Their album covers aren't exactly the stuff of polite society -- post-op transsexuals, boils on someone's ass. Neither are their songs, speedy, filled with sneering punk fury and revulsion for a society that profits from death. But The Neighbors really don't care.
"The tape cover came about because that's just what I wanted to do," vocalist and San Diego State University psychology senior Kenny Leek said. "It was something completely shocking and I guess attention grabbing. We did a 7 inch (single) also. I got a photo from my dentist, which was a guy's rotted mouth, that I put on there. And with this one, I just kind of carried on the tradition. I caught a rumor from someone that he knows people who refuse to buy our stuff because of the heinous pictures on our covers. I told him, 'Well, good. Those are the exact people I don't want listening to us anyway.'"
The only thing such prudes are missing out on is some of the finest hardcore this side of 1982. Sure, The Neighbors throw some melodies in their songs, but as Leek spits out the words with the frequency of bullets fired from a rocking and rolling M-60 machine gun, one thing becomes obvious -- this will send all the little MTV punkers screaming for their parents' protection.
This isn't pop-punk; this is hardcore. And because The Neighbors financed their new self-released CD, which contains "We Love Our Weenie" and "We Refuse to Kiss Ass," they can do whatever they want. According to Leek, after recording and pressing the album, as well as other expenses, the total cost was about $2,500. However, getting the money together wasn't easy.
"It took us quite a while to save up money," he said. "The thing is, most of the people in my band are totally broke and you couldn't get a penny out of them if you pulled their teeth out. So we just relied pretty much on shows and we don't get paid that much. So it took quite a while to come up with the money and it's a total pain in the ass."
Unlike other bands which only include a handful of songs on their albums, The Neighbors turned this CD into a full-on gut blowout of tracks, 18 songs in all, each as fast, raucous and angry as the last.
"With Fat Wreck Chords and especially major labels, they're going to pick and choose what songs they want to put on there as opposed to us," Leek said. "If we make a song and we're going to play it live, that means we like it so therefore we're going to put it on there, as opposed to catering to a certain sound."
This results in a diversity of songs, some of which are melodic. The rest are loud, hard, fast, punishing, brutal -- in other words, everything a good hardcore band should be.
"It's probably just the influences of everyone," Leek said. "Mainly, the guitarist writes the songs and he comes up with the riffs. A lot of times, he'll give me stuff and I'll say, 'OK, this is a good song, but it needs to be about three times faster.' Then I'll use it. If you want to do it slow, I really don't want to do it. Other times, some songs just sound better slow and melodic.
"Back when we first started, (our guitarist) was really influenced by Bad Religion and stuff like that. I used to like them back then too, but I'm more into stuff like No Comment, Drop Dead -- just the real bore-out, out of control stuff. It just kind of fits sometimes. Some people think we play too fast, but they haven't heard what's out there."
It's true, Leek does sing incredibly fast. In fact, most of the time, it's impossible to understand. However, there is method to this madness.
"It definitely keeps the energy level up to an absolute extreme," he said. "When I grew up listening to punk rock, it was Dead Kennedys, D.R.I., Corrosion of Conformity. That's what I was always up on.
"We really don't play that much faster than all these other bands that are playing right now. The point is that I sing percussively instead of going, 'Whoa, whoa, whoooa!' When you listen to a lot of these bands, they play totally fast, but for every four drum beats, they'll put a word in. I think if you're going to play that fast, every beat should be a word. That's just the style that I like and the style that I've always been around, I guess."
The Neighbors will play on May 24 with Voodoo Glow Skulls at SOMA; June 4 with Propagandhi, Good Riddance and FYP at the World Beat Center; and on June 11 at the Velvet.
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