Combat Rock—a misnomer; it ought to be Combat Fatigue, or maybe Burn Ward—really is every bit as chilling a portrait of the artist's failure in the midst of cultural hara-kiri as [Sly and the Family Stone's] There's a Riot Going On, with the difference that no one involved seems to have realized it. Maybe not just punk but everything it spawned has turned into a lurchingly ugly sick joke where the party favor everybody sits down on itsn't a fart-cushion but a junk needle; and maybe they themselves are so horror-gripped by the futility this engenders that one of their members has already been dragged down by it, and the rest are in a heartsick daze; but are they gonna admit any of that? Fuck no, they're the rockin' socialists—the agitprop must go on. So the album's formal content remains public gestures toward rebellion, let...