BREAKING SOUNDS:The Persuaders

posted Friday Aug 4th, 2006

Shattered Records recently released “Forced to Fuck” an anthology of the paramount late nineties low-life trumpeters,The Persuaders. Releasing just a couple of singles, the second on Royal Records (now Pollymagoo records run by Jack and Lili of The Splash Four, and now Volt) an album on Savage Records and a split single with Sweden's The Blacks, their catalog has become increasingly harder to come by over the years. With an earmark guitar sound that is the aural equivalent of rash decision making and the engulfing regret that usually follows, they carved out a standard that many bands have moiled over since. Forgoing the idea of using bass guitar, The Persuaders may have taken cue from some of the previous garage punk bands of the nineties, like the Oblivians and even the Gories, at least as far as instrumentation, but they took the duel guitar sound further into gutter and ripped out the spine, leaving a sound that's immediate and catastrophic. King Louie, even as the impish fair-skinned whippersnapper he was back in '97, has a voice as gruff as they come, sounding like he just crawled from beneath a bridge. "Forced to Fuck" spans the band's short existence with their classic songs like “Ain't Your Daddy” and “Hot Stix” among a heap of unreleased material, making this a must have for any rockn'roll fan with common sense.

Here's a video of the Persuaders from this year's Blackout. You might want to watch it lying down.