Capital Punishment

There are several bands called Capital Punishment: 1. A minimal electronic / no wave / retardo band from NYC in 1982 (featuring Ben Stiller on drums). What do you get when you cross the child of a famous comedian, the fertile New York no wave scene, and a few hundred dollars to record and release an album? You get Capital Punishment's album "Roadkill". And the drummer/backup singer was none other than Ben Stiller.

1. A minimal electronic / no wave / retardo band from NYC in 1982 (featuring Ben Stiller on drums).

What do you get when you cross the child of a famous comedian, the fertile New York no wave scene, and a few hundred dollars to record and release an album? You get Capital Punishment's album "Roadkill".

And the drummer/backup singer was none other than Ben Stiller. That's right, Zoolander himself was a wee lad of 13 when this album was recorded. And while the music here is amateurish - VERY amateurish at times - you have to admit that it's pretty damn cool for a high school freshman's band. I mean, what did YOU release when you were 13?

So listen to this record with a grain of salt. There are some stupid no wave songs, some decent minimal electropop songs, and actually a couple great electronic instrumentals: especially the epic "John's Forgotten Lands I, II, and III", which use every synth noise in the book. It's a curiosity, a strange amateur classic, and often a very enjoyable listen. Unfortunately, the group never recorded anything else, and the short-lived genre of Stillerwave never realized its full potential.

"Thirty years ago, our peers weren't quite as nice to us when we shared Roadkill with them. Everyone was in to the Stones in our school then, so Ben and I got a lot of "what is this shit?" from our peers when they heard Roadkill."
Kriss (the one wearing the bird mask).


2. A gangster rap group from Dallas, Texas.
3. A beatdown hardcore band from G?rlitz, Germany.
4. A metalcore band from Moscow. (http://www.myspace.com/capitalmetal)
5. A synth-and-spoken-word duo from Kyoto, Japan, with Ultra Bide's Hide on keys and drum machines and Jet Vel behind a megaphone.