There’s something exciting about a rock band playing tight and sharp without sounding like they’re wearing straitjackets. Bleeding outside lines without losing sight of them gives any music extra juice-- especially when that music is punk or post-punk, where blurring rules is often the point. Sometimes it’s just about having a reckless singer: think of the way Darby Crash slobbers over the Germs’ chords, Mark E. Smith rants upstream of the Fall’s repetitions, or David Yow grunts and hacks through the Jesus Lizard’s rubber-band dynamics.
Without that vocal variable, a band can still hit a sweet spot between tautness and sloppiness, but it’s tougher. One way is to play with so much muscle and adrenaline that the music bulges and tears at the seams. It’s a solution common to a bunch of 80s Australian post-punk bands-- groups with aptly guttural names like Fungus Brains, Sick Things, and People With Chairs Up Their Noses. My favorite was feedtime, who stretched punk by grinding it into a heavy, air-sucking marsh. Not far behind were Venom P. Stinger, a quartet who could sound as weighty as feedtime, but preferred quicker tempos and slightly more standard songs.
The emphasis there is on slightly, because Venom P. Stinger’s take on punk was far from middle of the road. Most of their tunes began with a simple beat and a few chords, but soon revved into noisier, wilder territory. This was due in part to the singing of ex-Sick Thing Dugald McKenzie, a fiery chanter who could veer off course when the moment demanded it. But most of the band’s unruliness came from two elements: the slashing, spilling guitar of Mick Turner, and the shuffling percussion of Jim White, who managed to make drum rolls sound like punk beats. (Not coincidentally, the pair went on to expand these styles as part of the Dirty Three).
This new compilation 1986-1991 collects Venom P. Stinger’s first four releases-- two LPs, a 7-inch, and an EP-- spotlighting a band for whom energy and insanity were much higher priorities than melody. Not that the songs didn’t have some strong semi-hooks. But there’s not a ton of melodic variance between tracks, which makes them less memorable as songs than as visceral experiences. After the dust settles, what echoes loudest is the vicious, sometimes daring power of the quartet’s workout-like performances.
Venom P. Stinger’s songs did get catchier as they made more of them, though. Their 1986 debut LP Meet My Friend Venom is a marvel of primal thrust, tearing through the air so forcefully you often feel like you’re just catching its smoke trails. But on 1990’s What’s Yours is Mine, some hooks begin to creep in-- albeit ones that feel just as fleeting amidst the band’s high-octane assault. Even relatively mid-tempo tunes like the lumbering “Those Snakes” and the swaying “Pressure Inside” sound as urgent as their more frantic jams. By the time of 1991’s Waiting Room EP, things had become even more streamlined, with no loss of urgency. Turner in particular learned to play more melodically without abandoning his loose, impulsive attack.
Waiting Room was the final release for the first version of Venom P. Stinger (they reunited a few years later with a different singer), so their time was pretty short. But their influence is detectable since-- see the noise-punk of Amphetamine Reptile bands like Halo of Flies, some of the more rock-damaged stuff on Load Records, and recent Aussie bands such as Eddy Current Suppression Ring and Slug Guts. Perhaps their music is ultimately for punk diehards seeking deviations from the genre’s norms. But if you’re inclined that way at all, it doesn’t get much better than this.
