Rules have never been Steve Lieberman’s comfort zone. Performing under the name The Gangsta Rabbi, the Freeport, New York musician has built a career on the kind of willfully odd, fiercely personal noise that most artists sand down or abandon. He is a Jewish-American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, composer, arranger, producer, and former village comptroller who seems happiest when the work feels a little inconvenient. If you have a soft spot for experimental punk and metal, you may hear a kindred spirit here, a rough ally you didn’t know existed until now.
On “GIMME NO PRODUCER – Police Officer,” the second track on his five-track EP “I’m Still Not Good Enough 48/86 Opus 230,” Lieberman leans hard into the qualities that make him such a stubborn outsider presence in experimental rock. There’s no attempt to smooth the surfaces, or to make the entry point easy. The song arrives as a statement, loud and self-directed, as if he’s daring anyone in the room to ask him to explain himself.
At 5 minutes and 47 seconds, the track has time to settle into its own strange discipline. It runs on a clipped, military count, “1, 2… 1, 2… step!”, a loop that feels like marching orders and a rallying chant at the same time. The groove is hypnotic in the way a mosh pit can be hypnotic, structured enough to keep you moving, raw enough to keep you on guard. Punk and metal collide here in measured bursts, aggressive but never airless.
The sound has an ugly charm, like a microwave left on a little too long. The edges scorch, the middle keeps simmering, and you start to notice how intentionally the heat spreads. That balance is part of the thrill. Lieberman wants the song to push at you, then pull you back in, then push again, until you stop trying to control your reaction and simply ride it out.
Even the title reads like a dare. “GIMME NO PRODUCER – Police Officer” comes off as refusal and provocation in one breath, a line drawn against polish, mediation, and any authority that might soften what he’s aiming for. The meaning stays slippery on purpose. This track doesn’t offer tidy context or a plot you can follow. It plants its flag and expects you to deal with the noise around it.
Lieberman’s vocals sit right up front, catchy and insistent, but still cryptic. He delivers phrases like spells rather than sentences, more incantation than narrative. You might not be able to parse every word, yet the intent lands anyway. The insistence is the message, and the message is insistence.
Musically, the track works at the outer edge of experimental rock, pulling from punk’s confrontational instinct and metal’s speed-drunk momentum. Everything keeps pressing forward, fast enough to spike adrenaline, steady enough to lock into a trance. It’s chaotic, but it’s a kind of chaos that invites movement. You can imagine it lighting up a dance floor, assuming that dance floor doesn’t mind a few bruises.
What sticks, though, is the afterimage. When the last note drops away, the song doesn’t feel finished so much as released. It lingers in the head like an unwelcome shadow, hard to spot and harder to shake. There’s no real comfort offered, no neat resolution, just a sense that the track has moved somewhere else and left you to catch your breath.
That stubbornness is central to Lieberman’s whole project. A Hebrew Nazarite, founder of The Bad’lanim, pioneer of Militia Punk, and former Guinness World Record holder for the longest officially released song, he has positioned himself outside the usual music ecosystems by choice. He doesn’t round off corners, he sharpens them. He doesn’t chase ease, he tests stamina. Still, inside the rawness, there’s purpose, rhythm, and a momentum that keeps dragging you forward.
“I’m Still Not Good Enough 48/86 Opus 230” doesn’t sound interested in approval. It documents an artist continuing to carve out his own history in real time, on his own terms. “GIMME NO PRODUCER – Police Officer” is one of its clearest declarations, abrasive, experimental, strangely infectious, and fully unbothered by who opts out.
This isn’t music for everyone, and that’s the point.
Steve Lieberman isn’t here to be understood.
He’s here to be felt.
