Some time back I posted the Welcome To Venice comp, and I mentioned the scary beach bum cholo punkers that populated the extremeley violent Venice scene. And while Suicidal Tendencies may be the best known band on the record, Beowulf actually contributed the best tracks. So here I present Beowulf's self-titled debut album from 1986. Beowulf obviously sounded much like their homies in Suicidal but they also inject a fair dose of Motorhead worship into their trip. Unlike Suicidal Tendencies these double-dipped super vatos weren't concerned with politics, skateboarding, or being a misunderstood teenager who craves a Pepsi. Beowulf sang about three things, and three things only...Drinking, fighting, and fucking, and to further illustrate this point they include a song called "Drink Fight Fuck" on this very album. Scarier than a hundred pasty corpse-painted Euro- teens singing the praises of Hitler and Satan, more unnerving than flavor-of-the-month gangsta rappers posing with automatic weapons and magnums of Cristal. This is sun baked L.A. hostility, gang violence fucking up your cool show, this is dusted, thugged out cycos who couldn't give a fuck about your scene. Fuck you.
28 comments:
Aesop-
Your description wins me over again. This sounds awesome. I keep reading about those LA gangs and they do sound terrifying.
I remember a Life's Halt/The Hitch/Kontraattaque show at the Lafayette Center in L.A. in 2001. A bunch of "Dusted up psychos" showed up and were hitting the pipe and this 15 year old girl with a brand new Crass shirt asked them very politely to leave. One of them took his keys out and shoved it in her eye.......what a mess...............
awesome thanks again
i got to ask this: if a kid praises Satan AND is a street thug, does he win the most violent prick award?
by the way i lost for a month or so and that means i have leeching ground to cover. cheers!!!
I remember a Life's Halt/The Hitch/Kontraattaque show at the Lafayette Center in L.A. in 2001. A bunch of "Dusted up psychos" showed up and were hitting the pipe and this 15 year old girl with a brand new Crass shirt asked them very politely to leave. One of them took his keys out and shoved it in her eye...girl learned a hard lesson that evening
there are people in this world that operate on far different levels than you
and it's best not to fuck with those people
I think a quote from Hickey applies here:
"You can stop eating animals if you want to, but who's gonna stop the animals from eating you"
The whole 'thug factor' is interesting. Whe I was growing up I steered clear of going to any punk or metal shows because those were the kinds of places where I would get my ass kicked. When I started going to shows a lot in the early 90s that really was not a problem, because the tough guys did not go to Jesus Lizard shows.
Which brings me back to Beowulf- they were from the area in which I grew up, Venice Beach. I remember seeing very tough-looking guys (both whie and latino) on skateboards with 'Beowulf' inkied onto their baseball caps. If I looked at these guys sideways I would have been killed. Whether I liked the music or not was a moot point. I stayed in one piece because I avoided the live shows like the plague. Now two decades down the line, I can safely listen to their music, which I do like a lot.
The point of this long comment? I don't really have one, but thanks for posting this, Aesop.
-The Anonymous Jew
the mere thought of these scary gang members having their kind of violent fun at the pit scares me.but the music is awesome and that's all that counts.
Reissued on CD with the less-good Lost My Head, minus the awesome cover art. http://www.amazon.com/Beowulf-Lost-My-Head/dp/B0007RO4IU
Trying to get this, but the link is not working. More L.A. hostility?
Just tried it and it worked fine. try again, esse.
Got it that time Holmes, thanks.
I think these guys give the late, great GG Allin a run for his money on their "Drink, Fight & Fuck."
And that's saying something!
Thanks for this post. I was never too familiar with these guys other than their later stuff that was all over early 90's snowboarding videos. On a side note, I had some friends in high school who had a shitty grunge band called V-13. I told them that their name could get them killed in certain cities. They changed it shortly thereafter.
holy shit, i was just looking at this record at my friends house last night. these guys are really into 15 year old girls. total creeps. this record rules.
Oh, and you aren't? C'mon, man.
Yeow! "Taste the Steel" is a show stopper. Makes me feel ripped off I didn't know about this back when I was blasting Suicidal's first over and over. Some of the metal elements remind me of one of my alltime favorite crossover platters: Forward Into Battle by English Dogs!!
This is why I love Cosmic Hearse. I was a Suicidal fan back in the day, when I was young(er) and stupid(er). But how did Beowulf slip past me? Where were they my whole fucking life?! With all due respect to Motorhead, this is more my speed!
This record is licking lemmy's boot and sucking cronos' cock - and it rules.
Great band, fuck Lethal Agression for dissing these guys at the MDF pre-fest.
Do tell, Mr. Apoctosis.
Basically the singer of Lethal Aggression went on a rant about hardcore and thrash bands that acted like "pussys", weren't "true" or wore make up/teased their hair. I forget the other bands he named, but Beowulf was on of 'em.
Well, he may of been speaking of the other hundred bands called Beowulf, but either way I have never heard of them and their name makes me not want to.
Lethal Aggression released one pretty sick album of thrash/hc insanity that kills and kinda sounds like a cross between DRI and like Cryptic Slaughter but kinda noisier. Good shit. Then they pretty much faded into obscurity, broke up or whatever. I heard they got thrown off a tour with Youth of Today for drinking too much. But yeah, lame to dis BEOWULF, fuck that.
TASTE THE STEEL!
Cheers Aesop!
Cheers for this one. I've been enjoying 'Lost My Head...' quite a bit.
Was always curious about BEOWULF when I kept seeing their albums/shirts advertised by SESSIONS skateboards in the back of old Thrasher magazines. Even at an early age, I was drawn to their sick, crude artwork and graphics.
Used to have the No Mercy lp but i never actually heard these. Cheers, look forward to it.
yeah..BEOWULF...super scary scene...
Let's see.. it was Suicidal tendencies / beowulf /no mercy /excel (+plus their incestuous side bands like los cycos)
The Sui's would show up to any show..like say..slayer - and they's send in a little suicidal kid into the pit and he'd get all crazy...the moment any body touched him - bout 12 crazy thugs would come in and pulverize. ..and they'd leave you for dead. This is all back in the 80s. There were these punk/metal record stores who had these photos taped up in their glass case of all the different dead dudes lying in a pool of blood from various shows and venues like fenders ballroom and palladium and balboa theater and that place they used to have wrestling and 70s roller derby (i forget the name). you guys that were around remember how seriously dangerous it was.. and this violence would translate into the same at backyard parties. seeing lucifer in el serino was just begging to be stabbed. cryptic slaughter in pico rivera -- your probably gonna get jumped. but yeah...that was fun!!
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