Artist:     Binky Philips and The Planets

Album:     Established 1972 NYC

Label:     Self-released

Release Date:     4.26.19

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Missing from the packaging of Binky Philips and The Planets’ Established 1972 NYC, a smoking slab of rugged, down-and-dirty hard rock, is an expiration date. More than likely, they’ll have to pry Philips’ guitar from his cold, dead hands before he leaves the rock ‘n’ roll life for good.

Birthed in the garbage-strewn gutters of Gotham in the early ‘70s, they were known simply as The Planets when they opened for the notorious New York Dolls at the Mercer Art Center and later, the Ramones at CBGBs. They were regulars there and frequented another iconic New York City punk-rock venue, Max’s Kansas City, just as often. In 1973, at the Hotel Diplomat, they played with KISS, and four years later, these diehards caught a bad break when a pending deal with Warner Bros. Records fell through. Undeterred, The Planets continued orbiting New York City, performing in one form or another anywhere that would have them for 47 years.

Incredibly, Established 1972 NYC is the first studio foray from these battle-scarred survivors, and their debut LP sounds like a rumbling, exhaust-spewing hotrod built in a garage out of spare proto-metal and punk parts by mechanics who know what they’re doing. Song structures are seemingly built with steel frames, as rough, exploding churns like “Splitsville or Bust” and “Drinking Gasoline” come off grungy and venomous, with heady rhythms thrown around like cinder blocks and hard-nosed, snarling and serrated riffs just spoiling for a fight. The hooks are tenacious and biting, similar to those found in Cheap Trick’s growling rockers, while singer Nolan Roberts’ assertive vocals add even more full-throated, gritty defiance, as the souped-up “Sour Grapes” floors it, the heavy and nostalgic “Kinda Liked it at The Time” sighs deeply, and “Blink” has a starry-eyed quality to it that’s unexpected and disarming.

What Established 1972 NYC lacks in beauty and refinement it more than makes up for in raw guts and passion, with solid, substantive songwriting its lifeblood. It is New York through and through, and while the melodic “Goodbye to All That,” with its boyish backing harmonies, puts childish pursuits and vices away and suggests Philips has a soft spot for pop accents, it’s not long before the tough-guy, street swagger returns. May they never die.

—Peter Lindblad