Flipper

San Francisco’s Flipper were a festering boil on the behind of early hardcore. With a slower, slapdash take on the burly noise taking shape all over the country like so much acne, Flipper let feedback and repetitive, rolling rhythms do the work that other bands left to velocity and vigor. Their bleak lyrics and nihilistic worldview launched snot in the face of proactive punks in a way that was apolitical but searingly volatile. Accidentally avant-garde, but never pretentious, Flipper’s modus operandi was to make something too hideous to love. In that, they only half-succeeded.