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Freeplay: Capitol Punishment
By Megan Carneal
mcarneal@mscd.edu

Capitol Punishment When Putsch Comes to Shove (Stage Dive Records, 1985)

Long before the current animosity towards President Bush and after the flower children had their peace-loving ways with Nixon, there was Reagan. And as with all screw-ups in seats of power, he provided music with a much-
needed ingredient: hardcore fuel for the counterculture fire.

Capitol Punishment could probably have done just as well for themselves today as they did in their own time. Transpose lyrics about Reagan’s reign with lyrics about Bush’s blunders and, voilà, it’s an album about political discontent fit for the present.

One thing this album does have that would make it unfit for the present is an understanding that hardcore is not poetic, it is not pretty, the band members do not have expensive haircuts, and the only purpose it really serves is as an outlet for pure unadulterated aggression.

Much like their riffs, Capitol Punishment’s vocals are brutal and vicious. It sounds like the singer is gargling a mouthful of whiskey as he spits out the kind of growls only appreciated, and most likely produced, by the inebriated. The machine-gun-fire drumming creates an all-out assault that never slows down throughout the album.

Their namesake track is pure speed punk that only takes a break from the chaos with crunchy metal breakdowns. As the title suggests, this track, and the rest of the album, is riddled with accusations of government injustice, the always-present and easily blamable enemy of punk.

“Elephant Man” starts off deceptively slow. After the first verse, it becomes apparent that this piece is utterly deranged, complete with split personalities. It starts with a bouncy bass, eccentric guitar pickings and subdued monotone vocals. The primal personality takes over for the chorus, and the song shifts into a hardcore stew of growling and distortion. The jumps between tempo and tone are cause for an extremely high sense of anxiety throughout the track.

At a short one minute and 11 seconds, “Racism Is Ignorance” could have been an incredibly profound and empowering track. Instead the band opted to try spreading an anti-racist message via a completely incoherent mess of syllables and screams. The song’s meaning may be lost, but the involuntary neck spasms created by a fevered state of frantic headbanging make up for the lack of clarity.

The musicianship is not great, unless great means playing power-chord progressions at light-speed. The lyrics and political views are not the most intellectual, especially since most of the vocals are completely indecipherable. What Capitol Punishment does offer is the spit-in-your face hardcore of old that has been edging closer and closer to extinction since the birth of post-hardcore.

Download Capitol Punishment’s When Putsch Comes to Shove at:
http://anamericanpunkin suburbia.blogspot.com/2006_02_01_anamericanpunkinsuburbia_archive.html.