This is another band that probably doesn't like to be labelled and feels
like a limit the definition of Hardcore...
However their sound evolved from a very slow '77 influenced punk to an aggressive
thrash, very originally played, that inspired many bands like Raw Power in
Italy...
In brief (for now...)
Metal Mike and Gregg started their career as musicians in the '77 band Vom. Even if they had already the peculiar sarcastic and irreverent lyrics, their music sounds really boring and old today... Official critics say that their drummer was bad, too...
The first period of the Angry Samoans (recorded Live at Rhino Records) was still a time of passage from the repertoire of Vom and other songs written with the influence of Canadian Subhumans and maybe of the Dictators. But they played better.
Eventually in 1980 they had written enough good songs to release an EP, the great Right Side of my Mind. All songs are very good and, even if their sound isn't the most raging heard that year and still influenced by garage-rock, they were coming closer to the standards of thrash, for example in the song Hot Cars...
Two years later they recorded what I believe is the farthest point in their
evolution, the album Back from Samoa.
It features mostly thrashers, many songs only 20/30 seconds long, but also
some longer, melodic tracks that were on the previous vynil, but re-recorded
with more speed and aggressivity. The sound coming out of their instruments,
anyway, didn't conform to the standard of the hardcore bands that were in
vogue: they kept a kind of soft, maybe garagey feeling...
Even if I'm a big fan of uncompromising hardcore, I believe that their best
material are the songs that clock in 1 minute, 1 and an half minute because
they were more articulate and complete than the blasts of few seconds.
Many good songs of this kind are also contained in the compilation Back
TO Samoa, that features many spare tracks from this first incarnation
of the band. You can listen to Time to Fuck and Are You a Square...
These were the years I want to focus on... Later, after a few years of fugitiveness, they formed a second incarnation of the band, they recorded several albums, but their music lost all the features that made them appealing... The proof is that in the occasional reunion gigs that nowadays happen in California they play only their original songs.
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I hope I'll find someone of this band willing to share some of his memories with us!!!