Labels: Iron Lung
Review by: Alex Deller
Kim Phuc have received no small amount of praise from me on here, so it’s a bit of a wonder that I’ve taken so long to pull my finger out and get around to reviewing their debut full-length. Pretty weak on my part, but them’s the breaks. ‘Copsucker’ has a great title and is a darn good record. If you were paying attention to the sevens then what you hear will be no real surprise, which is irate, clangourous punk with a singer who sounds like he might have that horrible crusty white spit collected at the corners of his mouth all the time. Their music gives you the same anxious feeling you might get if you’re in a tight, unfamiliar space with lots of other people moving in the opposite direction to the one you want to be going in. It’s intense and causes quite the commotion, maybe sounding like the Observers if they were constantly scratching at their skin to “let the ants out.” One gripe for me, though, is that the lead tracks from their three singles are also included here, and if you’ve played those records as many times as me then you might find it a bit odd to hear them sounding spruced up and a touch cleaner behind the ears. This isn’t a dealbreaker, of course, but being a greedy fucker I’d rather hear three new cuts than three I have elsewhere, particularly when newies like ‘Heathens’ and ‘Razorblades’ are so damn choice.