siLLy puPPy
While the San Francisco Bay Area was more famous for its rich thrash metal scene of the 1980s and 90s, the area yielded a great deal of other heavy hitters ranging from the AOR / hard rockers Night Ranger to the Santa Rosa US power metal champs Vicious Rumors however there was a darker underbelly lurking in the shadows as well. While Carcass, Napalm Death, Terrorizer and Repulsion dominated the early years of grindcore, the Bay Area band PLUTOCRACY was more than worthy of cranking out the sickest and filthiest expressions of depravity.
This band was something of a fusion band having tapped not only the primeval stench of grindcore metal but also the powerviolence sector of the punk world. The band only existed from 1988-1993 but later reformed in 1998. The band’s style has been affectionately called “dankcore” which was a mix of grindcore, powerviolence punk, heavy distortion, movie samples, gangsta rap samples and several screaming vocalists shouting tales of everything from police violence to drug references and other crazy shit.
The band actually formed in the wealthy city of Atherton which is considered one of THEEE most expensive places to live in the entire USA so what we have here is a strange brew of brutal suburbia punkcore that will surely please all the grindcore / powerviolence addicts. Like most of this type of bands, PLUTOCRACY released a crapload of EPs and only two albums which were fairly short as full albums go. This debut “full-length” DANKSTAHZ which came out in 1992 was only slightly over 24 minutes long but in its wake leaves a sonic pile of destruction like a nuclear bomb detonated at peak traffic rush hour.
This is metal / punk hybridization at its most raw and giving zero fucks about anything really. Sizzling speedy tempos combined with screaming sessions that surely resulted in puked up esophaguses, PLUTOCRACY mastered the art of combining the most brutal elements of crust punk and nascent grindcore with all those tricks and trinkets that Pig Destroyer would adopt, namely movie samples and other non-metal accoutrements. This is a no fucks left to give sorta release that delivers explosive energetic performances and adds enough extra elements to keep me entertained while the one trick pony show of screaming meets guitar distortion registers on the richter scale. Perhaps not as famous as Metallica but a nice Bay Area accent band fo sho!