You Da Victim!

Italy always had the most energetic hardcore scene and bands like Raw Power were proof of it.

Despite the death of their singer, original band member Giuseppe Codeluppi, they still play gigs and are planning a US tour in the summer of 2008 with a few stops in Texas and Mexico thrown in at the end of August 2008.

It's interesting to read their band website and then comb through memory banks back to their gig at (yep! it's been mentioned before...) The Ritz in Austin, Texas. The support band may very well have been Morally Bankrupt; it's all a blur at this stage so that might be incorrect.

The band state on their website that they "never had the chance to express in a studio album the great potential that the band is able to unleash in a live concert." They also mentioned that they "never managed to get a foothold" due to "a lack of professional managers and structure." There's truth to this statement. The gig in Austin was poorly "advertised" as such- not even a flyer was posted! The show was on a Sunday night and there were about half a dozen people in attendance. The show was really boring, being indicative of what one experienced at most of the shows for bands that were part of the "crossover" phenomenon of the mid to late 1980s. Remembering this gig and how anti-climactic it was to finally get to see this band, it's odd that the band espouses the feeling that they were so much more live than in the studio.

The humorous thing about all of that being said is that Raw Power didn't seem to be a blatant part of the whole crossover into metal like bands such as DRI and Corrosion Of Conformity, who actually signed on to Metal Blade Records. This 7-inch record and the LP that preceded it were released by Toxic Shock Records, a punk label. In hindsight, it could be said that some of the bands on this label delved closely into metal territory; bands like Modern Industry and Marching Plague come to mind.

Crossing over into the metallic realm was perceived to be a big deal to a lot of musicians in the hardcore scene because heavy metal had this "rebellious yet easy to control" feel to it that didn't really channel rebellion into a form of action but created a cathartic ritual that resulted in no push for social change. Since a lot of punks felt spurred to create change through that particular musical style, merging music into the direction of heavy metal felt like a step backward, rather than a step forward. However, when one thinks of bands like Septic Death or even Amebix, one can see a merge with metal that still doesn't compromise the integrity of the musicians who were playing it, nor does it water down the message underneath the sonic barrage.

Although, other blogs have posted this record, Kamikaze Conniptions sees fit to post it as well. The lyric sheet that accompanied the record will follow shortly. The record title is a piss-take on those who feel the need to hurl racial epithets on those from Italy; but beyond that, it's laughable because if you read it outloud, you sound like Elmer Fudd would if he were to pronounce the band name!

Wop Hour