Part of the original concept of Bad habit records was to delve into the past of Australian underground music and dig out important releases and reissue them with a real eye to keeping the atmosphere of the original time and circumstances. Records that every should have in their collection. High water marks of Australian punk.The first Helta Skelta Lp was self released and sold out quickly. We always get asked at the shop if we have it. Whenever we get a 2nd hand copy the next person to come in buys it straight away. It's became a mythical record.Everything about this record is perfect. The cryptic cover is aesthetically pleasing, but also has the aesthetics of 1 thousand bugs crawling all over your skin. Nick Blinko but he only ever watched kids cartoons. The music is this 60's garage inspired punk but played with the aggression of hardcore. The guitars are nearly surf rock at times, minimal distortion. The vocals are beamed in directly from the dimension of angry father yelling at his crying family for not turning off the lights or putting the water back in the fridge. Hes taking out his frustrations and confusion of a cruel and uncaring world by being cruel and uncaring towards you, the listener.A perfect punk album that's disorienting and absurd in a perfect way.Our take: Australia’s Bad Habit Records brings us a reissue of Helta Skelta’s debut LP from 2011. Sorry State carried the original self-released pressing way back then, so a few of you who have been buying records from us for 10+ years might already have this one in the stacks. However, by the time Helta Skelta put out their second album on Deranged Records in 2015 and toured the US, this first album was long gone. On this record, Helta Skelta’s style is one I don’t hear too much these days… punk rock with big, catchy riffs inspired by ’77 and garage-leaning bands, but played with the intensity of hardcore. If this had come out in the mid-2000s, people might have called it diagonal line hardcore, referring to the Buzzcocks-inspired sleeve designs on Social Circkle and Career Suicide records, but that’s only a rough comparison, as Helta Skelta had their own thing established here. The riffs are excellent, and while y’all know I like the fast shit, I think Helta Skelta is even more powerful on slower tracks like the almost bluesy “Submit” and the standout track “Disco Junkies.” Maybe there’s some AC/DC gene encoded in these Aussies’ DNA that makes them unstoppable with a big, mid-paced riff? Helta Skelta’s vocalist is also charismatic, the intensity of their performance emphasized by rough production that finds the vocal track frequently peaking way into the red. While this might fly under the radar for folks in the US, I’m glad Bad Habit allowed us to get this one back on the shelves for the curious to discover its riches.
