blast from the mid 1990s

The Suicide Machines were a Detroit Ska-Punk band who emerged into my consciousness sometime around 1996 and rode the "alterna-rock" radio format's flirtation with bands like No Doubt, Sublime, Goldfinger, and Reel Big Fish to no small success. I haven't listened to their debut, Destruction By Definition, in approximately nine years, but from what I remember, the songs were about adolescent and post-industrial feelings of marginalization and enclosure, not explicitly "political," but explicitly rebellious, in however an easily comodifiable way.

I gotta say, I'm somewhat surprised that they still exist, given the high level of attrition suffered by other 90s ska bands, particularly from the boom and bust ska-punk and ska-core subgenres. I'm even more suprised to hear them singing songs about capitalism and monopolies and "war profiteering," much less "The Red Flag" and "the coming revolution." That the ska-punk has shifted towards hardcore is less surprising. I think i kind of like them better this way. ("Rebellion Is On The Clearance Rack" is downright funny.) The Bush years seem to be making some punk, well, punker. Or, i guess i should say, polemicopunker (And some punk "liberal," but now is not a good time to get me started on that punkvoter crap.) As the Slackers' International War Criminal EP attests, this politicization has not been limited to the ska-punk side of the old Moon wall. (There were three albums in between the first and the new one, starting with Battle Hymns, which I never bought cause I was very angry about the state of ska and disillusioned with even the "political" ska-punk bands, like Against All Authority. But I may have been wrong. it was a long time ago. And I was pretty young.)