Though they lasted barely a year and never released a record, Rocket From The Tombs can legitimately be dubbed godfathers of punk. Hailing from the post-industrial landscape of Cleveland, Ohio, their personnel now reads like a proto-punk supergroup. Future Dead Boys Johnny Blitz and Gene ‘Cheetah Chrome’ O’Connor featured alongside Pere Ubu’s David Thomas and Peter Laughner but the apocalyptic rumblings they worked up in unison were unleashed two whole years before 1977’s summer of hate.
The band’s brief lifespan yielded only bootleg recordings from a handful of 1975 live shows and ultra-basic reel-to-reel demos, yet The Day The Earth Met Rocket From The Tombs transcends these primitive sources to deliver truly spine-chilling, future-shaping rock’n’roll.
Anthemic Stooges-style classics Sonic Reducer and Down In Flames would later be hijacked for mainstream punk consumption by The Dead Boys, while the abstract likes of Final Solution and the Beefheart-esque Life Stinks would shape Pere Ubu’s influential avant-garage sound. Even in this rudimentary form they sound astonishing, as does Laughner’s Ain’t It Fun, which comes on like the very epitome of brooding punk nihilism.
A reconstituted RFTT featuring Thomas and Television guitarist Richard Lloyd) has recorded two decent studio sets (Rocket Redux and Barfly) since 2003’s reformation, but it’s this blazing crash landing on planet punk that will forever define their oeuvre.
