Angry Samoans
Thirty songs in 45 minutes is on a par with D.R.I., but Angry Samoans’ stop-start stutter-songs sounded insanely tight despite their nonstop barrage of perpetually un-PC garage punk hits, most of which dated back nearly three decades. Frontman “Metal” Mike Saunders hasn’t aged a day since he came Back From Samoa in ’82, either. Watching the diminutive singer prowl around the stage in a Sting jersey – the sports team, not the ex-Police man – and backward baseball cap was like tripping back to West Coast punk’s first wave, with Samoan hits “Right Side of My Mind” and the anti-Rodney Bingenheimer rant “Get Off the Air” taking retro pole position at a fest that had more than its share of reunited old-schoolers. Midway through, Saunders traded places with drummer Bill Vockeroth for the romantic breakdown of “Time to Fuck” and “Slave to My Dick,” but the real surprise came when special guest vocalist and former Austinite/Hormone Tim Stegall, in yet another Dorian Gray moment, emerged from stage left to belt out “The Ballad of Jerry Curlan.” The Samoans knew their crowd and drilled out a pair of blink-and-you-missed-’em Black Flag covers (“Wasted,” “Nervous Breakdown”) that swelled both the frenetic circle pit of young punks down front and the hearts of die-hards now too fragile to stage dive. “Psych-Out 129” indeed.
This article appears in November 9 • 2007.