Gang Green

This Braintree, MA, based outfit, anchored by singer/guitarist Chris Doherty, first made waves when its 15-year-old members placed seven songs on the influential 1982 Boston hardcore compilation, This Is Boston, Not L.A., alongside the likes of Jerry’s Kids, the F.U.’s and The Freeze. (That’s Gang Green on the album jacket, causing a ruckus at Streets nightclub.) The first of a series of breakups, in 1984, coincided with the genre’s early death knells and Ronald Reagan’s re-election, though Doherty resurrected the band for 1986’s Another Wasted Night, a vintage slice of late-period hardcore, an ode to teenage troublemaking, beer-fueled mayhem and sexual frustration, and home to one of the least-likely covers of ‘Til Tuesday’s “Voices Carry” you’ll ever run across.  The intervening years have seen the band – when it’s not on hiatus or in a line-up flux – move into thrash, speed metal and hard rock, still touring America and Europe and testifying to the powers of alcohol and punk rebellion.
(by Stephen Haag)

Published on December 28, 2012