As the title implies,
Silver Wedding Anniversary is a live album from a 25th anniversary reunion show for Detroit noise rockers
Destroy All Monsters. Because the group was spawned out of the same scene that had earlier inspired
MC5 and
the Stooges, whose Ron Asheton was a later member of the band (he guests here, but the main lineup is that of the early band: Niagara, Casey Loren, Mike Kelly, and Jim Shaw), many histories wrongly classify
Destroy All Monsters as an early punk band. In reality,
Destroy All Monsters were more like proto-industrial, spinning deliberately ugly, often atonal music that quite often sounds no different than that of
Einstürzende Neubauten,
Foetus, early
Butthole Surfers, and other later proponents of the form. In other words, "Detroit: Rock City" is not an oddly punctuated cover of the
Kiss classic. Fans will enjoy
Silver Wedding Anniversary, but those expecting
Stooges-style proto-punk might be disappointed. ~ Stewart Mason