Well, to be fair… they kinda were. 
I actually took a shine to the first couple of songs. And I think “Data Control” is genuinely pretty good. I mostly love how incongruous that song is. After spending the entire album playing as fast as they could and barely cracking the two-minute mark on any one song, they suddenly decide that it’s time to slow things down a bit AND stick to a single idea for five-plus minutes. I might have even gone to the trouble of firing up Audacity or something and carving it off the rest of Side 2, except it’s also on The Living End, so there’s no real need to do so.