Decry

  • Decry
  • Falling (Toxic Shock) 1984 

In an early instance of new wave’s future institutionalization, this excellent California quartet covered the Dead Boys on its album. “Sonic Reducer” gets the full ’80s stun treatment and emerges sounding, as was probably intended from the start, just like the Stooges. Elsewhere Decry plays supercharged but crystal-clear punk surging with energy and skill. The songs are likewise competent, offering intelligent protests (against heroin as much as anything else) that culminate in the wittily imagined “Suburban Death Camp.”

[Ira Robbins]