Review Summary: The trashcan jazz-man really was a has-been..
'80-'85 Part II
By all accounts, Saccharine Trust were somewhat of a prodigal presence on SST. As West Coast punk sped into its second wave, detaching from amphetamine rock and forging its hardcore scene, Saccharine’s label-mates, Black Flag and Minutemen were becoming bastions of pent-up unrest and stage violence. The time was ripe for all that ardour and involvement. The Reagan Era was entering its first proper push, Cold War paranoia fermented, slinking into every aspect of life and art, police brutality was reaching lawless zeniths, and the darker corners of California were reeling from poverty, narcotics and crime. The heavies of SST quickly became the voice of the anxiety of youth, screaming ragged pleas for shaking off apathy and staying informed and angered. In the midst of all that sustained turmoil,
Paganicons was an apolitical show of how punk rock could meld with artful moodiness and personal strife, while still retaining the crunch and bite of its hardcore nature. The band would accompany their politically-inclined tour-mates to rallies and protests, but their music always stuck closer to enduring existentialism.
Politico bents and layered atmospherics aside, the core of
Paganicons feels as elemental and irksome as the rest of the SST roster around that time, and pound for pound, delivers eight knots of sinister yelping and serrated guitars. Opener “I Have…” kicks off on a hushed whimper and then bursts into ominous riffing and Jack Brewer’s snotty, rough vocal tics. “Community Lie” cruises atop a down-tuned bass that sits perfectly between high bounce and a deep groove, and the shred-march of the classic “I Am Right,” as close as the band got to a standard number in their nascence, is a continuous forward push. It all builds and propels
Paganicons into a short and vicious point of internal implosion, that coalesces in the warped, patient chug of closer “A Human Certainty,” the longest cut here.
Saccharine Trust’s life-span was a short one, lasting all of six years. Though the band would return to touring in the last 90’s, even putting out a new record at the turn of the century; that first, brief formation proved to be one of the most vital faces of West Coast punk. It makes sense that the band reunited just as rock music was entering its post-grunge phase. The Melvins, Nirvana and various other luminaries of the 90’s would end up pointing to Saccharine Trust, and
Paganicons in particular, as a watershed moment, a pivot that signaled punk’s exit from its skeletal roots and entry into atmosphere and aura, purposeful primitivism that still captured mood, even as it thrashed around like a strung-out animal. Among SST’s hyper-impressive muster roll, Saccharine Trust waxed poetic, negotiating beauty and aggression, as California burned around them.
