A three-song EP from this new Portland band with ex-members of SOME VELVET SIDEWALK, OSWALD FIVE O, and BILLY JACK AND THE HIPPY TEMPTATIONS. This is a dive bar cruncher. Gritty, reminiscent of US punk circa 1984. Hearing STOOGES, SICK PLEASURE, and DWARVES in the mix. Thumbs up.
On their debut full-length album, Portland’s OLD DEATH serves up twelve cuts of messy, virulent punk rock. Dripping with more snot than an infected nasal cavity, Dirty World feels like an earnest ode to punk of yesteryear. OLD DEATH evokes the thrust and snarl of Back From the Pink Room-era PINK LINCOLNS in a serious way! The tunes are gritty yet melodic, with bitingly cynical lyrics with a political slant. There’s an unhinged quality to the music that keeps things from getting too stale, though the non-stop guitar wankery does quickly become grating. Most compelling are the sub-two-minute tracks where the drums are more propulsive and the vocal mucus is palpable. They start to lose me when they drift into the skronky breakdowns found in “21 Gun Salute” and “Sick City,” but if you have a soft spot for bands from the ’90s that played in the style of bands from the ’80s, then OLD DEATH just might be your thing.
Two brief-but-memorable stabs of hooky pop punk from this Portland power trio. “In Your Face” is a snappy, propulsive jammer in the vein of MARKED MEN/THE SPITS, while the flip is a rollicking barroom singalong about what sounds like a potentially serious injury. Great stuff.
This tape has ten tracks of blown-out fuzz pop. Song after song of anthemic melodies, recorded in a shack somewhere in Oregon. The band is from Austin, but may have picked up something in the air from Denton, Texas—there are echoes of MARKED MEN, REDS, etc., although the closest comparison that comes to mind is the THERMALS. Great stuff overall.
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.
Astoria, Oregon’s the DUMPIES knock up some dirt with their Roberto Clemente EP, named after the Puerto Rican baseball player. And while traditional sports culture and punk ethos haven’t always walked hand-in-hand, I guess we are mixed up in everything now, and maybe that’s okay. All said, the track list reads like the snotty-as-ever garagesters they seem to be, with “Pot Moms,” “Eat Ass Do Crimes,” and “Garbage Zen,” to name a few. This six-song EP comes in at just over five minutes, with the longest song (1:19) being the SHANG-A-LANG cover “Commotion” that makes for a great anthemic ender. It’s catchy and fun like something you’d hear in a college basement, while being slightly more informed, with the song brevity of a hardcore outfit. Have a five-minute beer and listen up.
The social media-sphere kinda melted a bit when this record dropped…maybe because it’s so fucking hot. In less than three minutes of music recorded two decades ago, two Black kids from Alabama shoved a huge “fuck you” boot up the pretentious ass of (hardcore) punk by simply being themselves. The songs are simple, tough as shit, equal parts furious ’90s East Bay hardcore and LIMP WRIST—it’s not so much that they’re pissed, it’s that the SOCIAL LIES feel real. Not every “lost” recording from decades past needs to be unearthed and released…this one did.
