UK Subs
Occupied
(Fall Out/Jungle/Amsterdamned/Triple X)
"Darkness"
For 20 years, Charlie Harper has gone through more guitarists, bassists, and drummers than Julia Roberts changed outfits in The Pelican Brief. In so doing, the 50- something vocalist has never equaled the pure greatness of the 1977- 1983, first- four LPs Subs, prime leaders of U.K. punk's immediate, memorable second wave, along with The Damned, Stiff Little Fingers, and Undertones. But neither have his recent Subs released a truly horrible LP. While the loud, raw sound of Occupied is as predictable as a losing season for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Harper continues as ever to insist on the storming riffs and crunching, flowing sound that made the genre such a pleasure in the first place. On this, their 15th proper LP (each album title has started with the next letter in the alphabet), hard and nasty smackers such as "Darkness" and "DF188" easily better the whole sorry crop of crap, new pretender, American pop- punk yobbos who sound like so much sparkless, faceless, facile MTV fodder.
Jack Rabid