Friend Of God Chords

The Unanimous Hour

They say it takes only three chords to write a punk song. Lungfish did it with two. And they did it for 18 years. From 1987 to 2005, the Baltimore quartet could be considered the world's leading purveyor of punk-rock-as-devotional-art. They were a band hellbent and single-minded in their commitment to ascetic thrashing, with an amply bearded and tattooed frontman who came off like underground music's answer to John the Baptist.

For all that, Lungfish's music sounds immediately familiar. It's just a handful of cyclical guitar riffs and pulsing, sea-shanty rhythms played in steady repetition. "A person doesn't have to be Lungfish-literate to know how to hear our music," singer Daniel Higgs told the Baltimore City Paper in 1998, during one of the band's only extensive interviews. "If you've never heard the song before, after several seconds you have heard the song, and it's gonna do that for a few more minutes." Like the best punk bands, Lungfish used common tools, but created singular music through sheer force of personality.

Totaling 11 albums, Lungfish's catalog can be intimidating, but 1999's  The Unanimous Hour is a good place to start. Recently remastered and repressed by Dischord, Lungfish's long-out-of-print eighth record is among the band's sturdiest statements. On first listen, it sounds a lot like any other Lungfish record: Two or three chords repeat ad infinitum while Higgs belts out apocalyptic psychobabble. But this record has a special place in the Lungfish discography. It's a pivot point between the band's early years and the laser-guided minimalist riffage that would predominate its final three records.

Even before the Internet sped up underground music's turnover rate, Lungfish's evolutionary pace was unthinkably glacial. This is one band that never hired a string section, bought a drum machine, or contemplated a sudden creative left turn. Each record shed a few more superfluous notes, reducing the music to its barest, heaviest essence. Early on, Lungfish tempered their sound with some basic concessions to pop music-- verses and choruses, mainly (" Friend to Friend in the Endtime ", from 1992's  Talking Songs For Walking , was hooky enough that it eventually wormed its way into Joan Jett's setlist ). But Lungfish spent the subsequent years streamlining their approach.

By the time of  The Unanimous Hour , the group had jettisoned conventional song structures in favor of unflagging hypnotic grooves. Opener " Space Orgy " barely budges from a single chugging chord that ping-pongs back and forth between guitarist Asa Osborne and bassist Nathan Bell. " Mated " thunders along on an unceasing two-note bass line. " Vulgar Theories " pushes a single fuzz-drenched riff far enough to stare down the most fully zonked Spacemen 3 tune.

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