Reviews

Biff Bifaro

Nasty Nancy Hardcore Hotel cassette

Pittsburgh, PA’s gift to hardcore punk, Kill Enemy Records, blesses us with yet another disturbing cassette chock full of nasty, unrelenting hardcore. It seems NASTY NANCY is the solo project and brainchild of Devyn Brown, who is the drummer from LIVING WORLD. The recordings are entirely done by Devyn, but apparently he has a backing band playing with him to perform these monstrosities live. This is absolute outsider music, hardcore for the damn freaks. Put this high up on my list of bands I am dying to see!

The Losers Storm the Beach cassette

As a somewhat long-running demo/tape reviewer, I have always felt it was my responsibility to describe the music on the tapes that I am assigned objectively, make accurate comparisons, and be as encouraging as possible. I’m struggling with this one a little bit, because from the first listen, I can’t get past the comparison aspect. From the yelling of the first line, I thought “damn, this sounds a whole helluva lot like that first NOFX EP on Mystic Records.” I then listened to it again, and could think of nothing else. Seeing that name, people in the modern day might immediately be put off, and who could blame them, but I encourage you to listen to that first record to see how wildly different it is from the NOFX of nowadays. I probably hadn’t listened to it in fifteen years, but it was all I could think of. To attempt to break myself out of this internal cycle, I figured I would simply listen to the self-titled NOFX record to prove to myself that the comparison was all in my head. Well, it wasn’t. I went back and forth listening to that and the five songs on the LOSERS’ cassette, and at one point I lost track of which one I was listening to. If you told me these were lost songs from the first NOFX session, I would completely believe you. I guess the only thing left to be said is if you like the first NOFX 7”, you’re gonna love the LOSERS’ Storm the Beach.

V.V.M. Demo 2023 cassette

West Coast fastcore, mostly pretty standard fare. It’s fast and silly with goofy songs with subject matter like giving up your vegetarian ideals because there’s an In-N-Out Burger nearby. The unexpected thing about V.V.M. is the occasional melodic parts peppered into a few of their otherwise blisteringly fast songs. If we were to go based on the self-description on their Bandcamp page, it would seem the band thinks of these as being prog rock parts in their songs. To me, they just kinda sound like short skramz instrumental breaks before it’s back into the fastcore ripping. Who’s to say which of us is right? You be the judge. Five-song demo available online, an extra sixth song available only on the physical cassette.

Slevy Vol. 1 cassette

Alright, I’ve got a lot of numbers to throw at you and it may seem a little confusing, but stick with me because it’s more than worth it. SLEVY is a solo project (one man) from Irun, Spain. This Vol. 1 cassette is part of a two-cassette series which has the artist’s entire discography on it. Vol. 1 has his first couple EPs, comp tracks, and unreleased songs all recorded around 2005, it seems. This cassette was originally released in Spain in 2014, but a run of 100 tapes was just done by two Mexican labels at the end of 2023. SLEVY seems to truly be someone who loves all aspects of music within the punk umbrella. Ranging from darker, moodier, goth-adjacent synth-heavy tracks to catchy synth pop to driving garage rock, and some crust punk and hardcore influences on songs as well, SLEVY does it all without it feeling like a novelty. Here’s hoping these labels are working on Vol. 2 as well.

Modern Man Modern Man cassette

Mysterious guy hardcore is back with an absolute vengeance. Five songs of pummeling hardcore punk with a vocalist who seems to have taken a page out of Max Ward’s SCHOLASTIC DETH book. Sounds just like him at times. The similarity pretty much ends with vocal stylings and amount of feedback, though. MODERN MAN isn’t blistering fast, but instead ranges from mid-tempo down to plodding breakdowns. There’s no lyric sheet included, but judging from the band’s internet presence, they have no shortage of things to be pissed about. Not gonna find this on any streaming services other than the Bandcamp site—hard stance against Spotify and pro-Soulseek. Respect.

Wasted Denim Wasted Denim cassette

Power trio of some real RAMONES-heads from Leeds, UK. I’m not entirely sure what this band wants, but I have a damn good idea of what they don’t want, as, in true RAMONES fashion, three out of the four songs begin with the line “I don’t wanna be…” Four-song demo of self-proclaimed “chainsaw basement punk” in a mere seven minutes. I love everything about this. “I don’t wanna be a dickhead / I can’t help myself.” Truly my only gripe about this release is that the B-side of my tape was blank so I had to dub it myself off the band’s Bandcamp page, where the tracks were listed in a different order. It took me longer to figure out these issues than it did to listen to the demo a second time, which I was more than happy to sit through.

Frizbee / Pal Splat split cassette

Rust Belt split cassette between PAL from Cleveland, OH and FRIZBEE from Indianapolis, IN. Let’s start with PAL. We already know ‘em, we already love ‘em. Kooky, artsy, hilariously insightful, heavy on the synth, and catchy as all hell. Their first cassette made my 2023 year-end top ten list, and their side of this release might be even better. Two originals and a cover of “96 Tears” by ? AND THE MYSTERIANS, and all three songs are absolutely killer. Moving on to FRIZBEE. Another three songs on their side of the split, also two originals and a cover, the cover being “I’m a Bug” by the URINALS. As far as I can tell, this is the first release for FRIZBEE and it’s a pretty cool start, tho after listening to the PAL side, FRIZBEE kind of comes off like a less kooky, less witty version of PAL. The inevitable issue with splits—the sides will be compared and there will always be a preferred side. In this case, advantage PAL, whereas on their own, a FRIZBEE demo would likely seem all the cooler with nobody else snagging all the accolades.

Cromm Fallon Presents the P200 cassette

Las Vegas-based rock’n’roll which seems to have at least started as a solo project. This is the second full-length recording under this moniker, and it doesn’t say in the liner notes if this one is also done entirely by CROMM or if the press photos of the band looking cool means it’s a full band on the recording. Thirteen songs of mostly predictable, by-the-numbers rock’n’roll stuff. The harder stuff is slightly reminiscent of later-era HELLACOPTERS, but there are some straight up harmonica-driven blues standards, as well as an instrumental yacht rock song on here. I dunno, maybe it’s good and a punk review site just isn’t the right place for it?

Nucler Blud Corridor b/w Frown cassette

Bay Area band NUCLER BLUD plays fast, short, no-bullshit hardcore. These two songs clock in at a whopping 1:38 total. This seems to be their second cassette release, which is a split release cassingle by two labels of which I can’t find any existence whatsoever. The band’s first tape was put out by To Live a Lie, and sounds like some full-on DISCLOSE worship. It’s awesome. The two songs on this cassette seem to have moved away from that slightly, but are still pretty ripping. It’s cool that these tapes seem to have been a giveaway at a Gilman Street gig the band was playing.

The Justice League of America Strange Mono Unsung Gems: My Uncle Geno’s Band cassette

The first installment of the Strange Mono label’s Unsung Gems series, releasing recordings that have been lost to time. The JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA was active from 1979–1983 in Bergen County, NJ. Now, I know what you’re thinking, fellow MRR hardcore punk enthusiast: a long-lost recording from a band a mere hour drive from powerhouse record label Mutha Records from the exact Killed By Death time frame?! What wonders might await us? Well, I was wondering the exact same thing, but alas, the JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA was undoubtedly a rock’n’roll act. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Hell, who doesn’t love rock’n’roll? This collection of recordings is a confusing roller coaster to ride on, though—hopping from genre to genre it all feels a bit rudderless. Rock en general, blues rock, reggae, ’70s hard rock, power pop. It plays more like a mixtape than an album by a singular band. None of this is surprising, as I doubt this was ever intended to be a group of recordings played back to back. Moreso, it was likely a band trying to find their sound or whatever people say. Being a bit of an amateur shitty archaeologist myself, It’s always a fun thing to see long-lost recordings unearthed and brought to light. While it may not have scratched the itch I had initially hoped, the songwriting is solid, even if some of it isn’t my thing. The few power-pop-leaning tracks are legitimately cool; “Settled Sons,” “Fifth Amendment,” and “Martyrs For Each Other” are easily my favorites on the tape.

Outsider Two Song Demo cassette

It’s a confusing thing—I could have sworn that I was not a fan of recordings being overproduced, and that I prefer a recording to be a bit raw and lo-fi if it captures the essence of a band. OUTSIDER might have me reconsidering this stance, however. This may be a new frontrunner for the most lo-fi recording I have ever heard. It’s a shame too, because there are some pretty damn catchy riffs on it, which can be slightly deciphered from the cranked treble on the one guitar you can actually hear. Hell, I couldn’t even tell you for sure if there were drums on the songs or if my brain was just filling in the gaps. If you had told me this was someone’s practice tape of ideas for songs to show potential band members, I would have believed you; that’s closer to what this cassette sounds like than a demo. There’s two songs, it’s hardcore punk, they hate cops, there’s about two-and-a-half minutes of “music” on a forty-five minute tape, but I couldn’t tell you much else about it. I never thought I would be one to gripe about production values. Thanks a lot, OUTSIDER, I have no idea who I am anymore.

VHS Dust VHS Dust cassette

Two-piece guitar/drums fast hardcore punk duo. VHS DUST rips through the nine tracks on this short cassette with time enough to incorporate multiple sound clips, as is expected within this realm of brutal music. While I would put it in the “pots n’ pans music” category, I don’t entirely know the correct subsect to describe it, and maybe that’s a good thing! It’s not fastcore, it’s not grindcore, it’s not powerviolence, but it is angry and witty and incredibly entertaining. No internet presence, so no further info available.

Lika Mad Masses cassette

Second release, and seemingly first physical media release, from Helsinki, Finland’s LIKA. Eight songs on this cassette, most of which are around the three-minute mark—it gives them plenty of time to meander through different genres, which they do possibly a bit much for my tastes. At times, LIKA sounds like a fast hardcore punk band, while at other times, they sound like a classic metal-infused crust punk band, like TEM EYOS KI or something. Still at other instances, LIKA sounds like screamy, aggressive, moody ’90s alternative rock. The band is super tight, but the mixture of genres might come across a bit off-putting, though.

Waylon Thornton Frantic Mother’s Head cassette

Ten-song cassette of lo-fi, minimalist, twangy, guitar-driven, psych-adjacent garage rock. It’s fun and catchy and toe-tapping, but I wouldn’t call it groundbreaking. Almost sounds kinda like a budget, less memorable DEAD MOON. If you’re into garage-heavy simplistic punk or modern pop-psych stuff like OH SEES, you’ll probably dig this. The last song “Prince of Hell” has got to be one of the strangest compositions I’ve heard in a while. It sounds like a damn MEAT LOAF song, if Mr. LOAF was a member of SUICIDE.

Be Nothing Be All the Nothing You Can Be cassette

For something wanting to “be nothing,” there is a whole slew of somethings going on here that are a little difficult to decipher. This is the bands second full-length release, and it features a total of fifteen songs which have pretty close to just as many confusing amalgamations of sub-genres within them. Some have simplistic drunk punk repetitive riffs, other songs add in a bit of garage-freakout BUTTHOLE SURFERS kinda vibes, and still others feel like artsy math-rock, but math-rock played by people who maybe flunked out of their algebra classes. There’s certainly some cool aspects peppered in here, but it all comes off a bit confusing and overwhelming. One of the songs, “Battle of the Billionaires,” feels like a combination of the introduction riffs to about a dozen classic rock songs butted up against one another but never getting to the real meat of the song. TGI Fridays Endless Apps™ in band form.

The Barbed Wires The Barbed Wires cassette

Debut ten-song cassette that has all the pieces in place for the BARBED WIRES to become a legitimately popular band. Long-time rockers, who I was unsurprised to find out had been in such bands as PINK RAZORS, STRIKE ANYWHERE, and CLOAK/DAGGER, playing tunes that sound like a slightly more alternative rock version of the MARKED MEN. It’s instantly catchy, it’s memorable, and if the previous bands are any indication, this is surely going to be powerful as hell live, as all those aforementioned groups were great the times I saw them.

Zero Bars Demo 2023 cassette

Debut release of no-frills punk from this Canadian power-trio. Well, there might be one singular frill. The second song on the four-song demo adds a little post-punky WIRE vibe into their standard faster realm of mid-tempo punk sound, and it is the coolest song on the tape. All the songs are instantly catchy and driving. The demo is short enough that if you’re anything like me, you’ll end up flipping it over and over when the tape clicks just to get your fix.

Texture Freq Masochistic Episode cassette

Six songs of demented, mid-tempo, plodding, disturbing queer punk. This is outstanding. It’s like Minneapolis, MN’s answer to Cleveland’s mighty CRUELSTER. The way the singer barks the repetitive and seemingly idiotic phrasing over and over, you could have even potentially convinced me that this cassette was CRUELSTER taking a slightly different direction than their previous output. Don’t be fooled tho, there are some very obvious and important differences between these two bands, one being that TEXTURE FREQ’s debut cassette comes with a zine entitled The Immediate Stages of the Hardcore Singer, whereas I’m not entirely convinced that the members of CRUELSTER know how to read, let alone write. The zine, written by the band’s singer Jimmy Cooper, has all the lyrics to the demo at the end, but first takes the reader on a bit of a journey which, as an idiot, was a little bit difficult for me to follow. Talks of opera singers, Kierkegaard, and Medusa are peppered through the discussions about queer struggles, formation of a band, lyrical writing, and even a reference to other published reading material to check out. Some of this may be over my head, but I absolutely love it regardless. I would be happy to pass the zine portion along to a credible zine reviewer if someone would be interested in doing a better job of reviewing written words. As for the music, don’t snooze on this. TEXTURE FREQ is top-notch.

Pal Pals cassette

Kooky, driving synth punk from Cleveland, Ohio. What a debut release! Completely unhinged subject matter and vocals on top of bopping, herky-jerky eggy punk stuff. It gets a little too artsy for me at times, but these songs have a way of feeling incredibly zany without losing their pop sensibility. I think this is great and plan on listening to it quite a few times. Excited to see what comes next for PAL.

A Season in Hell Demo I cassette

To start things off, I’ll let the band describe what we’ve got here in their own chosen words: “Written and recorded (in) under two hours in Clifton Heights, PA on the day Kacznski [sic] died.”  Now that you have a rough idea what we’re dealing with here, A SEASON IN HELL plays super aggressive powerviolence-inspired hardcore. Everything was recorded live on what sounds like a damn boombox. A couple of the songs have some heavy licks and the band is pretty tight, considering. I’m definitely not saying this demo is bad, but with a little more time spent on it, I think it could have moved a lot closer to good. Kind of feels like the product should be a little closer to finished before it is exported. The recording itself sounds like a relic from years past. I didn’t realize it was possible for bands to still capture that hiss-filled, lo-fi, demented demo sound that was more commonplace years ago when nobody had access to home recording equipment. The four-song demo repeats on the cassette, and I got halfway thru the second repeat before I realized what was happening. I thought they had written an insane amount of stuff in a mere two hours.

Fugue State Subtlety’s Dead cassette

As time continues moving on and the world gets more and more back to “normal” in this perceived post-COVID world, the one and only thing that I feel sad for is the amount of cool isolation-inspired solo projects beginning to fade—for a number of months, that made up the majority of tapes I was sent to review. There was something incredibly beautiful and inspiring about the resilience of the creative punk rocker left to their own devices and having to make something work alone in order for it to exist at all. Well, FUGUE STATE is coming to me rather late in the game, but it just may be my absolute favorite of all such COVID projects I have yet heard. Beautifully crafted and demented driving garage rock tunes with more hooks than a meat locker, and some killer saxophone playing on two of the tracks. FUGUE STATE combines elements of tons of classics without  sounding like aping them at all. Highly recommended for fans of the CRAMPS and BUTTHOLE SURFERS. Truly top-notch. I have no idea if this Western Massachusetts-based solo project has made the transition into being a live band, but dear god, I hope so.

Steve Adamyk Band Live cassette

Primitive Screwhead. That name mean anything to you yet? It is the cassette subsidiary label of the mighty Big Neck Records which releases exclusively live cassettes for bands. And that’s what we have here for STEVE ADAMYK BAND, a collection of tracks from a slew of different live shows. The recordings range from crystal clear sound to very acceptable quality, being that it is a mix of different live recordings. STEVE and his band play a blend of pop punk, power pop, and garage rock, all mushed into its own amalgamation. The band has a slew of releases, many of them on Dirtnap, to give you an idea of what they’re all about. It’s super poppy and catchy, and if that’s your thing, jump on this cassette, as they don’t seem to last very long.

Power of Dusk Demo 2023 cassette

Three years have gone by since the band’s debut release Demo 2020, and little seems to have changed. POWER OF DUSK is still super pissed, playing angry, fast hardcore punk, and they are still dead-on with their politics. To say they were left-leaning would do them a disservice. With songs like “Queer Angry & Violent,” it’s pretty easy to see where they stand on modern issues. Fuck yeah. Five songs of aggressively intense hardcore punk. Get into it!

V/A Dot Dash Mixtape, Volume One cassette

A brand new label’s debut release, and an all-around cool idea. A compiled mixtape of bands on the label’s radar, all doing unreleased/live/cover songs. Super fun. I always love when labels do things like this, because it is a beautiful way to expose people to a ton of new bands. Featuring tracks by the already-known and beloved RETAIL SIMPS, GG KING, and IBEX CLONE, as well as fifteen others to open your eyes to. Love it. Will certainly be keeping an eye out for what Dot Dash ends up releasing next.

Leche Gas Powered Guillotine cassette

With a number of releases already under their belt, LECHE from Austin, TX returns with a new six-song cassette EP. A band that is rather difficult to pinpoint with a specific sound, LECHE meanders around many subgenres contained within the greater, all-encompassing “punk” umbrella. Best I can come up with is that they are a cowpunk take on Southern rock (maybe mostly due to that wildly long “Freebird”-type guitar solo to end one song, yeesh) with a peppering of noise rock and speed metal, all tied together by the satirical stream-of-consciousness style ramblings of the vocalist—that last part is most prevalent on the song “Premium Suffrage,” written from the perspective of a country club member kicking non-members off the basketball court that has been reserved for his company two-on-two basketball tournament.

Father Thing Father Thing cassette

Kooky, zany, weirdo hardcore punk from Jackson, MS featuring members of NEUROTYPICALS and BIG CLOWN. FATHER THING blasts through six tracks in just over seven-and-a-half minutes. That’s not a lot of time, and they don’t waste a damn second of it! Switching from spastic, revved-up fastcore to mid-tempo synthesizer squealing breakdowns in the blink of an eye. Okay FATHER, you’ve got my attention. This absolutely rules! Thankfully, the entire demo is available for listen on the label’s Bandcamp page, as the copy I received was indecipherably dubbed and this review would have been much much different if I went solely based on what I heard on my warbly tape. You better believe I have since re-dubbed my cassette off the online tracks, as I plan on getting some serious mileage out of it.

V/A The Fifth Punk Rock BBQ cassette

What we have here is apparently the fifth cassette in a series of annual compilation tapes released to coincide with an all-day event in Detroit, MI. Such a cool idea. Thirteen different bands, mostly all within the dingy, garage-y rock’n’roll world. I really like this concept and the event seems like it is probably a blast. Hell, some of the tracks on here are really good! My big gripe is that I can’t possibly explain which bands on the tape I like because there is no track listing to be found for this release—neither on/in the physical tape case, or anywhere online that I was able to dig up. There is a jumbled list of band names on the front cover, but no song titles and no way of knowing if I am to read the names vertically or horizontally as to which bands play in which order. I assume these tapes were made in bulk as a giveaway at the event, but I would highly recommend splurging on an insert stating the band names and song titles, or at the very least including a back flap on the cassette’s J-card cover listing all of the pertinent information. In terms of printing costs, I’m not sure how many more tape covers can fit onto a sheet of paper when you only have a front cover and spine for the cassette, but it can’t be a big enough difference to justify this level of confusion.

Satin Black Rock Hard at Random cassette

Heavy-metal-infused party punk rock from Dekalb County, IL. Mostly pretty formulaic, with a couple of little curveballs thrown in that are likely little goofs between the band members—for example, the intentionally sloppy blastbeat part of their song “Scumbag Black Metal.” That one makes sense to me, but the disco beat on “Red, White, and Brew” is over my head. With song titles like that, I kind of imagine everyone more or less can tell what they’re getting into with a band like SATIN BLACK.

Miscomings Hat cassette

I think it takes a certain level of self-awareness to be able to acknowledge when you just truly do not understand something. I wholeheartedly admit that MISCOMINGS from Seattle are very much that for me. Structureless, angular, plink-plunky, riff-less guitar licks over math-rock drums that incorporate blastbeats, disco beats, and many things in between, with vocals repetitively yelped on top. Kooky, artsy no wave/noise rock that leans into that nu-metal-feeling groove pretty heavily. Maybe it’s just over my head and I’m missing something.

Simulation Demo 2023 cassette

New San Francisco hardcore punk band featuring members of ACRYLICS. Stylistically, this is nothing new, nothing mind-blowing, but the heavily distorted riffs are catchy enough that they feel very familiar and I have heard them running through my mind since my first listen. Staying mostly in the mid-tempo range, SIMULATION plods through these four songs, and as soon as it’s over, you’re gonna wanna flip the tape and listen again. Pretty cool first release, and I can’t wait to hear where they go from here.

Futura V cassette

As one might be able to guess from the title, V is the fifth release by Los Angeles-based hardcore punk outfit FUTURA. Four fast, raging tracks of metal-infused hardcore punk. I almost used the word “relentless” to describe it, but upon further listening, there are a few instances on this tape that let up a bit with a spooky or somewhat introspective interlude, so maybe a bit of relenting, but each instance only lasts a moment. Half the songs sung in English and half in Spanish, with high-pitched vocals that sound somewhat reminiscent of Christina from the mighty VANILLA POPPERS at times. Looking forward to VI.

Choncy Community Chest cassette

Debut eight-track release which keeps the listener guessing the whole time. We’ve got catchy post-punk, angular artsy punk, driving garage rock, weirdo nasty hardcore/noise rock stuff, this tape is all over the damn place! And I mean that in a good way, in case that didn’t come across as obvious as it was intended. It makes a lot of sense to me that CHONCY is from the wacky city of Cincinnati, OH, one of the more interesting punk scenes in the country currently. After releasing that new album by the DRIN, this seems a lovely addition to the catalog of the powerhouse that is Feel It Records, now that they have relocated to the same aforementioned city. Keep ‘em coming, Sam!

Snuki Demo 001 cassette

Six rage-filled songs of plodding, fuzzed-out, nasty hardcore punk. Shockingly memorable despite these songs being completely devoid of anything standardly deemed “catchy.” SNUKI sounds like they would be very appreciated by the lovers of CULT RITUAL and other popular mysterious guy HC bands from a handful of years ago, but it’s certainly not on that same powerhouse level. It is a bold claim numbering your very first demo with multiple zeros in front of the one. I expect at least 99 more demos from SNUKI, or I want it known that I am now officially on record as being pissed about it.

Disolvente Disolvente cassette

Mid-tempo, no-frills punk rock trio from Barcelona. All Spanish-language chanted vocals complete with doubled-up, sing-along style choruses on many of the songs. Repetitive riffs that manage to keep my attention and make the recording sound incredibly timeless. We’re not reinventing the wheel here, because it needs no such reimagining. This is A+ in my book.

Grawlixes Demonstration 2022 cassette

Blistering, lo-fi raw punk the likes of which upstate NY has not seen since NO FUCKER or their subsequent (and my preferred) band HERPES. That isn’t to say they are cut from the exact same cloth or anything. GRAWLIXES isn’t a by-the-numbers recreation of classic D-beat bands. It’s nasty, it’s driving, it’s also quite familiar. Hmm. Oh, perhaps that is because the same six songs were released on a cassette last year, entitled Demonstration 2021. Re-recorded versions of the same songs make up this second demo. No complaints here, as it is truly ripping. Word has it that a 7” is coming out very soon. Will it be the same six songs recorded a third time around? Even if it is, you can bet your life I’m getting a copy as soon as it is available.

Pandemix Dead Celebrities cassette

PANDEMIX have been doing the dang thing for the better part of a decade, and they’re always a heavy-hitting live band each time I have seen them. Oddly enough, they were the last band I booked a show for mere days before the COVID pandemic kicked in, as well as the first band I booked a show for once it started feeling safe enough to do so after that. With multiple records and cassettes under their belt already, the band’s newest release is a four-song cassette which they had for sale on their most recent tour. Mostly continuing the band’s ongoing mixture of hardcore punk blended with peace punk, this cassette features one piano/fiddle/trombone/vocals ballad to close it out. A little out of place for my tastes, but it seems like it would be enjoyed by the folk punk/AGAINST ME! aficionados.

Tetnis Moving Quickly to Prevent a Hater From Detonating the Vest cassette

Incredibly catchy, pretty garage pop from Columbus, OH. TETNIS has been around releasing music regularly since 2018. Some of the songs on this tape are rather middle-of-the-road, rock-en-general sounding, but there are more than a few cool, driving tunes to make up for that. It’s like an indie pop bastard sibling of the MARKED MEN or something. A bit slower and wimpier, but catchy all the same.

Damak Crisis of Faith cassette

A wild ride of a debut full-length release by this trio from Austin, TX. Not the style I initially expected, seeing as it was released by the label that put out the newest records by LIQUIDS and ERIK NERVOUS. DAMAK does their own thing, a jangly, driving, poppy take on modern post-punk. Really catchy songs, beautiful instrumental interludes, unconventional rock instruments like flute, cello, and autoharp peppered through the recording—this is sure to get quite a few more plays on my stereo. Very much looking forward to what DAMAK does next.

Why Bother? There are Such Things cassette

The latest in a slew of releases by Mason City, Iowa’s WHY BOTHER?, There Are Such Things is a cassette collection of songs from previous small-batch cassette/lathe releases, as well as five new tracks specific to this tape. The A-side, filled with the more straightforward new songs, is the beauty of this tape to me, with the B-side getting a little too artsy/avant-garde for this knucklehead’s tastes. All in all, it’s a very cool collection and shows the versatility of this somewhat uncategorizable band. They continue to toe the intersection of post-punk, synth punk, garage rock, art-punk, and whatever other sub-genres you care to throw at them. Dare I say, WHY BOTHER? trying to categorize them? An incredibly interesting and prolific modern band that deserves your attention. Hop to it and give this a listen!

Repo Fam Venus Fly cassette

This feels a little bit over my head, to be completely honest. It is my opinion that for songs of any genre of music to be memorable, there must be a “hook” of some sort to keep the listener engaged. The definition of a “hook,” in my mind, is incredibly loose, as you can find them in the grimiest of punk music, the most intense of extreme music—they exist truly everywhere. The REPO FAM songs on this cassette almost feel as if any sort of “hook”’ has been intentionally taken out of them, and yet I am still feeling inclined to refer to this as pop music. I’m having a bit of an existential crisis over here about it. Can pop music exist without any semblance of pop sensibility? I don’t know that I have the answer to this question. Listen to these eight songs of avant-garde New York City music yourself and see if you can help me understand.

Witch Piss Witch Piss cassette

Well, this absolutely rules. The tape of the month, for my money! I believe WITCH PISS to be a solo project from Simi Valley, CA. Five songs of completely idiotic, synth-heavy, drum-machine-driven moron music. Subject matter of the songs ranges from painting The Hamburglar as a revolutionary, to the troubles of being Garfield, to transmogrifying oneself into a slug, and all things in between. This tape is super fun and easy to flip and continue listening to, as there is an A-side of the tape as well as an “also A”-side. Unfortunately for all fans of the utterly absurd, the WITCH PISS Bandcamp page informs me that this cassette tape is already sold out. Sorry, mutants.

Weaponized Flesh Hurtful cassette

Five tracks of throwback-style speed metal from Athens, Georgia. WEAPONIZED FLESH does an excellent job of keeping your attention with a mixture of classic-sounding speed/thrash metal riffs, raging heavy metal guitar solos, and power metal harmonized leads. Throw in that hard-to-define punk edge that a band like this brings to the table, and it all works pretty well.

U.N.E. Sin Esperanza cassette

A collection of recordings from Toluca, Mexico, dating back to as early as 1994. According to the cool little booklet included with this cassette, UN NUEVA ENEMIGO played their first gig in ’94 with LOS CRUDOS after starting their band mere months earlier “without experience or knowledge of music.” Pretty damn cool. It’s a little rough around the edges, as one would imagine from a band who started without any experience. Lo-fi, repetitive, sloppy punk riffs with vocals passionately delivered in Spanish over the top. A cool collection by a band that apparently never played out of their hometown. My only gripe is how overwhelming the flanger effect on the guitar is on half these tracks. Sure, it was the ’90s and that effect was absolutely everywhere, but it comes off incredibly distracting to the overall song whenever it’s engaged. A minor gripe for a neat little piece of history in the form of this collection cassette.

Warrior Tribes The Con cassette

A posthumous cassette of the now-defunct WARRIOR TRIBES. Fifteen tracks of relentless, no-frills hardcore punk recorded in 2017. Enough hooks to keep your attention without getting too showy. WARRIOR TRIBES wear their Chicago roots on their sleeve with a sound that could easily be compared to ARTICLES OF FAITH. Maybe throw in a dash of BATTALION OF SAINTS, but with a gruff, lower register vocalist. Repetitive, fast, and snappy riffs that never get boring, with the occasional mid-tempo, flange-heavy dirge tossed in for good measure. This is a real success and it’s a shame to hear that the tribe has fallen. I would have very much liked to have seen this band.

Full Bleed Bleed Out demo cassette

This is one of the most demented recordings I have heard in a very long time. I would have said that it’s lower than lo-fi, but if it’s all high end, treble knob cranked and snapped off, then what’s the term for that? I’ve listened to the full tape a few times and still can’t tell exactly what is going on half the time. Is it just a super fuzzed-out guitar with vocals on top? Is someone playing a full drum kit or is that just a snare drum being played from time to time along with the beat? Regardless, there is some undeniably cool songwriting here if you really focus in order to decipher what’s being played. The main thing that sticks with me is how much this dude has an absolutely killer voice. Picture a young Keith Morris with every line of vocals super distorted, having been recorded peaking way into the red. Wildly cool packaging on this—a cassette mailer with artwork glued onto each panel. It’s a good thing that this was sent to someone like me who is really into nasty recordings, because the packaging comes with a razor blade stuck to the front under a strip of painters tape as well as a Band Aid peeled and stuck to the inside cover. What other conclusion could one possibly reach as to what that is to be used for while listening to such a monstrosity entitled Bleed Out?

Clusterfux Blood cassette

I previously received a cassette collection by CLUSTERFUX which compiled the band’s 7”s and tons of unreleased songs—I remember at the time feeling like it was a bit lackluster and somewhat all over the place. If I were a more pompous individual, I might suggest that my review pointing out the gripes I had with the previous cassette inspired CLUSTERFUX to focus on the genre they really wanted to be playing on Blood, their newest release. This cassette couldn’t be more different from how the earlier tape came across. We’re talking straightforward, no-bullshit, crossover/thrash metal. A short and sweet six-song cassette, which I think works well for a band of this genre, rather than the overwhelming nature of a collection cassette. Hell, even listening to a record like Crossover by D.R.I. feels like a bit of a marathon if you ask me—by the end of it, I’m always left wondering why they didn’t cut the album off with the stomper “No Religion.” Anyway, you get none of that with this cassette. If you’re into later-era crossover D.R.I. albums, CLUSTERFUX now sounds like a mixture of that and any ’80s classic thrash-metal band who were not memorable enough to make it into any iteration of the Big Four.

Deliriant Nerve Uncontrollable Ascension cassette

Absolutely pummeling death metal/grindcore from Washington, DC. Tight riffs, relentless drumming, short songs which end as soon as you start to get a feel for them. My biggest gripe with most straight-up grindcore bands is that they seem to put the pedal to the metal and play endlessly full-speed without anything to differentiate their songs. Thankfully, you don’t get that with DELIRIANT NERVE. They slow things down often enough for a catchy breakdown or a circle-pit part, helping the album easily keep your attention. I believe this to be members of DC grindcore band NEEDLE, as well as ZTUPED who I think are absolutely top-notch. If you’re into this style, this cassette will not disappoint. This is To Live a Lie showing why they are debatably the best name in the game when it comes to extreme music labels.

Cartones Sala De Espera cassette

Have you ever dreamed of a world where people love late-era RAMONES albums as much as you? A fantastical land where seemingly normal passersby on the street will shout lyrics to “I Believe in Miracles” at you while you walk past? I know it sounds almost too good to be true, but what if I told you that such a land exists?! A decade of the RAMONES touring South America from the late ’80s to the late ’90s left rioting fans thirsty for more, and from then on, the heavenly country of Argentina has been viewing the RAMONES as the pinnacle of pop music. Apparently that stance shows no signs of stopping. CARTONES are no exception to this notion that I’m gonna go ahead and say is a fact. No, this cassette does not sound exactly like the RAMONES. This is not a carbon copy by any means. What you have here are ten beautiful songs of pop music, the likes of which could only be written by individuals who, from a young age, grew up hearing the blown-out, sing-songy vocals of a nearing the end of his career Joey Ramone crooning to them from the radio. I swear I was going to make a comment expressing how CARTONES’ songwriting and harmonizing style reminded me of Argentina’s premiere RAMONES-worship band LOS EXPULSADOS until I saw in the track list that Sebastian Expulsado himself is featured on one of the songs. Sala De Espera is a lot of fun, and I highly recommend it if you have an appreciation for pop music, downstrokes, and a certain band that may have been mentioned a few times in this write-up.

Teenagexorcist Teenagexorcist demo cassette

Four-song demo cassette of blown-out, lo-fi, noise-infused, powerviolence-influenced hardcore. Slow and sludgy repetitive riffs followed by fast and spazzy blast parts with feedback before and after each track. The weird pedals/noisemakers peppered in are the coolest and most memorable parts.

Cell Rush Demo 2022 cassette

Grimy, nasty, ten-song demo cassette from Western Michigan. Mostly meandering around at a snail’s pace, CELL RUSH comes across incredibly primal, plodding from riff to riff, staying in the mid-tempo realm of noisy hardcore punk music. They do speed up from time to time on a couple songs, but it’s usually followed by an even more stripped-down slow part. They really hit their full speed during one of the more memorable tracks, “All-American Nosferatu.” Something about this recording makes me feel very unsafe, like I’m being stalked and someones going to jump out at me from beyond the next corner. Very nasty.

Cosmic Halitosis How Can I Help You? cassette

Ten-song cassette of slow-to-mid-tempo indie rock/’90s alt-rock worship. Noodly guitar leads and catchy sing-songy vocals over driving, repetitive riffs. Seems like the kinda project that people super into things like DINOSAUR JR. would be hyped on. It’s not bad by any means, but I am particularly confused by the band and the label each billing this as being “punk,” “hardcore,” and even “punk as fuck.” I find the usage of “punk” as a descriptive musical term as a catch-all for any guitar-driven band to be pretty obnoxious. It just makes the use of the term completely meaningless. I wouldn’t even refer to this music as being punk-adjacent. Guitar-driven jangly alt-rock. I guess there’s one song on the B-side entitled “Soggy Hotdog” that is in the modern pop punk realm, but it comes across as a bit of a novelty, as if it’s alt-rock kids being like “ooh, we gotta make a fast punk song.” Pet peeve ramble over, there’s some catchy and pretty songs on here, but even with the warbly, badly dubbed tape, I just don’t hear anything “punk” about it.

Bursters Rindcore and More cassette

Blown-out drum machine/synth-heavy electronic music ranging from mid-tempo to blistering fast. Most of these songs feel as if they are over almost as soon as they start. The vocals are delivered with such strain and intensity that you can almost feel polyps forming in your own throat just from listening to this cassette. After almost every track, there is a sound clip about oranges. Presumably that is the titular “rind” that “rindcore” is referring to?

Class Class cassette

RIK AND THE PIGS join forces with Jim Colby, one of the all around best musicians I know, to bring us CLASS, with a new cassette tape released on the mighty Feel It Records. Buckle up, folks, and take a little ride with me. Everyone reading MRR knows RIK at this point, and his instantly recognizable voice crooning at you almost intimidatingly on the songs he sings will immediately win over PIGS fans. I’m not entirely sure how many of his Hog Boys RIK was able to wrangle into this project, but teaming them up with Mr. Colby was a helluva move. If Jim Colby is not a household name for you, then that’s a house I’m not sure I care to enter. Jim has been involved with seemingly countless bands spanning many different genres of music, but most notably to the avid Maximum Rocknroll reader, he was the blastermind behind the absolutely killer new wave group from Tucson, AZ, NEW DOUBT, who did a slew of cassette releases, and he was the saxophone player with BROWN SUGAR both live and on the band’s LP. CLASS might first come off as a little confusing, but I urge you to listen to this cassette a few times before you make your mind up about it. A departure from the incredibly nasty lo-fi recordings that helped make RIK AND THE PIGS so special (don’t even get me started on how much I love that last LP), this cassette has impeccably clean production value, each instrument coming through as clear as day. CLASS has different vocalists featured on multiple songs on this tape and feels like there are more than one songwriters taking the reins from song to song. It comes off like a glam rock band or a modern-day version of KISS without the glitter or the gimmick. Well, I haven’t seen them perform live, so maybe there is glitter and makeup and fancy clothes….hmm. I would honestly be quite open to seeing these beautiful ghouls try something like that. Can you tell I’m a fan over here? Pardon me while I flip the tape for yet another listen.

Alarm Practice Room Tape 2019 cassette

ALARM is from Grenoble, France and has been a band since at least 2013, when their debut 7” came out. As can be surmised by the name of the demo, this cassette release was recorded in the band’s practice room in 2019. It was apparently recorded live in one take, which is particularly wild since the sound quality and production value are not that bad at all. Hell, this sounds a lot better than a majority of the cassettes which get into my hands. Eight songs of driving, mid-tempo punk rock with super catchy vocals, sometimes yelled, other times sung, and tastefully placed stripped-down guitar leads. Oh, and one of the songs is a RUDIMENTARY PENI cover, which can’t ever be a negative thing. Very cool tape. Songs are catchy and memorable. Seems like a band that would really shine live, so here’s hoping they make their way stateside sometime.

Primal Brain It’s Still All a Game cassette

Blistering hardcore punk rife with heavy breakdowns. Follow-up cassette to the band’s first demo from a few years ago, It’s All a Game, also on Oklahoma City tape label O.D.D. Tapes. Apparently not much has changed over the last two years. A nasty, blown-out, lo-fi recording which makes the band come across as a raw punk band at times, tho I’m not convinced that is the intent. Pummeling and unrelenting, ripping through song after song, all building up to the closer which is a crushing dirge of a number. Super heavy, and equally scary.

Moflex Moflex cassette

A collection of previously released material by Mexico City’s MOFLEX spanning from 2016 to 2018, with two additional songs specific to this cassette release. Repetitive lo-fi punk rock songs that are a bit heavy on the upstrokes; not sure whether that is meant as a pop punk or ska-infused element to these songs. Nice-looking packaging. I’m sure fans of this band will be excited to get this collection rather than tracking down the two different cassettes MOFLEX released a handful of years ago.

Adamkus Ir Ieva Green Demo cassette

ADAMKUS IR IEVA, or A.I.I. as they seem to be abbreviated, were from Lithuania and active in the early 2000s. Originally released as a CD-R demo, the entirety of the band’s demo, which was their one and only recording, has now been re-released on cassette twenty years later. Sixteen songs of politically-driven anarcho peace punk. The recording is a bit thin and modern-sounding, which definitely makes it stand out from classic peace punk recordings. It’s a bit of a shame, considering the songwriting here is pretty cool and interesting. Even so, this is definitely worth tracking down if peace punk is your thing.

Grimly Forming Live on KXLU 88.9 FM cassette

A live cassette of an on-air radio broadcast performance from October 25, 2019. Los Angeles, California’s GRIMLY FORMING brings you a non-stop barrage of pummelingly aggressive hardcore punk. The band speeds through their eleven-song setlist in right around fifteen minutes, barely pausing between songs. Growling, pissed-off vocals on top of mid-tempo plodding riffs, intertwined with blistering fast hardcore. What a stomper.

Pastry Boys Above Us Only Pie cassette

Seven-song novelty cassette with songs about pastries, baking, and nibbling in general. The songwriting is surprisingly good despite the novelty nature of this project. Somewhere between power pop, glam, and mod revival kinda stuff, PASTRY BOYS keep you really entertained the whole cassette through and are witty enough to force a few smiles throughout the listen, with their self-identified genre of “chouxgaze” being one of the more quippy attempts. Very entertaining.

Aldi Ost Aldi Ost cassette

Seven songs of mid-tempo, surf-infused hardcore punk from Berlin. Catchy, memorable songs with vocals occasionally sounding a bit like Keith Morris. ALDI OST seems to be pissed for all the right reasons, poking fun at security guards, hating cops, griping about SUVs, and on my favorite track of theirs, coming down on the drug-fueled toxicity of rigid, emotionless “Masculinity.” Their self-proclaimed “male-fronted punk” angle and the pin-up centerfold-style sticker of the singer included with the tape definitely gave me a little chuckle. Very solid debut cassette and I can’t wait to hear more!

Ex Parents Ex Parents demo cassette

Originally released in February of 2020 and limited then to a mere ten copies, EX PARENTS decided to utilize the downtime that was about to be thrust upon us all to send their demo out to be remixed/mastered and have artwork done by Keith Caves, who is undeniably one of the best in the biz! So here we have the newly remixed/remastered/reissued/hand-numbered (out of 50 copies) EX PARENTS four-song demo tape of pop-infused hardcore punk. I can say with utmost certainty after playing with them in their hometown of Roanoke, VA last month that the tape doesn’t hit as hard as the band does live. That doesn’t at all mean that it’s not a solid demo, merely that the band’s live sound couldn’t quite be captured. As someone who is a bit of a completist when it comes to music, I can’t help but wonder how that originally mixed batch-of-ten tape sounds. Are we getting the DIY version of “the great rock’n’roll swindle” here? Can’t wait to hear the record that is allegedly in the works.

 

SOSS 2022 cassette

Frenetic drum-machine-driven solo project punk from Mobile, Alabama. Four original tracks and a DANZIG cover. It’s fast, it’s catchy, it’s weird, it’s got unexpected hooks and tempo changes, it’s everything you could possibly want in a solo project. That is to say it’s everything I want in a solo project, I’m not gonna tell you what you should want, but you just might want to check out this killer cassette by SOSS. Oh, and I just discovered that there’s an additional four songs not included on the tape or on Bandcamp, unless you download the entire album from there, and they’re top-notch. Not sure why these weren’t included on the cassette, but I am pleasantly surprised to have uncovered them.

Doppler Radar and the Local News Kissing Booth / Scalp Me cassette

DOPPLER RADAR AND THE LOCAL NEWS from Indianapolis, Indiana brings us a two-track cassette, a format commonly known as the cassingle. “Kissing Booth” is an skramz-esque track with artsy spoken word vocals on top of herky-jerky, math-rock-style starts and stops. This is backed with “Scalp Me,” a more straightforward powerviolence-y track that mostly sounds like the vocalist is one of the Gremlins in the classic movie of the same name. A mere 23 copies of these were released in Italy and already sold out. It seems this is from the 50 North American copies that were made, of which copies are still available.

Hot Load Love Bag Demos cassette

Five songs of revved-up, sleazy, booze-soaked Los Angeles rock’n’roll. Barked, distorted vocals on top of nasty riffs, driving drums, and wailing butt-rock bluesy guitar leads. This is the second pressing of the HOT LOAD demo, the first press of 50 copies apparently having sold out fast, so don’t sleep on the sleaze.

Белый китаец (China White) Вкладыш от жвачки турбо (Turbo Gum Insert) cassette

When this tape first kicked on, I thought I was in for some catchy rock’n’roll/power pop throwback stuff, which would of course have been A-OK with me. The band’s titular song “China White,” which begins this ten-song cassette, nails that style absolutely perfectly. As the song concluded, I was finishing reading the attached letter which confusingly described the band as being a synth punk band, as does the label’s Bandcamp. As soon as the next song started up, I realized I was in for quite the ride. Completely changing gears, the band starts fluidly ripping through genre after genre without sounding forced or contrived at all, working their way from the aforementioned style through songs of fast D-beat, nasty garage punk, herky-jerky synth punk, and ultimately landing on a few killer tracks of the mid-tempo synth punk persuasion, akin to bands like the SPITS. This is outstanding. An absolutely killer cassette from St. Petersburg, Russia. Apparently the band is on a hiatus right now, as some of the members left Russia because of the war—yet another reason to hate war. The band and label have made a point to express that proceeds from this release are going to support people from Ukraine.

Funny Face Dog in Hell cassette

This cassette is a true time machine. Absolutely no part of this release would have me believe that it came out in the year 2022, aside from it being expressed that it was recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic on the back panel, of course. Catchy and instantly memorable ’90s-sounding indie/alternative rock—I keep seeing comparisons to THEE OH SEES on the band’s Bandcamp page and such, but I just don’t hear that. While this does have some jangly, fuzzed-out guitars and an undeniable pop sensibility, none of their songs feel as driving as the more up-beat OH SEES songs or as out there as their kooky psychedelic jammy ones. I hear more of a mix of DINOSAUR JR. and a bit of that first KING TUFF record.

The Black Gloves The Black Gloves cassette

The BLACK GLOVES have been around for a few years now, their first two-song demo dating back to 2017. Here we have a five-song cassette of killer, driving, catchy garage punk from Denver, Colorado. Stripped-down, simplistic, no-frills, and nothing to be desired from this reviewer. A four-year gap between releases may seem like a long time, but with the output being this solid, I will gladly await the third release, which based on what we know, should be out somewhere around November 2025.

The Things Live at Temple Bar Music Centre cassette

I don’t know much about the THINGS, other than the fact that they are a garage rock band from Dublin, and that the bassist went on to form long-time garage-psych powerhouse CHEAP FREAKS, who also have a new live cassette out on the same label (Primitive Screwhead) as this one. Jump back in time and across the pond with me, won’t you? Here we are in Dublin on May 27th, 2004 at the Temple Bar Music Centre, with the THINGS taking the stage. From the first note played on this lo-fi, live-recorded cassette, I am instantly a fan. Driving, nasty, synth-heavy, dingy garage punk which somehow dips its toes into the rockabilly world without being off-putting in the slightest. There are a few songs on here that I would swear I’ve known all my life, they’re that catchy. I love what Primitive Screwhead has been doing as a label, cranking out cassettes of live material of varying sound quality. Keep up the good work.  Despite the tape being shrink-wrapped, mine came complete with a long pubic hair sealed inside. Is that standard with this release or am I a special case? Thank you?

Briefbombe Briefbombe cassette

A novelty act the likes of which I am surprised we have never seen before. Postal-themed fastcore, self-proclaimed as being “mail-fronted.” You get it? Because of the mail? A theme all punks are familiar with, I mean, everybody goes to the post office. Eight songs played with complete ferocity and desperation. The mail never stops, and neither does BRIEFBOMBE, which translates to “mail bomb” in case you didn’t put that together. The world has surely seen its share of novelty fastcore/powerviolence bands, but I am pleasantly surprised by this one. The cassette is short and sweet, leaving you wanting more. The band doing a reimagined version of “Plz Mr. Postman” had me a little nervous, but instantly won me over. This is an absolute blast, and I hear they play gigs all dressed as postal employees.

Strangely Addictive How Will the Youth of Tomorrow Worship Satan? cassette

Far less evil than the album title would have you believe, STRANGELY ADDICTIVE is a Swedish lo-fi garage punk/indie pop band. A bit of a strange genre combination, and at times the songs feel too poppy for the punks, while at others too gritty for pop music fans. Liking a bit of everything, I can certainly see the appeal of STRANGELY ADDICTIVE. There are moments that they remind me of the HARD-ONS, and how can that be a bad thing?

Battlesex Strike With Precision cassette

Portland, OR-based BATTLESEX returns with their second cassette release. Four songs of fast, heavy metal-infused raw punk. The clean production of the recording mixed with the riffs having some serious pop sensibility somewhat makes you forget that you’re listening to a pretty nasty band. A style that seems like it would benefit from a gruffer-sounding recording.

Exploding Eyes Live at Bello Bar cassette

Primitive Screwhead, live cassette subsidiary label of Big Neck Records, simultaneously dropped three releases of projects all featuring Robert O’Braidaigh, who was also in the THINGS and CHEAP FREAKS. Chronologically, this is the third of those releases, recorded on February 27th, 2016. Removing most if not all of the grit from his earlier projects, EXPLODING EYES feels like a straightforward, radio-friendly rock’n’roll act. The songwriting is great, musicianship is top-notch, and though the band is less nasty than the aforementioned, it still has some wild, squealing guitar leads and thundering drums. It’s interesting to listen to the progression of three different bands Mr. O’Braidaigh has done and see the genres he navigates fluidly. You can get all three of these as a bundle of cassettes from the label, which I recommend doing if you like any of the three bands.

Slimex Easy Money cassette

SLIMEX returns with an absolutely killer studio recording, the follow-up to their well-received four-song demo from last year, available on a lathe-cut 7” or cassette, the latter which I am listening to now (and for the foreseeable future). This is just incredible. Bouncy, jangly, weirdo synth-heavy punk. I refuse to cheapen this release by throwing an “egg” at the front of their descriptive term. This is for anyone and everyone who cares about new wave, synth punk, etc.

Cheap Freaks Live at the Olympia cassette

Alright, let’s get down to business here. The band: for those of you unfamiliar with CHEAP FREAKS, they are a killer garage rock band from Dublin, Ireland that seamlessly incorporates aspects of punk, surf, and psychedelic rock into their sound. They have released a bunch of EPs and an outstanding LP on Big Neck Records that you can still find out in the wild pretty easily. The label: Primitive Screwhead is the all-live cassette subsidiary of the aforementioned powerhouse Big Neck Records, and has been cranking out tape after tape of Big Neck and Big Neck-adjacent projects. This volume was recorded on July 4th, 2013 at Dublin’s Olympia Theatre. CHEAP FREAKS sound unbelievably tight and the sound quality is better than most bands’ studio releases. Another one right on the money by Primitive Screwhead.

V/A Amenaza Mexicana Vol. 2 cassette

The International Anti-Capitalist Punk and Hardcore Union presents Amenaza Mexicana Vol. 2 (“Mexican Threat Vol. 2”): ”Noise to Survive Capitalism in the Third World.” This is a twelve-song compilation cassette showcasing Mexican underground punk. A wide array of genres make appearances on this tape. Kicking off with a couple tracks of melodic punk rock, it changes gears and brings us some goth-y deathrock and hardcore punk before spinning on its heels, taking us back full circle. The B-side gets a little less predictable, immediately kicking you in the face with back-to-back hardcore tracks before delving into driving, metallic crust punk and some sort of metal-infused shoegaze, switching back to the easier digestible hardcore punk and more melodic punk before the weirdness gets a little too weird. There is a bit of something for everyone on this compilation, the Union really doing their part to try to unite the different punk factions. All in all, a cool compilation with an even cooler message: “Ama La Musica, Odia El Fascismo” (“Love Music, Hate Fascism”). Bring on Vol. 3!

Marty Brass Painted Glass cassette

The last few years have shown an enormous uptick in the number of solo projects releasing music, and understandably so. You tell all the weirdos out there that they can’t go out and make music with their friends, and I really only see a few options as to what the reaction to that will be. Thankfully, our dear MARTY BRASS seems to have chosen the more constructive of those potential paths and has graced the world with an absolutely delightful cassette of solo music. Eight songs of masterfully crafted power pop/garage-pop from this talented gent from Cleveland, Ohio, one being a lovely version of a ROLLING STONES song. It’s beautiful, it’s catchy, it’s driving, it’s well-played on every instrument, it’s pop music at its absolute best! (And I have it on good authority that there’s plans to take the live band version out on the road in the coming months!) Two years in and one would assume we had seen and heard it all by now, but MARTY BRASS shows that there’s still new solo projects worth checking out.

God Plutonium Demo 2022 cassette

This is exactly what a hardcore punk demo should be! It’s fast, it’s pissed, the recording sounds completely demented, and above all it leaves you wanting more! GOD PLUTONIUM features members of NECRO HEADS, LIVING WORLD, ALAMOS, and presumably countless other Pittsburgh bands. The masterminds over at Kill Enemy Records have done it once again, continuing their flawless output thus far.

 

Stinkbird Stink cassette

Helsinki, Finland-based poppy garage punk band STINKBIRD brings us a five-song, scent-centric cassette EP. Catchy, mid-tempo songs peppered with noodly guitar work and a vocalist teetering towards the bar-rock realm of things. Surprisingly, it doesn’t stink nearly as bad as the song titles/lyrical content would have one believe.

La Grieta Askeroso Getxo Sound 2005–2015 double cassette

Spanning an entire decade from 2005–2015, this is the complete discography of Spanish avant-garde experimental art/noise project LA GRIETA. Presented with very cool-looking minimalist artwork in a dual-cassette case on bright yellow and pink cassettes, with a huge write-up in Spanish about the history of the project. It all looks very cool, and for fans of this band or this style, I imagine this to be an absolute delight. As an introduction to the band, I found it to be a lot to attempt to digest, especially with its lack of form. I recognize that is the style that is being sought, but listening to two straight hours of long, loosely knitted-together, seemingly improvised sloppy “songs” featuring squealing feedback, blip-bloops of unknown origin, horns, melodica, and even snoring has it all feeling like jazz to me. I am absolutely craving something easy on the ears.

El Sancho Jollier Than Thou cassette

Novelty Christmas album from Hawaiian-based pop punk band EL SANCHO. Six songs of RAMONES-core pop punk filled with repetitive sing-songy vocals and catchy guitar leads. Pretty entertaining as far as novelty Christmas songs go. “Merry Christmas Joey Ramone” had me coming back for a few extra listens.

The Hamiltones Live at the Jungle Gym cassette

The HAMILTONES follow up their incredible Dracula Invitational, 1791 LP from last year with a live cassette on Primitive Screwhead, the Big Neck Records live cassette subsidiary label. End of February 2014 in Buffalo, NY: lo-fi nasty instrumental surf rock plays as an absolutely bonkers party rages around. Punkers in Buffalo have had this recurring event for years now, with a beach party taking place in the midst of winter to attempt to stave off the seasonal blues. Heat is cranked, swimwear is donned by all those in attendance, and on this special year, musical guests the HAMILTONES performed live in a jam-packed living room. I happened to be at this party, and I don’t exactly remember things being as debaucherous as fellow attendee Micky Harmon depicted in his artist’s rendering of the evening on a wild-looking four-panel foldout cover for this cassette. Though, the more I think about it and listen to these tunes, the more accurate I think the artwork actually is.

Art Gray Noizz Quintet Live! Friday March 13th 2020 cassette

Another killer live cassette by the masterminds at Primitive Screwhead. This was actually my first exposure to the ART GRAY NOIZZ QUINTET, who play mid-tempo, sleazy noise rock. This was recorded mere days before all the COVID lockdown protocols began, so it stands to reason that this was likely the last live musical experience that the crowd that fateful evening would experience for quite some time. Listening to it on cassette, I would imagine that those who were lucky enough to be in attendance were held over for quite some time thanks to these nasty grooves delivered by the QUINTET.

Night Court Nervous Birds! One cassette

Thirteen-song, long-playing debut cassette release, which appears to be the first half of the bands “nervous birds duology,” so there is presumably a Nervous Birds! Two cassette coming at some point. Upbeat indie pop, not quite gritty enough to affix the often thrown-around “punk” attachment to their “pop” genre. People who dig the pop stylings of MARKED MEN or JAWBREAKER would likely find enjoyment in this Vancouver-based band.

The Hot Pockets Live in Köln cassette

Primitive Screwhead continues to unearth lo-fi recordings debatably worthy of cassette releases on their live-recordings-only label. This time we find a recording from over twenty years ago, originally recorded in 2001 by Dutch punk/sleazy rock’n’roll outfit the HOT POCKETS. Stumbling through a 30-minute set of originals as well as covers by the NERVES, the REAL KIDS, and even GUNS N’ ROSES, the band keeps the audience on their toes with their juvenile between-song banter and out-of-tune harmonizing vocal attempts. Seems like this was probably a bit of a beautiful disaster to behold in the moment.

Crash the Superyacht St. Vitus Square Dance Apocalypse cassette

While this seems to have begun as a COVID project, CRASH THE SUPERYACHT from London, UK has remained pretty busy. After releasing four digital EPs, they now enter the world of physical releases, and it’s with a full-length cassette. Nine songs of lo-fi indie pop. Simplistic and catchy.

Forbidden Wizards Saved by Sabrina the Teenage Vampire Slayer cassette

Spastic, kooky, TV-obsessed punk from the Netherlands. All ten songs are super short and filled with endless mathy riffs one after the next. I am sure there’s something interesting and witty going on lyrically, but I have never seen a single episode of Saved by the Bell or Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and tho many have attempted to force it on me over the years, I do not understand Buffy the Vampire Slayer at all. It’s weird tho, cause I love just about every TV show. Looking at the other FORBIDDEN WIZARDS releases, they seem to all be based on mashed-up TV concepts. I’ll be eagerly awaiting the Stargate/Babylon 5/Sex and the City thematically mashed-up cassette and promise you I will pick up on every reference dropped.

Destiny Bond 2021 Demo cassette

Six-song debut demo cassette from Denver, CO. DESTINY BOND plays fast, spastic, riffy hardcore punk which teeters on the edge of fastcore at times, but rather than going into that realm, DESTINY BOND instead occasionally kicks into shredding metal solos or a heavy breakdown. It’s a good mix and you never get bored through the whole demo. Granted, that’s only like seven minutes, but still, I dig it!

Hearts Apart Number One to No One cassette

While both the band and their label’s internet presence refer to HEARTS APART as being a “punk rock” or “punk rock’n’roll” band, they really come off as more of a blues-infused, indie/alt-rock band. I think one would be hard-pressed to make the argument that this falls anywhere within the punk umbrella, except maybe in the modern usage of “pop punk” as a sort of catch-all genre for any sort of guitar-based poppy music. This isn’t meant to be disparaging, the band is perfectly fine, the songs are super catchy, it just sounds in a closer vein to the HOLD STEADY or something like that rather than the ERGS!, with whom the label makes a point of comparing them.

The Bananas Don’t Go Toward the Light cassette

I don’t know what aspect of this is more shocking: that I was sent an album to review by a band called the BANANAS—that yes, it is that BANANAS, who have been around for something like 30 years now—or that it kinda rips? While long-term fans may initially be a little bummed that it doesn’t have anywhere near the lo-fi grittiness of the likes of Forbidden Fruit, there are a bunch of a-peal-ing things about this new album (yeah, I’m gonna make crummy fruit puns in a BANANAS review, let me have this one). It is plenty driving and catchy, gets wackily fast at times, and is sure to make any fan of this long-time Sacramento garage-y pop punk band smile. This was a delightful listen, the BANANAS have apparently been ripening just fine over their 30 years.

Fumes Fumes cassette

Yes!! Words cannot express how excited I was to see that this band has a cassette out! FUMES are a new-ish band from the current mecca of punk, Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Last time I was down that way, I did a kooky recording project to which FUMES actually contributed two songs. It was the first recording the singer ever did, and he absolutely killed it right off the bat. This tape does not disappoint. Seven songs of driving, nasty, youthful hardcore punk, filled to the point of making an absolute mess with piss and vinegar. It’s unstoppable! Consider FUMES high atop my list of new bands that I am dying to see perform live.

Lappen The Lappen Supergroup cassette

Mid-tempo punk from Leipzig, Germany. These songs are pretty catchy, but it’s a little difficult to pigeonhole exactly what they sound like. It’s like an Oi!-inspired egg-punk band, or an egg-punk-inspired Oi! band, if you can picture either of those. Nine-song cassette which is over very quick and inspires an immediate second listen.

V/A Tarantula Tapes Presents: Tracknaphobia, Volume 1 cassette

A format that I am absolutely always a fan of, an introductory mixtape/sampler for a record label. Tarantula Tapes is a Canadian-based cassette label that began as a “pandemic project” for the people who started it. This cassette marks their one-year anniversary of being a label. My sincerest congratulations! Now onto the music! While not everything on this 21-song cassette is exactly my cup of Caesar (that’s what everyone drinks up there, right?), I love the idea of an eclectic, all-over-the-map tape label just putting out music because they believe in it and are helping cultivate their local scene. We’ve got catchy pop punk, rockabilly, some rendition of hardcore, twangy lewd folk-country, instrumental surf, heavy stoner rock, and that’s all just on the A-side! When I was younger and starting my record label, I used to make tapes of my releases and keep them on me at all times, giving them out to anyone vaguely alt-leaning. Skateboarders, mall punks, ween-bags in ironic punk-adjacent shirts, all in the hopes that it would get people more excited about the killer bands we had coming out of my hometown. I imagine this technique would be a top-notch move in Barrie, Ontario, and if this mix were given to young budding punkers, it would likely have a huge impact on them. Being from just south of the border and regularly touring through Canada, I definitely plan on hitting up Barrie once that is a possibility again.

Bad Anxiety Demonstration cassette

Anyone who knows me well knows that I have been a big fan of all the punk things that Hattiesburg, Mississippi has had to offer over the last bunch of years. The recognizable Earth Girl label let me know I was in for a treat, but I had no idea just how much of a treat! Lockdown solo project from Hattiesburg written and recorded all in one day, and it is absolutely flawless! Four songs of ripping, blistering, catchy hardcore punk that has absolutely no business being as good as it is considering it was written and recorded all in the same day. Go listen to this, buy tapes from Earth Girl, and next time you’re on tour, make a point to go through Hattiesburg, MS for a gig.

Neon Belly What’s Mine Ain’t Yours cassette

Very cool, catchy, mid-tempo head-bobbing punk from Wilmington, North Carolina. The lo-fi recording feels very fitting for the band, but the even lower-fi artwork makes it hard to decipher how many songs there are on the cassette. The tracks being in a completely different order than they’re listed and the program repeating over and over on the tapes doesn’t help that either. Eight or nine songs, two of which are covers: “Civilization’s Dying” by ZERO BOYS and “Don’t Hide Your Hate” by FILTH.

Acid Casualties Victims of Psychick Warfare cassette

Seven tracks of the grimiest hardcore punk I have heard in what feels like forever! ACID CASUALTIES from the New York/New Jersey area are relentlessly pummeling and have found a way to prove that hardcore can still be absolutely terrifying. Do you like ’80s hardcore? Do you hate everything else? Well, this tape might just be for you. It is most certainly for me.

Critter All Better cassette

Seven-song demo cassette by this three-piece Canadian outfit. Slow-to-mid-tempo plodding songs in the grunge/riot grrrl kinda vein. This demo was originally released as part of Demo Fest 2020, a fundraiser event which had over 200 demos released on the same day by bands from around the world. I wonder what percentage of them actually made demo tapes of their release.

Broken Vessels Broken Vessels cassette

Reissue of the band’s demo originally from 2018. BROKEN VESSELS from Santa Ana, CA play fast, catchy, driving hardcore punk that feels rather timeless. I honestly could have probably been convinced that this had been recorded in just about any decade from the 1980s on. There are a lot of cool elements peppered in which make it a bit hard to fully pin down. “Greasy Little Addict” is such a killer song that’s gonna get a lot of play over here.

Judy and the Jerks Live in NWI cassette

If you are yet unfamiliar with JUDY AND THE JERKS, well then you’ve got some homework to do now, punk! With a killer 7″ and a slew of cassette releases under their belt, Hattiesburg, Mississippi’s golden children JUDY AND THE JERKS are truly unstoppable and have been putting Hattiesburg on the punk map for a number of years now. This new cassette is a live show from Hammond, Indiana recorded on January 6, 2020 by “Nervous” Erik Hart. Solid sound quality, a lot of fun, but let’s be honest here, not as fun as seeing the band live.

SSSSSSS SSSSSSS cassette

SSSSSSS is a two-piece recording project where one member handles all the music and the other takes care of vocal duties. This tape jumps right into high gear with some revved-up, weirdo drum-machine-driven fast punk stuff which is super cool. Throughout the course of their ten-song cassette, SSSSSSS dabbles in a number of different genres that feel more inspired by drone or black metal, which feels less exciting to me. I wasn’t able to find out any info about the band, but I’m not entirely sure if that’s intentional or if they are just truly un-Google-able. My biggest gripe is that the demo is dubbed very quietly. When I realized it was the same program repeated on both sides my hopes got raised that maybe the B-side was dubbed a bit louder, but alas, it was not—in fact, it was even quieter than the A-side.

L.I.C.E. L.I.V.E. L.A.U.G.H. L.I.C.E. cassette

When I was first sent this cassette for review, even after doing some research I would have sworn that this was a split cassette by two bands: MID CITY SHIT ROCKERS and ASYMMETRICAL INSURGENCY. Turns out those are the names of the two digital releases put out by the band L.I.C.E., compiled onto a single cassette tape. Alright, now that we’ve gotten to the bottom of that confusing puzzle, let’s try to make sense of the music! Mid City Shit Rockers was released in November of 2020, and the songs are super fast, aggressive hardcore punk teetering on the brink of but never quite crossing over into the powerviolence realm. Fast-forward a few months to January of 2021 and the release of Asymmetrical Insurgency, which dives right over that fence, into a world of blastbeats, sound clips, heavy, plodding slow parts, and nothing in-between. Absolutely crushing.

Part-Time Lover Living in the Past cassette

Living in the Past is a cassette collection of the complete recordings by Cleveland, Ohio-based PART-TIME LOVER. Seventeen tracks of catchy pop-psych from a project that has been releasing music for the better part of a decade. Some of the songs lean a little more on the indie/folk side of things than the psychedelic, but it all seems to work for them. If this band or this style of music is up your alley, this is almost definitely the tape for you.

Big Chungus Defecation Nation cassette

The CHUNGUS returns with more grody, grimy songs about excrement, vomit, jacking it, and more! Outsider punk from NJ, as easy to love as it is to hate. Five songs of nasty, mid-tempo, synth-squealing, drum-machine-driven punk with the snarkiest vocals you could ever possibly imagine. I would place my bets that this might be one of the most polarizing bands in all of punk currently. Punkers are either going to absolutely love this or be wildly disgusted by it! I’m not gonna tell you how you should think, but I will turn it on again while I continue pondering the hard-hitting questions asked by BIG CHUNGUS on this release, such as “why are you self-hating when you could be masturbating?”. Ya know, that’s a damn good question, CHUNGUS.

Anti Social Club Anti Social Club cassette

Spastic punk rock from Calgary. ANTI SOCIAL CLUB seems to refuse to pick which lane they want to be in. I hear elements of early American hardcore punk, Epitaph Records-style punk, metal-infused guitar licks, and there’s even some overly funky slap bass on one of the tracks. Vocals ranging from screamed hardcore call-and-repeat style to catchy “whoa-oh-oh”s. The LP of this looks to have been released in 2010, and this is the cassette version of the same record released by the same label, if this is up your alley and you missed a chance to get it on wax.

Kochise / Les Partisans Live split cassette

Split cassette featuring French punk bands KOCHISE and LES PARTISANS. Both sets were recorded live at the Le Foch bar in Chaumont, France, on May 17th, 1996, at a gig both bands played together. KOCHISE was a French anarcho-punk band originally formed in 1987 who even did a split with CONFLICT at one point. The recording on this is a bit muddy and warbly, but it’s hard to tell if it’s an issue with the tape duplication or if the original live recording sounds that way. LES PARTISANS, not to be confused with classic UK82 punk band the PARTISANS, formed in 1994 and I believe are still a band to this day. They play mid-tempo street punk/Oi! and have ska elements with a horn section sporadically squonking along with the catchy melodies. This side of the tape sounds much clearer and seems like a good representation of the band. A cool idea, solid-looking packaging, and nice documentation of a classic gig from the past.

Müllheim Kron cassette

Five songs of wacky, drum-machine-driven, synth-heavy post-punk from Berlin. At least I think it’s a drum machine.  Unlabeled black cassette comes in a blank black O-card sleeve with a tiny sticker of the album art in one corner. Clearly, some research is necessary to figure out what we’ve got here. Hmm, the internet is absolutely no help, the band’s bare-bones Bandcamp is all that can be found, which makes it hard to even tell if their band name is spelled MÜLLHEIM or MÜELLHEIM. But wait, there is a booklet that comes with the cassette! Excitedly I dive in, hoping to unearth some sort of information. To my dismay, it is a fourteen-page mini-zine of scattered, stamped letter-art and no info whatsoever. It does look really cool though, and my intrigue is growing as I flip the tape for a third time. But wait, what’s this at the bottom of my box of cassettes to review? Three beer bottle labels peeled off of different German pilsners? Eureka! Handwritten letters from the band to Maximum Rocknroll! 

Label 1: “Hello, we are MÜLLHEIM. Berlin-based synth-punk from Berlin, Germany.”
Label 2: “Info: founded 2020. Band: Patient 1—Voc/Git. Patient 2—Bass/Synth. Patient 3—Drums.”
Label 3: “Thank you very much—MÜLLHEIM”

Finally, some information! I learned that…..well, I learned that it’s an actual drummer? Wait, what if Patient 3 is a drum machine?! Hmm, I guess I learned nothing except that MÜLLHEIM is absolutely incredible! I listened to the tape over and over while continuing to come up empty handed. Mysterious Guy Hardcore is dead, all hail Mysterious German Synth Punk!

Anxious Pleasers Anxious Pleasers demo cassette

Seven-song demo cassette from the Great White North, specifically Hamilton, ON. ANXIOUS PLEASERS could easily fit in with other modern Canadian bands like PRIORS and TOMMY AND THE COMMIES, and musically they actually sound somewhere right in-between the aforementioned. Not as poppy/garage-y as TOMMY, not as heavy rock’n’roll as PRIORS, they fit right in that “best of both worlds” kind of sweet spot. A power trio of long-time recognizable Hamilton dudes who were in ROCKET REDUCERS, TV FREAKS, FLESH RAG, and surely a gaggle of others. My favorite to date, and even includes a PAGANS cover.

Merked Merked cassette

Walking that tightrope between powerviolence and straight up grindcore, MERKED seems to fit right in the middle somewhere with a style that I have seen referred to as grind-violence. Seventeen tracks of pummeling, heavy, slow, and brutal followed by relentless and fast riffs, very few of which break even the one-minute mark. Pepper in a bunch of sound clips and you can surely recognize the recipe. For fans of NO LESS, IN DISGUST, and anything in-between.

Wineteeth Soft Bangers cassette

Debut full-length recording from Harrisonburg, VA natives WINETEETH. Navigating the oft-overused descriptive genre term the label uses to describe the band, I do not hear “garage rock” coming from this cassette. What I hear is more of an amalgamation of ’90s genres: a mixture of slower, distorted grunge-esque songs mixed with aggressive but crisp and clearly-recorded alt-rock. Feels almost like a period piece for the 1990s. The recording is super pro-sounding, with vocals sitting right up top. It wouldn’t feel at all out of place to me if one of these songs was slipped into rotation on an alternative rock radio station.

Napolnariz Discografia cassette

Discografia is a 31-track discography cassette compiling all of the band’s recorded output from 2002–2012; an entire decade of NAPOLNARIZ from Puerto Rico. Presuming these songs are on the tape chronologically, which as far as I can tell they are, they began as a snotty, snarky, sloppy, mid-tempo, lo-fi punk rock band, and as their time went on they got tighter and started writing catchy pop punk songs, never fully ditching their early grit, though. You’ve gotta respect that level of commitment and dedication over the course of a decade. The highlight for me on this tape is a Spanish-translated version of DEAD BOYS’ “All This and More” as “Todo Esto y Más.” This tape as a whole is a lot of NAPOLNARIZ to take in, but there’s definitely some really cool, catchy songs on here.

The Freak In the Beginning cassette

Kansas City hardcore punk. The FREAK seems to have near-limitless anger frothing up inside them. The kind of hardcore punk that is just seething rage, making you feel really glad that the people involved have found the outlet of hardcore, or who knows how many bodies would been left in their wake. Fast, crushing hardcore punk with pummeling heavy breakdowns. Short and pissed. The five-song demo is over very quickly, and thankfully the tape has a whole bunch of dead space after the music ends before the B-side repeats the same tracks, giving your heart rate a chance to reduce and letting your blood come down from its boil.

Los Flixs Los Flixs demo cassette

Although they are based in Germany, LOS FLIXS appear to have two members originally from different South American countries. This makes a whole lot of sense, seeing as how LOS FLIXS has a very Latinx punk sound going on. RAMONES-inspired riffs with catchily sung and harmonized back-and-forth vocals between the different singers in the band. Incredibly poppy and head-bobbing. There’s eight songs on the demo and they go by far too quickly, prepare to continue flipping the tape and re-listening.

V.D.I. Idem cassette

Fast hardcore punk from Argentina. V.D.I has a very memorable quality to their songs, as if I have heard a number of them before but can’t quite pinpoint where. Most of the songs on this nine-song cassette are ripped through in the faster realm of mid-tempo speeds, tight stops and starts really accenting and keeping your attention. The only song that really breaks the mold that they’ve set is “Pogo Reliyon,” which is slower, catchier, and more sing-songy. I would have sworn it was a LOS EXPULSADOS cover were it not for the drastic speed-up ending of the song.

DMT .D.M.T cassette

Six songs of blistering raw punk/D-beat mixed with elements of powerviolence-inspired hardcore. It’s heavy, it’s nasty, it’s over in a flash! Thankfully the cassette is double A-side, so the listener can flip and repeat to their heart’s content. A killer debut release from the lovely state of Maine. Everything looks and sounds spot-on with this tape. To quote the liner notes: “DMT is meant to provide a calming and meditative state, play loud for best results.” Well, I followed the instructions but my results seem to be varying from that which is described—hmm, maybe I did something wrong, better flip it over and try again…

Franky Shampoo The Lost Tapes cassette

I’m not sure who this FRANKY is, but he seems to have a bit of an issue with time. Between the physical release and the small amount of info that can be found on the internet, I am being told that this batch of songs was written in the early ’80s, released in 1990, copyrighted 2006, and released now after being discovered after an unknown period of time. What’s more important is that I couldn’t possibly care less where the goof ends and reality begins because these songs are timeless enough that I could be convinced that there is truth to any combination of those wild claims. Mr. SHAMPOO and his backing band, who the internet tells me is called the CITY CREATURES (tho, I strongly suspect it may just be our sudsy new friend all on his lonesome), seem to be from Chemnitz, Germany. FRANKY plays a lovely mix of many different styles of punk. There’s some ’77-type stuff in there, some mid-tempo post-punk catchiness, some synth punk elements peppered in, it’s all done extremely well and nothing sounds out of place. I am greatly hoping there are more tapes to be discovered by this enigmatic individual. I’m feeling all frothy and lathered up, and these mere seven songs have set the bar incredibly high. What’s this? A secret track? An unlisted eighth song, full-MIDI version of “Ace of Spades”! FRANKY, you mad man! Wherever you are, come back to us, you’ve got a hit on your hands with this tape!

Meal Jimmy cassette

An absolutely delightful release from Helsinki, Finland. The debut release by MEAL is a six-song cassette of incredibly timeless post-punk which leans a bit into the art-punk/indie rock realm on a few of the tracks. I’m not exactly sure how it’s possible to feel overwhelmingly nostalgic about a recording the very first time you listen to it, but these songs seem to have that ability. I am not gonna sit here and say that it feels like listening to WIRE for the first time or anything like that, but maybe like a small little minute fraction of what that feeling was like.

Atomic Energy Commission AECPWMCTEP cassette

A mixture of drone-y soundscapes with minimal lyrics/samples/field recordings, harsh noise freak-out stuff, and electronically-driven dark post-punk/goth songs. Very artsy and atmospheric. The little write-up by the band on their Bandcamp implies that the songs were all written for and about the pandemic, during which this album was recorded. The B-side of the tape, not available online, is the exact same recording but in reverse. A funny concept, but pretty difficult to get very far into it unless you happen to be a super-fan of this style.

Community Gun Target Practice cassette

Absolutely relentless, blistering hardcore punk. Short and sweet four-song demo clocking in at just over four minutes. Completely crushing. This is unquestionably my kind of hardcore. Sounds a bit like LIFE’S BLOOD to me, and how can that possibly be bad? A lot of attention to detail went into making this tape look super cool, too; maroon print on sparkly silver paper, white cassette shells, and a really cool embossed effect having the band name raised off the cassette itself, like how a label maker would look but without the label. My only gripe was that the copy I was sent was dubbed unbelievably poorly. The A-side was unlistenable and warbly, and the B-side was depressingly quiet. Had to re-dub my copy off of the label’s Bandcamp. Hopefully it was a fluke and the rest of the mere 50 copies of this stomper sent out into the world sound better.

Demonios Chuecos Vol. 1—2 cassette

Started as a way to stave off the insanity during COVID lockdowns, DEMONIOS CHEUCOS is a one-man band from Mexico City, Mexico. I am absolutely blown away by this, and by the humble writings of Carlos about the entire process (found on the Bandcamp page). He goes in depth describing each of the songs, as well as the process of learning bass, drums, and how to record in order to make this project a reality. Catchy, ripping hardcore punk, start to finish. Most full bands would be lucky to end up with a finished product this good.

Highway Stacy Highway Staci cassette

Tyler from OCCULT DETECTIVE CLUB relocated from Fort Worth, TX to Chicago, IL and started a solo project under the pseudonym of HIGHWAY STACY. A bit of a mixed bag of genres on this tape. Mid-tempo post-punk/art-punk that occasionally has electronic EDM drum sounds and almost youth crew-style vocals on a couple of the songs. Confused? Don’t be, it works. The tape ends with a strange minimalist take on the classic ADOLESCENTS track “Losing Battle.” Apparently, this one-man band is looking to branch out and do a full band with these songs. Live in the Chicago area? Head over to the link below, check out the songs, and hit up Tyler.

Clusterfux The 7″s cassette

Compilation cassette compiling all recorded CLUSTERFUX tracks from 2004—2007. Two recording sessions that became sides of three split 7″s with some leftover tracks all included here. CLUSTERFUX seem mostly like a thrashcore band, but some of the unexpected genres I hear when I listen to this makes it feel as if the band is somewhat living up to their name. There’s some crossover metal riffs, some rip-roaring thrash metal solos, vocals going back and forth from sounding akin to DRI to sounding like they’re recorded for a crust punk band, and even sounding oddly screamo-inspired at times. Unexpectedly, I think some of the songs on the “You” side of this cassette rip harder than everything contained on the “Fuck” side, which is surprising since that side is all the tracks that didn’t make the cut on the band’s vinyl releases. A few of those songs sound more straightforward crossover thrash, which seems to suit the band the strongest.

Mesh Mesh cassette

Everything about this cassette is absolutely spot-on! A wonderful-sounding, self-recorded five-song tape from Philadelphia, PA. Super catchy, memorable, driving post-punk with just enough artiness peppered in to allow the band the ability to make the tape and sleeve look super cool. If I’m not mistaken, this seems to be a band born out of the smoldering ashes of underrated Philly powerhouse MINT, of whom I was an unbelievably big fan. Gotta have more! These five songs will only hold me over for so long!

Brain Peel / Double Suede Banana Split cassette

This cassette features two songs by BRAIN PEEL, two songs by DOUBLE SUEDE, and one song by BRAIN AND DOUBLE which is, as you may have assumed, a combination of both bands, who hail from Philadelphia, PA. DOUBLE SUEDE have something of a modern pop-psych/OH SEES kind of feel to them which comes off really catchy and driving and fun. BRAIN PEEL is more of a mid-tempo garage punk kind of band. The collaborative track is a fun little meandering instrumental number. Cool concept, fun mix of styles between the two bands. My only gripe is that it ends too quickly.

Cococoma The Money Will Roll Right In cassette

New release on powerhouse label Primitive Screwhead. For those of you not yet familiar, this is the brand new, all-live tape label run by garage rock dynamo Big Neck Records. Chicago, IL-based COCOCOMA has always been a cool, intriguing band to me, who seemed to walk the tightrope between catchy garage rock and spastic, nasty punk weirdness. On this live cassette recording the band really ramps up the psychedelic/pop aspects of their sound. So many killer, catchy songs on this tape and the sound quality is great. One doesn’t always know what kind of can of worms they’re opening with live releases, but thus far Primitive Screwhead has been doing a fantastic job with releasing cassettes that truly capture what it’s like seeing a band live.

Endless Bore / Numbskull split cassette

Split cassette of two current Australian bands. ENDLESS BORE from Melbourne plays heavy powerviolence-inspired hardcore with repetitive heady breakdowns. I have reviewed one of this band’s previous cassettes and these songs feel much more involved than the prior release, with a more prominent emphasis on brutality. NUMBSKULL from Sydney meshes well on this split, but they bring a more fastcore approach to the extreme music on this cassette. Unbelievably short songs played at blistering speeds. “Mozart and Beethoven can suck a wet fart / This is hardcore punk, not the fine arts.” Respect, NUMBSKULL, I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Spirit of Revolt Brick demo cassette

Debut release from this Northern Colorado band. SPIRIT OF REVOLT hits the streets running with six songs of politically-driven punk rock. Mid-tempo drums, driving repetitive riffs, shouted anarchist/anti-capitalist lyrics, “Oi!s” peppered in for good measure, what’s not to like?

Data Unknown Data Unknown cassette

As you might guess, not a lot of information is available for a band called DATA UNKNOWN. This is some pretty wild stuff, tho. Indianapolis, IN-based, lo-fi drum-machine-driven weirdo punk/new wave/noise/synth kookiness, and it all somehow works really well together. Ten tracks, all sounding wildly different from one another. Not sure if the band is suggesting that they’ve “got it made in the shade like Ra,” the benevolent Egyptian god of the son, or “Like Ra,” the corrupt, powerful Goa’uld bent on destruction and world domination from the other side of the Stargate, but either way I am all in to take that journey and find out which.

Plexi Heart Blips cassette

Without question my favorite tape I was sent this month for review. Wow. PLEXI is relentless hardcore punk. Fast and pissed, heavy pit-worthy breakdowns, raspy/strained vocals that sound instantly familiar without feeling like they’re ripping something off. The intensity and forceful delivery of the vocals very much remind me of how Barb used to sing in I OBJECT. Eleven songs of unapologetically ripping hardcore punk. With no contact info and seemingly no internet presence, I am not sure how to suggest you track down a copy of this, but do yourself a favor and try.

V/A The Comp Vol. 1 cassette

One of my favorite things, when an unknown label does a compilation/mixtape showcasing what their label is all about. Wet Cassettes seem to have about twenty releases under their belt, and this comp has twenty tracks. To describe it the way they intended: “The Comp Vol. 1 features twenty previously unreleased songs from twenty Wet Cassettes artists of the past, present, future, and well, some that were just formed for this compilation.” This New Jersey-based label seems to dabble in a number of different genres, going from synth-punk to black metal to harsh noise to straight up grindcore. Personally, my favorite on the cassette is the Denmark synth-punk duo OK SATÁN whose cassette I also reviewed this month, or ARACHNID SALAD with their lo-fi cyberpunk track. There is a little too much emphasis on the pots’n’pans music for my personal taste (lo-fi grindcore, noise stuff, etc.), but all in all, this is a very cool introduction to a label I was previously unaware of.

The Letter K Garage Magic cassette

Absolutely beautifully done packaging on this cassette of lo-fi pop music. Two-color screen print on both sides of the J-card as well as the tape labels themselves. Stylistically, this mashes a bunch of different aspects of pop music together. You get some modern indie-infused pop punk, some Plan-It-X “kid of summer” style pop punk, some dreamy bedroom pop, and other elements I can’t entirely place. It’s a very nice little tape if you are into the catchier realm of things.

OK Satán OK Satán cassette

Second cassette from Copenhagen, Denmark-based, two-piece drum-machine-driven punk outfit OK SATÁN. Short, nasty, no-frills, no-bullshit songs. It seems everything was recorded on a four-track in their practice space, but it’s not as lo-fi as one might expect from that description. Everything is perfectly discernible, and were it less dirty, I think something would be lost with songs like this. “Stay on Drugs” is an absolute smash! Now to try and track down this band’s other releases…

Crack / Siberian Ass Torture split cassette

Split cassette of two current Japanese bands. SIBERIAN ASS TORTURE plays nasty mid-tempo noise punk. Their shorter songs are pretty cool, but the longer drone-y instrumentals lose my attention a bit. CRACK plays mostly very slow, repetitive, instrumental drone music but adds in noise elements with indecipherable screaming on top. All the songs on this split were recorded live. Not much information on this release or on either band seems to exist on the internet, and attempting to search for them just provided some very strange results, as you can potentially imagine.

Oof Is This Really Happening? cassette

Walking the tightrope between post-punk and No Wave, OOF from Brooklyn, NY does a really cool job of keeping some of their mid-tempo songs feeling really driving. While some of this project is a bit too much on the artsy side of things than I would standardly like, some of it resonates really well with me. The skronking saxophone and occasional somber violin come off very tasteful and not overbearing at all. The dual vocals each sound kooky in their own respect, both are capable of being very pretty yet also bizarre at the same time.

Albert DeMuth / Thot Audit split cassette

A split cassette with some of the most gorgeous packaging I have ever seen on a cassette release. We’ve got a four-color screen-printed O-card (with a single print on the inside of it even though it is glued shut), a two-color screen-printed insert, two-color screen-printed labels on each side of the cassette, and it all comes in a two-color screen-printed (inside and out) folding chipboard slipcase. It looks absolutely amazing and I very much applaud the amount of work that went into this. Now onto the music. It took me a few listens to fully understand what was going on with this tape. The two projects featured here both had members of the NY-based band COTTAGING. ALBERT DEMUTH is a solo musician who plays slow and meandering minimalist music with lackadaisical poetic lyrics delivered in a lazy LOU REED kind of way. THOT AUDIT, on the other hand, plays more driving, artsy, indie-based rock music with some mathy, all-over-the-place kinda riffs jangling away throughout their side of the tape. Some cool post-punk/gothy moments shine through at times. All in all, a very cool-looking and sounding release once I spent the time to get past my initial confusion.

V/A Asiztyt: Korrupted Beggar cassette

Another installment of a four-way split cassette on a 30-minute tape from Philippines-based label Prevail Records. The release self-identifies as “Cyber D-beat Crust Rumble,” and who am I to argue with that description? This time up we have DYSTOPIATE, who are a real nasty, crusty, black metal type of band. DESASTYR, who was also on the previous one of these comps I had heard, with more of their noise/No Wave weirdness. DISGARCHE, who are the most straightforward band on the comp, playing nasty crust punk. And finally, TERMINATOR1, who seems to be based in Hungary and is real nasty, lo-fi, sloppy crust punk. Same as the last volume, a tape run of 35 copies with little to no internet presence. If this is up your alley, act quickly!

Boiled Tongue / Shitload split cassette

Lo-fi noisecore solo project split cassette. SHITLOAD from New Orleans I have reviewed releases from before, and this is more of the same. Drum machine sounding like a machine gun, fast riffs over top. It’s a bit hard to differentiate from song to song since they’re all essentially in the same formula. Speaking of songs being difficult to differentiate from one another, BOILED TONGUE from Gulfport, Mississippi lists their tracks on this release as just “(Untitled 1-17).” If lo-fi grindcore, powerviolence, or other forms of aggressive music are your bag, then this would presumably be up your alley. Both projects mix elements from all different forms of brutality into a single package.

Sonny Vincent and the Bad Reactions Live at WCSB Cleveland cassette

Sonny Vincent, best known for his work in seminal NYC ’70s punk band TESTORS, and his backing band from 2012 the BAD REACTIONS performing live on a Cleveland based radio station. Starting things off with my favorite TESTORS song, this tape is relentless with similar style sleazy, driving rock riffs the whole way through! Aside from a three-song 7″, this is the only documentation of this project and it is absolutely worth a listen. Honestly, pretty inspiring stuff hearing aging rockers not losing their grit. If you dig TESTORS (and if you don’t maybe you should give them another shot), then you are definitely going to dig this.

Twin Guns Black Moon in Woodstock Live cassette

Another live cassette on Primitive Screwhead, the Big Neck Records live cassette subsidiary label. TWIN GUNS play some sort of amalgamation of rockabilly, garage-y rock’n’roll, and psychedelia, with a bit of surf influences peppered in there, too. This live tape is somewhat amusing due to the few people that keep talking obnoxiously close to wherever the mic was set up, so you get occasional snippets of conversation coming through louder than the band. A fun new tape label that has me intrigued as to what will be cranked out on it next.

False Negative A Brief Respite From Civility demo cassette

Thirteen songs of fast, nasty, unapologetic early ’80s hardcore aping all within a mere eleven minutes. As much as the band’s logo looks remarkably similar to that of NEGATIVE FX, the vocalist at times sounds almost exactly like Choke, so you’ve got a rough idea of what you’re in for with this tape. Driving songs with shouted vocals, barked gang vocals on many choruses, and catchy breakdowns. This is nasty Midwest hardcore at its finest, regardless of what decade it came out.

Musclegoose Yah Mo B There, God? It’s Me, Michael McDonald cassette

Musically, this almost rips at times, but the whole release is so overly chock-full of puns, plays on words, paragraph-long song titles, ’90s movie and music references, and goofy lifted riff parodies that it’s hard to look at just the music. I imagine this is a band of really fun people to be around who have wonderful senses of humor, and if you’re in on the goof this is probably side-splittingly hilarious. I, however, just find the novelty aspect of it a bit confusing, off-putting, and distracting.

ÖPNV ÖPNV cassette

Five songs of plodding, synth-heavy punk from Germany. Mid-tempo and dirgy, this falls somewhere in my mind between post-punk and slower peace punk stuff like POISON GIRLS. I really dig it. The strange occasional synthesizer blip-bloops are really cool and kind of push this over the top for me. Between the stuff here on Phantom Records and the handful of things I’ve gotten to review on Billo Records, it seems Germany has a wide array of killer stuff going on currently and I am thirsty for more.

The Throwawaze Punkstars cassette

It has been a few years since I have heard new bands playing street punk songs like this. Five songs of driving, beer-soaked, pogo-crazed nastiness from Oklahoma City. With choruses of “I’m unemplOi!Oi!Oi!ed / I’m unemplOi!Oi!Oi!ed / I’m unemplOi!Oi!Oi!ed / Fuck you!,” I imagine that the avid MRR reader can hear this song in their head right now without ever listening to the THROWAWAZE. Big fan of the band’s glamour shot in the insert being in front of a row of pinball machines.

Practitioner Demonstration I cassette

This tape looks incredible, which had me a little nervous since oftentimes punk’s eye for aesthetics is questionable. When I first started listening I was concerned we might be getting into artsy/scrams territory, but PRACTITIONER pleasantly surprised me by turning out to be a raging, noisy hardcore punk act that breaks into nasty dirges as often as it revs up to D-beat. From Nashville, TN, these self-proclaimed anti-fascist punks officially have my attention.

Ask Severed Self cassette

Four songs of metal-infused, mathy-riffed, post-hardcore from Michigan. It’s not bad as far as that style goes and the band’s politics are seemingly dead-on. If you’re into CONVERGE this is probably very much up your alley.

D. Sablu Taken by Static cassette

New Orleans, LA is home to David Sabludowski, who fired up a Yamaha MT400 multitrack cassette recorder and cranked out a wild eleven-song demo under the condensed moniker of D. SABLU. Taken By Static has a bit of everything going on in it so I’m having somewhat of a difficult time saying exactly what it sounds like. There are some faster electronic/new wave tunes on it that are super cool, a couple really blown-out and nasty revved up garage punk songs, some slow, meandering pretty things, oh, and a song or two that could debatably be passed off as lost OH SEES demo tracks. A wild ride I will be buckling in for again and again.

Porok Demo 2020 cassette

Ten songs of fast, driving hardcore punk from Finland. POROK is fast, pissed, and keeps their songs from all sounding too similar with well done guitar leads popping in sporadically. While clearly being very influenced by classic Finnish hardcore, my major gripe with this release is how clean and slick the recording sounds. If this was recorded and mixed a bit nastier, I think this would sound a lot more like the bands that have inspired them, and be more of an entertaining listen.

Bullet Proof Backpack Total Lockdown cassette

Youthful hardcore from Newport, RI. So many aspects of this feel instantly familiar even upon a first listen. The songs feel as though I’ve heard them many times before. I’m not sure if that means they’re particularly good, or just really well re-written punk songs. Six originals and a NEGATIVE APPROACH cover.

Necro Heads Necro Demo cassette

Lo-fi, nasty, knuckle-dragging, booger-eating hardcore punk. NECRO HEADS from Pittsburgh, PA sound like they kind of don’t take any prisoners. Six songs blistered through in just over five minutes, which is collectively shorter than the seventh and final dirge of a song on the demo. This is some nasty, no-bullshit, gross hardcore and I want more.

Shaka S is for Shaka cassette

Grimy hardcore punk from Oklahoma City. This is the second demo released by SHAKA. Stripped-down, gross punk devoid of any memorable choruses or catchy riffs. This is just nasty. My hopes are that none of the aforementioned descriptions are coming off as negatives because I mean them all as nothing but positives. I imagine the standard crowd reaction for SHAKA is just shaking with rage or twitching uncontrollably, and I hope to one day be among those ranks and see this for myself.

Anxiety Spree Anxiety Spree cassette

While this appears to be a COVID project, I am very much hoping that ANXIETY SPREE from New York City/Chicago will be much more than just that. Musically, this lands somewhere between pop punk, Revolution Summer, and non-pretentious indie rock (if such a thing exists). The recording consists of only two members, both of whom I have seen play in countless bands for the last decade or so. Pleasantly surprised to see that they’re doing a new project together, but not surprised in the slightest that it is as solid as it is.

Pariiah Swallowed by Fog cassette

Slow, sludgy metal from NJ played by a cast whose list of previous worthwhile bands is a mile long; DEVOID OF FAITH, DAS OATH, and KILL YOUR IDOLS to name a few. This six-song demo is incredibly powerful. Though it rarely revs up even as fast as mid-tempo, you can feel anxiety and desperation building as these heavy songs continue to plod along. Highly recommended even if “sludgy” and “metal” sound like off-putting terminology in music you like.

Coffer Uneasy Street cassette

Nasty, lo-fi, grimy garage rock from Detroit, MI. Three songs which have a feel to them as if they were written, somewhat learned, and then immediately hastily recorded, which I admittedly dig. With a run of only 25 copies, this wildly blown-out recording would likely disappear into obscurity were it not for the label documenting it digitally. Painters Tapes, self-proclaiming to be “Detroit’s Worst Cassette Label” (though I think they’ve got some competition with Juicy Crack Cassettes) seems to have a ton of other releases, which I will be digging through shortly.

Pope Joan Happy + Relaxed cassette

Full-length album of alt-rock, indie rock, and modern pop-punk. It’s not that POPE JOAN isn’t a good band, or the songs are bad or anything, they just seem maybe a little too happy and a little too relaxed to really make a lasting impact. Even pop-punk bands need a little bit of grit to them, don’t they? Anyways, it’s poppy, it’s catchy, and there’s an Uncle Buck sample on it.

V/A Nitalect: Abandoned Meaning cassette

A four-way split cassette on a 30-minute tape. DESASTYR really lives up to their name playing some strange combination of noise/jam/punk/No Wave/free jazz/something or other. It’s kind of like hanging out at Guitar Center, to be honest. I do love the photo of Weng Weng on their portion of the insert, however. DOWN//OUT is more discernible, playing post-apocalyptic crust-infused metallic punk. BOZGOR keeps it the most straightforward of the bands on this comp, delivering fast D-beat. DREKAVATZ closes out the tape with a mixture of cheesy metal riffs and mid-tempo black metal, revving up a little faster from time to time. It’s actually the most enjoyable of the tape and I couldn’t help but bop around to it a bit. All in all, an incredibly bizarre four-way split. I can find no information about this online, but with the tape being a run of only 35 tapes, once all four bands had their copies and review copies were mailed out I can’t imagine the label would have had many to sell.

Big Grump The Complete Recordings cassette

BIG GRUMP is a noise rock band from Memphis, TN that I have to assume is now no longer together based on the feeling of finality this tape has. The Complete Recordings is exactly what it sounds like, the complete recorded discography of the band. Mixing equal parts heaviness and mathy riffs, BIG GRUMP is able to keep my attention through the entirety of the cassette without ever crossing the threshold into being too artsy. If they are in fact broken up, what a bummer. If not, I look forward to more releases from them.

Memory Leak Graduate Into Nothing cassette

Ambient indie/shoegaze from Tijuana, Mexico. Five long, pretty, meandering songs, two of them clocking in at over six minutes. As the tape began, I thought it was going to be all instrumental soundscape stuff, which had my interest and was pretty intriguing, but it only lasted the introduction to the first song. The packaging of this really caught my eye and it was the first tape I popped on when receiving my box of demos to review. A double-cassette case which looks like a miniature DVD case, fold-out lyric sheet, and a live photograph of the band. The packaging really is lovely.

V/A Achtung ADK cassette

Thirteen tracks of synth-heavy weirdo punk from Berlin, Germany. If I’m understanding things correctly, all the songs were recorded specifically for this sampler. This is incredible and all over the map within genres that I thoroughly enjoy. There’s fast punk stuff, raging hardcore, No Wave weirdness, and post-punk dirges, with synth being present on a majority of the tracks. After a few listens, I think my favorite tracks are by DIE BONZEN, GESTURE, and NIGHTMARE. I can’t wait to do my research and find out if any of those bands have more to offer as their tracks are super good.

Become A Live Exercise cassette

Recorded live on KCSB radio on 10-25-2012. Hailing from Santa Barbara, CA, BECOME has the throwback Revolution Summer sound down perfectly. These songs are beautifully crafted, instantly familiar, and super well done, and all of this comes across even being performed live on a radio show. Personally, I probably would have cut out all of the horribly awkward banter with the radio host from the tape release of this, but to each their own. I see that the only other thing the band did was a demo tape on German label Take It Back Records, and I will be attempting to track one of those down now.

The Harness 1st Demo cassette

Two-piece, lo-fi hardcore punk/queercore from Serbia. I was shocked to see that a drummer is listed as a member of the band. Considering how nasty the recording is, I had assumed it was a distorted drum machine. This is a wild ride. Four songs of incredibly pissed-off hardcore punk with song topics like calling for all the queer punks to come out and be proud, and being upset about not being able to masturbate in your room without getting in trouble. I think this is beautiful and I am honored to have one of the mere 25 copies that exist of this masterpiece.

The Speed Humps Consumption cassette

Four originals and two DWARVES covers comprise this most recent release by the SPEED HUMPS from Ontario, Canada. The originals are all in the faster realm of mid-tempo as far as hardcore punk goes. This band appears to have three different vocalists, with both guitarists and the bassist sharing the duties. The vocalist that does a majority of the songs has barked discernibly yet choppy style, not unlike UNIFORM CHOICE. The second takes the lead on the incredibly confusing song “Dick Dungeon” (is it really about accidentally seeing some dude’s business in the bathroom of a bar?), and has a lower, growlier, Matt Freeman kind of gurgle to his voice. My favorite sounding of the three vocalists is the member who sings the two DWARVES cover songs. I can hear her chiming in singing backups in the originals, but she sounds super cool as the lead vocalist.

Cage Kicker Cage Kicker cassette

Relentless hardcore punk from Berlin, Germany. This is everything a punk demo should be. It’s fast, it’s pissed, it’s catchy, it’s short which leaves you wanting more. I want more! Oh, so much more! CAGE KICKER seems to hate many of the same things I hate; cops, organized religion, money, prison. What’s not to love about this demo? Pardon me, I have to flip this over and listen to it again being that CAGE KICKER might be my new favorite band.

People Person People Person demo cassette

Falling somewhere between Revolution Summer, hardcore, and melodic indie rock, PEOPLE PERSON is a bit of an enigma. Five toe-tapping songs with intelligently written lyrics, complete with song descriptions for each in the liner notes. These borderline-intellectuals have a lot to say, and they say it well. Packaging looks great, which is unsurprising with what I have seen come out of the Extinction Burst label.

V/A Tape Dad cassette

Tape Dad is a cassette label from Fayetteville, Arkansas, and this is their first compilation release, with plans of doing a new one to be released every year on Father’s Day. Very clever, Cassette Daddy! “It’s a crazy hodgepodge of different genres, styles, cities of origin, and friends” (per the label’s Bandcamp discussing the compilation), and I couldn’t agree more. With twenty tracks, I could go on about this forever, but rather than that I am going to focus on the handful of standout tracks from the punk/punk-adjacent realm that readers of MRR may care about, ignoring the jammy/college rock/singer-songwriter/indie/art stuff and leaving that for another place to review. PONO A.M. kicks off the comp with a killer driving track of garage-infused insanity not unlike THEE OH SEES. MUSCLEGOOSE has a weird, spastic, cow-punk kind of feel to them. BIG GRUMP, whose cassette I also just reviewed, is some cool, nasty noise rock. The PHLEGMS play a cool mixture of driving garage rock and post-punk. There’s a lot of cool stuff on this comp, and a lot that is very much not for me. Give it a listen and decide for yourself!

Cheap Clone New Paltz / Walk to Canada cassette

Two-song cassingle put out to coincide with the band playing their final show. Both songs are super catchy, jangly ’90s-inspired pop, and sure to get stuck in your head for a while. Admittedly, it kinda feels like I’m watching the end credits of an episode of The Adventures of Pete and Pete, tho.

Nag Red Panda cassette

Three-song self-released cassette from Atlanta, GA. For those of you not yet familiar with NAG, they have already released a slew of releases, including a single on Total Punk Records. Choppy, spastic hardcore punk that also mixes in mid-tempo garage aspects, and does it damn well. These three songs are awesome and it seems that since this tape was released, there is a new LP out now as well. Gonna be getting my hands on that ASAP.

Sin Futuro Distort Reno cassette

Blistering, blown-out, nasty hardcore punk from Reno, NV. Ten songs and a nasty version of “Terrorize” by GANG GREEN. Popping back and forth from near-warp speeds to the perfect circle pit tempo, SIN FUTURO knows what they’re doing and how to get an aging weirdo like myself pumped up even just from listening to a cassette in their living room.

Sissyfit Make ’Em Pay + Lilith EP cassette

SISSYFIT is pissed for all the right reasons! Tough hardcore songs with strong emphasis lyrically on scene politics, mental health, killing fascists, and issues related to being a woman in this horrid sexist world we live in. This is super tough; the breakdowns are absolutely pummeling and have me barely holding back from opening up a pit of one in my living room. This cassette compiles what I believe to be the band’s only two releases. Make ’Em Pay seems to have come out in 2018 and is a bit more memorable and straightforward than the at-times-metal-infused Lilith which came out this year. Even so, this works wonderfully as a single cassette release and I am officially a fan.

V/A Be Gay, Do Crime!: A Girlsville Benefit Compilation for Prism Health cassette

Girlsville hits it out of the park with this one. A benefit for Prism Health, which is such an important cause. A little about them from their website (find out more at prismhealth.org): “Prism Health offers a safe, affirming, and non-judgmental space where all members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer community can obtain the compassionate and culturally effective health care they need and deserve.” A+. Now onto the music. This comp is absolutely killer and features such heavy hitters as GEN POP, STIFF LOVE, and even a new track by OSEES (the newly renamed/revived OH SEES), as well as sixteen more tracks. It’s impossible to pick a favorite track off of this as it hits a lot of different bases. I was most surprised by how driving and gritty the OSEES song on here is, though; haven’t heard that band sounding this nasty in a while and I absolutely love it. Listen to this comp, make a donation to Prism Health if you can, and perhaps most importantly do what the label says: be gay, do crime!

Bewitchin’ Pool Bait n Switch cassette

Carbondale, IL seems to be home to some very odd ducks swimming here in the BEWITCHIN’ POOL. From the looks of their previous output, this band seems to have set the bar incredibly low, with a release entitled Tales From the Dolla Bin. This tape is pretty difficult to pigeonhole into a single sub-genre. It’s a bit all over the map, in a very cool way. There’s ’90s alt-rock-inspired stuff, pop that feels reminiscent of the KING KHAN AND BBQ SHOW, tongue-in-cheek cowpunk, a horn section in a song that otherwise sounds like DEAD MOON?! This is wild and I am definitely intrigued to hear more. The slower, more meandering songs lose my attention a bit and make this release feel longer than it actually is, but those upbeat, driving numbers really make it worthwhile.

Zurich Cloud Motors Do More Than Deconstruct-o cassette

This is my first exposure to a band with an almost overwhelming amount of output, having what I gather to be at least seven cassettes out. ZURICH CLOUD MOTORS ranges from catchy indie pop to bordering-on-indecipherable noise rock, hitting everything in between as well, which is quite the array. There are even moments when I hear early MEAT PUPPETS-inspired stuff coming through. A real wild ride. By all means, if you check this out, which you certainly should, give it more than just one song cause as soon as you think you know what ZCM is all about, they seem to switch things up on you.

The Beat Index Volume One: Juvenilia cassette

Madison, WI-based pandemic solo project. Poppy rock’n’roll hooks mixed with electronic synth-pop/synthwave/new wave. There are some real dreamy, pretty songs on this. I honestly don’t know how much appeal this will have to punkers/freakers, and I know I’m no expert in the electro/synthwave world, but I think my man Bobby from No Coast Records might have a real hit on his hands here with the BEAT INDEX. The pop sensibility on this cassette is remarkable and undeniable.

The Yearners 2020 EP cassette

Three-song cassette on Dirt Cult Records. Very much what you would expect from the label—incredibly catchy indie-leaning pop punk, exactly what I thought I was getting. Only three songs? What a tease! It seems the band members live far apart from one another, but hopefully they get together again soon and crank out more songs ’cause this is really poppy and fun and I’ve already listened to it three times in a row.

DZTN 1980 War of Good Intentions cassette

A really interesting solo post-punk/synthwave type of project. It seems the creator of this project is really leaning into music as a way of coping with the global pandemic we are currently living in, already cranking out four different releases in 2020. This is an eight-song cassette, very heavy on the synth, all songs seeming to have a strong post-apocalyptic feel to them, and the subject matter seeming very much drawn on the times we are living in.

Invalid Do Not Resuscitate cassette

If anyone ever tries to give you the argument that hardcore sucks now or that it ended in the year blah-blah-blah, tell that fool to shut up and make them listen to this tape. My god, this is absolute perfection. This is what hardcore should be. It should come as no surprise that this rips so hard when you look at the all-star lineup of Pittsburgh, PA lifelong punkers involved in this project. If you like hardcore punk and are interested in what dudes from EEL, BLOOD PRESSURE, AUS-ROTTEN, CAUSTIC CHRIST, and about a billion other bands are doing in the modern day, stop what you’re doing and listen to the almighty INVALID!

Shitload The COVID Sessions cassette

New Orleans noizecore project. SHITLOAD takes elements from all different kinds of extreme music and kinda mixes them all in together. The mid-tempo grimy riffs are pretty catchy, and I find myself wanting more of that. Tracks that stay in that realm like “Hang On” are super cool and I dig a lot. However, whenever it kicks into grindcore speed, the “drums” just sound like a non-stop machine gun. Twenty-one tracks of that is a lot to digest in one sitting, but tons of respect for how busy this dude’s been to crank out this much stuff all post-COVID.

Endless Bore Treatment Resistant cassette

Second album from Melbourne, Australia-based ENDLESS BORE. Fifteen tracks of stripped-down, by-the-numbers hardcore with tough breakdowns and vocal stylings you’d more likely expect to hear in a crust or D-beat band than a straightforward tough hardcore outfit. That of course isn’t to say that they aren’t fitting for one another.

The Maxines Burn It Down cassette

Posthumous release from this former K Records fuzzed-out garage-pop duo. On this release, the MAXINES deliver twelve songs of simple, wonderfully catchy mid-tempo garage rock. I have really been enjoying all the stuff on the Girlsville label that I’ve been sent lately and hope they continue to crank out such releases.

Silicon Heartbeat Silicon Heartbeat cassette

Debut cassette keeping the style of Kalamazoo, MI alive. SILICON HEARTBEAT sounds so much like the SPITS at times, it’s kinda crazy. Fuzzed-out, nasty mid-tempo punk with wild synth sounds peppered in. This tape is comprised of a mere four short songs, doing exactly what a good demo should: leaving the listener wanting more. I want more! Thankfully the attached note suggests they have plans to do another tape or record this fall. Consider one already sold!

Closedown Fucking Spent cassette EP

Nasty, gritty, sloppy hardcore punk from San Diego. Gruff vocals barked over mostly driving mid-tempo (with occasional fast spurts) hardcore punk. Very cool. Very angry. Four songs, short and sweet, same program on the A and B sides of the cassette.

Curbsitter I’m a Soy Boy cassette

Wow. Milwaukee, WI really has a hit on their hands here with CURBSITTER. Five-song cassette that reminds me a lot of super early NOFX. I’m not going to go on a ramble about how that’s a good thing, but I’m talking that early Mystic Records stuff that’s nasty, and many of the songs are too gross to make a lot of musical sense. Yeah, that stuff. This is great. If this band is a fraction as entertaining live as this tape is, they have just moved to the top of my must-see list. With songs about humanity coming to an end, disgust of social media, and spending your last 30 seconds alive masturbating, what’s not to love?

Reaches The Land Is Kind cassette

Solo project from Brooklyn, NY. It’s impressive how all-over-the-map this is, being that all the music and production is done by one person. Stylistically, every song is a bit different so it’s a little hard to pin down. The different songs span into areas of new age, new wave, synth-wave, synth-pop, dance pop, and there’s even a song on acoustic guitar that sounds kind of like solo SYD BARRETT stuff, you know, without the gallons of psychedelics. A lot of this is definitely out of my wheelhouse, but it’s very well done, and the aforementioned pseudo-psychedelic acoustic song, “Psychiatrist With A Sample Bin,” is actually pretty good.

Bashford Happathy cassette

Ten-song cassette from Madison, WI, recorded, mixed, mastered and released by immortal turkey Bobby Hussy. Grunge/alt-rock revival with some real nasty, sleazy riffs, doing it the best that this style can possibly be done. BASHFORD sounds a lot like Bleach-era NIRVANA to me, like you could probably slip a couple of these tunes within that record and play it for someone who has never heard it before and I doubt they would stand out that obviously. I am personally not the biggest alt-rock revival kinda guy, but if early teenage me had heard this, it would have certainly gotten a lot of plays.

Half/Cross Terminal cassette

Fourteen-track full-length demo of powerviolence-inspired hardcore. Metallic leads and scramz-esque interludes help make it more than just full-on PV worship. It’s fast when it’s fast, it’s heavy and plodding when it’s slow. My main gripe is that the tapes are dubbed so quietly that even cranked on my stereo, it’s still very quiet and buried under the tape hiss. Listening on their Bandcamp is much clearer.

Max Nordile Gym Places cassette

A very strange artsy/noise project. Sounds to me like a mixture of field recordings and intentionally badly played instruments. Unlike the previous release by MAX NORDILE that I reviewed, some of the “songs” on this release have vocals on them, delivered in a lazy, kooky, CAPTAIN BEEFHEART style of spoken-word singing.

Max Nordile Let Them Fail cassette

I don’t really know what this is. Noise? Free jazz? The unintelligible sounds a novice band makes before starting their set? An art project? Someone learning to play a bunch of different instruments? Hanging out at Guitar Center? As far as I can tell, there are five “songs” on this cassette, each as confusing as the last. Repetitive squeaks and squawks played for a while before abruptly ending. Favorite track: ________, which is my way of saying that there is no track listing within the cassette or available online.

Spados Fast One on the Masses cassette

Lo-fi treble-heavy power pop from Philadelphia. Sickeningly catchy while still coming across gruff enough that I have no doubts that the punkers can dig it. I giggled a little bit at the hand-written note within the cassette stating “This cassette tape contains *LO-FI* garage rock.” Not mincing words, not pulling any punches, calling a SPADOS a SPADOS. The only label info contained anywhere on the cassette or online merely states CHUB-001. Your guess is as good as mine.

Tommy Bahama Boys Garage Inc. II cassette

Based on the artwork, the name, and the little BEACH BOYS sample at the beginning of this tape, I assumed I was in for some instrumental surf or fun pop music or something. Boy was I wrong. This tape is a truly confusing experience combining harsh noise with lo-fi novelty electronic driving drum machine punk. Call me crazy, but there’s a couple cool, nasty synth-punk songs buried in here if you take the time to dig them up. They seem to have dubbed themselves “seapunk” and “yacht punk.” I don’t expect either of those terms to really make it off the docks, but if tapes like this keep floating to the surface I will certainly keep checking them out.

Death Gasp Death Gasp cassette

Crusty hardcore punk from Pittsburgh, PA. Six track demo of driving, metal-infused, nasty crust punk. The dubbing of the tape makes it sound super lo-fi, but I also checked out the songs on their Bandcamp and the recording is much more clear than I was initially led to believe.

Hotmom Stupid Vegan Band cassette

This is exactly what I want in a punk demo! Every song a nasty punk hit played fast and spastically on the verge of falling apart. This demo somehow embodies that feeling you get when first delving deeper into the world of punk, going from entry-level bands to the real deal. That feeling of excitement mixed with a tiny amount of fear. HOTMOM has me thirsty for more. Thankfully searching around on the internet I was able to find that they’ve got a slew of other demos out. Phew!

Spam Risk Spam Risk cassette

Chicago, IL brings us SPAM RISK, a weird/poppy post-punk band featuring noodly guitar work and vocals bordering on novelty-song style both in their delivery and the subject matter. A couple of the songs on here are super driving and catchy as hell. “Google Bookchin” is the real stand-out track on this seven-song debut cassette. Definitely interested in hearing more of this kooky stuff.

Blotchouts Lenora Guards the Egg cassette

Angular, dissonant, blip-bloops of no wave weirdness. Really fun, weird, artsy kookiness. BLOTCHOUTS from Mobile, Alabama bring us twelve songs on this newest release of theirs including a truly bizarre cover of JOHNNY THUNDERS “You Can’t Put Your Arms Around a Memory.” Much of this tape is too weird and long for me, but in the moments they lock into some driving grooves it is super cool. The band seems to have a ton of other releases so if this kinda thing is for you, you’ve got a lot of new tunes to check out.

Ghouli Nothing cassette

Dark and angry hardcore from Richmond, VA. This is a really nice mix of different types of punk. I hear some early TSOL in there, some RUDIMENTARY PENI, even some HOLIER THAN THOU which makes for a cool amalgamation of early punk and death rock stuff, but they’ve clearly got the chops to blister through some faster songs as well.

Nightfeeder Rotten Demo cassette

Heavy crust punk from Seattle. They’ve definitely done their homework with this band. The songs all sound like you’ve heard them before, which either means that they wrote some catchy riffs or that their songwriting is damn good at aping the bands that have inspired them. I definitely hear some AUS ROTTEN-type hooks coming through with a few of them. Eight tracks in total, ending with covers of MISSBRUKARNA and the VICTIMS (Australia). The covers might be my favorite part as they not only do the songs justice, but it also seems to force the band to break out of the pretty standard crust sound of their originals. They play the different genres of punk surprisingly well.

Regime Bury Them Now cassette

Blistering D-beat from Moscow, Russia. This tape rips and is pretty timeless. Nails this style dead on. Sure, it’s cliché to compare a D-beat band to DISCHARGE, but there you have it. Five songs will leave you wanting more.

Thievery Thievery cassette

Lo-fi hardcore from Victorville, CA. From the little insert included I have gathered that this was a short-lived project from 2005 that wrote four songs and recorded live onto a four-track, released it as a demo, and played one singular show. This is a reissue of that same demo. It’s pretty cool, sufficiently pissed. The quality of the recording makes it a bit difficult to discern exactly what they sounded like. The mind fills in those garbled gaps, tho. Musically it falls somewhere between powerviolence, fastcore, and some tough-guy beatdown stuff.

A Hanging Food for Rats cassette

Full-length album originally released by the band in 2009 on CD and now available on cassette. A HANGING is a crossover thrash band from New Orleans. Musically, there are a few songs that kick in and shred pretty damn hard. Unfortunately, almost every one has a slow, almost scrams-esque breakdown within it. That, combined with the very forced growling type of vocal delivery, puts me off considerably.

Bootlicker Live in the Swamp cassette

For those of you unfortunate enough to not be familiar with BOOTLICKER yet, do yourself a favor and check out their slew of EPs already out in the world. Rip-roaring, relentless Canadian hardcore punk. This cassette is a live show recorded during the band’s last US tour. The recording is top notch and the band is clearly in the midst of their tour tightness. Some of the angriest and best hardcore punk going these days. This live recording sounds better than most band’s studio records. Pro-dubbed tapes with attention to detail on the artwork put this over the top. It even includes a cool looking obi strip on the outside of the tape shell. According to Neon Taste Records there is supposed to be two inserts within the tape but my review copy did not come with those.

Death Cow Pioneer cassette

Seven tracks of indie/alt-rock from Lincoln, Nebraska. DEATH COW is very catchy and the songs are full of pretty, harmonized vocals, ripping guitar leads, and repetitive mid-tempo distorted riffs. I’ve seen them referred to as a garage band and a “weirdo punk” band but I don’t hear any of that at all. It feels like poppy ’90s alt-rock revival stuff to me.

Filth Garden Live Filth cassette

This is a wild ride. Cassette comes with no artwork whatsoever, case wrapped in duct tape, with the words FILTH GARDEN written in black sharpie across the front. I had to cut the case open to pry the cassette out from inside, revealing a black cassette with a duct tape label reading the same thing. This appears to be a live set as it is one continuous song with no breaks other than feedback which all ends with cheers and applause. Musically we’ve got drums and bass, the bass occasionally kicking on some kooky effects pedals. The tempo ranges alternating from heavy doom sounding stuff to upbeat driving riffs. It sounds very full considering it is only two instruments and a vocalist, who sounds eerily like Cronos from VENOM.

Gritos Gritos cassette

New band from San Diego, CA. The writeup that was included with the demo refer to them as being a raw punk band, and while there are certainly aspects of that style peppered throughout this tape, it comes across to me as a more straightforward hardcore unk band with peppered in metal riffs, but in a good way, ya know? Four songs, lyrics sung in Spanish.

Head to Wall Demo 2019 cassette

Super chuggy, youth-crew-esque hardcore. Three songs that truly sound like they came from a different decade. You know the sound; singy melodic vocals with barked gang backups, driving main riffs, chugging tuff breakdowns. As I write this I’m discovering that there is an unlisted fourth song on the demo, a cover of “Under Fire” by 411. Not hiding where their inspiration comes from one bit with this choice of cover.

Klazo / Susans Weekend in The Rust Belt cassette

This is a split live cassette from two garage-punk bands from London, ON. It has live tracks recorded in Detroit, Cleveland, and Rochester while the bands were on a weekend tour together. Oddly enough I was personally in attendance at the Rochester gig. Small punk world. This is a fun idea, the tapes look great, and it sounds pretty cool considering it was recorded on a Tascam at three different venues, but I think I would rather just listen to studio recordings by each band, personally. If you are currently unfamiliar with the bands, KLAZO is a nasty two-piece fucked-up garage-punk duo with an LP out on It’s Trash Records. SUSANS would also fit within the garage-punk world, but are a little more straightforward thank KLAZO. I don’t know that they have any studio releases to date, but after revisiting this live set of theirs I am certain that I would like to hear one.

Virvon Varvon Mind Cancer cassette

Brand new release on the Portland, OR based Girlsville Records label. VIRVON VARVON is the new project featuring members of the English trashy garage rock powerhouse BLACK TIME. This band is a bit hard to peg down, but has hooks galore! The songs are all over the place but don’t stray too far from the overarching garage punk umbrella. Catchy, driving, nasty, lo-fi garage punk/rock’n’roll garbage. Those adjectives do anything for you? If so this is very much worth a listen.

Enemy Distrust cassette

Ooh baby, this is tough. Heavy hardcore riffs and tough-as-nails breakdowns. ENEMY doesn’t come off particularly like tough guys, though. Do I feel that way because of the polite hand-written note which accompanied the cassette? Perhaps it’s because of the band name and song titles written in pink paint marker directly onto the cassette shell in lieu of any sort of artwork? Either way, I dig the effort. I can’t find any info about the band, but I hope to because this is hard enough to get us aging punkers out of mosh retirement.

Pink Guitars We Are Made of the Sun cassette

Ripping fast hardcore punk from Buffalo, NY. I know that PINK GUITARS originally began as a solo project, and being from Buffalo myself I saw an early line-up of his live band play once. I’m not sure if this cassette is still just the one guy or if it’s now a full band, as there are no credits found within, but whatever the case I hope the responsible party(s) keep doing whatever they did here because this tape is awesome! Five songs of blistering, ’80s inspired hardcore punk. “Always Searching” seriously kills! The riffs are tight and catchy, the drums are fast, the one guitar solo is unexpected and well played. The vocals sound a little monotone at times, but that’s also what makes it sound a little bit like UNIFORM CHOICE, so chalk that one up wherever it fits for you. The program is repeated on the B-side of the tape, but it is played backwards. I kept listening waiting for the hidden messages in PINK GUITARS songs to become clear to me, but nothing ever presented itself. What’s surprising about this is that some of the riffs are actually pretty damn cool when played backwards, too. Well, I’ll be damned. Along with all the releases on the dude from PINK GUITARS’ tape label, only 25 copies of this tape exist, so scope it online as it’s likely sold out.

V/A My Head is Like a Radio Set: A Girlsville Compilation cassette

This is essentially a sampler cassette featuring a number of artists who have releases on Girlsville Records, based in Portland, OR. As per the label “…all new, novel, unreleased & unearthed tunes from our favorite bands.” Stylistically the tape ranges from bubblegum-pop to garage rock to synth-pop—it’s all over the map but the bands all work together really well. This is super cool and fun as a way to expose oneself to a ton of new bands all at once and see what a label is all about. I love when labels do this kinda thing. The tape features a ton of bands: the MARDI KINGS, the PRISSTEENS, FREAK GENES, GERM HOUSE, SEABLITE, the DARLING BUDS, UK GOLD, COLLATE, DIE GROUP, UV-TV, BECKY & THE POLITICIANS, SPLIT FRICTION, COACHWHIPS, THEE THEE’S, and OUIJA BOYS. If any of these bands are on your radar, or you just feel like scoping out a bunch of new bands, give this tape a shot.

Affect Profit Victim cassette

Noisy D-beat raw punk from Sweden. Five songs of frantic, chaotic, crusty punk with vocals barked over top and a constant squeal making me think my tinnitus was acting up. I was equally as shocked to read in the insert that this was actually recorded at a studio, not on a boombox, as I was to read that the band has only two members, the vocalist also playing the drums. I’m not sure if this is just a recording project or if they play live, but the songs are pretty cool and I would certainly like to see two people pull this off live.

Ex-White Disco cassette

Nasty, weird, driving, gross, shit-eating punk from Germany. Musically this rips. The catchy clean guitar licks really get stuck in your head, and some of the songs are awesome, specifically “It’s Me, The Shit” and “Hooray Henry.” On some of the songs, the barked vocals are a bit overly affected which makes them come off teetering on the brink of being novelty songs, which, depending on how that statement rubs you, can be viewed as a positive thing. The lyrics that I can decipher are just dumb enough to make me scratch my head wondering why the hell I didn’t think of them. “I want to piss in your face, I want to beat you with my bat.”

Nervous Aggression Demo 2020 cassette

Thrash-metal riffs mixed in with melodic punk, sludgy emotional parts, incredibly loud sound clips, and occasionally rapped lyrics. The main riff in “School Shooter” sounds a lot like that one really cool HOLIER THAN THOU song, but the rest of the song unfortunately does not. The last thing I ever want to do is misinterpret people, but I will say that if you’re going to have a song entitled “Slut Shame” where the only easily decipherable word in the song is “whore” yelled twice, you may want to consider including lyrics with your demo in order to avoid drawing the wrong conclusions.

Period Bomb / Rosé Perez Born in a Bag split cassette

This was my first exposure to ROSÉ PEREZ, and I don’t think I fully understand it. It sounds as if the YEASTIE GIRLZ wrote a musical in an attempt to make close-minded masculine dudes uncomfortable. I have, however, previously been exposed to the performance art piece known as PERIOD BOMB more than a few times. While I do respect the never-say-die attitude they have to constantly tour despite losing members, making more merch from the road, etc., I just wish more time and effort went into finishing the product before it was exported. This is essentially just noise parading as a band. The drums and bass occasionally have a comprehensive groove they lock into and repeat, but the guitar is just used as a noise-maker, which was particularly evident the one time I saw them play where rather than using a guitar pick the singer/guitarist played her instrument with a corncob. I am sure this has appeal in the art-noise-punk circle I am not familiar with, but the constant question of “how much art can you take?” regularly echoes in my head, and the answer for me is “not this much.”

Teenage Cenobite Live cassette

Driving, nasty synth-punk. Richmond, VA has got something special here. Six songs recorded live and sounding better than a majority of demos I usually hear. TEENAGE CENOBITE originally began as a solo project, but after releasing their first cassette has become a full-on live band that, from the sound of this tape, are an unrelenting powerhouse. Not surprising that this is as good as it is having been released by Feel It Records, one of the most consistent labels these days.

Warm Swords War on Words Vol. 1 cassette

At first I didn’t realize that I was given both volumes of WARM SWORDS’ War on Words cassettes to review, and I listened to the second volume first. Whoops. This first installment seems to be more straightforward and is my preferred of the two cassettes. Minimalist, synth-heavy garage-y post-punk that meanders around a bit in an artsy direction, especially on the tape’s instrumental tracks. The first batch of songs are super driving and really do it for me. Those are where this project shines. The instrumentals lose my interest and the more pop-heavy songs don’t seem to be as memorable. There are lots of very cool aspects to this band, but two full length cassettes is a bit much to digest as an introduction to them.

Warm Swords War on Words Vol. 2 cassette

Try as I might, I cannot figure out where this band is actually from. It’s either New Zealand, Belgium, France, or Germany. Strange, minimalist, garage-y post-punk that leans a bit on the artsy side of things without being entirely off-putting, though it does teeter on the edge there a few times throughout the course of this tape. Despite the vocals being delivered somewhat lazily, the songs as a whole come across rather powerful and driving. It’s an interesting combination and I’m pretty into it. All the songs are recorded and mixed by the band, too, which is always an impressive thing. I was a little nervous that going into Volume 2 would be similar to seeing the movie sequel before the original and I would be lost, but all that has happened is I am all the more intrigued to visit the first volume.

Deadream Deadream cassette

Fast hardcore punk. Five short songs, each clocking in well under a minute in length, most of which still finding the time to have a tough breakdown. Picture something mixed between LEFT FOR DEAD-type spastic riffs and tough CHAIN OF STRENGTH breakdowns.

The Dumpies Jim Thorpe cassette

The most recent release by a band whose offerings seem to all be cassette releases named for various professional athletes. Here we have Jim Thorpe, Native American Olympic gold medalist. The DUMPIES may not be as versatile musically as Jim Thorpe was athletically, but they are not all that far off. Running through six songs in under six minutes, they touch all the bases and dabble a little bit in a number of sub-genres without it feeling forced. Mid-tempo garage, plodding punk, lo-fi pop, catchy pop-punk. The DUMPIES break up their pentathlon of original songs by tossing in a RED KROSS cover, and they totally nail it. Consider this reviewer’s eyes peeled for these elusive other athlete-themed cassettes.

Eva Ras Meni Nije Svejedno… It’s Not Whatever cassette

EVA RAS is a solo screamo project from Belgrade, Serbia. Musically they would fit in very well with the likes of ORCHID or PG.99, etc. It is spastic, chaotic, and unsettling, so I think it very much achieves the goal of the genre. The band uses the term “emoviolence” to describe their sound, and I admittedly had to look that one up. I’m not sure when screamo started being referred to as skramz, and when bands sounding like that adopted the term emoviolence, but as far as I can tell it’s all pretty similar. This is apparently the first half of a double EP, the second half forthcoming, and the cassette is limited to 12 copies.

M80 Apathy cassette

Holy hell, this rips! Oakland, CA’s M80 plays super driving and catchy hardcore punk of an incredibly timeless nature. It would be difficult to pinpoint a timeframe that this came out if I just heard it playing somewhere. The five-song cassette instantly feels familiar, like I’ve been listening to it for years, without sounding like any one specific band. This might be as close to perfection as a demo can get, in my book. Not satiated with listening to the tape three times in a row, I did a little searching and found a live set of theirs on the internet and it’s totally worth a watch.

Armchair Martian Demo cassette

This is a cool little piece of history. The demo was originally recorded and self-released in 1995, and was reissued this year, coinciding with the band playing some reunion shows. ARMCHAIR MARTIAN from Fort Collins, Colorado had close affiliation with Chad Price, the third singer of ALL, who is credited on this tape as “the Bigfoot” for his weird scream at the very end of the tape, but I think he did also sing on some of the band’s material later on. This tape is really catchy, and while the ’90s are certainly not my favorite of decades for punk, this is undeniably good. It’s kind of like if the poppier later-era ALL stuff tried to sound like GIN BLOSSOMS, but couldn’t help but have a little peppering of HÜSKER DÜ tossed in there, too. If any of those aforementioned references are your thing, this is highly recommended.

Julien Papen Theelevator cassette

Everything on this cassette was written and all instruments played by one JULIEN PAPÈN from Lugano, Switzerland, who toes the line somewhere between psychedelia, garage rock, and bedroom pop. The first song is pretty long and drone-y, and I was a bit turned off to it at the beginning, but by the time the tape got to the song “Winter Is Fun” I was ironically very warmed up to it. That is unquestionably the stand-out bopper on this release. There are certainly some very cool aspects here, but some of the songs are just too darn long. Four and a half minutes, five minutes, six minutes. Get right to it, and this project would instantly be better, but I suppose that is one potential drawback of solo projects: no one to help tug on the reigns while working the kinks out of songs.

Macrodose First Dose cassette

Heavy, powerviolence-influenced hardcore from San Francisco. It’s got what you’ve likely come to expect from this genre: the fastest of the fast and the slowest of the slow, with very little in between, changing quickly back and forth between the two acceptable tempos. The standout track for me is “Victim,” which breaks the mold and just rides a mid-tempo nasty riff for the duration of the song. I think the band may have an anti-tech deck stance, which I would like to know more about. I’ve never really understood the tongue-in-cheek stances and goofy songs that often coincide with this style of music. My favorites of this genre have always been just genuinely, unapproachably pissed.

Misery Guts Oxford ‘Ardcore cassette

D-beat-infused hardcore from Oxford, UK. Nothing groundbreaking here, but certainly not phoning it in. Songs are tight, vocals are pissed. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a vocalist credited for “confrontation” before. Definitely makes me more intrigued to see this band play live.

Nerd Processor A Dumb Fool, Loudly cassette

Two-piece bedroom pop outfit from Boston, MA. Mostly pretty non-offensive pop tunes, a few songs are certainly better than others, with “Alice” being my favorite of the bunch. There are some pretty fun little melodies in the woodwinds, added by one member. I would have much preferred a shorter release of just the standout tracks though, as 40-plus minutes on a single release is a bit much as a first introduction to a band.

Putzfrau Demo 2019 cassette

This is wonderful! Relentless fast hardcore punk that is still somehow memorable and catchy without being even the slightest big “poppy.” PUTZFRAU blisters through eight tracks with only one song surpassing the one-minute mark. Portland, OR has a real winner on their hands here. It’s clear to me that these are some seasoned vets, the guitarist having been in the criminally underrated MONGOLOID and ORGANIZED SPORTS, and I’m told the bassist was in NASA SPACE UNIVERSE and UNIX. I am unfamiliar with the previous works of the singer and drummer, but I highly doubt this is their first band, and would love to know what else they have done. A+

Singing Lungs Mutter cassette

’90s pop punk/indie pop worship from Grand Rapids, Michigan, featuring someone from CHEAP GIRLS. A few of the songs are definitely catchy, and you’ll probably be really into them if you’re nostalgic about LEMONHEADS/DINOSAUR JR and stuff like that. This release is a pro-dubbed cassette, but the sound of it is absolutely awful. Warbly and unintentionally distorted, which doesn’t work well for a band trying to write catchy songs and a singer actually singing. I had to turn it off and listen to the band’s Bandcamp.

Warsh Burning Urge cassette EP

Prince Edward Island, Canada brings you the second cassette release by WARSH. This is incredible! Sophia’s barked, overly reverberated vocals are relentless, which is unsurprising given the subject matter. This band is pissed for all the right reasons. WARSH mostly plods along noisily within the mid-tempo range, but cranks it into overdrive on a few of the songs on this tape. It reminds me of a more raw, unhinged version of CONDOMINIUM. I semi-recently was on my first extended tour of northeastern Canada and we took a ferry up to Prince Edward Island. It was fun and all, but we certainly didn’t play with bands like WARSH. Oh, how I wish we had, though.

An Invitation You Can’t Love Me cassette

A two-song cassingle. AN INVITATION appears to be a one-man-band from Richmond, VA who was in that band SATAN’S SATYRS. This is some truly sleazy, nasty, heavy-metal infused rock’n’roll. Vocally it kinda sounds like VENOM to me, while musically it ranges from sludgy and plodding to riff-heavy and driving. Pretty cool, but I think I need to go take a shower now.

Crux Decussata Class Dismissed cassette

I’ll be honest with ya, I put this cassette aside while doing my reviews for the month fully expecting it to be the real stinker of the bunch. To my surprise, CRÜX DECUSSÄTA proves the old adage “don’t judge a demo by its cringe-worthy artwork” to be true. Three songs of rip-roaring speed metal, with the final one being a weird hybrid of “Highway Star” by DEEP PURPLE and “Victims of the Vampire” by SLAUGHTER AND THE DOGS. I enjoyed the first two songs, both complete with their SLAYER-style high-pitched-scream dive-bombing before dissipation, but was incredibly skeptical of how they would pull off the third’s mashup. To my surprise, it is actually pretty well done and super entertaining, wisely switching away from “Highway Star” before the extended solo and morphing into “Victims of the Vampire,” taking that to the end and focusing on that song’s much more attainable solo.

La Milagrosa La Milagrosa cassette

Puerto Rican punkers living in Brooklyn deliver a debut cassette with seven songs of lo-fi punk rock crammed on a short cassette. Six head-bopping originals and a cover of a song by fellow PR band ACTITUD SUBVERSIVA, which I recognized from their split with TROPIEZO, whom I was a big fan of but regrettably never got to see. This is a real nice change from the overhyped “punk” bands that Brooklyn tends to shit out, and it comes across incredibly sincere and not contrived in the slightest. It seems they only made 50 of these cassettes, so get one quick.

Max Nordile Primordial Gaffe cassette

This cassette looks amazing. Super slick pro-dubbed silver cassettes, three-panel foldout J-card cover with black print on shimmery silver paper stock. I am learning a lot this month about the dangers of focusing on the aesthetics of demos. The only positive things I have to say about this release have to do with its good looks. I have absolutely no idea what I just listened to. Weird squawks and smacks and bleep-bloops with whiny vocals and/or jazz horns delivered over top of it. It’s some form of avant-garde experimental art project stuff that I guess I just don’t get. The tape is long too, there’s eleven “songs” on it, and they’re not particularly short. I standardly make it a point not to write reviews during the first listen of a demo, but I don’t think I will be able to make it the full way through this tape a second time.

Silk Leash Troublesome Thoughts cassette

Artsy noise punk from Maryland. Four songs that kinda sound like if PG.99 or ORCHID got rid of the noodly guitar parts and had a more aggressive singer. The band’s Bandcamp informed me that the release is actually called Troublesome Thoughts, as it’s not listed anywhere on the cassette.

Stupid Fascist Citizens Divided demo cassette

STUPID FASCIST are from Green Bay, WI, and are a self-proclaimed “leftist political hardcore band…made up primarily of old school ’80s punks with an impressive back catalog.” I couldn’t find any info on what bands the members used to be in, but regardless it is awesome hearing older punks still fuming with aggression and channeling it into a fast hardcore punk band. Three songs on this demo, which I think are collectively over in about the same amount of time as the cobbled-together “propaganda reel” that starts the tape. The attached note informs me that the band is finishing up work on a debut LP. My interest is piqued. Bring it on!

Zurich by the Japanese Decoration Food Cassette

This is a strange one, for sure. ZURICH BY THE JAPANESE jumps from bedroom-pop to ambient-drone to experimental-noise to singer-songwriter folk to shoegaze to all kinds of other weird obscure sub-genres that I’m not sure I fully understand, all on one lo-fi cassette. It’s not particularly surprising that they’re able to cover such a wide range, considering there are 24 songs on this demo. It’s all pretty confusing, and some of the songs even completely change genre unexpectedly right in the middle of themselves, making it difficult to follow along to try to point out which, if any, of the songs are standout tracks. Perhaps it’s my small brain at fault, but it all comes off as way more of an art project than a band, and I think I need a nap after navigating my way through the entirety of this release.

The Beekeepers Song Demos 2 Cassette

Eleven tracks of well-crafted, mid-tempo, jangly pop from the mastermind of SPACE WOLVES. Having been an unbelievably big fan of that band, this is right up my alley. Super catchy songs, lovely clean guitar licks, beautifully belted crooner-esque vocals, all done while keeping it cool and lo-fi, nothing overproduced. Presumably, most times “pop” is used as a descriptive term here at MRR, it is referencing pop-punk or power pop, but neither of those terms feel particularly fitting for the BEEKEEPERS. This feels more like ’60s-inspired pop/rock’n’roll recorded with a DIY punk mentality. You’ll be bopping your head, you may even shed a tear, but don’t let that stop you from giving this a listen, it’s an A+. I’m going to stoke the fire in my wood stove and play it again from the top.

Dialer Tour Tape 2019 Cassette

Took me a minute to wrap my head around what’s going on here. This is Philadelphia, PA-based drum-machine-driven synth-punk which also has an occasional saxophone. Some of the songs are pretty cool—faster and nastier than I expected, particularly the newer songs on the A-side of the tape. This is where DIALER really shines. The slower tracks feel too long and lose my attention, particularly the repetitive ones with spoken-word political sound clips in lieu of vocals, which close out each side of the tape. Side A is listed as having four new demo tracks but there’s definitely more on it which goes on for a while, and side B is DIALER’s side of a split 12″ with CHRONIC ANXIETY. Interesting to see a band in the current age having a strong, outspoken, anti-war/anti-authority political agenda, and props to that considering it feels like many bands nowadays are stuck singing about goo and slime, but a lot of it does come off sounding a little contrived and cringy.

Ephs No Riots Cassette

This is certainly a lo-fi recording, which is not necessarily a slam when it comes to this style of punk. The J-card does warn you that it was “recorded at home,” after all. Mid-tempo, kinda catchy, minimal punk rock sounding like it was recorded on a crummy old boombox. There’s a bit of a post-punk feel to it at times with the jangly guitar meandering around repetitive bass lines. EPHS covers “Teenager” by the RATS which is a pretty cool tune to choose for a cover, and the tape has some kinda drum machine type thing on at least one of the songs—like I said, it’s pretty lo-fi. It seems this cassette is an edition of merely twenty, so snag it while you can if you’re into lo-fi catchy home recordings.

Hawkbaby Hawkbaby demo cassette

Six songs of mid-tempo punk. Plodding, heavy-sounding riffs with noisy leads spattered atop. I was going to make a comparison of the vocalist sounding like Larry from the DARVOCETS/WETBRAIN, but the more I’m looking into this, I wouldn’t be surprised if it is actually him. The label is from Cleveland, after all, and I can’t picture another city in the world that would be churning out this kind of punk. A few of the songs sound a bit like the same rewritten song, making the tape blend together slightly, but it’s a pretty damn good song, so why deviate from a formula that works? I listen to music every day at my house, and the low end on this recording is so heavy that it rumbled my speakers, shifting a glass overhead light cover that was balanced on the speaker for the past year or so, sending it crashing to the ground mere feet from where I was standing. It seems even listening to HAWKBABY is potentially dangerous, and this recording has truly captured the essence of Cleveland.

Pest! Pest! Demo Cassette

Hardcore punk from Brooklyn, NY. Each of the five songs go between blisteringly fast to the slowest of punk dirges. While having such a formula makes the songs a bit predictable, the passion shows with a band like PEST. It is on the slower parts, however, that the cool guitar work really shines through. There are some unexpectedly catchy licks hidden in these angry songs. The vocals on this demo are especially pissed, and I was not surprised to find that the vocalist is Katie from South Carolina’s now defunct GLITTORIS, who were an incredibly powerful live band. This tape was dubbed pretty poorly, but listening to the digital tracks, the recording itself sounds great. I expect and truly hope to see more from this band.

Riita Absolute Santa Rosa Cassette

A note attached to this cassette informs me that RIITA has changed their name to LÖCKHEED since the release of this demo. RIITA/LÖCKHEED is a heavy crust punk band in the vein of early TRAGEDY records. The songs aren’t bad, and they’re probably cool to see play live. This, however, is a style that has been done to death over the last few decades, and there isn’t anything particularly standout about this recording. Part of that could be due to the tape itself having a significant warble to it, making it slightly difficult to differentiate everything going on, and messing with the listener’s equilibrium. Crank it up and pass the Dramamine.

Sonomax Sonomax Demo Cassette

I’m hesitant to even refer to this as a demo, considering how professional it is. Very polished recording, pro-dubbed cassettes, shrink wrap; an overall very nice looking and sounding complete package. SONOMAX play catchy indie pop with maybe a hint of post-punk churned in, and hail from Brooklyn, NY. It’s very poppy, but oddly not particularly catchy.

Thee Irma & Louise Kill List Cassette

As a lover of surf music, this tape was a pleasant surprise. THEE IRMA & LOUISE from Bern, Switzerland have apparently been a band since 2002, and have a whole slew of vinyl releases under their belt, which I will certainly be looking into now that I have been exposed to their newest release. Kill List appears to be the band’s first cassette release, and is ten tracks of surf-infused punk—or should I say punk-infused surf? The songs range in tempo from slow and creepy to fast punk, and one of the few vocal numbers actually sounds oddly similar to “El Dorado” by AGENT ORANGE. Guitar tones are pretty distorted, and there is a lot of spooky organ peppered in, leading me to assume they’re more inspired by punk bands doing instrumentals, such as “Surf Bat” by 45 GRAVE rather than by ’60s surf music. While not my favorite take on surf, they do the style very well, and some of the tunes are incredibly catchy. What’s more: they keep most of the tracks instrumental, the way this reviewer feels surf music should be. Once you go vocal, you lose me a little bit. Having only two vocal numbers on this ten-song cassette, I like those odds. What really confuses me about this tape is all ten songs listed are on the A-side of the tape, while the B-side is roughly ten minutes of feedback and stick clicks as if a song is about to start, but never actually does, followed by a strange instrumental industrial song. Unnecessary. The A-side will be rewound and played many times over.

The Touch Heads Nostalgia Is Poison Cassette

This band rules! On a recent tour I drove, they were one of the locals that played the Boston gig, and were one of the best bands I saw on that trip. The TOUCH HEADS have got it all: short songs that are catchy and memorable, nasty riffs, killer guitar work, and booming drums. A truly awesome modern hardcore punk band. This demo does exactly what a demo should do, in my opinion: leave you wanting more. Clocking in at just over five minutes with the program repeating on both sides of the cassette, I find myself letting it flip and listening to it over and over again. Here’s hoping this isn’t the only thing we hear from TOUCH HEADS. I want more!