Plasmatics - Coup D’Etat (Reissue from Razor and Tie)
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Used to be that the biggest threat to your teenage years was not cornfed pop-sluts from Florida but rather a giant mohawked glamazon with electric tape over her nipples and a penchant for demolishing old cars on stage. Former live sex show worker and part-time porn star Wendy O. Williams and her band of scavengers The Plasmatics delivered the Fear to parents during the ‘70s and ‘80s and therefore were absolutely worship-worthy to suburban youth. Coup D’Etat, the band’s third album (originally released in 1982), finds the band tilting their whipsaw blend of punk and metal firmly into the latter camp, with producer Dieter Dierks blunting their rougher edges with the same fetishistic high gloss he lent to his records with the Scorpions and Accept; the result feels like a full blow to the jaw from a vinyl glove rather than a set of scabby knuckles. The colder production doesn’t temper Wendy’s paint-peeling vocals or the destroy-all-monsters lyrics of “Path of Glory,” “Country Fairs” or “Just Like On TV,” which color the world in a much murkier shade of black than most other metal bands from the period (save hell-and-brimstone doomsters like Venom). Fans of Wendy and Co’s earlier, punkier efforts may be turned off by this bid for commercial acceptance (which didn’t work), but there’s still plenty here to get your guts in a knot, especially a fearsome tear through Motorhead’s “No Class”;Razor and Tie’s reissue includes a middling extra track, “Uniformed Guards.”
—Paul Gaita
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