Every once in a while a record comes along that embodies all that is great and holy about the rock. I imagine the guys in The Left would smirk at the concept of rapture through high energy punk, but without a doubt "Jesus Loves the Left: The Complete Studio Recordings" is one of those records. This is basically what happens when a handful of young dudes with great record collections and a keen appreciation for the history of the rock, a firm distaste for all things pop and the chops to back it all up get some real studio time and cut loose like doomsday could hit tomorrow.

Bona Fide, the folks responsible for recent reissues by ‘70s acid punk guitar god George Brigman, get a little more hardcore punk with their latest release. The Left were a revered mid 80s Baltimore punk band that combined wry, often hilarious social commentary with tight, arty arrangements that touched upon The Stooges, 13th Floor Elevators and the more expected practitioners of the form, mainly The Angry Samoans and Radio Birdman. Here was a genuine punk band that was not afraid to indulge in its love of garage and 60s psych and rocked with more authority than 90% of their peers in the process.

Opener "Hell" sets the tone with a crashing bang. It’s probably the signature Left tune with lyrics (penned by band 5th member Kiki Kelly) that give a breakdown worthy of Dante before arriving at the conclusion that – get this – it’s right here, and we’re living in it. Maybe no real revelation, but the music is phenomenal: lashing riff duels with fierce bass/drum interplay that gives the MC5 a serious run for its money. There’s the pitch-perfect "Youngster on the Force," which should touch a nerve for anyone that ever met a guy who, "…just got out of narc school and he thinks he knows the world." Again, the music enthralls with a torrent of three chord battery and mined-bending solos, all over in less than two minutes. The rockabilly tinged "Stop" is shorter than a minute, but just long enough to kick your ass good before the fantastic slow crawl of "R.I.P." lights the funeral pyre with an opening riff lifted from Thirteenth Floor Elevators’ "Rollercoaster" and a hardcore chorus that basically shouts at the human race: "Evolve or die!" Talk about prescience. And there’s so much more like the hilarious tribute to drunken indifference, "Fuck It," the beautiful Husker Du meets Buzzcocks rush of "Attitudes," the pissed off call to arms of "Frontline."

Every song these guys pull out of their hat combines a raw rock backdrop with rich social observation that’s both sardonic and just plain intelligent enough that it doesn’t feel like the listener is being told over and over, "society is fucked and YOU have to do something about it," even though that’s basically what’s happening. The real challenge for any band like this: Can you indulge that social imperative without preaching? The Left answers the question with a resounding yes.

And there’s a more too. They skewer TV soap culture (a particularly bizarre American phenomenon) with "My Shows," racial strife with "The Vietcong Live Next Door," "Teenage Suicide," Aids in "Aids Alley," which bassist John Hornick apologizes for any political incorrectness in the liner notes. It’s a send up of gay cruising culture that’s actually sort of painfully accurate and perversely amusing, as one might expect with these guys. What else? The awesome "Redneck 711" borrows the riff from "Sweet Home Alabama" before turning into throbbing punk assault that skewers every redneck stereotype in the book. This is my childhood in sound! There’s a crash and burn take of "TV Eye" that’s as tight and rip-roaring as any I’ve heard. There’s "You’re So" which lifts note for note the riff from "Last Train to Clarksville" and turns it into classic kraut-punk, and really there’s just not a bum track among the 20 collected here. This features two albums – "It’s the World" and "Last Train to Hagerstown" (both originally issued on Bona Fide in 84 and 85, in fact) – a compilation track and three unreleased gems that don’t suck at all. "Jesus Loves the Left" embodies all the best and most meaningful aspects of real punk and kicks ass every second of the way. And it’s not just for the kids, either. 10/10 --

Hagerstown, Md., is only an hour and a half northwest of D.C., but back in 1983 this rural 'burg might as well have been on another planet. Redneck bars + 7-Eleven culture = boredom, though, and that's the formula for punk bands. Enter the Left, weaned on 1960s crud (Sonics, Standells, Elevators) and '70s thud (Stooges, Dead Boys, Damned).

Bona Fide Records originally issued the two Left albums, 1984's It's The World! and 1985's Last Train to Hagerstown. (Fun Fact: in '88 the label also did Antiseen's Honour Among Thieves.) Now Bona Fide resurrects the legacy as Jesus Loves the Left: The Complete Studio Recordings. Both platters have been remixed, while detailed liner notes tell the tale alongside photos and reproductions of LP sleeve art, notably the debut's controversial depiction of a punks, metalheads, new wavers and Klansmen in a trash heap.

The music has definitely stood the test of time. World! lead track "Hell" is the proverbial shot across the bow, a shuddery, throbbing slice of Pere Ubu/Dead Boys spiked by Brian Sefsic's coiled-Iggy vocal. Hagerstown's highlights include "The Viet Cong Live Next Door" (think Radio Birdman does "Peter Gunne" -- Sefsic also channeled Birdman's Rob Younger, and guitarist Jim Swope was like Deniz Tek, Ron Asheton and Cheetah Chrome rolled into one) and, just to make the Stooges connection explicit, a dead-on cover of "TV Eye." Four unreleased tunes from a short-lived 1992 reunion are equally up to snuff - "State of Mind," in particular, has a Johnny Thunders vibe. Ensuring the CD title's accuracy, an '83 compilation track, "You're So" (featuring a great Monkees rip), is included.

The Left, who split in '85, may have been but a brief blip. But the group burned so brightly that the gleam of that flare arcing across the Hagerstown skyline could be spotted all across the country

Fred Mills, Creative Loafing, October 2006

The Left furnished truth in packaging. The stark visual cues let it be known that this was garage punk for suffocating the annoying--presumably those in Hagerstown, where the band was formed. The blasting noise of the band--Jim Swope’s guitar through a Fender Twin set to crushing treble and singer Brian Sefsic chanting as charmlessly as Iggy on The Stooges--combined in a mix to scratch diamonds. You imagined them to be churls who meant exactly what they sang on "Fuck It," a tune about barflies. Photos included with this new collection, Jesus Loves the Left--a play on the old Jesus Loves the Stooges bootleg--indicate they were more tender-looking than originally thought. By the evidence, even a girl liked them.

In 1985, the Last Train to Hagerstown EP became the Left’s epitaph. The brutal lyrics of "The Viet Cong Live Next Door" and "AIDS Alley" made some peg the band as a group of bigots, but the Left was satirizing its town, which "Redneck 7-11" made clear. "We’ll stomp your heads," Sefsic sang, "because revenge tastes sweet." "You’re So," an excellent one-off for a retrospective sampler, turned "The Last Train to Clarksville" riff into rock to cathartically elbow someone in the mouth to. Chuck Eddy put both Left records in Stairway to Hell, his 1991 book chronicling the 500 best heavy-metal albums in the universe. Too late to do them any good, it added poetic futility to the tale.–George Smith, Baltimore City Paper

This amazing CD collects all the recorded work of the Left, A MD band that somehow came of age in the shadow of the Bad Brains/Minor Threat DC scene, but by 1984 they managed to sound like they were from Detroit circa 1973. A couple of the songs have an almost hardcore sound, but played at the wrong speed with the wrong drum fills, wrong wailing guitar runs and wrong vocal delivery. The band released two incredible 12" Eps with ridiculous punk rock cartoons on the covers (one of aliens destroying Earth, one of the band beating up mullet-head Quiet Riot and Men At Work fans.). They actually cover "TV Eye", but the intense Stooges groove of the first song, "Hell", is as devastating and original as it is derivative. Another amazing song is about soap operas, and a stellar number is about gay hustlers sung and played almost exactly like Jayne County and her band. This is genuinely offensive, but it is perfectly ounk rock offensive. Obviously, this band doesnt cleanly fit into punk rock history, but I guess that’s what makes them even punker. The most midwestern band I’ve ever heard from the East Coast–Waymon Timbsdale, Roctober #43