Consolidated

Consolidated came out of San Francisco in 1988 with founding member Adam Sherburne and a plan to smuggle radical politics onto the dance floor, and The Myth of Rock in 1990 was where the plan got loud. Its title track, "Consolidated", is the band's manifesto: a spoken declaration that they are no rock and roll group and no product, just a small, stubborn crew trying to make life better for themselves and everyone around them.

The sound is a collage built for argument. Electronics and live instruments pile up into industrial clang and hip-hop thump, and between 1989 and 1994 the mix kept mutating toward hard rock and funk; by Business of Punishment, which carried "Butyric Acid" in 1994, the hard rock had muscled in. Mark Pistel and Philip Steir were among the members along the way.

What they shouted about: vegetarianism and animal rights, women's rights, racism and homophobia, the Holocaust, capitalism and flag-waving American nationalism. Critics called them strident, and they knew it, which is why the records keep puncturing their own sermons with jokes at their own expense. They even admitted that pop felt like a defanged medium for this kind of message. They used it anyway, betting it was the only way to get social justice in front of a mass audience.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.