Search - Vietnam :: Past Away

the band Vietnam formed in Atlanta at the dawn of a new decade. The 80?s had arrived and an ?out-with-the-old-in-with-the new? attitude took hold among creative circles. Vietnam was forefront with this zeal and helped usher in a fresh new era of music to the Atlanta new wave scene - a geographic big sister to Athens' prime-time in the college rock limelight. Embraced by the cavalcade of legendary Athens' bands such as Pylon, Method Actors, R.E.M. and Love Tractor, Vietnam wowed the patrons of Atlanta's 688 Club and the Agora Ballroom, as well as Athens' 40 Watt Club and Tyrone?s. Unfortunately the group never released a record until now. Twenty-five years after Vietnam?s heyday, the group's enduring set list is finally available on CD. ?Past Away?, the first concrete documentation of Vietnam's explosive original art-punk compositions, has been released on lead singer/songwriter/sax player Stan Satin's own label, Scared Records. A funky use of percussive textures (steel drum, congas), shrouded in scathing guitar squalls, set the tone for damaged and nihilistic pop music stylings fortified with a punk lexicon. Satin's blaring and cerebral saxophone wails amidst the framework of post-industrial pop punk and no wave grind evoke everyone from Roxy Music to Tuxedomoon, Joy Division to Devo, Cabaret Voltaire to The Contortions. The songs that make up ?Past Away? were recorded over the first months of the new millennium.