The Testors came out of the same gritty mid-to-late ‘70s punk scene that birthed The Ramones, Television, Blondie and Talking Heads. Despite playing in the typical New York haunts like CBGB’s and Max’s Kansas City, the trio never quite made the cultural and global musical impact that their peers made.
While they may not have had the hooks that allowed those other bands to cross over to the mainstream, listening to some of their output – 14 tracks of which have been collected on Prime Primitive: 1976–1977 – it’s clear the band had the music to at least get them as far as some of their grittier peers like The Dead Boys, Suicide, and The Dictators.
The band didn’t put out any albums in their brief existence, but over the decades, smaller labels have been rediscovering the allure of this underdog band and releasing lost and found audio in drips (the most exhaustive collection came out 20 years ago on Swami Records). Green Noise Records is the latest, putting out one of the most satisfying collections yet under the title Prime Primitive. The 14 tracks that make up this record all come from 1976 and 1977 and are a mix of live and studio recordings. From the very first track, the explosive “Primitive,” it’s clear the band was leaning into a much more aggressive take on the emerging punk genre than some of their scene mate. Ahead of their time, you can hear their sound in a lot of the hardcore bands that came out of New York and LA about 5-to-10 years later.
Songs like “Voltaire,” “Hey You,” and “I See,” with their buzz saw guitars, machine gun drumming, and frenetic vocals, easily stand side by side with songs from bands like the Cro-Mags and Circle Jerks. The songs are aggressively forceful and at times remarkably fun (especially “MK Ultra”). This set is being released in limited numbers on vinyl only, ramping up the nostalgia factor (streaming a classic punk rock record just seems a little incongruous).
