After writing last week’s column on Pere Ubu, I’ve spent a lot of ear-time with their fellow ‘70’s post-punk bands. I’ve marveled at how singular and catchy their music still is (Gang of Four, Joy Division), how knotty and difficult it remains (The Pop Group, This Heat), and sometimes both (Public Image Limited’s Metal Box). And then there’s Mission of Burma. 

Although their music is somewhat dissonant, endued with the energy of punk rock, and concerned more with artists and geopolitics than, say, fornication, Burma didn’t roll with the traditional post-punk bandwagon. For one, they were from Boston, hardly a post-punk mecca (though it would soon birth a nice hardcore scene), and, two, their music, in the Year of Our Lord 2025, doesn’t sound especially prickly or singular, as Burma, in the 40-some years since their debut, have had both the joy and misfortune to see their sound become mainstreamed.

Although the two albums they made in their initial run, Signals, Calls, and Marches and Vs., are over 40 years old, Mission of Burma’s artsy and anthemic sound can still be heard all over today’s streaming world, from Fontaines D.C. to Porridge Radio to the newly re-activated Les Savy Fav. Spin a track from either of Burma’s 1980s releases; you might wonder what the big deal is. “That’s When I Reach For My Revolver” sounds an awful lot like one of those Pixies songs with a giant chorus.“Trem Two” sounds like Liars at their creepiest. “Fame and Fortune” sounds like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs fronted by boys. Mission of Burma’s initial originality has been swallowed by its followers. They made this world. We now live in it. 

What surprises me about those early Burma albums is that this band came upon their sound in the 1970s. Unlike the Pixies, who had a decade of punk, hardcore, art-rock, and indie to draw inspiration from (in addition to Burma itself), MoB had the Stooges, Pere Ubu and few others. They embraced classic rock pillars like Jimi Hendrix and Pink Floyd, but stripped their guitar rock entirely of the blues. To me, Mission of Burma sounds like pure electricity, fast, white hot, and give or take some tremolo, entirely unadorned. When their fellow post-punks were ladling on chorus and reverb, Burma played it straight. 

Well, mostly. 

The secret ingredient in those early days was Martin Swope, who augmented the power trio of guitarist Roger Miller, bassist Clint Conley, and drummer Peter Prescott (singers all), with a tape deck. Sitting behind the soundboard, Swope ripped bits of the band’s live performances and sent them back through the PA speakers, creating odd phantom shapes and textures. Amazingly, for all the bands that have ripped off Burma, only Comets on Fire, that I know of, actually added their own member dedicated to looping tape.

Burma existed for four years, 1979-1983, retiring at the height of their popularity, due to guitarist Roger Miller’s tinnitus. It got so bad he took to wearing shooting headphones, over his ear plugs. (That Burma shows were notoriously cacophonous probably didn’t help his hearing.) And then the band became a legend, helped along by the fact that their label, the Boston indie Ace of Hearts, always kept their catalog in print, and by a chapter featuring them in Michael Azerrad’s canonic indie history Our Band Could Be Your Life. By the end of the 1990s, indie rock, a music they helped pioneer, was the dominant genre for any guitarist who didn’t down tune their guitar. 

And then, in 2002, a wild thing happened: Burma came back. 

Now it seems silly to celebrate the return of a beloved ‘90s band. Everyone from Pavement to Unwound have reunited. And some, like the Pixies and Archers of Loaf, have even created new music. And an even more exclusive group that includes bands like Dinosaur Jr. and Slowdive have not only reunited and created new music, but new music that, in quality and quantity, rivals the music they made during their first go-round. But in 2002, bands, especially indie rock bands, never reunited. Dead was dead. And Mission of Burma was D-E-A-D. 

And then they weren’t. 

And then they had an album coming out!

The cheekily titled ONoffON acknowledged their hiatus. Who would’ve known at the time that that second “ON” would last four times longer than their first “ON” and produce more than twice as much new music – some of which might not only match, but surpass their original tunes. 

Today’s Heck Record is Burma’s second album back from their hiatus, the masterful Obliterati, an album that’s looser, funnier, and takes more chances than anything from the first phase of their career, while fitting comfortably within the band’s wheelhouse. You could put any song from this 2006 album next to any of their songs from 1981 and they would go together like Lego cubes. 

The Obliterati adds ten solid rockers to Burma’s oeuvre, a dozen sneaky hooks and stupid-clever references (“Donna Sumeria” nicks “I Feel Love” even without Giorgio Mordoder’s Moog), and has the funniest line they ever wrote (which also happens to be a sneaky hook and stupid-clever): “And I’m haunted by the freakish size of Nancy Reagan’s head/ No way that thing came with that body.” Hollywood always said the former first lady had a great head game (Google: “Nancy Reagan blowjob queen.”)

Burma quietly split in 2020, having played their last show in 2016, and releasing their fourth album together since their reunion.  They had disappeared for 20 years, during which time the world copied the shit outta them, and then they returned sounding exactly the same…maybe even better than ever.