Wheezing Maniac – Shade Through The Night Door

Wound-up-tight, high tension collection of the full recorded works by Wheezing Maniac, a short-lived South Californian power-trio from the late 80s. If you know of them already, it's likely for one of two reasons: their one-and-only 7" came out via the Dead Moon's Tombstone imprint, and two of their songs ended up featuring in H-Street's grailed skate video, HOKUS POKUS. The latter tells you a little more about Shade Through the Night Door than the former - i.e they don't sound very much like the Dead Moon but they do bare resemblance to the kind of wired and smart-arsed bratty punk that would have made a lot sense in the context of late 80s gonzo skate culture. Elements of the white boy funk stutter of The Big Boys and Minutemen, the suburban misanthropy of No Trend and even the art-damaged absurdity of Pere Ubu all rear their heads at various points across these 17 tracks, but it's Mark Dagley's The Girls they resemble most for me, taut and wired, but goofy and good time, too. No evidence here to suggest why Wheezing Maniac didn't 'make it', but given they managed to record so much in short a small space of time suggests they left nothing unsaid - a flash of white light energy and then done, exactly enough and perfectly rendered, the punk blueprint in excelsis.