by JOHNSON CUMMINS

I am sitting in the sombre confines of one of the more popular St-Laurent coffee shops with Roy Vucino, guitarist/singer of Montreal's CPC Gangbangs. A veteran of punk rock bands like the Daylight Lovers and Les Sexareenos, Vucino's got a brand new bag, a band rounded out by former members of the Spaceshits, stoner rockers Grime, some of his fellow Sexareenos and Paul Spence, that Deaner guy from FUBAR. The demo they gave me was encrusted with glue and red paint, and proved to be playable only after some serious elbow grease was applied.

Although this 10-song document sounds like it was recorded in a washing machine, the effort of scraping off crud was well worth it. An homage to the Pink Fairies' "Do It" is pulverized into submission with a song that bares the same name. "I Want It All" brings vintage Crime to mind, the Stooge-style wah-wah attack of "Gone Black" sounds like a 200-pound hummingbird and the catchy chorus of "fuck you" in "Mechanical Man" is, simply put, punk as fuckin' fuck. Traces of the band's lineage are expertly obscured as high-octane rock elbows its way to the forefront. If Daylight Lovers and Les Sexareenos came across like keggers and the Spaceshits came off like Ritalin brats, then CPC Gangbangs come on like the cheap biker crank that was going around at Altamont - or more accurately, the resulting property-of-Hells pool cues coming down on flower children's heads.

If you are planning on joining the CPC gang, better pack up a heaping helping of black-as-tar humour and a penchant for drugs and drinking. As Vucino calmly tells me over his microwaved pasta, their name stems from a friend of theirs who, on a bad PCP trip, attacked and killed somebody. During the attack, he kept mispronouncing PCP and endlessly screamed "CPC, CPC, CPC!" Although Vucino admits that killing people is a bit too much, he does encourage their audience to get as fucked up as possible before their shows. Their rowdy following has garnered them a bit of a reputation in town, but Vucino just thinks it's all par for the course and can only be positive if people "just give in to random action."

Vucino further explains, "We like our shows to get a bit chaotic because it reflects every aspect of the music. The people that come to our shows like to do substances, drink and have fun. The music really lends itself to that. Rock 'n' roll is dangerous and wild and for some people, it provides a real escape. The main goal is just to be entertaining, put on a good show and have fun. But sometimes..."

CPC have also put together a manifesto that is one-third John Sinclair's White Panther 10-point plan, one third Anton LaVey's Satanic Bible and one third Charles Manson rhetoric. In the CPC's Commanding Principles of Chaos (CPC, get it?), the boys gather 10 points explaining the importance of abandoning morality and laws and encouraging indulgence, vengeance, mind-altering substances, suffering and getting down with the horned one. "It's important that people should learn to embrace random thought and action - chaos will lead you to a path that you might've not known existed."

With Navajo Code Talkers and DJs Royal Bungalow and General Lingus at Pub Jacques-Cartier (1702 Ontario E.)
on Saturday, Dec. 13, 9:30pm, $6

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