EP REVIEW: Teenage Depression - "Skank Or Die"

   I downloaded this 9-song EP from the 7inchpunk.org blog several years ago, before that site became inactive (long enough of a stretch where I just stopped checking for updates and upon looking it up again has not made one in 2 1/2 years). Sometimes I don't know why I burned all those downloads to CD-R; my stacks of music are ridiculous and unmanageable, unwieldy even, but there was a period when I didn't really have a good set-up for listening to music through my laptop because I don't like having headphones on constantly. So I have just stacks and stacks of CDs that I've listened to like once or twice and as a result I'm always coming across little pieces like this that were forgotten by time and then forgotten by myself as well.
   I know pretty much nothing at all about this band and went into the listen blind, but I very much like the band name and most of the stuff on 7inchpunk fits a pretty discernable category (punk-core and punk-heavy crossover from the 80s or bands playing blatant 80s throwback stuff) so I guess I wasn't completely blind. I basically knew what I was in for. There were about 15 minutes before I had to leave for work so a quick hardcore EP was the perfect option.

   Teenage Depression was an 80s punk/hardcore band (they've got to actually be from the era this doesn't sound like a throwback band) that's heavy on the punk side of things. Bands they most immediately remind me of are West Coast staples like The Adolescents or The Chiefs so I'm just gonna go ahead and guess they're from the Los Angeles area circa 1982 or maybe like the Rockies area/midwest a few years later. (NOTE: Upon looking up this release online to get the album cover image I found a separate punk mp3 blog that said they were from New Jersey and this 7" was released in 1984 so I was totally off geographically but not so much in terms of timeline. Also that site has the songs listed in different order so I don't know which is correct. Kind-of a non-issue however this isn't a concept album. That said, this review was written with those assumptions in mind.)
    The first song, "I Love Kate," is undistorted and has an almost cow-punk vibe going on like a rudimentary Dead Milkmen  track or even kinda like the 'softer' tracks on "Not So Quiet On The Western Front" like the ones from Bent Nails and Angst. It's a bit of a stylistic anomaly amongst the rest of the EP, however, much of which is pointlessly fast and generic 3-chord punk/core. They do attempt some little musical chances to differentiate their songs from the general morass that is the US82 sound, like the lounge intro for the second song (which I think was a shit-talk song about Henry Rollins) and an appropriation of The Clash's "Clampdown" in between fast parts on the final song, but for the most part its pretty straightforward 80's punk thats clearly from the DIY level. One of the tracks almost sounds like early Agnostic Front, if not for the clownishly goofy Crucifucks-esque vocals.
   Thematically, they have a stupid anarchy song that sounds exactly how you would expect a stupid anarchy song to sound; one of the mid-tempo quasi-breakdowns has lyrics about 'living your life' because he's not gonna tell you what to do and you shouldn't tell him what to do either. You know, that old song n dance. Most of the fastcore stuff is (I would assume intentionally) unintelligible. Given the context of this style I can't tell if this band was being stupidly ironic with their apparent lite sloganeering like the Circle Jerks, or if they were being stupidly serious with it like Youth Brigade.
   This isn't the dopest rare 80s 7inch record that I have burned onto CD-R, there are many many more high-quality works, but I love the 80s Cali-core sound so overall it was a good listen. Download it if you so desire, I'm sure obtaining a physical copy will take more effort and record-collector pixie dust than is really necessary.

 http://www.7inchpunk.com/2006/04/12/teenage-depression/