think some of the other songs are about ex-girlfriends, or something (it’s hard to tell, because the sound gets progressively worse as the disc goes on. Maybe Don was hitting the hard stuff along with the band). All Hopped Up is definitely something to play over and over again, if for no other reason than to watch everyone around you cringe.