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Just because you can see through punk rock, like a shot glass of vodka, doesn't mean the fire inside is dead. Two things
matter: Your dosage -- the volume the music sounds best at – and the potency of the music -- the ultimate proof. The
Distillers haven't spent 12 years on a shelf mellowing out. They're not so smooth. In fact, the wonder they create is in their
mashing together of very active ingredients, plundering through punk like it's just being discovered.
A little history
- Pretend it's Thanksgiving of '98. Take a nineteen-year-old woman with a mohawk that looks like a new and perfect circular
saw has been thrown through her cranium, her name is Brody. She's the singer/screecher, originally from Melbourne, Australia
- the continent colonized so England could shuffle its convicts off because their guillotine blades were getting dull. While
Down Under, Brody was in a band called Sourpuss. Find a guitar player from Detroit that sounds like she's carving tablature
on a concrete curb. That would be Casper. She's a proud crusty punk. Fire up long-time skin bruiser and drum attacker Mat
Young, formerly of the ADZ and CH3, melt them altogether and surround the compound with the barbed wire bass of Ms. Kim Chi,
who uses her ass flap patch to piss in public without a care, and you've got it right. Moonshine's best with homegrown ingredients,
coupled with a time-tested, family-protected process.
The Distillers are as fiery and natural, yet rusty and jagged
as their ridge-running brethren. Bootleggers and The Distillers also share something directly in common: a healthy dose of
incest. Brody and Kim met at Kim's work. Brody knew a friend who knew a drummer. Conversations that began with "I didn't know
you played..." ended with a band quickly. They do have one thing in common that isn’t by chance: Kill from the heart.
All members are now in a band they truly want to be in -- not to not to just hammer out crude notes like role-playing, bummed-out
monkeys. Being so, they burned out all the crud and heated their music to make it simple and powerful and good. Their main
ingredients are filtered over and over again. Each time, the proof getting higher and higher. All well and good, what do they
sound like? Don't try to make the pigeon hole for the Distillers smaller than “punk.”
You'll get splinters
just trying to shove them in it. If the music industry were as honest as package labeling, some bands would have to suffer
the indignity of being Utah 3.2% beer. Fuck, stick a rag in the top of The Distillers and you've got yourself a Molotov. Reminisce
over the talented spirits of the Plasmatics' Wendy O. Williams (RIP), the caught-on-fire accident of the Circle Jerks, the
hooked smile of Patti Smith (They cover "Ask the Angels"), the dysfunction of the Germs, and the uterine sparkle and barb
of the Lunachicks. Swirl it around a bit. Get a whiff of the bouquet. Tinkle in a hint of the crust and cleanse- the-wound
drill of Crass. If you haven't heard of them, I'm pretty sure you know at least one of the bands that already admire and have
played with them: X, The Dwarves, Rocket From the Crypt, U.S. Bombs, The Criminals, L.E.S. Stitches, The Ducky Boys, and Litmus
Green. They already have dates scheduled with H20, AFI, and the Nerve Agents. Remember, like The Distillers have, "If it'
ain't broke, don't break it." Burning it to the ground is another matter entire. It's all in the distillation. Screw the top
off.
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