Scared of Chaka

Tired of You (Sub City/Hopeless)
by Scott Hefflon

Within seconds, you know Scared of Chaka isn’t just another shitty punk band clogging space in stores and review sections of magazines. My first thought was The Vindictives, simply cuz there was the grating guitar tone which hovers in the high end, snarling vocals, and while the lyrics are probably important to someone, ya can’t understand a fuckin’ word of it. But soon it became clear what Scared of Chaka is all about: Garage punk noise. They howl, they rip shit up, and they’ll probably give ya a headache cuz you’ll turn the stereo up so loud the noisy guitar riffs’ll have the general effect of putting your ear next to a blender or coffee grinder. While there’re melodies you’ll probably come to recognize as well as a few choruses you’ll hear once yer ear gets used to the sonic barrage, that’s not what really what matters. What matters is that with the exception of a couple two-minutes laggers, every tune here is balls-out garage punk to smash things to, slam into people to, or get dangerously drunk in public to. Good stuff, in other words. The kinda raw music you don’t hear much in this consumer-driven punk movement. The songs’ll move you (imagine Bracket on an AC/DC kick, stripped of clean production and annoying tendencies, then fed amphetamines and Jack and put in a small room with bad acoustics and told to rock their lame asses to pieces), the jumpy rhythms are addictive and you’ll be lucky if you don’t break something each time you listen to it. Oh yeah, there’s a cover of MC5’s “Teenage Lust” and 5% of profits go to helping The New Day Runaway Shelter in Albuquerque, NM, which is where this noisy quartet is from. As if that explains anything.
(PO Box 7495 Van Nuys, CA 91409)