It's very rare to hear a band with a barrel-aged Bowery punk vintage sound these days- so rare that I frankly thought this was a recovered session tape from an early In the Red co-signed troop of slag-heads attempting one last pull off an already entirely ashed career. But would you believe this is really a bunch of NYC-by-way-of-Boston hardcore dudes attempting to rekindle the city's roots with little more than a bad attitude, a handful of hacksaw riffs, and a foggy memory of a shadow world of culture-rich slums slicked over and streamlined into dull strips of social mausoleums comprised of vacant tax-write-offs, tourist traps, and vintage-upcycling boutiques (also existing primarily for tax purposes). Ruckus's 12" self-titled is entirely decoupled from the city that is, as a revelation of what was, a draft of stale beer with a couple of snipes floating in it, that while bearing no nutritional value, pulls the mind down a drift of bitter nostalgia to float down the gutter of good tidings like a stream of sick, summoned by the galling purge of last night's libations. An unrestrained and hardy gamble of half-recollected depositions from a rash, degenerate mingling that started with a bottle of aberrant abandon, a hitched ride downtown, and a determined lack of remorse, with the premeditated ambition to spend down every dime in your pocket just to see what the night will furnish in return. It's like the soundtrack to some second-hand studio exploitation flick, where misrule is the only rule at an urban high school, the water fountains are filled kegs of lite beer, the principal is in deep debt to the mob, nerds run DARPA-funded psychological experiments on classroom pets, and a ragtag crew of punks keep the authorities in line- a story of distinguished debauchery, grainy lo-fi affairs, and kicking school dances turned riot that culminates with the captain of the football team coming out as gay, the head cheerleader hooking up with a 6-foot NIMH rat, and the whole school having an orgy on the quad before the army calls in an airstrike and the credits roll. The End...? A burnt hand punches through the still-burning limestone and concrete rubble of the flattened former learning institution, gripping a still partially intact Gibson Flying V just before the final fade-out. Maybe not... But you'll never know. The ushers are clearing the theater seats of anyone who didn't pay for the double feature (next showing Abel Ferrara's Driller Killer), and you've gotta mosey. The sequels will all be direct-to-video and/or be lost in a warehouse fire. But man, that soundtrack will live on in your head forever, an amp-fed Ruckus whose resounding echo can't be suppressed by the temperance of time, or your real life's demands for moderation. Remember, it's always hot in the city, and if you know you're way, you can always tag along on a night cruise through these steaming, love-sick streets in search of satisfaction.
