O.L.D. — Old Lady Drivers (review)

Album · 1988 · Grindcore

3.5/5 · 2022-07-18
siLLy puPPy

While most grindcore that emerged in the 80s was steeped in gore, horror and bad taste, the New Jersey act O.L.D, short for OLD LADY DRIVERS took a completely different approach with its fast-paced din-fest. This band that featured vocalist Alan Dubin and guitarist James Plotkin who together would go on to spawn the killer avant-metal band Khanate began their career as a comedic grindcore band that was designed to parody the early antics of guitarist James Plotkin’s early grindcore / deathcore band Regurgitation and on this debut simply titled OLD LADY DRIVERS, which also included drummer Ralph Pimentel, delivered those very goods before moving on to become one of metal’s strangest psychedelic avant-artists of the 90s.

While O.L.D. wasn’t the only grindcore parody band on the scene (Sore Throat released its D-beat / core hybrid with humorous overtones debut “Unhindered by Talent in 1988), OLD LADY DRIVERS had a deeper sense of sustainability throughout the decades as old school metal has fallen out of favor and bands that were thinking outside of the box and unhindered by commercial aspirations have finally come of age. In many ways O.L.D. was a typical grindcore band of yore with short lightning fast tracks that exhibited unruly distortion and angry anarchic vocal contributions. This album is nothing like the band’s later efforts and features a rather immature but effective take on grindcore though a completely different lens than gory bands such as Carcass.

In a year when bands like Motley Crue, Cinderella, Poison, Ratt and Metallica were ruling the mainstream metal scene, bands like O.L.D. were stirring shit up in the underground and offering gems for future generations (and those hip enough to get this at the time.) The OLD LADY DRIVERS debut by nature exudes a nonchalant fuck it all attitude about the emerging world of extreme metal with ridiculous song titles such as “Total Hag,” “Lepers With Feet,” “Colostomy Grab-Bag” and “Die In Your Beauty Sleep.” While the main sound of this album is totally in the grindcore genre with lightning fast heavily distorted guitar riffing frenzies, the album does throw out a few curve balls such as the JJ. Cale turned Eric Clapton hit remake of the classic rock track “Cocaine.”

This album features 15 tracks with only one track (“Wisdom Lost”) over 4 minutes and most under 2. Heavily distorted and fucking obnoxious as hell, OLD LADY DRIVERS delivered a competent grindcore album in its own right only irreverent from the getgo with non-grind sounds such as acoustic guitar bits, pop-shlop accouterments and ridiculous subject matter. The result is an interesting but eclipsed debut album only because this band managed to craft some extraordinary psychedelic avant-metal albums that followed. This is by no means a throwaway debut unless extreme metal is not your thing. Comedy comes in many flavors and colors and O.L.D. delivered an unexpected example this far on in an extreme metal subgenre not known for its funny bone.

Ounce for ounce, this debut titled OLD LADY DRIVERS delivers that rare opportunity where lovers of extreme metal and comedy can co-exist side by side for slightly over a half hour’s length. Like most grindcore, the lyrics are unintelligible but even the musical nonchalance and deviations from the norm provide enough comedic departure for the staunchest metalheads out there. Granted this is not this band’s finest moment but for a debut release it’s quite interesting and from a retrospect approach probably even innovative for the year it was released. Energetic and ferocious as any hardcore metal band at the time, this band saw the humor that oozed from such extremism and ran with it. There is also a pre-grunge sound here that places this band in the same ballpark as Green River, The Fluid and Skin Yard but in a more extreme way.