WZBC likes the brash return of Primal Scream

Primal Scream was born in the Orwellian year of 1984, which is fitting because for the last two decades the band has been watching over indie rock like Big Brother.

The band has presided over the convergence of rock music and the acid house underground with its landmark Screamadelica, and it helped make heroin cool again on the Trainspotting soundtrack. At the turn of the millennium it started to fade away a bit, band members consumed by hallucinogenics and addiction, and indie rock started to rest a little easier.

That is, until Primal Scream came back. Man, did that band come back. Guns blazing, fire in dilated eyes and ammunition to spare, Primal Scream was out for blood. We're talking an Empire Strikes Back kind of comeback - Primal Scream had the technology, and everybody else could run or die. The album? XTRMNTR.

Albums don't get any more ambitious than XTRMNTR. It attacked with nihilistic rage and left nothing sacred. It put to music a political doctrine that was both comprehensive and utterly simplistic: ask no questions and destroy your enemies. Sound familiar? That's because the Bush administration ripped it off to fight terrorism a year later. I'm convinced that Donald Rumsfeld listens to XTRMNTR.

In fact, the band essentially plunged into a three-front war, with full-scale assaults on tired rock fixtures. The first target becomes obvious right away: track one is named "Kill All Hippies." There are no concessions on the track. No, there is only blazing guitar, scribbled distortion, stepladder scales, and vocalist Bobby Gillespie's refrain of "You got the money, I got the soul." The rest of the album follows suit, finding spirit through ripping guitar and the language of destruction, daring the jam band scene to ante-up. Noodlers beware. Primal Scream reminded indie how to hate, and if you read much music criticism you'll notice that its "kill all hippies" doctrine has caught on quick.

"Kill All Hippies" was XTRMNTR's blitzkrieg, and the dirt grass underground (it's not so cool to like moe anymore, is it?) fell like Poland. Primal Scream had 11 more tracks to work with, and bigger fish to fry.

Next conquest? Well, remember this was 2000, so they had a nice mainstream target to pick on, that is, rap-metal.

Not that they proved that rap-metal sucked or anything. Everybody and their mother already knew rap-metal sucked. Fred Durst was posturing all over the place: nobody could avoid the horror. But XTRMNTR gave the music intelligentsia their own way to get angry, a way that had nothing to do with nookies. "Accelerator" sounds like MC5 at a thousand miles an hour, total audio entropy. "Exterminator" punches pacifism square in the face with its mechanized guitar grind and lyrics like "Exterminate the underclass, exterminate the telepaths, no civil disobedience." Ghandi could never hack it in Primal Scream's universe.

So yeah, you're probably thinking something like, "XTRMNTR did a number on hippies and bad rap-metal; it's not as if Phish or Korn are fortresses against criticism."

Fair enough, Primal Scream was bullying some of the music scene's more fragile youth. But then there's the third victim, where we encounter the Primal Scream-as-Medusa aspect of the album. In 2000, the band looked around the indie scene and saw lethargy. Kids standing around at shows trying to look disinterested, a slacker world of pacifism. Primal Scream was ready to kill the children ... and they did. XTRMNTR set fire to it all, it sent a hammer blow into smug '90s rock.

Full of spirit, snarling, and impossible to listen to without feeling yourself come unhinged, XTRMNTR was everything rock hadn't been for years. It laid to waste the Belle and Sebastians and Yo La Tengo's of the world: not since General Sherman had territory been conquered this mercilessly. And, in the process, they trail blazed a path for the post-disco dance craze that's dominating the underground today. The Rapture ought to call Primal Scream up to say thank you. The connection goes so far that the post-disco golden boy's of DFA records (James Murphy and Tim Goldsworthy) actually made their first big splash arranging track six, "Blood Money."

So there it is. Ladies and gentlemen, XTRMNTR. A 21st century sociopath beacon that took no prisoners and obliterated the musical landscape. I think it's pretty cool.