Spirit Gun - The Status Quo Must Go (self-released)

I must admit that I read that album title a bit too quickly and thought, “Poor old Status Quo, what has that raggedy old r&b band ever done to hurt anyone?” Then I remembered that horrendous single, “In the Army Now,” and thought, “Fair enough.” But, having checked my schoolboy-level knowledge of Latin, I quickly realized that this title for the revolutionary message that it is.

As the song from which the album takes its name kicks off Spirit gun’s new one, we are presented with a wall of squalling proto-punk-rock ‘n’ roll that threads a line between such seminal bands as The Stooges and The MC5 through the do-wop punk of The Ramones but whose simple and incendiary message seemed to get lost when punk began taking itself far too seriously by the end of the seventies. And now it is back, thanks to Norfolk, Virginia’s finest.

Like those aforementioned bands, “Status Quo” shows just one aspect of their sonic blend. Push on through the album, and you find “Statis” taking a more gothic/post-punk stance, “The Heist” wandering down some seventies-infused R&B routes, and “Stand 4 Nothing” sounding like the most brutal garage rock band on the block kicking up a storm.

As this song states, you need to stand for something in this life, and Spirit Gun stand for change, for revolution, for the end of the Status Quo (not the band) in whatever form that takes and whatever that might mean to each of us – change in leadership, societal attitudes, acceptable morals and ethics, government policy, business standards, political will, a change in what we, the people, are prepared to edure. Change is, after all, the only constant!

And, of course, Spirit Gun stand, most of all, for incendiary salvos, thundering drums, relentless and groovesome basslines and one helluva live show!

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