You can take it as either a very good sign or a very bad sign when you open up the liner notes to a new hardcore album and find, scattered throughout its pages, biographical blurbs of Henry Thoreau, Vergil, John Locke, and Buddha. Given the complexity of most punk rockers' political philosophies, the chances are better that you're dealing with whiny and pretentious dilettantes than with informed and seriously thoughtful commentators.
Pipedown are the exception to that general rule, however; angry as they are, their lyrical bottom line is one of encouragement and uplift rather than empty-headed complaint. And although the band's gallery-of-philosophies approach (in which each song is paired with the name and quickie bio of a thinker whose writings were relevant to the song's topic) is a bit shallow and show-offish, it's also not without value. Then -- oh, yeah -- there's the music, which is consistently both dense and complex, and never oppressively heavy. "Subversion as Rhetoric" is a nice chunky instrumental that incorporates both didjeridoo and what sounds like a Malcolm X sample; "Leviathan" (which is paired, for some reason, with a bio of Vergil rather than Thomas Hobbes) borders on the downright melodic, though there's some raw-throated screaming buried in the mix behind the hooky chorus; and "Control" alternates screaming and singing in a manner that brings to mind
Bad Brains in its heyday. Great stuff. ~ Rick Anderson