Style: punk, heavy metal
Label: Havoc Records
Year: 1994
Home: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Members: Dave Trenga ~ lead vocals
Corey Lyons ~ bass
Eric Good ~ guitar/vocals
Matt Garabedian ~ drums
Adrienne Droogas ~ backing vocals
A-R, at first, greatly reminds me of Satanic metal band Nunslaughter whose songs are guitar onslaughts of drowning chords behind shouted diatribes in under 3 minutes that are riddled with in your face discomfort & shock via lyrics, titles & attitude. This is pretty much A-R, even down to the poor production quality. But, there's a major difference - while Nunslaughter may not actually be Satanists, A-R are nothing but committed to the topics they sing about. I find something incredibly interesting & appealing about a band where the songs on their 5 song EP openly & heatedly criticize racial cleansing, war, Vietnam, the ignorant government, Nazi sympathy, death & the cure for AIDS (that is criticizing the government who aren't finding a cure). Nazi sympathy is not exactly a topic that most bands turn to for lyrical inspiration, let alone most people even think about, let alone if a band is inspired to write about social causes more often than not any message will be hidden behind Dylan-esque poetry. A-R has no modesty &, thank God for free speech, puts it all upfront. But, then, musically there's not much here to work with so if you aren't listening to the message as it is, then what are you listening to? It also helps that the band doesn't take to indecipherable screaming, though a lyric sheet can at times help a lot for some clarity. I'll confess, it's an odd comparison I know, the only other time I've seen a band so forthright in sharing their socially corrective message is Chumbawumba, who have covered AR songs, the Gaelic Oi band Oi Polloi & Ian Stuart the father of the white supremacist music movement. But, that says a lot. A-R would, ironically, probably agree with Stuart's anti-government ideology. Its seems to me that most bands are more interested in aiming for the Grammy's than making any potential fans uncomfortable. It's only bands on the far fringe, Chumbawumba being the above exception as they've achieved commercial success, realize that they won't be on MTV any time soon & thus are far less hesitant about putting their neck potentially on the chopping block. They have nothing to lose by being honesty. Even bad press will be more press than they've had before so they've got nothing to lose. Even Bono, with all his honorable activism, would shudder at A-R's forthright honesty & lack of modesty. You may not always agree with A-R's far left anarchist point of view, but you can't help but have respect for what they're trying to express. & you can't help but smile when you hear lyrics like: "Don't give them freedom/cause they're not going to give you yours ... fuck Nazi sympathy" from the five line song "Fuck Nazi Sympathy", or: "by the time the war has ended a new one's just begun/modern day is just the same no war is ever won/you'd think we'd learn our lesson/but it's so plain to see/same old fate with a brand new date ... how many lives were lost/by the Nazi holocaust/see history reappear/ethnic cleansing's here" from "Tuesday May 18, 1993" though I'll confess to not knowing what happened on that day, or my favorite: "You see the pain & the suffering from your lavishly furnished materialistic shithole/you cry crocodile tears for the poor wretched children/that inhabit the two-minute time slot between your favorite sitcoms ... why should you care, after all, they're not your children for now" from "Do You Know Where Their Children Are".
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