Archive Review: Rubber City Rebels' Pierce My Brain (2003)

Twenty-two years after the release of their first and only album, the legendary punk posse Rubber City Rebels has come roaring back to claim the legacy that should have been laid upon the band to begin with. Ohio’s RCR cut their collective eyeteeth on the Stooges and the Flamin’ Groovies, hanging out with fellow acolytes of the three-chord, garage rock aesthetic like the Ramones and the Dead Boys. Unlike Stiv and his gang or art-punk poofters like Pere Ubu, the Rubber City Rebels never succumbed to the lure of Sodom or Gomorrah, choosing instead to bring the band’s revved-up brand of rant and roll to the Midwestern masses. Needless to say, in an industry built on formula and supported by trends, RCR went over like a dervish at a debutante’s ball, and the band splintered into sleeper cells soon after releasing its hard-rocking, self-titled debut album in 1980.   

Recording a dozen new tunes in the wake of a successful reunion mini-tour, slash-and-burn axeman Rod Firestone has returned to lead his band of merry men – vocalist Buzz Clic, bassist Bob Clic, and drummer Mike Hammer – on a musical search and destroy mission with Pierce My Brain. The band succeeds admirably, walking a tightrope between young, loud and snotty and metallic K.O., lyrically ravaging the entire Hot Topic mallrat culture of manufactured dissent. “(I Wanna) Pierce My Brain” slags conformist trendoids by taking “body mod” to its logical extremes while “Grip of Fear” delivers a more insightful commentary on current events than any of those pseudo-intellectual, candy-ass political punks have managed to come up with lately. The profoundly disturbing “I Don’t Wanna Be A Punk No More” examines both punk’s self-imagery and the band’s place in history while “Dead Boy (Eulogy For Stiv)” offers memories of Firestone’s fallen comrade.

One guitar, three chords, scorching leads and throbbing rhythms – the Rubber City Rebels are back and Pierce My Brain is both the band’s manifesto and an opening salvo for the (kind of) new millennium. If all the music on the radio all sounds the same these days and you can no longer swallow cookie-cutter “punk” pop stars like Good Charlotte or Simple Plan – nice boys playing polite music for a demographically chosen market – check out Rubber City Rebels. The wise and sage Rod Firestone said it best in “Punk Daddy,” loudly proclaiming “Old School Rules Fool!” Rebels Forever, Forever Rebels! (Smog Veil Records)

Review originally published by Jersey Beat music zine, 2003