Adolescents

They Say...

Review by Ned Raggett, All Music Guide

Social Distortion tends to be the band which gets venerated these days as the flagbearers of Orange County punk, while Agent Orange gets its own credit for amping up the surf sound for the slampit generation, but in terms of what could be called classic OC hardcore -- brattish, young, sneering and energetic -- it's all about this brilliant album, jam-packed with songs that to this day are constantly covered or cited by other acts worldwide. That the original lineup of the Adolescents itself spawned at least four separate future bands, if not more, further demonstrates that something good was going down, thanks to five kids who really were adolescents or had just barely gotten past that stage. The Descendents were the obvious role models for nearly everything on the album, if anybody -- same general sense of catchy bash and crash while voicing incipient youth-of-the-'80s angst -- but the Adolescents were just that little bit more aggressive and pissed, tempering goofiness, especially from Tony Cadena's sneering vocals, with an at times barely concealed outrage at being stuck in Orange County's cradle of right-wing conservatism. Songs like "L.A. Girl" may be more semi-typical misogyny and scenester-trashing than anything else, but "Who is Who" and the slow start, then fast rip of "Kids of the Black Hole" snarl at mocking peers, police attacks, wrecked households and more besides with fierceness. The musicians do a fair job throughout -- brothers Rikk and Frank Agnew are more than fine on guitar, while bassist Steve Soto and drummer Casey Royer keep everything chugging along nicely. Then, of course, there's "Amoeba" -- a sharp, intelligent lyric equating adolescence with being stuck as a science experiment and vowing to break out from that trap with an instantly catchy gang-shout chorus, resulting in one of the all-time great rock anthems. (The CD reissue adds not only the Welcome to Reality EP but also Rikk Agnew's solo debut, All by Myself.)