By the time Tim Hemensley, John Nolan and Timmy Jack Ray entered the studio to record Time Wounds All Heels, The Powder Monkeys were arguably at the top of their game. Gone was the blues-rock backdrop and five-piece lineup of the Powder Monkeys’ first album, Smashed On a Knee; in its place was a brutal punk rock trio hell-bent on laying waste to the insipid pretenders to rock’n’roll’s modern crown.
Now released on vinyl for the first time, Time Wounds All Heels is less an album of songs than a violent sonic assault. The album starts almost innocuously: a casual drum beat gives way to Nolan’s guttural punk guitar licks; Hemensley’s gravelly tones chime in to offer some well-chosen observations on the tedium of the world in which the band must exist.
Skip to Insane Old Game, and The Powder Monkeys are in full, frenetic flow: it’s a multi-sensory collage of beer, cigarette smoke, poetic invective and punk rock attitude. And has there ever been a more confronting Australian rock’n’roll track than Turn to Hate? The Powder Monkeys are in your face, shouting, spitting, challenging you to get the fuck of their way; One More War suggests the band’s not finished yet, ready to wipe the floor with any flaccid rock’n’roll imitators.
For all of the aural brutality – and you’ve still got The Supernova That Never Quits, Straight Until Morning, Ten Minds, Conquest, Gotta Put the World Away and 2000 Sins to go, if you’re game – what’s apparent with Time Wounds All Heels is the quality of Hemensley’s lyrics: he’s the modern day people’s poet, critiquing the superficial obsessions of society, rebuking cultural shibboleths and generally taking a discursive axe to everything that pisses him off. This is punk rock in its rarely-sighted literary guise, an erudite blend of anger, frustration and attitude.
Eventually it all came to a head, and The Powder Monkeys collapsed under the weight of drug abuse. John Nolan was lucky to survive; tragically, Hemensley did not. But for a time, The Powder Monkeys were perhaps the greatest rock’n’roll beast on the planet – and Time Wounds All Heels is one of the greatest punk rock records ever recorded.
BY PATRICK EMERY
Best Track: Straight Until Morning
If You Like These, You’ll Like This: IGGY AND THE STOOGES, MC5, MOTORHEAD
In A Word: Brutal
