I’ve been hearing about this since the early ’80s, but punk rock in them days was different than it is now. In burgs like the Toledo of my youth, the records you saw, you bought, and then let all your friends tape. If a record was gone when you came back and none of your friends had snapped it up, you were outta luck, chump. So it was with the Flesh Eaters records. I subsequently got hip to bandleader Chris D’s work with the (okay) Divine Horsemen and (kickass) Stone by Stone, but the Flesh Eaters have remained legend to me.

And worthy of legendary status this record is, standing shoulder to shoulder with LA classics that I did get to hear like the Germs G.I. and X’s first couple of LPs. Rockabilly provides much of the structure and subtexts here — as it does for X and many an other LA punk band from them days — but the noise factor is considerable and pushes “A Minute to Pray” into a place all it’s own. It’s funny — the press kit pushes comparisons to The Stooges and Beefheart, but that doesn’t really cover the pallet deployed. The sax is used in ways both more conventional and innovative that Steve MacKay’s Funhouse wails — it reminded me by turns of Ornette and Roxy Music — and the glock fills space like the mournful rattle of Nick Cave’s piano on early Bad Seeds recs.

The focus here is deep even while the surface moves aplenty. Chris Desjardin’s voice, an oft-remarked on instrument, is less out there than expected (no Brannon, Cave, Yow levels of nuts) but works in an unhinged (less-hinged?) Richard Hell kinda way. Meeting a legend is never what you expect, you can only hope not to be disappointed. And A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die doesn’t disappoint.

(Superior Viaduct, PO Box 193563, San Francisco, CA 94119)