Crash

Essentially Crash's swan song, Live — recorded at Herman's Hideaway on St. Patrick's Day 2013 — captures the raw, crunchy power of the band better than any studio album ever could. And that undoubtedly has to do with the fact that Crash was always best when allowed to follow its...

By Tom Murphy

October 8, 2013

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Essentially Crash's swan song, Live — recorded at Herman's Hideaway on St. Patrick's Day 2013 — captures the raw, crunchy power of the band better than any studio album ever could. And that undoubtedly has to do with the fact that Crash was always best when allowed to follow its musical impulses. Yes, there's plenty of crackling distortion from mics that can't quite handle the sound, but that's often how these guys sounded at most of the dives they played. Included are high-energy covers of Chris Ritter's old San Francisco band, Fang, and "Warsaw," by Joy Division (listed as "31G"), to reflect the act's earlier phase as a punk-rock cover band. Crash's fiery originals, meanwhile, sound like the love child of late-'70s English punk, à la GBH, with bits of early hardcore.

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Tom Murphy is a writer, visual artist and musician from Aurora, Colorado. He was a prolific music writer for Westword and a documenter of the Denver music scene.

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Twitter: @simianthinker