THE SUBHUMANS Same Thoughts Different Day

Legendary Canadian punk group Subhumans emerged from the 1978 font of creativity that produced DOA and The Pointed Sticks. They have been part of the Alternative Tentacles family since being included on the infamous "Let Them Eat Jellybeans" compilation and played shows with Dead Kennedys, Minor Threat, Black Flag, and Bad Brains.

Their first album "Incorrect Thoughts" was released on Vancouver label Friends Records in 1980. They always planned to make their older material available again, but a now defunct San Francisco label had issued an unauthorized version of "Incorrect Thoughts" in the '80s which substituted some remixes without the band's knowledge, included tracks which hadn't made the cut for the original album, and changed the cover art. It was an unpleasant mystery for the band and three decades later the former owner of that label was asserting ownership over the original album, preventing its re-release without an expensive and contentious legal tussle.

The Subhumans decided to meet the challenge to their ownership of their own material by rerecording all of the songs from the "Incorrect Thoughts" album, which they proceeded to do at the Hive Studios in Vancouver, assisted by Jesse Gander. Original members Brian Goble (vocals), Gerry Hannah (bass), Mike Graham (guitar), and newly-recruited drummer Jon Card (formerly with Personality Crisis, SNFU, and DOA among others) got together in 2005 to record a new album of original material, "New Dark Age Parade," for Alternative Tentacles (Virus366) and the band had reactivated into a live entity. The intent was neither to slavishly recreate the old recordings nor to radically reinterpret the songs, but updating the sounds and the recording techniques while maintaining the original spirit of the album. As a bonus, Subhumans recorded six additional songs from the same period for the second 12" of a two LP set, some of which had never been recorded before!

The Subhumans’ first album, "Incorrect Thoughts," is a timeless classic, an all time favorite of mine that I sought after for a long time. Unfortunately though according to the liner notes of "Same Thoughts Different Day," the album was released under some pretty shady conditions by CD Presents. The Subhumans are not the only band to claim that CD Presents released a record without authorization from the band- allegedly the Avengers’ L.P. was released under similar circumstances. It looks like at this point the Subhumans don’t even own the rights to the recordings on "Incorrect Thoughts" and consequently they decided to rerecord their early material for Alternative Tentacles.

The results of this experiment are mixed. This Twenty First Century version of "Incorrect Thoughts" is considerably more polished than the original product, but unfortunately it lacks the venom and some of the edge from the first time around. If it’s any consolation "Same Thoughts" includes two songs that were not released on either version (CD Presents put out a version with bonus tracks in 1985) of "Incorrect Thoughts," and honestly overly polished or not, you really can’t go wrong with any version of tunes like "Firing Squad," "Death To The Sickoids," "New Order," or "Behind My Smile." The Subhumans did a perfect job writing songs that utilize melody and anger to create a product that is somewhere between Menace, early Bad Religion, the Partisans, and the Adolescents. A fan of any of those bands would be guaranteed to be stoked on the Subhumans. Perhaps the best solution is to buy "Same Thoughts" for the sake of the band and get your buddy to burn you a copy of "Incorrect Thoughts," which CD Presents just reissued again to get the real deal. At the very least we can say that the Subhumans can still competently play their classic material and hope that they will do a tour of the U.S. soon.