Bum Kon - Drunken Sex Sucks (Smooch Records) 2008. As someone who moved to Denver later in life, I was not around for the hardcore zeitgeist of the early 1980s. I mentioned a long time ago in a writeup on Ultraman, that “I’m sure every town had a band like Ultraman in the 1980’s. Local heroes who were head and shoulders above all the rest.” I always assumed that Denver’s version of this band (and every smaller town had at least one) was The Frantix. Apparrently, I was a little off. The band that ruled the Denver hardcore scene was according to the liner notes of this new CD, Bum Kon.
Bum Kon recorded two albums and a single in between 1983 and 1986. The single is called ‘Drunken Sex Sucks’ (an opinion I have been known to disagree with) and was released by Local Anesthetic in 1983. You can hear that monster of a 7inch on the new Local Anesthetic comp I wrote up a few weeks back. Everything else was unreleased and sat in a top secret bunker in the heart of the Rockies until this year when Andrew Smooch and his rag-tag band of misfits raided the compound and unearthed 25 tracks of pure, undistilled, hardcore noize onto an unsuspecting, record-buying public. So what we have here is the entire recorded output of the kings of Rocky Mountain hardcore, recorded in the early eighties. How does that sound?
It sounds good, mi amigo. Real good.
Actually the sound quality of the disk is a little hot. I mean, its like they mic’d everything at 11. But this is obscure hardcore from the 1980s. Expecting high production values from this is like expecting CGI effects in a Ted V Mikels movie. So you gotta get past the sound quality (which is no worse than the sound quality of the 7inch by the way) and listen to the songs. First thing I gotta say is that Bum Kon were fucking fast. I’m talking Husker Du “Bricklayer” fast here folks. Bum Kon were definitely a hardcore band. Don’t let the first track “Giving In” fool ya. That one has an almost SoCal feel to it, kinda like something off the first TSOL EP stripped of all the Posh Boy production value. Nope….after “Giving In” its all flailing bodies, swinging fists, hostility, political incorrectness and booze fueled madness.
I give this disk a 10. I think it is better than the Local Anesthetic comp. I admire a band like Bum Kon. They played kick-ass hardcore in the middle of nowhere at a time when doing it made you a complete social outcast. They recorded an entire of album purely for the hell of it because they had zero commercial potential. I mean, do you know what the name Bum Kon means?
Track Listing
Giving In
Drunken Sex Sucks
The Draft
Fighting Yourself
Nancy Reagan Fashion Show
Forced Away
Visions Of Hate
I See
Wasted Mind
Slow Death
This Is Art
Old Woman
Questions
Reagan Sucks
Locked Away
Go Die
Signals In My Head
Better Than You
Bum Kon
Gay Rodeo
Giving In (Alternate Take)
This Is Art (Alternate Take)
Better Than You (Alternate Take)
Gay Rodeo (Alternate Take)
Visions Of Hate (Alternate Take)
The CD is available from Smooch Records for $13.98 US PPD. Well fuckin’ worth it!