Fang – Pissed Off Buddha (Cd/Dvd)

Fang Pissed Off Buddha (Cd/Dvd) combines the long out-of-print Boner Records albums Spun Helga from 1986 and A Mi Ga Stafas from 1987 with previously unreleased material, making it the most comprehensive document of a period in the Berkeley and Oakland hardcore band’s catalog that had been genuinely difficult to access.

Fang Pissed Off Buddha (Cd/Dvd): What This Release Contains

The Spun Helga and A Mi Ga Stafas period represents Fang operating with the confidence of a band that had established their identity and knew what they wanted from a recording. Both records came out on Boner Records, the label that Tom Flynn founded, and both had been out of print long enough that secondhand prices had climbed to levels that deterred casual collection-building. Malt Soda’s decision to combine both albums plus previously unreleased material on a single CD and DVD package makes Pissed Off Buddha the definitive document of this chapter. The DVD component adds a visual dimension that archival releases of this kind rarely include, which makes this more than a straightforward reissue compilation.

Fang and Their Influence

Fang are one of the Bay Area hardcore bands whose influence extended substantially beyond their immediate audience. Mudhoney, the Butthole Surfers, Metallica, and Nirvana all covered their material or cited the band directly, which tells you something about the reach of what Sam McBride and Tom Flynn were doing during this period. The combination of ferocity and specificity in the Fang recordings of the mid-eighties produced something that translated across genre lines in ways that more generic hardcore recordings from the same period did not manage.

Why This Format

Getting two albums plus unreleased material on CD with an accompanying DVD in a single package is a collector-friendly approach to archival hardcore material. Malt Soda assembled this properly rather than just throwing tracks together, and the result is the version that serious Fang collectors and West Coast hardcore archivists will want on the shelf. The tracklist across the two albums is substantial, and having everything together makes the full Boner-era picture clear in a way that tracking down individual pressings of each album separately does not achieve. This is the complete document for this chapter of the Fang catalog, and it belongs in the collection.