Those recent reissues of Flipper's early works are now augmented by some cool vinyl editions on the Four Men With Beards label; this LP edition of Generic includes a black and white glossy insert, and is pressed on 180 gram black vinyl.

We've been waiting forever for this to happen! The first four Flipper albums have finally been reissued, and each one of these albums is a crucial chapter of this seminal San Francisco band. EVen if you've never heard Flipper, I bet that you've at least heard the name; these freaks have had an enormous influence on so much of the heavy, fucked-up punk and metal that we love over the past three decades. Flipper formed in 1979 in the midst of the burgeoning hardcore scene, but even though the band was eventually embraced by a cult following in hardcore, these mutants had little in common with the louder/faster aesthetic of punk as it headed into the 1980s. They were much more closely aligned with that weirdo San Francisco art punk scene of the late 70s that gave us other unclassifiable bands like Chrome and The Residents, but Flipper were heavier than everyone. Playing slow, bludgeoning atonal riffs and plodding super-heavy rhythms, Flipper were slower than anyone else in punk at the time, and their sheer heaviness and the nihilistic aura that surrounded the band and their music is what drew in the hardcore punks. In the decades that followed, Flipper turned into one of the most influential bands of the American underground, and you can trace their influence through the sloppy, misanthropic sludge rock of 80's bands like Drunks With Guns, Blight and Kilslug to the success of Nirvana and the Melvins, both citing Flipper as being one of their biggest influences. Especially the Melvins. Out of all of the bands that I listen to, the Melvins might be Flipper's most devout disciples (next to Rick Rubin's mid-80s band Hose); over the course of their career, the Melvins have covered tons of Flipper songs and have cited Flipper as one of their biggest influences since the beginning, and its pretty obvious when you listen to the crushing, plodding drumming and sludgy punk riffs on any of the Melvins's albums. And more recently, there has been a whole movement of fucked up noise/punk bands that are worshipping at the altar of Flipper, from Pissed Jeans to Brainbombs to Clockcleaner, they've all got that Flipper DNA coursing through their veins. Of course, nobody has ever surpassed the mighty, mysterious brain-damaged heaviness of Flipper themselves, and these new reissues are crucial for anyone who wants to hear the band at the height of their demented powers.

Flipper's 1981 debut is a total scumpunk classic, a nine song pummeling of narcotic-fueled skronk and pounding sludgepunk surrounded by the band's nihilistic worldview and brilliant negatory lyrics. All of the instruments sound like they just barely staying in tune, and the band constantly teeters on the edge of falling totally out of rhythm with one another...but this chaotic, go-for-broke performance just amps up the band's energy and menace even more. The opening song "Ever" barely keeps in time, staggering over a lumbering mid-paced beat that woggles back and forth, but then the band throws handclaps over top of it, making the dissonant slog a subversive catchy singalong. The rest of the album lurches through slow, menacing dirges like "Life Is Cheap" and "Shed No Tears", and it's not till the second to last song "Living For Depression" that Flipper speed things up into a near-midpaced hardcore skank, only to drop right back into pummeling heaviness with their all-time classic "Sex Bomb". The nearly eight minute "Sex Bomb" is the clostest thing that Flipper have ever had to a single, the whole song revolving around a single obnoxious four chord riff played over and over with an awesome funky sax line blown over it and splattered with weird electronic fx, the song getting sloppier and sloppier as it lurches along, like a seriously wasted, super-heavy Stooges jam wandering into oblivion. Totally crucial. Generic Flipper still stands as a masterpiece of heavy, damaged post-punk nearly thirty years later. Highly recommended! This reissue includes photos and liner notes written by Krist Novoselic from Nirvana, who was a member of Flipper from 2006 to 2008.