There aren’t too many bands where I can exactly remember how I got to know about them. But T.S.O.L. (True Sounds Of Liberty) definetely would be one of them. Back in school I had this one class where there only were like seven other kids. And there was this one guy (who’s now probably dead or on heroin) who was into the stuff I was as well, like NOFX, Pennywise and bands like that. Remember, I was around 13 and it was the 90ies. What else should I listen to but Skate Punk, Melody Core or whatever you want to call it. So he once gave me this sampler of Epitaph Records, Punk-O-Rama II. Besides the type of bands I already knew there was this band called T.S.O.L. on it, with “I wanna fuck the dead”. Of course I thought that this was great, although it was quite different of course.
So years later I bought a copy of their first album, Dance With Me, which originally was released in 1981. Seriously, I have no clue why T.S.O.L. even were on the Epitaph sampler mentioned above. Anyway, Dance With Me is awesome, of course. What I realized a while later again is, that this record was kind of US-Hardcore’s answer to Post Punk. Don’t get me wrong, of course this record was a Hardcore-Punk record. Rough, scruffy and snotty. But at the same time it was way darker than most other records of that time, and Jack Grisham’s voice has this really gloomy vibe to it. So guess “Death Rock”, as I read in relation to T.S.O.L., is not a wrong description.
I mean of course T.S.O.L. doesn’t sound like Christian Death (well, at least on this record), but like I said, it’s like an early incarnation of that genre, still representing the snottyness and rage of early 80ies Hardcore, mixed up with the darkness and gloom of rather sullen Post Punk.
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