THE ELECTRIC BIBLE | CHAPTER 247

Another American band who emerged from the punk melting-pot with a markedly new approach, the PiL-inspired Flipper chose to slow everything down for the first time, creating a monolithic sludge-like morass of sound in which guitarist Ted Falconi unleashes a grinding barrage of post-Levene distortions and convolutions over simplistic rhythms and repetitive, often absurdist shouted vocals. Although Flipper’s music too often descended into joke territory, the seven tracks compiled on Sacrifice – all recorded between 1980 and 1981 – show that Flipper at their best were seminal in the development of American 80s underground music, and noise rock in particular.