Aversion Therapy

From the latest Aversion.com:

Balls
The Yuppie Pricks
Chicken Ranch Records

"Punk rock -- or a casual approximation of it -- turned up in a lot of weird places lately: Blaring in the background of luxury car commercials, pumping from SUVs driven by snotty rich kids, auto-loading on the MySpace page of every sniveling, future Republican scenester in America. Yeah, it's really disconcerting, isn't it?

The Yuppie Pricks are here to take punk rock back for the punks. Launching an over-the-top offensive at everything that was, long ago, anathema to the punk spirit -- rich guys, Republicans, fashionistas, frat boys -- Balls aims to burn every bridge punk's built with the mainstream over the past two decades. If it doesn't immediately sound like a wonderful idea, you probably have no business buying punk records in the first place. Try moving on to Coldplay.

As divisive as possible, The Yuppie Pricks make that abrasive, snotty and defiant punk album that's been on the endangered species list for eight or nine years. Guitars sound like they're being crushed by falling cinder blocks as much as they're being played, the rhythm section is an earthquake in a scrap yard and singer Trevor Middleton learned his trade by singing along to Dead Kennedys albums. It's the sort of album you can play for your own enjoyment, or play at your stuffy neighbors, coworkers or sister for your own amusement.

The Yuppie Pricks hate all the right things, and use their amalgam of '80s California punk, hardcore and metal as a vehicle for that hate. "Collars Up" blasts the popped-collar status symbol that's swept the nation again, "Fraternity Days" takes an easy pot-shot at the Greek sector of campus, "Fuck You, I'm Rich" spares no words satirizing upper-class values. "G.O.P." retools Buzzcocks' classic "ESP," to piss off the red states. In the spirit of bipartisanship, "Donkey Show" swoops in to disgust the Democrats. The pro-suicide "Loser" is there just to piss off anyone The Yuppie Pricks might have overlooked.

It's all done with a snide smile -- there's as much Guttermouth and Vandals in Balls as there are Dead Kennedys and Crass -- so the Pricks are flicking authority's nose rather than aiming a gun at it in the name of the proletariat. Smile all you want, though: Balls is the sort of album punk's needed for a while -- let's pray it finds its way into the ears of the pop-punk scene."

- Matt Schild