Professional Punk Rock Shows Its Pop Roots

Vancouver’s D.O.A. was the first North American band to play punk rock as professional musicians a dozen years ago (tight, in tune, and into the microphone) and they more or less laid down the conventions for what later became hard-core punk--a bunch of clean-cut guys in a van, touring the country and singing loudly about racism, cops and deforestation. Speed-metal bands, including Megadeth, Metallica and Overkill, were influenced by D.O.A.’s sound and attitude too, and what began as radical is now very much part of the rock ‘n’ roll vernacular. At the Country Club on Saturday, D.O.A.’s pop roots were showing. The band was as tight and energetic as ever, with a full bottom, cleanly articulated vocals and good-natured rage at the status quo--punk-rock mellowed into something anyone could like. (The band has never fallen into the sludge-metal hell of late Black Flag, the splintery neo-jazzisms of Firehose or the anarchist bongo demagoguery of the Dead Kennedys.) But most of all, D.O.A. had songs, catchy choruses, crunchy riffs and all.