No No Zero
Rough Stuff
By Sam Sutherland

Formed from the ashes of Toronto punks the Exploders, No No Zero kick out the kind of perfectly grimy garage-punk jams that psuedo-punks like the Hives dream of. There are enough dirty riffs and dirtier talk here to make even the hardest punk blush. Rough Stuff has its mind in the gutter and it stays there from start to finish. With some pretty straight-forward song titles (“Why Won’t You Let Me Fuck You?,” “Beat The Shit Out Of Me”) and some pretty funny ones, too (“Taco Wagon,” “Penetrating Insights”), No No Zero have one thing on their mind. Thankfully, the sex-obsessed lyricism is matched perfectly by a frantic, grunge-y instrumental backing that would make the Stooges proud. Singer Pius Priapus does some fine channelling of Jello Biafra on songs like “Driven to Extremes,” although his expressive delivery still remains all his own. With enough fast, sloppy rock’n’roll to earn the band a few slower numbers, tracks like “Brown Shower,” a truly twisted slow-burner with a droning bass-and-keyboard riff, come as a welcome and interesting change from the balls-out madness of songs like “Ass Commando.”

Do you have any equally impressive song titles planned for your next record?
Priapus: Our newest song is “Crazy About Your Pussy.” So I guess that’s one. Generally, they’re actually shorter titles, although most of the songs were written at the same time. I’m not writing the songs for the titles. But I guess we got some fun ones.

Did you go into the writing of Rough Stuff intending to make an album of songs about sex, or is that just how it turned out when you got to writing lyrics?
The latter. If you look at all the songs I’ve ever written, a lot of them are about sex. But they’re not always. I just had this real explosion of songs that were all closely related in theme. A lot of stuff about massage parlours or whatever. The first two records will be from the same collection of songs, so they won’t be too dramatically different. But beyond those records, that could really change. That’s part of the reason why we picked the name we did. I wanted a name that didn’t suggest anything. Hopefully that will free us up to do whatever we want. I’ve been thinking that maybe our third record will be all instrumental, or all slow songs. But right off the bat I just wanted to deliver short, fast, loud. (Signed By Force)
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