Plague Vendor’s brand of punk rock is Californian, though not in the sense that their debut Free to Eat conjures visions of Los Angeles’ variegated urban sprawl, or the countercultural aggression Berkeley, or the disparity in Sacramento’s double life as a cow town and a state capital. The descriptor likely triggers some immediate ideas their Cali predecessors embedded in our consciousness, few of which are consistent with each other but all aligning to create a theoretical Golden State: the guitars are situated somewhere between the beach and the garage, and there's "surf's up" tremolo riffing played with the berzerker energy that powers the Bay Area. It's pop too, if not necessarily pop-punk*—*the kind you could hear on Lookout! or Plague Vendor’s home, Epitaph. That covers a lot of ground geographically and stylistically, and Free To Eat does as well, showing a lot of civic pride even if Plague Vendor’s music is pretty handy for joyously loathing wherever you happen to be.
The band's a quartet in their early 20s from Whittier, an exurb about 20 miles outside of Los Angeles that truly earns a reputation as "conservative"*—it gave us George Allen and Richard Nixon. It's the kind of stultifying, relatively comfortable place that drives a lot of bored kids to the dark arts and Plague Vendor dabble in all kinds of gothic aesthetics—there's Brandon Blaine's possessed vocals, the eyeliner-streaked anthems of early AFI, and the Mexican folklore from which they get their name. But Plague Vendor are more interested in creating their own aura—*even more so than the song on Free to Eat that bears their own name, single “Breakdance on Broken Glass” is a statement of purpose, indulging in “Immigrant Song” and “We’re An American Band”-style mythmaking (“Your daughters love our style/ Every slaughter ends with a smile”). If “voodoo-punk” is a real subgenre, Free to Eat is trying to be a definitive document.
Free to Eat is a blast, and its album cover was chosen wisely: Blaine is in the center of the picture, only outside the frame because he’s lunging out of it. He deadpans like Mark E. Smith over bucking, neck-snapping riffs on “Black Sap Scriptures” and a minute later, manages a Jack White yawp on “Cursed Love, Hexed Lust”, bedeviled and agitated over the wiles of a preacher’s daughter*—*at least until the double-time thrash where he scat-raps like Anthony Kiedis with his sock on fire. It’s certainly cartoonish and caricatured, but the carnality is welcome; there hasn’t been much space for sex in punk of late, carnal drives either eliminated by scolding stoics or used as a platform to spark academic and political debate.
While Blaine’s imagination is given plenty of space to roam, Plague Vendor’s framework is small *—*small town, small, cramped shows, small, cramped album. Free to Eat’s ten tracks clock in at about 18 minutes, most of which are tied up in the aforementioned highlights; the balance is given to one-minute, fast-twitch exertions which don’t leave much of an impression beyond being samplers for their live show. Still, it’s all fun and all hooks, the latter in a literal sense—the musical elements are entirely sharp and metallic, with guitars that sound like they’re emitting steel shavings, jangly tambourine and a piercing, inhuman shriek in the beginning of “My Tongue is So Treacherous.”
As referential as Free To Eat can be on its own, there are times when a band notes an influence that completely changes your perception of it; Plague Vendor’s favorite band is indeed one from California, but Liars are only recent transplants and they haven’t been called “punk” in over a decade. You can hear the connection*—*the confrontational frontman, the obsession with the occult, the physicality of their live performances. More importantly, even the best California punk bands tended to devolve into formula after a few albums; if they’re true to the ideals of their role models, Plague Vendor could end up somewhere even more strange and exciting next time out.
