“What separates the fury and the filthy in me?”

Polarizing. That’s the crime of Bury Me Standing. Well, that and being uneven. But it’s worth a backward glance into THE EXPLOSION’s discography.

Between Steal This, Flash Flash Flash and Sick Of Modern Art, THE EXPLOSION made themselves instantly recognizable as one of the best punk rock bands of the early 2000′s. Their Virgin debut, Black Tape, was, and let’s be polite, erratic. It could easily be discounted as the first major label record by a punk band. A couple “punk-influenced” singles, mid-tempo songs of varying quality and a couple absolute scorchers. No surprises, in other words. THE EXPLOSION toured dutifully on it, made videos, played their part, showed up on friendly music shows and… then the twist everyone saw coming happened: Virgin condemned the follow-up, Bury Me Standing to corporate limbo, for reasons unknown, but gossiped to be that they didn’t hear a single. In Virgin’s defense, they were right. Of the fourteen-ish songs recorded, there wasn’t a “Here I Am.”

On the other hand, their reluctance to release the disc was the boot heel to THE EXPLOSION’S skittering spider. It was an ignominious death for the Boston, by then, New York band.

Bury Me Standing was clearly influenced by THE GUN CLUB. Sure, Bury Me Standing had those same punk-influenced singles and mid-tempo songs that I could take or leave, but the now venerated L.A. country-punk group appears, like a ghost, on “It Ain’t Right,” “NYCD” and “Rally Around.” And infuriatingly, “NYCD” and “It Ain’t Right” quickly became my favorite songs off of Bury Me Standing. “It Ain’t Right” managed to work in a spaghetti-western style piano bit before, you know, THE EXPLOSION kicks in with a rager and the result is a really good punk song, bolstered by the off-genre flourish.

“NYCD” was my favorite track and the most out of place on the disc. It’s got female back up vocals, an organ and is maybe the first and only example of THE EXPLOSION writing a moody noir song, presumably about suicide bombers. I always like the lyric, “the Sunni straight from London/the shoes are from Rome/the drinks are all on me if you go home,” so it’s gratifying to see the song move out of bootleg status. There’s a gloss and a sheen to Bury Me Standing that did not serve the band well. And yet through it, a glitter of jagged tooth comes through. THE EXPLOSION accepted just enough collagen puff to make themselves unpalatable to their prior fanbase but they weren’t quite domesticated enough that lyrics like “the midwest/they’ve got nothing/but meth and fool’s gold,” were sanded away.

How to present the contradiction, then?

Chunksaah wisely sidesteps the issue by quietly dropping four of the songs from the original release, mostly the mid-tempo songs that I could take or leave. Which, and this ought to be said, loudly, makes this a better record overall. It’s a poorer document of Bury Me Standing, though. “Warning,” as a final track feels… inappropriate. It’s one of the few fast songs on Standing. I won’t ascribe motives, but that particular bit of re-sequencing draws attention to what isn’t there, for me.

But the desire to go out on a positive note, to write their own ending, that’s totally understandable. I’d say Rest In Peace, but like all the other bands I’ve loved, I really just wanted to see what would have come next.