Vocals – Paul Guitar – Matt Bass – Jay Drums – Ali
The city of Windsor, Ontario, is known locally as “Northern Tijuana” – a place to score Cuban cigars, rum and hookers as well as alcohol for the 19+ American hordes. It’s also the home to Canada’s biggest rape rate and an unending garbage strike that threatened to drown a city already submerged in massive unemployment and beer-fueled violence that spills out into the streets on a nightly basis.
“It’s a colorful bouquet of working class people, alcoholics, drug addicts, Bible thumpers, racist trash, un-employed, criminals, thugs, and shut-ins, available in all ethnicities, shape, sizes, and flavors,” vocalist Paul Magro said in an interview in Maximum Rock N Roll.
From this nightmare emerges Disco Assault, a four-piece hardcore punk attack bringing the world to knees with its unrelenting sound that takes a page right out of the early eighties Boston scene and Detroit legends, Negative Approach.
Disco Assault was formed in late 2005 and leveled audiences all over the Midwest, Ontario and Quebec, sharing the stage with such acts as SNFU, D.O.A., Gang Green, Dr. Know, Toxic Holocaust, Fuck the Facts, The Rookers, Hold a Grudge and the Gutter Demons. They have also put it down with local heavy hitters like State, Fear City, Death In Custody, The Bill Bondsmen, Hellmouth and local Windsor favorites, the Lager Lads.
“Lately they’ve been pretty intense and involved lots of flying bodies and broken bottles,” guitarist Matt Bishop said describing a typical gig, in an interview for Oi! Warning zine.
The band released its first 7-inch - “Saturday Night Bleeder” on Schizophrenic records – and Disco Assault was lauded by zines like the legendary Suburban Voice, which described the record as “Loud ‘n fast hardcore with throat-shredding vocals.”
Razorcake noted in its review that the crop of 80s-influenced HC bands in recent years produced some good and some bad acts, but “this band from Windsor, Canada seems to be doing it right. Nice, raw production and songs that charge forth but also have an infectious melody to them.”
Maximum Rock N Roll simply said “Yes, it’s good!” and one columnist, Bruce Roehrs, placed the record in MRR Top Tens of 2008, calling it “ferocious punk rock!!” and “Fucking brilliant! Brutish punk with a capital “P”!”
Disco Assault is set to release another 7-inch and a U.S. tour is in the works for next year. Whether old school HC remains the trend by then doesn’t really matter to a band that comes from a place where you have to work to survive.