Bullet Treatment

What More Do You Want? (2004)

Hein Terweduwe

I assume that in a few years time the LA's Bullet Treatment biography will be released as a new encyclopedia. If you like riddles and such, I suggest you could read about their history on their homepage, but you'd better take an aspirin before you do. So with singer #6, the drummer that became a guitarist and whatnot, they finally managed to record this 10 song EP for Basement Records, the label that releases these "Radio Disaster"-comps with a remarkable frequency. Like so many other bands Bullet Treatment started out playing coversongs from classic bands such as Minor Threat, Angry Samoans, Descendents, Suicidal Tendencies, T.S.O.L., 7 Seconds, Bad Brains, Adolescents, etc and you might have heard them on some comps with covers of Bad Religion, Ramones or The Misfits. "What More Do You Want" also includes a classic coversong with Circle Jerk's "What's Your Problem", which they do great BTW, adding a very raw touch to it.

All the other original songs on this CD bare this same classic punk touch with incredible speed-drumming, fearce and churning guitars and raw-shouting yet clear vocals that altogether reminded me of long-time classic acts like M.D.C. or 7 Seconds and the likes. I'm delibirately not using the term "hardcore" to define this music, although I'm sure a lot of you will label it as such, but there's too much a degree of melody in these attacking songs to use it. Not in a newschool melodic sense, but these guitars all have these great loops and simple chords which I rarely see any band play at this speed anymore. I'm aware that there's no artistic standout stuff in what this band is doing technically, but the energy, the boost of power and speed dripping from these songs, along with my nostalgic feelings that come with listening to this 1-2 minute songs, makes it a great EP for this 35-year old sucker. You'll have to be open for some heavy shit when you buy it, but if you like your bands fast and furious without a degree of metal or growling voices, I'm sure you'll love it as much as I do. This sound is the soil that bands like Good Riddance and their adepts are still weeding from. I will always like bands that manage to reproduce this sound in the way Bullet Treatment does it, no matter how generic it might be to some.