The 1984 album Maynard James Keenan called “the embodiment of punk”
A fierce and unwavering commitment to his artistic guts has guided Maynard James Keenan’s work and projects for 35-odd years in the alternative rock game.
No one can accuse Tool of selling out. Fronting the progressive hard rock outfit since their formation in 1990, Keenan has helped captain an experimental and esoteric force in the metal world, dropping album after album in the Tool oeuvre that floats around the cerebral and far-flung, as well as attaching himself to the A Perfect Circle and Puscifer side-projects that similarly aim to venture off the beaten path.
It’s a safe bet, then, that integrity is a major sway for Keenan when offering his two cents on the epitome of any genre, let alone punk’s urgent countercultural essentiality. Perusing the famous Amoeba Music store in Hollywood as part of their ‘What’s in My Bag?’ series, picks of Black Flag and X receive praise, but one lauded LP of the DC scene stands as the ultimate expression of punk’s insurrectionary fervour.
“Minor Threat, this album specifically,” Keenan states as he lifts their 1984 compilation from the shelves. “This, to me, embodies what that punk movement was. This guy has remained pretty true to that whole approach to life and community. Very influential to me in the early stages.”
It can’t be overstated how seismic Minor Threat’s impact was on US hardcore. Conjoining their two 1981 EPs, Ian MacKaye led the way of the DC punk scene along with Bad Brains before their decamp to New York, fronting Teen Idles and later forming the enduring Fugazi for decades.
But it’s Minor Threat that stands as MacKaye’s defining band, packed with furious blasts of invective that never drips with an ounce of cynicism or snarl, and imbuing the beefy hardcore attack with an empowering air detonating from the garage rage.
As well as the immortal title track standing as a DC anthem, ‘Straight Edge’ invented a whole philosophy, a declaration of self-discipline from alcohol and drugs, as well as responsible sexual activity. Such ethos has carried MacKaye across his entire life, refusing any publication or press interview that contains the presence of alcohol. It’s unwavering earnestness that radiated from Minor Threat’s febrile core, the sound of a politically-charged band, without veering into the polemical, that wears their creedo more than just a badge or branding exercise.
“I think there’s a bunch of stuff that when you go back in your youth, you go back and listen to some of these albums, they don’t hold up,” Keenan reflects. “There’s not a lot to them. It was more about where you were, how old you were, what was around you. But then there are ones that just completely shine and transform, you know, like they survive.”
It’s hard to argue. One listen to any of Minor Threat’s hardcore explosion still whips the senses into an arrest over 40 years later, leaving a burning imprint on the world of punk and the broader alternative world that set a standard of principle Keenan and countless others have looked up to in inspiration.
