Review
Testors
Prime Primitive: 1976–1977

Press release says this came out May 30th so I’m even more behind than usual… Blame summer! I did get an advance download which instantly caught my attention and I’ve listened many times since then. The guitars are shredding. The quick turn around in the chord progression from “Hey You” could or may have inspired Greg Ginn on the early Black Flag stuff. To be honest I could use a little less guitar in the mix and a little more drums especially on the live tracks like “Awmaw” where the drums just rip!
Led by prolific proto-punk Sonny Vincent, sounds like Love’s rock ‘n’ roll swagger with the wild abandon of MC5 or just imagine Arthur Lee fronting Dead Boys with whom the Testors toured nationwide back in 1979. The A side features nine early studio recordings from around the same time as their only official release- the Together b/w Time Is Mine single from 1976. B side features 5 live cuts which, aside from my earlier critique, sound pretty awesome considering. Reminds me a bit of Detroit's Death but almost more in that it deserves to be more than a footnote in the pages of punk history. For example, if AI actually worked “Let’s Get Zooed Out” would be on every proto-punk algorithm cued-up alongside classics such as “Kick Out The Jams”, “Sonic Reducer”, “Blank Generation” and “Beat On The Brat.”
Even though these recordings exist they’re not easy to come by physically. The last posthumous compilation was released by Swami way back in 2003. It was reissued in Europe by Alien Snatch in 2014 but you’d still be lucky to find a copy. I have a lot of respect and gratitude for Green Noise, the current champion of indie punk distro in North America, for putting out this crucial release. The kind of record you tell your friends about, which i did. To quote my old buddy Kevin, who pointed out one of the seemingly few upsides of modern conveniences- “Things that shouldn’t be aren’t necessarily banished to obscurity anymore..”