DEATH
Initially the Hackneys, who were African-American, played soul and R&B, but a live show by the Stooges turned their heads around. The youngest of the brothers, guitarist David, pushed the group in a hard-rock direction that presaged punk, and while this certainly didn’t help them find a following in the mid-70s, today it makes them look like visionaries.
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The 1976 single, “Politicians in My Eyes” b/w “Keep on Knocking,” came out on a small regional label. Within a year the band had decamped to Burlington, Vermont, where the brothers had relatives, and what started as a vacation to clear their heads turned into a more or less permanent move. They changed their name to the Fourth Movement and adopted a gospel-rock sound. In the early 80s David returned to Detroit (where he died from lung cancer in 2000), and not long after that the other brothers started the reggae band Lambsbread, which is still active in Vermont.
Vicious Circle
Mahern’s singing was the icing on the cake—he could actually carry a catchy melody with his precisely articulated screams and shouts. The title track is little more than a rant, but “Civilization’s Dying” and “Livin’ in the 80’s” have a tunefulness similar to what the Descendents were bringing to west-coast punk—a great sound in the right hands, though since the 90s it’s been disgraced by a cavalcade of execrable pop-punk bands.
All-Night Lotus Party
The follow-up, All-Night Lotus Party, is darker and more unkempt. The opener, “White Elephant,” sharpens the line between tunefulness and noise: Williams accompanies one of Prescott’s catchiest vocal melodies with feedback and serrated string slashing. The Suns tone things down for the tender “Room With a View,” but they crank the tempo and volume on “Engines” and the hyperactive “Walk Around.”
