The Body The Blood The Machine — The Thermals
Sub Pop
2006
Rating:


The new halcyon days of punk concept albums continues with The Thermals' "The Body The Blood The Machine." The Thermals' effort may be the best of the liberal-bating rebel rousers, arguably even topping Green Day's heart grenade of "American Idiot" for the fury of its social commentary. Slightly more polished than on "More Parts Per Million" and "Fuckin' A," singer-guitarist Hutch Harris and bassist Kathy Foster (also filling in on drums) continue to deliver loud, abrasive garage rock in the tradition of the Ramones and The dBs. With no time for oblique metaphor, The Thermals eschew subtlety for a story of a near future where the hero and his girlfriend attempt to escape from an Orwellian Christian regime — it could take place in 2024, 2004 or 1984.

Opener "Here's Your Future" establishes the religious themes by opening with an organ and biblical references to Noah and Jesus. "God reached his hand down from the sky / He flooded the land, then he set it on fire," Harris sings before screaming the title over raucous guitars and drums. "A Pillar of Salt" is a siren wail detailing the hero's flight so "we don't have to die / We don't have to deny / Our dirty God / Our dirty bodies." The urgency is unrelenting through the hopeful closer "I Hold the Sound," which wonderfully reconstitutes a bass solo from New Order's "Ceremony." "It's early still," Harris assures us, and all the more reason to keep fighting.

Posted Friday, December 22, 2006

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