400 Blows

Not long after moving to Austin, I became friends with the band Those Peabodys.  In their travels, they played with a band from Los Angeles called 400 Blows.  They were (are?) a power trio consisting of guitar, vocals, and drums.  That was kind of a 90's thing to not have a bassist in your band (Champs, Sleater Kinney, White Stripes, etc.).  400 Blows differed from the aforementioned bands (and most groups in general) in their complete and utter lack of anything resembling subtlety.  Have you ever seen what a wave form looks like?  The peaks and valleys.  Dynamics.  400 Blows has nothing to do with any of that.  While rendering these tracks, they looked exactly like what they sounded like - solid bricks of sound.
The first time I saw 400 Blows, it was right around when their first full-length came out.  The guitarist looked like he should have been in some kind of army.  The singer was some kind of weird bondagey cop with a half-mic stand and sunglasses.  The drummer was an Asian drum machine in human form.  Their demo remains my favorite output by them, I don't think they've yet to match the power in subsequent releases.  They very easily could though if they'd just turn everything back up to 10.

01 The Bards Must Drink and Junket
02 And the City Never Slept
03 The Bull that Killed the Matador
04 Premature Burial
05 Everything is Easy Now
06 Electric Wilderness
07 The World's Largest Miniature
08 The Flies