Vinyl: The Yah-Mos: Undefeated

by Thomas Harding on Nov 28^th, 2011

At long last we conclude our look at the Sacramento, Calif. punks that taught hipsters how to party.

Ask most people who saw the Yah-Mos play a gig what they thought and most all of them will talk about the greatness of their live performances. They are always name-dropped in lists of other great live acts, who have all been mentioned ad nauseam in the last two reviews in this series.

Why is any of this subjective bloviating important? Well, all will soon be clear.

Some background:

After Off Your Parents, The band began to work on their LP while continuing to tour the U.S. Legend has it that, in the time between the recording for the two records, the band won several live competitions against the likes of Current, Antioch Arrow and even Jawbreaker. The band opted to celebrate their domination of the live circuit and so it was decided. The next effort would be dubbed Undefeated.

Then Gern Blandsten Records put out 20 more records that were not the Yah-Mos’ Undefeated.  You could speculate with all the absurdist posturing of the band, but the real reason isn’t terribly exciting or even really known. I would speculate the band’s demise in 1996 simply caused all involved to move the record on to the back burner.

Then in 1997, the record was issued on LP and CD to mixed-to-poor reviews from the band’s fan base. That’s where I get lost with the other critics out there.

Now there are those who have said that I am a contrarian. This is mostly based off the endless joy I get from bating people with ludicrous statements (or, in some cases, true statements that the punk rock overlords have deemed to be taboo e.g. Propaghandi are a NOFX knock off, or in the case of the newest record, a Ten Foot Pole clone…ZING! Take that, punk rock status quo!) that often are counter to how I truly feel about the issue. This is not one of those cases. I find that on Undefeated, The Yah-Mos truly reach the top of their craft. Undefeated is almost all hardcore licks with an odd pop sensibility, but this is twisted and contorted so out of shape by trapezoidal instrumentations and Nic Offer’s signature zany, hyperbolic and, at times, nonsensical lyrics. While the band certainly had these elements on their previous efforts, the tricks have all been honed razor sharp. The band is always just on the verge of falling apart totally, then they all turn on a dime in unison and take the song in a new direction with a catchy hook and follow it with an angular blast beat that ebbs into a jazz pattern bedded under D. Boon staccato, tinny sounding guitar riffs.

While many of these elements were first showcased on Off Your Parents, Undefeated is where the band begins to show mastery of the style. At moments channeling the odd fusion of jazz and hardcore of acts like Swing Kids (exemplified on the track “Let’s Do It!”), the Yah-Mos begin to shed much of the cliches that held back earlier records. The one dimensional songs about how cops suck and selling out is lame are mostly absent; in their place are more subversive songs steeped in what one can only hope are metaphors. Coupled with more experimental instrumentation, its is easy to see why many fans of the early arterial shied away from Undefeated. Songs like “Domesticated” often veer off on musical tangents that can seemingly kill the flow of the otherwise blistering record.

So, is Undefeated the Yah-Mos magnum opus? The general consensus among fans seems to say no, giving that honor instead to Off Your Parents. Undefeated is, however, the band’s swan song. In this release we see the band peaking, reaching full potential and mastering a particular idiom in which to work.

Undefeated is still available on CD and LP on good ol’ Gern Blandsten Records and the lyrics are still written the same on the liner notes as the 7-inch