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A  Place Called Bad [Box Set] Image
Metascore
87

Universal acclaim - based on 8 Critic Reviews What's this?

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  • Summary: The box set for the 1970-80s Australian punk rock band collects all of its studio releases as well as a disc of live tracks including an unreleased recording from Adelaide UniBar.
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  • Record Label: Numero
  • Genre(s): Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock, Punk Blues, Noise-Rock, Power Pop, Post-Punk, Aussie Rock
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Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 7 out of 8
  2. Negative: 0 out of 8
  1. Aug 17, 2016
    90
    Numero Group has performed a great public service here for aficionados of joyful noise. Anyone who spent time left of the dial during the heyday of college radio should pick up this collection.
  2. Aug 16, 2016
    90
    On the whole, the music on A Place Called Bad makes a strong case that the Scientists were one of the '80s best bands, especially during their swamp noise years. They had the look, they had the songs, they had the sound, and everything they did burned with the white hot fire that only the very best groups are able to harness.
  3. Uncut
    Aug 16, 2016
    90
    A Place Called Bad augments such high-water marks as 1983's Blood red River with rarities and live tracks like a 1983 demolition job on Captain Beefheart's "Clear Spot." All of it whets the appetite for explorations of Salmon's sprawling post-Scientists oeuvre. [Sep 2016, p.88]
  4. 80
    Crucially, radioactive classics such as Blood Red River, Weird Love, Atom Bomb Baby, Swampland and their psychobilly spray-job on Jonathan Richman’s She Cracked still sound vital and audaciously genre-crushing. The Scientists well deserve this Mount Rushmore of a set.
  5. Aug 16, 2016
    80
    They remained off all save the hippest of radars, yet this exhaustive 80-track anthology incorporating their complete studio recordings and an exuberant bonus live set shows that they nonetheless amassed a fearsome catalogue.
  6. Mojo
    Aug 16, 2016
    80
    The 22-track vinyl's an ace place for newcomers to get electrified. [Sep 2016, p.107]
  7. Aug 16, 2016
    60
    They’re best known, though, for the swamp-rock they adopted from 1982--distorted, grimy, seedy and just a little psychotic; Swampland was as memorable a manifesto as you could hope for. But there is an awful lot of it here, and you might well find that a little of their midnight-flavoured Birthday Party-meets-Suicide-meets-Iggy stew goes quite a long way.

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