Pre-Owned Golden Black: Greatest Hits (CD 0825807703523) by Guitar Wolf

0825807703523. Pre-owned: Good condition. CD. With their amps cranked past the threshold of pain and the hard but smeary blare of their guitars pushing the VU meters past the red and into the infrared, Guitar Wolf are a band who play straight-ahead punk rock with a physical force and frantic intensity matched by only a tiny handful of mere humans, and they've left behind plenty of fine records that document their speed-jive genius with commendable accuracy. Guitar Wolf's career came to a crossroads in March 2005 with the death of bassist Billy, and while guitarist Seiji and drummer Toru have pledged to continue with a new man on the four-string, that makes this as good a time as any to sum up the band's first era, and Golden Black is a "greatest hits" compilation that features 26 slabs of six-string frenzy recorded between 1997 and 2005, and from the first blast of "Can-Nana Fever" to the final growling report of their cover of "Summertime Blues," this album hits the road with the throttle opened all the way, and it never lets up for a moment. Even the album's token "ballad" -- the noise-laden romantic number "I Love You, OK" -- is tough as nails, and as they shout their tributes to such essential rock & roll subject matter as beer, girls, bikes, guitars, radio, space aliens, and lots more, this is primal no-quarter punk (with a rockabilly undertow) at its most joyous. If Golden Black: Greatest Hits isn't the definitive Guitar Wolf album -- it doesn't cohere quite as well as the epochal Jet Generation -- as an overview of the trio's first 18 years, it's superb blazing fun, and if you're looking for an ideal introduction to the group's glorious mayhem, this will do the trick just right. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi