3. Plasmatics - Coup D'Etat
This was the fourth and final Plasmatics album before Wendy O Williams went solo. It is quite simply a stunning piece of work, brimming with vehemence and outrage. Their angry, socially aware punk-metal, and provocative live show (Wendy used to stalk the stage with clothes pegs on her nipples before blowing up a car or chainsawing a television in twain) was never going to find a mainstream audience, but it is a shame that their jaw-dropping effort on this finale went largely unnoticed. It's frenetic from start to finish, as if the band were running to catch the last bus home. The guitars slice with the precision of a Ginsu knife and pulling in Dieter Dirks (Scorpions, Accept, Twisted Sister) as producer adds an iridescence to the music which perfectly compliments Wendy's gargling-with-shards-of-glass scream. A well-observed and perfectly executed cover of Motorhead's No Class would ordinarily be the highlight of any album, but here it's just one song on an album chock full of them. Way ahead of the curve, their lyrics offered criticism of mainstream society, predicted environmental catastrophe and pondered the aftermath of an apocalypse in which "Glaciers cover the desert. Microorganisms in the breeze. Giant ape-like invaders swim the river to New York. Massive global eruptions. Panic spreading it will not stop..." Horns up!