The Secret History series features profiles of classic D.C. albums as a way of looking back at the District’s contributions to music over time. This installment remembers Let Them Eat…, the Monorchid’s bracing post-punk debut (Simple Machines/Dischord, 1997).

The Monorchid was a hard act to ignore. Forming around guitarist Chris Hamley and ex-Ignition bassist Chris Thomson, both veterans of the Wisconsin-born/Dischord-bred aggro outfit Circus Lupus, the quintet supplied D.C. ears with a hopped-up, agitated mix of fiery post-punk, jagged art rock, and weird mutant blues. Their noise was menacing, confrontational, and unsettling, but compelling and exceedingly catchy.

Together, Hamley (guitar), Thomson (vocals), Andy Cone (guitar), Andy Coronado (bass), and Tom Allnut (drums) were a tightly wound unit, sporting a charming shortage of give-a-shit and welcome knack for laying twisted riffs over agile rhythms. Thomson’s insinuating sneer upped the tension with every line, as Hamley’s and Cone’s guitars engaged in an endless sudden-death knife fight full of savage stabs and desperate feints. Though the band only cranked out two LPs, 1997’s Let Them Eat… and the 1998 Touch and Go-released swansong Who Put Out The Fire?, The Monorchid were an object lesson in the brightest flame burning half as long.

“The guys in The Monorchid had grown up for the most part in D.C., we had been in bands, we went to shows, we were active members in the scene. So in a lot of ways we fit in, yet in a lot of ways we didn’t,” Thomson tells DCist. “We were odd balls. We were kind of doing our own thing.”