Cybergod
Nausea
More Songs About Plants and Trees
Various
Allied Recordings
Reviewed by Kest
"His omnipresent power is felt in every home/ Feel his warm static embrace, you'll never be alone/ His flickering gaze emanates the divine light/ That bathes his worshippers each and every night."
A new religious cult? A sci-fi story? No, it's Nausea's single, "Cybergod", a scathing attack on that most repugnant of mass media, television.
Nausea are an anarchist, crusty, hardcore/grind band from New York. They play loud, angry, aggressive punk-based political music. Apart from denouncing the mass control induced through the power of the Cybergod, the single is backed with the "Body of Christ", a brutal assault on Christianity. Very "in your face", but nevertheless they're both catchy, groovy songs. It's also good to hear such a heavy band incorporating a woman as a singer.
More Songs About Plants and Trees is a compilation of songs about the environment by four US bands. The first side has two melodic, poppy punk tunes by Cringer and the Lookouts. Side two begins with a manically thrashed hardcore song by Antischism, and ends with one of Nausea's typically crusty dirges.
Aside from the neat politics and music, the EP has a list of 105 "more addresses to help plants and trees", with US groups ranging from the Acid Rain Foundation through Earth First!, the National Geographic Society, the Rainforest Action Network, to the World Wildlife Fund. And what's more, the cover opens into a "(Turning our) Back to Nature" poster!
Both EPs are by Allied Recordings, an independent US label. If you want to get your ears around some of this groovy stuff, the EPs are $5.50 each and $5 postage, from the Spiral Objective Collective, PO Box 126, Oaklands Park SA 5046 (catalogue available free).