Thorazine “Crazy Uncle Paul’s Dead Squirrel Wedding”

sfilzen — Tue, 27 Feb 2024 21:08:10 +0000

Thorazine “Crazy Uncle Paul’s Dead Squirrel Wedding” 1996. Hell Yeah Records. Growly, tight & fast punk from Philadelphia. Crazy Uncle Paul’s Dead Squirrel Wedding was the band’s debut LP (they put out an EP in ’95) and only released one more (Vicious Cycle, 1998, which I wrote about a couple years back). Their Bandcamp page looks to still be pretty dead (says new album coming in 2017 which is the same as what it said in 2020) but fortunately it linked me to their Facebook page and hey! they’re active again! They have an 8-song EP on Spotify (SRA Records) released in 2022: In H00v3r We Trust: it seems to be a tribute to Thorazine band member (bassist from later/reunion years??? It’s fuzzy) Dan Hoover who died in 2022. I’l listen to it at some point soon. Anyway, this LP has been languishing in my stay-or-go pile for years now. I know I bought this from frontwoman/singer Jo-Ann Rogan at a Thorazine show at the Cactus Club in ’98 when they were touring for Vicious Cycle. She was great – awesome snarly punk voice and excellent stage presence (she was also very nice). It’s been over 25 years since that show so I have zero recollection of what, if any, tracks they may have played from Crazy Uncle Paul but it’s a great punk LP. My top tracks are “Riding the Train,” which has lighting fast punk guitar plus a healthy dose of hard rock/metal guitar at the bridge; the anaemic “I’m Not a Whore” (best line: “fuck you, fuck you, fuck you all!”); “Boiling Point” which is very Germs-esque (great!); and the funk-punk “Rain.” I know we are running out of space but I’m not quite ready to let this album go. It stays.

Here’s a 90′ quality video of Thorazine playing two songs live from ’97. I can’t tell what the first song is but fairly certain the second is “I’m Not a Whore.”

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Thorazine “Vicious Cycle”

sfilzen — Wed, 29 Dec 2021 19:25:37 +0000

Thorazine “Vicious Cycle” 1998. Hell Yeah Records. Wicked-fast punk out of Philadelphia (they got sued by pharma-giant Smith-Kline-Beecham for their band’s name). Vicious Cycle is Thorazine’s second (of two) albums – they were pretty active in the 90’s, disbanded for a bit in 2003 and reunited in 2014 for a couple of singles and, according to their Bandcamp page, planned a new album in 2017 but I’m pretty sure that didn’t happen. I believe we saw them in ’98 at the Cactus Club while they were on tour for Vicious Cycle and I absolutely loved them – we picked up this record as well as their first, Crazy Uncle Paul’s Dead Squirrel Wedding (1996), at the show. It’s probably been since the late 90’s that I’ve listened to Vicious Cycle and…it’s still great!!! Frontwoman Jo-Ann Rogan is an absolute powerhouse punk singer with the perfect balance of a crystal clear voice and a wicked scream (I remember having a tiny girl-crush on her and chatting a bit after that Cactus Club show – she was lovely!). The rest of the band is super-tight with great thrash and melodies. So so many great songs on this LP but my top picks are the opener “I’m Happy,” the brutal and growling “Dirty Nasty Sex,” the thrash-punk that goes abruptly mellowish-melodic “Jacob” and the excellent “Don’t Need None of Your Shit.” Even the hilarious 60’s girl-group/Sha-na-na inspired “Food” (“fooo-oo-ood, I want my food”) is fantastic. The only track I don’t care for is “Better Than Here” which is not sung by Rogan; it’s a pretty bland 90’s punklette that lacks the punch that characterizes the rest of the LP. There’s not much out there on the web about Thorazine, but I did find this low quality video of a show from ’97:

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Thorazine “Crazy Uncle Paul’s Dead Squirrel Wedding”

Thorazine “Vicious Cycle”