A decade after his death (two since he left office), former president Ronald Reagan continues to be a subject of many a musical effigy, but it's been a while since the hardcore community had him as its muse. Enter Iron Reagan, a Richmond band composed of members from notable crossover thrash groups like Municipal Waste and Darkest Hour, who are the jellybean cowboy's latest invokers. While their sound places them as political punk in the vein of Wasted Youth or the Crucifucks, Iron Reagan's lyrical tendencies skew nihilstic and violent with a dash of odd humor. Where Black Flag once instructed the crowd to “Rise Above”, Iron Reagan proudly declare, "I Ripped That Testament a New Asshole”. It’s a shock-driven approach, sure, but when it comes to expressing displeasure with the status quo, have punks ever bothered to clean up nicely and say “please”?
The quintet's latest, The Tyranny of Will, is a thirty-two minute blitzkrieg that surges forth like the blood spurting from the politician's neck on the album cover. Iron Reagan stick to what they know best: firing off short, potent riffs at a workmanlike pace, and letting the listener sort out the mess for themselves. In interviews, frontman Tony Foresta hasn’t tried to hide the fact that he and the rest of the guys are, largely, winging it: “We suffer from A.D.D. pretty hard—almost everyone in the band,” he revealed recently to one reporter with a laugh, “so we make music that comes across faster, and more to the point."
In other words, they’ve got the punk mindset already hard-wired, and so it naturally follows that nine of the album’s songs blow by in under a minute. On the album's most immediate cut, “Eyeball Gore”,power chords stamp and stomp as the band make their impassionately sadistic demands: “All we want is eyeball gore RIGHT NOW!” Think of the song as the album's elevator pitch: the violent fervor of protest music used to incite social change and knife parties. Of course, there are jabs at the cops and the one-percenters (see the hilarious “U Lock the Bike Cop”, in which Foresta warns a policeman that his fixie’s going to get jacked). Most of the time, however, Iron Reagan simply release their furor with no target in particular. “Broken Bottles”, a twisted take on Adolescents-style skate punk, captures the sentiment of that band’s essential cut “Bloodstains” and leaves it to simmer, resulting in a chugging frenzy topped off with a tottering solo. Sometimes, they can’t seem to tell exactly who or what they’re mad at; “Your Kid’s an Asshole”, short and pointless, might as well be the musical equivalent of a typo-laden insult from an email exchange between two soccer moms.
A significant portion of The Tyranny of Will was written while Iron Reagan toured with GWAR, not too long before Dave Brockie (aka Oderus Ungurus) passed. According to the band, the late frontman lent Iron Reagan some inspiration, going as far to contribute gory gross-out ideas for the album, and listening to The Tyranny of Will, a number of similarities emerge between the two entities. Foresta’s podium-side barking bears kinship to Brockie’s theatrical delivery, and while the former has yet to perform in blood-soaked costumes exposing prosthetic genitalia, he plays a comedic villain with aplomb. “I’d rather just set fire/ Than be left to die,” he threatens on “Miserable Failure”, his energy essential in keeping the group's bare-bones, repetitive fretwork fresh.
For diehard thrash heads who possess patience and a sick sense of humor, The Tyranny of Will should prove satisfying; most listeners, though, will probably find the record's attention-challenged songwriting grating by the fifteen-minute mark, and as the album plays on, the pummeling punchlines don’t hit as hard as they're intended to. As is the case with most overstuffed hardcore albums, The Tyranny of Will lends itself well to a cherry-picking approach; keep some riffs and ideas, and toss the ones that don’t stick. Essentially, it's ample license to take part in some musical mudslinging—and The Man could always stand to take a good mud-and-blood pie to the face.
