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NO HEART, NO BRAIN, NO BALLS:
Adipocere and Pussyhound.
Anarchy Ahoy! I figured I was in for a fun ride when I opened this. A demon on the cover extracts the brains from a desk-jockey and the back photo is the Broadcasting House demolition site. Nelson noisemongers Adipocere and Pussyhound split the disc between them. Adipodere kicks off with a metaller pick slide into The've Got You by The Balls. This half of the disc is relentlessly funny in the reactionary vernacular of the ageing punk. One track is almost gentle - "I am a fly - buzz, buzz, buzz" it goes. There's a McMurder nursery rhyme paean to a certain food chain outlet and a plea for political activism on Blow Up The Beehive. First impressions hold up - good time nihilism with a built in hangover. Pussyhound is a slight different story, with Dave White reprising his role in Cunt ie. bangs on bin lids while animosity woman Kez rants like a pagan with a bellyache over horror movie scrapes and flubbering drum machines. Some cool stuff including a bloody misogynist rave up, Ragman. By the time Are You Fucked Off Yet? bellows it's rhetorical question, this punter can't help replying "Yep, plenty thanks". Not for the dinnertable, but enjoyable enough for the non - squeamish.
Jacob Conner New Zealand Musician 60th Issue June / July 1998
"Leave our trucking food alone / You pack of trucking tankers / No one wants it so truck off / You pack of trucking tankers". Well now that I've got your attention, be warned! If you can't handle abrasive lyrics that remind you thay politics, Jenny Shipley, McDonalds, machismo and corporations are screwing us, then don't buy this album. For those of us who remember Dead Centre, Nelson's notorious punkers, this collection of particularly harsh songs may come as a nice, oops, I mean nasty reminder of our fading youth. As expected, this album has much to say about the state of our nation / world, lives and expressed with a definate anger taken from the tone of Mike Pukes raspy vocals and guitar riff hardware. Xanataph c/ Deathmetal band Daemon appears with some more of his wicked and downrighteous guitar technique. Kez Bizarre appears also to back up the vocals on a couple of the tracks. Trace Hodgson submits some cool cartoons on the cover. Obvious punk influences flourish here, digging up memories of watching early NZ punk bands like No Tag or The Johnnies. My favourite, most listenable numbers are I Am A Fly supporting fly protection, and Jon & Rex with lyrics like "Jon and Rex like to have sex / Rex up Jon and Jon up Rex". On closing note, I must say that Humpty Dumpty deserves more respect than to be called a "solid chicken fart". Want to know more? Contact Mike at (defunct address).
David Gideon New Zealand Musician Vol. 9 No. 4 February / March 2001
Bluuurgh! Anti-social anthems of discontent address fast food franchises, teletubbies, pigs, greedy c**ts, the royals and Truebliss. The songs are bloody funny, even better read as lyrics and the liner notes offer intertaining explanations for each cut. Basic punk stylings pound the humour into submission, allowing for deadly serious disgust to seep through. Some material seems dated or is recycled. What is important though, is the fierce independence Mike Puke demonstrates by refusing to be sedated by mainstream popular culture. He's spitting bitter pills rather than wallowing in negativity and while the music may border on the horrendous, the ideology implores vigilance. If society makes you sick, you may well enjoy singing along to Big Fat Rats and Chicken Fucker. I wondered what happened to Mothertrucker Records and it's heartening to see they're still keeping it real.
Jacob Conner New Zealand Musician 2002
Mike Puke
Mothertrucker recordings
One things for sure - you could never accuse mike Puke of selling out to the man. After fronting Nelson punk outfit Dead Centre, veteran troublemaker and so-called musician Mike Puke made the move south to Dunedin, showcasing his distinctively atonal and throaty growl In Mike Puke and the Pukes in a handful of shows at Fuel. He played guitar and "sang" while two of the scariest looking females I have ever seen provided "backing vocals" and a suitable level of menace. Unlike other NZ operators, you'll definitely never catch Mike Puke advertising Nescafe or getting his musical guerilla warfare sponsered by coke. No one is ever, ever going to sample any of Pukes tracks, make them into backing music for an add, or use them on a compilation album.
For you see, Mike Puke just does not give a fuck what anybody else thinks of him. In the liner notes for The Sound Of Puke, a nineteen-track exercise in tolerance, he rejects his species out of hand: "When I look at the human race and see what fucked things it does, it makes me thankful to know that I am actually Xarg from (the planet) Zog. Now if I could only fix my spaceship and go back home". On the song "I'm Glad I'm Mad", which is musically inseparable from every other song on this disc, he claims: "You may think that I am Mad but I don't fucking care / Living my life just like you is more than I could bear".
So Mike Puke attacks. No one is spared: the police, Truebliss, politicians, KFC, people with cell phones, the Teletubbies... even Princess Di gets an amazingly vitriolic diatribe in the song 'Dresses For Inhumanity'. (Worryingly, Mike Puke also sings a song about wanting an Uzi.) Musically this album recalls Dead Kennedys but completely lacks imagination. It's practically unlistenable. But it's true punk - pure, nasty, braindead, political and unconcerned with the consequences. I just hope Mike Puke gets the chance to take out Blink 182 before he fixes his spaceship.
Grade: D
Rohan Critic Issue 25 30 September 2002
Mothertrucker Records
The first thing I'll say is that this record beats the hell out of Pukes last one, The Sound Of Puke, which was described in Issue 25 of Critic 2002 as a "nineteen-track exercise in tolerance" whose songs were "musically inseparable" from each other.While The Nightmayor Of Nelson is not amazingly original or particularly pleasant to sit through, it represents a progression in Puke's style towards being bearable enough to listen to as well as having popular appeal. Not much of one, but a progression nevertheless.
Mike Puke records alone, programming the drums, thrashing out the chords and growling the words all by himself. He is no Pavarotti, but possesses a respectable (if not very musical) howl of strangulation.
He is no Satriani, but his studied solos and basic three chord progressions suit the stripped back feel pretty well. He is no Danny Carey, but the drums on the album are straightforward, solid punk-thrash material. Overall, his music is kind of like rubbernecking at a car crash: something tells you to ignore it and keep driving, and something else just won't let you. Just when you're sick and tired of the monotony of it, Mike Puke throws something into the mix to hold your attention for just a couple of minutes more. And before you know it you're at the end of the album.
I don't particularly like Mike Pukes music, or punk in general, but what Mike Puke does is to be encouraged. He does it for no one but himself, and if anyone wants to listen and growl along with his diatribes, well, that's a bonus. If no one bought The Nightmayor Of Nelson (and sales will almost certainly approach the zero mark), I am quite sure that album number four would still arrive for review sometime next year. Nothing will stop him. There's something pretty rare and special about that.
Grade: 5.5/10
An audience with Mike Puke.
MIKE PUKE: Yeah - the olds! They don't believe in what I'm doing at all, eh, they want me to have a real job. But it's not for me. When I left school I worked in a mental hospital as a nurse, and earned shitloads of money cause it was really good money back then. But because I was doing shift work, my friends had time off when I didn't. So there I was with all this money to spend but I didn't really have anything to do with it. So I got to the point where I thought fuck, I'd rather have time than money. Time was more important to me than money. So I lived on the streets, did the drugs and alcohol thing and all that. And just before my 23rd birthday I thought I should do something a bit more positive. I always liked the anarchist-type punk bands who were saying things, so I thought I'd start playing guitar.
CRITIC: Your latest album, The Nightmayor of Nelson, is about some fascist mayors of Nelson. Did you like playing that troublemaker role, pissing off Nelson people?
MP: Yeah, I really upset the Slasher Malone (former mayor of Nelson, Peter Malone) a few times. Our feud started when I was 18 or 19 and I started going to the pub. We used to go to the pub in Richmond and we'd see the mayor there, always drunk with his car parked out the front. It was really hypocritical because at the time they were doing all these anti-drink driving things. We did some posters of him, one as the Grim Reaper and one of them as Hitler. He got quite upset.
CRITIC: Understandably.
We were putting the posters up and this old fella just nutted out. He saw the swastika and saw red. He went and called the cops, and the cops came round, and they liked the poster. They asked for a couple for the police station. We did this gig up on the church steps. It was for a music course, a three month thing, which was pretty useless. I learnt nothing, as you can probably tell from listening to my music! We did this little gig, and as soon as my section came on the mayor came flying out of his office yelling, "Stop stop stop!" and all this sort of shit, at which point we turned all the amps up and started getting feedback, and making all these noises and going "Fuck you". There was a big argument. It got in the paper, how I was saying they should rename Nelson 'Belsen' cause it's run by a pack of Nazis. He threatened to stop all funding and everything to do with music in Nelson, because of a couple of people who upset him. He threatened to fuck up the whole music scene for everybody in Nelson. They've always been that way anyway. It's always been hard for punk and metal bands to play in Nelson.
CRITIC: Do you enjoy Dunedin more! Or do you hate Sukhi Turner too?
MP: I've got no problem with her - as of yet! Sukhi Turner seems pretty cool for a mayor, but I'd imagine if someone like Richard Walls gets in I might start up a Dunedin version.
CRITIC: Do you like any music apart from punk?
MP: I can tolerate most music, except for really commercial music that's made solely for making money. I can't the Top Twenty and all that crap, but I like good honest music, people just doing their own thing.
CRITIC: Is that what you like about punk as a musical form? That it's not commercial?
MP: I like the honesty of it. It's just grassroots. You don't have to be very good at it, and you can be as serious or unserious as you want about it.
CRITIC: Would you like to have a platinum album and be really successful?
MP: Yep, I could do with the money. As long as I didn't have to compromise myself. If I could be stinking rich on my own terms, I'd be quite okay with that.
CRITIC: But you'd rather not sell out and get a slick producer and make a nice record for the radio?
MP: I'd never do that. I couldn't do that. All I can really do is what I do. I mean, I couldn't play flashy music, I just stick to my barre chords, and I'll never be a good singer or anything. Good singing doesn't suit punk music anyway, it mellows the sound out too much, I think.
Review, Photo and Interview by Rohan Critic Issue 13 June 2 2003
Mothertrucker
Possibly the first Kiwi Punk Rock concept album? PUKE is the solo project of Mike Puke of - unsurprisingly - THE PUKES. This sees Mike experimenting more than he does in the band situation with the use of keyboards, sound textures, drum machines and greater lead guitar work. Lyrically, this deals with the state of Nelson's (city on NZ's South Island) Mayors and highlights the injustices that 3 (I think) mayors have committed in the city. It's given a twist though, as Mike insinuates (dreams?) a violent and bloody death befalls each one. It's an interesting and frequently amusing set of lyrics that pack quite a punch - 'The Mathebeast Stalks This Town' in particular. Production is pretty sharp with clear vocals and some hard-hitting guitar. The drum machine sometimes makes it a little mechanical but, on the whole, this is a grizzled, barbed slab of pure Punk.
Steve Scanner Scanner Zine
A really cool CD that's different from the norm... cos it's in 13 parts and tells a story about the mayors of Nelson, New Zealand. Mike's done a good job here... good music, melodic punky tunes with a hint of menace.... well thought out and well worth a listen! Comes with a pull out sheet of all the lyrics as well.
Sean Oi! Warning Zine #4
Well this CD opens with the hilarious "Babies Are Horrible"... which is a great song!! Followed by 5 live tracks which if I'm honest are okay but the sound quality could be a tad better but all the same you get a good feeling that The Pukes are a great live band! Then you have 9 tracks of Puke... which I thought was great listening, "I'm Glad I'm Mad", "This Is The Day", "Babies Are Horrible" and "I'll Do What I Want" just 4 of the great tracks on offer... I liked all of 'em... decent punk tunes with Mike's hard edged vocals combine to make it a good overall listen. Plus you get 5 live videos on 'ere as well... go check 'em put, you'll like 'em!
Sean Oi! Warning Zine #4