ARDKORE, Napalm Stix to Kidz!!  (1989, Metalworks)

The skull:
Looking like it was ripped straight from the back cover of a fourth-grader’s notebook, this
image piles on the cliches: a skull, a fallout shelter/radiation symbol, and the anarchy “A” scratched into his forehead. The skull tries hard to look ferocious, but no dice. The band logo and especially album title font almost make it look like a Screeching Weasel album. They do have punk leanings, so there you go. What’s with the detached bottom jaw and the thin two-pronged tongue? Man…how long till we get to Skull 666?

The music:
Mindless and pointless, if perfectly competent, this band, like so many British thrashers
offered too little too late. So it is with this album, a bland pile of crossover thrash. 16 songs, 36 minutes, titles like “Kill the Lollipop Lady,” “No Fear” and “Judge of Death.” Yawwwwn. File it away with Cerebral Fix, D.A.M. and Virus and move right along. Nothing to see (or hear) here…
–Friar Wagner