The Dwarves were a humble punk-rock band that never sparked revolutions, but has never made a bad record either. Underrated like all groups that know how to poke fun at their own music, the Dwarves actually embody the darker, more malicious side of rock and roll, the thread running from Chuck Berry to the Rolling Stones, from them to Blue Öyster Cult, and so on. Reprobate and incorrigible, they have no moral scruples, no conscience, no restraint or modesty. Yet behind all this ostentatious barbarism lies, once again, the death drive that has always lurked in the darker recesses of rock music.

The Suburban Nightmare were active in Chicago as early as 1983. They were a late freak band with modest ambitions, whose only album, A Hard Day's Nightmare (Midnight, 1985), was released after they had already moved to San Francisco and changed their name to Dwarves. That album sounds as if Red Krayola had backed Zappa on Freak Out. It is a collection of novelty songs, but imbued with the hallucinogenic spirit of the 1960s rather than the satirical spirit of the 1950s.

Horror Stories (Voxx, 1986), their first album under the new name, is a tribute to the psychedelic culture of the 1960s, from the garage-surf of Don't Love Me to the acrobatic rock and roll of Lick It. Their preferred style still seems to be free-form psychedelia ā la Red Krayola, but tracks like Mined Expanders seem more like parodies of the genre, and in I'm A Living Sickness (with its most outrageously annoying noises) they use it to indulge in decadence in its most blatantly showy form.
The style they truly excel at is revealed in the wild punk-a-billy of Monday Blues, Love Gestapo, and College Town (the last worthy of the best Cramps). Guitarist He Who Cannot Be Named (Pete Konik) and singer Blag Dahlia (also Jesus Christi or Julius Seizure) wreak havoc on more than one rock tradition, but the results are sometimes spectacular.

Two years pass before they are heard from again, and when they reemerge, it is practically a different band: the EP Toolin' For A Warm Teabag (Nasty Gash, 1988) compresses seven tracks of extreme hardcore into just nine minutes. The lyrics exalt what are unanimously considered the worst problems of American youth, from Free Cocaine to Let's Get Pregnant.

Two more years pass, and in 1990 the EP Astro Boy makes things worse, which then spiral completely out of control on their second album, Blood Guts & Pussy (SubPop, 1990), even more provocative. Almost all the titles address phenomena or habits banned by respectable America, screamed and played with the ferocity and lust of a horde of barbarians descending on a colony of helpless boarding school girls. Even in this portrayal of the petty vices and major sins of American youth, this celebration of licentious subculture, the Dwarves reveal themselves as disciples of the Cramps and Alice Cooper.
Mostly, the hyperkinetic rhythm of hardcore reigns supreme (and the realistic sketches of adolescent life range from Let's Fuck to Skin Poppin' Slut, from Fuck You Up And Get High to Insect Whore), all incredibly equipped with excellent choruses that prevent them from feeling like repetitions of the same song, with epileptic peaks ā la Ramones in What Hit You and Back Seat Of My Car. But the Dwarves become truly irresistible when they perform the martial steps of their punkabilly (Detention Girl) or when they launch into a pop-ballad riff and melody (Drug Store and Flesh Tantrum).
Blow after blow, this perversely frenzied ride through "pleasure" paints a unique gallery of sluts, thugs, brutes, and junkies. This album also lasts only a few minutes—long enough to leave a superficial abrasion, not a mortal wound.

The EP Lucifer's Crank (No 6) and the album Thank Heaven For Little Girls (SubPop, 1991), still overflowing with irresistible melodies, criminal lyrics, and frenetic rhythms, were released in 1991 at the height of the group’s popularity. The band had also become famous for their live shows, often lasting only ten minutes, during which Konik plays completely naked, wearing only a mask covering his face.

Far from being redeemed, on Thank Heaven For Little Girls the Dwarves race headlong through a half-hour of cathartic fury, sweeping along in their mad ride another swarm of “alternative” adolescent portraits (dedicated, that is, to “bad kids”). Yet in the sardonic nursery rhyme of Lucky Tonight, which lays out the band’s most cynical and fatalistic philosophy of life, and in the comical tirade of Fuck Around, seemingly derived from a frantically sped-up 1950s doo-wop, a new style emerges—a mood halfway between psychotic mania and obscene parody, a kind of novelty for ultra-punk nihilists.
At the same time, Salt Peter’s extremely mobile bass and Vadge Moore’s frenetic drumming are so improved that they often create a “train-like” rhythm of great impact, reaching back to the roots of American popular music. Indeed, Konik’s guitar even delivers Gun Club-style blues cadences on tracks like Blood Brother's Revenge, one of their masterpieces. The effect is certainly more comic than tragic, reminiscent of the “Rocky Horror Picture Show” (see the grisly Blag The Ripper). Overall technical progress also manifests in their rock and roll, more devastating than ever, from Speed Demon to Fuck 'Em All, which serve as the true anthems of these irreducible heroes of the underworld, making them worthy heirs of the Heartbreakers. Taken together, the album marks the attainment of a “rock” maturity beyond “punk,” leaving open the possibility of a future in the mainstream.

Wild, crude, uncivilized, the album Sugarfix (SubPop, 1993) delivers another dose of “epic” rock and roll ā la Alice Cooper (Anybody Out There, Saturday Night, Cain Novocain), glorifying the band’s usual depraved vices. These are lightning-fast, deafening tracks where the band’s rebellious spirit reigns supreme. The album also features two proudly perverse Stooges-like confessions, Bad Reputation and Underworld, alongside a couple of sinister voodoobilly atmospheres in Evil Primeval and Lies. Played and growled in one breath, Sugarfix confirms their status as genuine rock animals.
The rough sound, the hoarse vocals, the flayed guitars, the heart-pounding rhythms—these remain unchanged. The finale is titled Wish That I Was Dead…

Specula was the experimental project of drummer Sigh Moan. The album was Erupt (Scat, 1995).

Blag Dahlia released the solo EP venus With Arms (Atavistic, 1995).

Are Young And Good Looking (Theologian, 1997) is definitely an oxymoron, as they are not young anymore and they never were good looking, but the album, recorded with new guitarist Mike Fox (replacing Konik), feels young and irreverent as usual in this set of short and furious "songs". We Must Have Blood, Throw That World Away, You Gotta Burn. I Will Deny, Demonica, Everybodies Girl, Hit, Ballad Of Vadge Moore, The, One Time Only, Pimp, Crucifixion Is Now, The,

Another title that is hard to believe is Come Clean (Epitaph, 2000), since the songs on this album are as dirty as ever. The only thing that has changed over the years is the production values. Thanks to better production quality (and slower tempos), their music sounds more like Sweet/Slade glam/hard-rock than punk-rock.

Vadge Moore and Mike Fox were also active as Billie Wonka.