Black leather, spikes and chains, The Lewd is, as Dirk Dirksen put it, "One of them kind of acts." Their 1982 album, "American Wino," is violent, ugly, perverse and frightening. The songs betray a bleak and ominous vision of American life seen through the eyes of youth without hope of a future. This is not the San Francisco sound of the '60s, but rather the belligerent sounds of these Seattle transplants' fight for survival on the gritty streets where the dejection of last generation's Utopian failures meets the stark realities of economic deprivation. This is fast, jarring and furious punk rock at its finest. Long languishing in obscurity due to its rarity, the reissue of this seminal LP makes it a compulsory component of any punk rock record collection.