Executioner

Directly across the street from the Triton Museum was Executioner's rehearsal space, an empty bedroom in singer Dave Burk's house, where the five band members read the newspaper article, shrugged their shoulders, and promptly went back to what they were doing minutes before...running through a setlist filled with songs about nuclear attack and the angst of living in President Ronald Reagan's cold war circus. In retrospect it might seem slightly odd that a group of kids from the suburbs in Northern California would be singing about atomic blasts and the horrors of war, but on closer inspection it makes more sense. These guys grew up watching cartoons on T.V. in the morning and Vietnam body count reports on the evening news. They were too young to vote in an era of unprecedented atomic weapon proliferation, the perceived threat of attack from Russia and Libya, and the chest-puffing of President Ronnie whose cabinet buddies proclaimed belief in imminent Biblical Armageddon to anyone listening. So they cast their ballots with their guitars and voices instead. Their music was hard, fast, tight and loud. It contained "taboo" extended guitar solos and stop-on-a-dime tempo changes. They sounded like nobody else. A mix of Hardcore west coast Punk Rock, Speed Metal (before there WAS such a thing) and the larynx-shredding assault of Burk's vocal missives, their music commanded attention. And they got it. Their single "Fix Me/Hellbound" was the number one requested cut on the legendary underground station KFJC for the entire year 1983. It was the number two most requested song on San Francisco's mainstream station KQAK (The Quake) the following year, sandwiched in between Depeche Mode and Culture Club, two groups they had absolutely NOTHING in common with. But by that time they had called it quits, the "victims" of their own teenage attention spans, the then-current Punk Rock ethos of slackerdom, and perhaps a few too many encounters with illicit substances. The album they had recorded sat unreleased for over two decades, kept alive only by the 4th and 5th generation cassette dubs that kept on making the rounds among kids in California in the following years. It's a shame, really. It could have been a contender... and for awhile it was. Recent interest in Executioner and their contemporaries in the early 80's San Jose Punk scene has led to a hugely successful reunion gig, and a soon to be released 45, From Patac Records, featuring artwork by the legendary Winston Smith.

Hellbound 7'' (2010)

01 - Fix Me

02 - Hellbound

03 - Flatlands

04 - Marked To Die

Anthology (A Call To Arms) (2011)

01 - Fix Me

02 - Hellbound

03 - Why War

04 - Pack Of Lies

05 - Kraft

06 - Marked To Die

07 - Crime Through Corruption

08 - St. James Park

09 - Love At First Sight

10 - The Only Way

11 - I Miss You

12 - Flatlands

13 - Cease Fire

14 - The Bum

15 - 1984

16 - We Don't Need It

17 - Bible Bangers

18 - Obliteration

19 - Nagasaki

20 - Stage Executioner

21 - War Machine

22 - All The Dead

23 - 1984 (Growing Pains)

24 - Love At First Sight (Growing Pains)

25 - Fix Me (Growing Pains)

26 - Marked To Die (Growing Pains)

27 - The Bum (Growing Pains)

28 - The Only Way (Growing Pains)

29 - Fade With The Dawn

Hellbound (2019)

01 - Fix Me

02 - Hellbound

03 - Flatlands

04 - Nagasaki

05 - Crime Through Corruption

06 - 1984

07 - Love At First Sight

08 - Marked To Die

09 - Fade With The Dawn

10 - Pack Of Lies

11 - The Bum

12 - Obliteration

13 - The Only Way

14 - I Miss You

15 - Cease Fire

16 - We Don't Need It

17 - Bible Bangers

18 - War Machine

19 - Love At First Sight (Demo)

20 - Fix Me (Demo)

21 - Kraft

22 - Why War

23 - Saint James Park

pass: freepunk77