IT

Suicide’s strange gigs drove their audiences to genuine bloodlust. Opening for The Clash at a 1978 show in Glasgow, principal singer Alan Vega recalls having an axe thrown at his head; when Suicide opened for Elvis Costello in Brussels that same year, a full-scale riot erupted (and was later quelled by tear gas). As grisly and deliciously barbed as anything Vega released while working as one-half of Suicide, IT is a self-described “masterpiece and final statement” that reeks of the lunatic drama of the duo’s past. Recorded in the final six years of his life with wife, visual artist, and oft-collaborator Liz Lamere, IT was allegedly the by-product of a feral obsession with the daily news. Gnomic as The Fall’s Mark Smith, Vega cannons deadpan phrases and anti-establishment platitudes (“HEY NAZI PUNKS”; “HOW ABOUT THE ANTICHRIST?”) over drum machines for 52 minutes. The difference, though, now, is that nobody riots in his wake.