Texas has always been one of the hotspots for punk’s most eccentric bands, including the Big Boys, Dicks, Kamikaze Refrigerators, DRI, MDC, Poison 13, and the Hickoids, an ‘80s “cowpunk” band that managed to embody both those terms without sacrificing anything from either genre. The first fifteen tracks here, from their We’re in It for the Corn album, sounds like the twangy cousin of Texas’ most extreme musical proponents it is—Scratch Acid set loose on the Sons of the Pioneers’ repertoire, or the Butthole Surfers up to their eyeballs in psychedelic slide guitar ’n’ chicken-pickin’. The remainder of the disc, the tracks from their Hard Corn EP, is a wee bit more subdued sonically, but their lyrical subject matter and cover song selection remained just as off-kilter. Were they the greatest punk band ever? Maybe, maybe not. They were, however, a pretty fun listen, and sometimes that’s more important.
–jimmy (Saustex)