FLIPPER POWER ROCK ENOUGH TO MAKE CHARLIE PRIDE HAVE NIGHTMARES




Forget The Offspring, forget all British punk rock, if you want some real hardcore grungy punk rock which is convincingly deafening and has some real Led Zeppelin meat to it, then you might want to check out a band called FLIPPER. 

They definitely are not sleek and elegant
like that dolphin by the same name. I normally hate punk, because it usually sounds like an unfocused distorted noise with no melody and structure. 

The kind of noise you get by putting a big lump of steel through a wood lathe and having someone banging jam tins at the same time. 

But in a weak experimental moment of spontaneous curiosity, recently I bought a $5 CD, yeah i`m loaded by the way (jokes, jokes) of the Flipper album `Love`, which was released in 2009, the band's first album in 17 years. 

I did not have a damn clue who they were, but being open minded like I am, I thought I could waste $5 on a CD which I believed I probably wouldn`t like all that much. 

What persuaded me most likely to buy it was the sticker on the front of the cover, which said that Flipper were the godfathers of grunge-punk, and the name Krist Novoselic, who I recognised as the bass man from Nirvana. 

I have always been a lot more tolerant of grunge than punk, and seeing that the description was grunge-punk and not punk-grunge, I assumed that grunge was the more dominant ingredient in the music of Flipper.

It is still a very unrefined and rudimentary punk rock affair for the most part, but there is still a lot of grunge blues power down in
the mix which gives certain songs a lot more grit than average run of the mill punk. 

The CD I purchased come with a bonus live
CD called `Fight` as well, I have listened to it from beginning to end once and I must say it is not a rock album for the faint hearted or somebody who is into Survivor or Toto. 

Very loud and very unrefined, complete with on-stage swearing and buffoonery. The last song off their new studio album Love which I think is one of the most brutally heavy pieces of grunge power rock ever is called `Old Graves`. 

Flipper might rate themselves as being a grunge-punk band, but the epic two-chord grinding guitar riff which guitarist Tedd Falconi puts to this song, along with the
flamboyant exuberance which drummer Steve DePace exerts, turns what could have been just another 9 minute long garage
rock filler into something extraordinarily powerful and undeniably inspired by the theatrics and primal raw intensity of the
old Black Sabbath.

A number of other songs including `Why Cant You See` and `Transparent Blame` were almost in the same sound bracket but Old Graves really hammers, it is nauseating, bone crunching and only for those who have a stomach lining. 

Krist Novoselic on bass was obviously a new addition to Flipper from the early incarnation of the band, and like Michael Anthony of Chickenfoot and John Paul Jones of Zeppelin, Novoselic is great on bass because you can actually hear him playing it.

Maybe it`s not worth 30 bucks, but `Old Graves` alone is probably worth the peanuts I paid for the whole album. Dont wait around for me to write another blog on punk rock though, you`ll be waiting a bit.

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