The Audacity of Hype

VINYL FORMAT. The Audacity of Hype was produced by Biafra and engineered by hip-hop producer and longtime co-conspirator Matt Kelley (Hieroglyphics, The Coup, Digital Underground, Victims Family, Tumor Circus) at Prairie Sun Recording in Cotati, CA, and San Francisco's Hyde Street Studios. The band's twin guitar attack retains some of the space-punk overtones and spy-music-on-meth chaos of The Dead Kennedys while adding a healthy dose of Detroit-style proto-punk flavored with Weiss' industrial excursions into metal percussion.

Topically, the album explores how the forced Iraqnophobia and Homeland Insecurity continues to feed lawlessness at the top ("The Terror of Tiny Town") vs. a runaway police state and class war toward the bottom ("Three Strikes" and "Electronic Plantation," originally done by The No WTO Combo, Biafra's one-off collaboration with Krist Novelselic and Kim Thayil). "Clean as a Thistle" becomes more timely every day as "family values" blowhards from Sanford to Berlusconi are caught in sinful trysts, while album closer "I Won't Give Up" offers an Age of Obama anthem on how change comes from agitation from below, not from glamor and sound bites from the top.