Chokebore - Black Black

Year: 1999

Label: Punk In My Vitamins

Quick, name one musical export from Hawaii, that's not Don Ho. 

Dude, that's sooooo easy, it's Chokebore. I also would have excepted their previous moniker, Dana Lynn. 

If you skated in the late eighties you may have known of Chokebore as Johnee Kop's band, the guy more famous for his cryptically perverted paint pen on grip tape ramblings than his actual skating. I mean seriously, how was that dude even pro? Granted he was on the Vision team the same time as Ken Park, who made a career out of invert variations, so it seems like almost anyone in a pair of Jimmy'Z clamdiggers and a Maui and Sons muscle shirt could ride for those buffoons, put dang.

Alright, so anyway, Black Black is Chokebore's kinda "comeback" album. They started off on Amphetamine Reptile, and progressively got less wild and more introspective and somber. The constant though has always been the vocals. If you ever have heard Chokebore, you'll never confuse them for another band. No other vocalist sounds like Troy Bruno Balthazar. His words are strung out, slightly distorted, and in a pitch that's hard to describe. Sometimes it's a mumbling drone, other times it's a soaring bird (did I really just say that?). On this record the music is pretty subdued, but on occasion they bring the rock, it's got a little bit of a later Unwound feel (and by the by, Vern Rumsey of Unwound runs the record label Punk In My Vitamins), not that they sound like Unwound, but it just has some of that steez. It also reminds me some of Bluebird (who I should post something by...note to self).

DL