Who Put Out The Fire?

Monorchid’s second, and last, record is filled with the same angular guitars and high-pitched rants that made their first album, Let Them Eat, an exhilarating blast of bad-attitude post-punk. But Who Put out the Fire? differs from its predecessor in four important ways. First, the guitar and bass parts are more harsh and minimal, though the interplay among them is more complex. Guitarists Andy Cone and Chris Hamley and bassist Andy Coronado play in jagged, incongruous counterpoint to one another, boiling their lines down to only a few notes and snapping them off strangely. Second, Chris Thomson’s words are more urgent because their subjects are less obvious, as is the case on this lyric from “Alias Directory”: “First they steal my thunder, now they want my organs/Can’t stand to see me breathe, much less succeed.” Third, the album was recorded more cheaply than the slick Let Them Eat, and while the recording isn’t indistinct enough to dull the album’s instrumental impact, it does succeed in creating a sense of mystery. The vocals are somewhat buried and some of the words are hard to understand, and the drum sounds are, happily, matter-of-fact. Fourth, and most importantly, the songs are more streamlined and perversely catchy. All four of these differences make Monorchid even more punchy, nasty, and compelling. Who Put out the Fire? is a brilliantly venomous slab of D.C. punk rock. – Charlie Wilmoth