Pure Noise Records – 29 Aug 2022
The PBR of Covers Records (FFO: punk covers of 90s songs)
Earlier this year, Pure Noise Records partnered with Pabst Blue Ribbon. This resulted in some co-branded merchandise, like shirts, hats and koozies. It also paid for fifteen Pure Noise bands to record an LP of cover songs by their influences. Instead of a more straight-forward title like Under the Influence, which is probably frowned upon by the Milwaukee brewer, the resulting mix is titled Dead Formats.
If you’re just getting into music, this likely serves as a musical roadmap for your favorite band’s favorite bands. If I was younger and just getting into the equivalent of MXPX, Less Than Jake and Strike Anywhere, this would be perfect for expanding my musical boundaries.
If this applies to you—STOP READING AND GO LISTEN. This isn’t intended to gatekeep you from broadening your musical taste.
For those of us who survived the late nineties and early aughts, cover albums are nothing new. It seems like every band from that era had at least one cover of a popular band that they recorded as a secret track or contributed to a compilation.
The pinnacle of this trend was likely Fearless Records’ Punk Goes… series. From 2000 until 2019, bands would record a cover song for the chosen genre. This resulted in interesting mashups, like Link 80’s skacore version of Metallica’s“Harvester of Sorrow” from Punk Goes Metal or Thrice’s post-hardcore take on Real Life’s “Send Me an Angel”.
On these compilations, the bands usually did something different. In Dead Formats however, we have punk and hardcore bands almost exclusively covering punk and hardcore bands.
As a result, there are a fair number of covers that are fairly straight ahead takes on the original. Sometimes it comes off well—see, for example, Drug Church energizes The Mighty Mighty Bosstones’ “Someday I Suppose”, while Red City Radio’s orgcore vocals add a degree of desperation to All-American Rejects’ “Move Along”. Other times, little value is added to the original—see, for example, State Champs’ nearly note-for-note take on Blink 182’s “What’s My Age Again?” or Spanish Love Songs’ Skiba cosplay on The Alkaline Trio’s “We’ve Had Enough”.
Other approaches to the originals are likely missteps. Microwave takes Sublime’s classic “Santeria” and somehow makes it even more mellow. Elder Brother apply the “Wonderwall” treatment to My Chemical Romance’s “Welcome to the Black Parade” by stripping it down to an acoustic singalong.
That isn’t to say that some bands don’t take chances. LURK gives The White Stripes’ “Fell in Love with a Girl” a raucous full band treatment, while Rotting Out distinguishes their version of “Society” from Pennywise with dueling vocals. Chamber brings the mosh with Machine Head’s “Davidian”—although this may seem the most ambitious as they are the only metal band on the compilation.
That all said, I think that Dead Formats compares favorably to a can of Pabst. It’s comfortable, even though it’s nothing amazing—and it’s hard to pass up for $2.
Once hailing from the salty tundra of Syracuse, NY, Ben now calls the DC suburbs his home. He fell in love with punk after listening to Punk-O-Rama 3, Less Than Jake and MXPX in middle school. He loves to slam dance but is too large to stage dive.
When he’s not pretending to have exquisite musical taste, he’s raising two children, designing RPG products and practicing law. (Who knows if he’ll ever get the hang of it.)
