Capital Punishment, Ben Stiller's High School Punk Band, 1982 Album ROADKILL To Be Reissued by Captured Tracks

September 14 will see the reissue of the debut (and only) album from NYC's Capital Punishment. Entitled Roadkill it was first released in 1982 and the new remastered and expanded version will be made available via Captured Tracks. Today they share the newest single, "Confusion, which premiered via Rolling Stone who call the band's album, "a mix of industrial art-collage, synth-tweaked post-punk and teenage kicks." The band's Ben Stiller and Kriss Roebling had a chat with Rolling Stone about the album and you can read that story HERE.

LISTEN TO "CONFUSION"

The band previously shared, "Muzak Anonymous," a Beefheart-ian, gong-afied freak-funk that needs to be heard to be believed. LISTEN HERE.

Capital Punishment formed in 1979 in NYC when the 4 band members were teenagers. The band consisted of a future Supreme Court Justice for Arizona, aProfessor of Slavic Studies, a Musician/Documentarian whose family built the Brooklyn Bridge, and an A-list world-famous actor. For a band of high school weirdos who actually got their s together enough to make a completely uncommercial album with no means to sell it and still "release" it shows a lot of determination, persistence and perhaps insanity. But it's always those kinds of weirdos who go on to do great things - just ask Judge Peter Swann, Professor Peter Zusi, Kriss Roebling and Ben Stiller.

NPR said, "Capital Punishment conjured something dizzy and warped, and worth hearing even if its rhythm section didn't include the future star of Night at the Museum" andBillboard noted, "You can hear a young Stiller's steady percussion behind a truly funky sonic arrangement that answers the lyrics, 'Consumers speak please' with "A-B-C-D, master."

Beyond whatever curiosity the membership entails, Roadkill is an incredible example of the kind of home-spun, DIY post-punk that music collectors drool over at record fairs each weekend. Heavily influenced by Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle, Eno, Chrome and all sorts of proto-industrial music, Roadkill features a tracklisting that includes "Delta Time" - a post-punk anthem, written on a lark, with a tongue-in-cheek British accent that sounds like if Television Personalities decided to become kind of scary - and "Confusion," an industrial psychedelic standout, with an eerie synth-lead verse that segues into a glam-rock chorus straight out of the Mick Ronson playbook.

While news of this reissue leaked in 2015, September 14, 2018 is in fact the first timeRoadkill is being released since the 80s. The album will be available on all formats and via all DSPs.

Pre-order Roadkill here!

Photo by Dave Stekert

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