The Ritz, New York
8 April 1988

New York Times
14 April 1988
by Jon Pareles

Mayhem by the Screaming Messiahs

Mayhem lurks within loud, basic rock-and-roll. As the music tears along, a listener ought to wonder just how long mere song structure can keep the lid on devastating emotions. Although most rockers like to think their music carries a sense of danger, few bands come closer to raw mayhem than the Screaming Blue Messiahs, the English trio that rocked the Ritz on Friday.

The band supercharges three-chord blues and country riffs by bashing them out with the muscle of hardcore punk-rock; Bill Carter, the Messiahs' guitarist and singer, snarls lyrics with sullen defiance. Onstage, he rarely sticks to the structure of his songs as he's recorded them. He blasts them wide open with clanging power chords, shrieks of feedback and new, ranting lyrics while Chris Thompson playing bass and Kenny Harris on drums keep up a stomp or a gallop. With the rhythm section on a rampage and the songs torn to tatters, the Ritz set was an outpouring of molten rage.

Unlike the first generation of British punk-rockers, the Screaming Blue Messiahs embrace American blues and country as music that doesn't flinch from death or revelation. Mr. Carter is also fascinated by such American fixations as cars, guns and broadcast evangelism. His songs sometimes tell stories, but only when they're not hurling imprecations or piling up images of destruction; the band's one cover version, of Hank Williams's ''You're Gonna Change'' - sung by Mr. Carter with a pure yodel midway through the verse - seethes with hostility.

Mr. Carter, a shaven-headed, fireplug-shaped man in a silvery suit, went about his performance with the unblinking calm of a film-noir hit man. Picking out blues riffs or strumming his guitar open-handed, he seemed to let the band's momentum push him toward ever-noisier guitar parts. As the audience members up front slam-danced and dived (or were hurled by bouncers) from the stage, the music's ferocity never let up.