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Nasty, nihilistic Middle America hardcore punk. Howling and affected vocals, the way the kids like(d) to do it in the ’10s, and plenty of sonic tweaks in the mix and between songs to remind you that you’re listening to something genuinely damaged. The drums that drag “Meade St.” out of that feedback and into the pit are….well, that little bit seals the fukkn deal. Bare-knuckle hardcore punk. Sold.
Very good single comprised of two cover songs from this L.A. band. WARM DRAG is made up of vocals and two samplers, but the two tracks here sound like lush, full-band affairs despite having only two members. “Butch Things” is a smoky, post-punk crawl that summons Siouxsie Sioux fronting the BAD SEEDS. “Your Thunder and Your Lightning” brings some darkwave texture with a static-tinged bass pulse and classic reverb-drenched psych guitar. This record hits the sweet spot between familiar and fresh. I want to hear more.
The mighty WITCHES WITH DICKS return with a new six-song EP. Dirty pop punk that worships at the altar of Cometbus. This shit rules. I just wish it was longer.
First released in 1991 by MCR UK, and later in 1994 on Epistrophy Records, in 2018 by Monolith Records, and now by Pine Hill Records, A Wind of Knives was born after the dissolution of UK’s dark punk legends and crust pioneers AMEBIX. Founding member Stig Miller, alongside ex-AMEBIX members George Fletcher and Spider and newcomer Tim Crow of SMARTPILS created ZYGOTE. This debut release almost feels like a continuation of the bleak sound that was achieved in their earlier venture expanding on what KILLING JOKE began with, a MOTÖRHEAD-inspired sense of rock’n’roll songwriting, and adding a taste of what can be described as deathrock-oriented post-punk guitar atmosphere. This will please not only crust punk fans that like to wander off to unknown territories, but also post-punks and deathrock goths. A shame that ZYGOTE did not release more material; one can only imagine what they could have achieved on their next step.
Imagine, if you will, a world where the BOMBPOPS listened to too much later-era DISCHARGE and hair metal instead of listening to too much BLINK or whatever. Now imagine that they still had Fat Wreck production values. Imagine no more my friends, because ALIEN BOYS have made that fantasy world come to life! Not my particular cup of tea, but after a few listens I don’t wanna throw it like a Frisbee, so that’s something I suppose.
I already have a soft spot for this split, as my first hardcore band in the mid-’90s was called CARTRIDGE. But let’s get to work. Well, CARTRIDGE of Boston is far superior to what we were. This is clobbering GLORIOUS?-style hardcore with some echo added to the vocals, but played with the sheer intensity of BLOODKROW BUTCHER. Non-stop bombing blast such as HUMANT BLOD—there is literally a “bomb fall” effect sample added that is punctuated with a blast on a break. And there are hardly any breaks here. Shit, this side fucking rules! WET SPECIMENS torrentially rain in on the higher register with equally fast hardcore, though they add some twangier post-punk riffs and spaced out solos and surprising late ’80s thrash metal riffs. But really just as subtle accents. This is much catchier, to the intensity of Side A. Great split, now I want to find one. Jeez, you got the name, and this was totally impressive. Send a damn copy next time.
This fuckin’ band. First they tear the ass out of 2019 with the killer Too LP, and now this Love Story makes the rest of the 7″ pile pale in comparison. I thought this Richmond, VA outfit might be done after they parted ways with their previous black-throated singer, but drummer Trevor jumped up to fill the slot with surprisingly great results. Here the SHOES stomp through three songs, each showing a different side of the band’s bizarre spiral of turbo-charged, trippy, and groovy hardcore punk rock. The record clocks in at just under eight minutes, but rumor has it that a carefully-timed bong hit will make it seem more like sixteen. Starts heavy, ends heeavvy. Highly recommended.
If you don’t know, DROPDEAD is one of the greatest fast hardcore bands of all time. They are also one of the fastest fast hardcore bands of all time. As the title suggests, the tracks here are culled from demos recorded in 1991—and I swear that “Protest” and “At The Cost Of An Animal” sound more unhinged here than on any of the subsequent vinyl releases, and everything here hits just as hard as it did when I first heard (most of) them on a third-generation cassette 27 years ago, but it all hits even harder today because these songs (and more importantly, these words) are still relevant, they are still urgent, and they are still fucking furious. And then if you’re still standing, the sound and the delivery on the second session are simply unparalleled…this is the band who are still on top of the mountain, and they just released some recordings to remind us all who built it.
A South German private press post-punk curio from 1982 that failed to capitalize on any sort of Neue Deutsche Welle hype at the time of its original release, but the underground reissue industry is thriving in the 21st century and we haven’t run out of petroleum yet so now here we are again. The repeated mentions of FAMILIE HESSELBACH having been “the German TALKING HEADS” strike me as a little strange—there’s some surface-level parallels between the two groups, namely a reliance on rubber-band bass snap to guide anxious, funk-influenced rhythms, although if anything, FAMILIE HESSELBACH seem to have pulled those elements from UK-based primary sources (the taut, scratchy groove-agitation of both GANG OF FOUR and A CERTAIN RATIO would be high on the list). Some skronking horns and inside-out disco beats do point to a certain New York influence, but it’s one drawn from the No Wave universe of bands like the CONTORTIONS that never even remotely included the TALKING HEADS, and the vocals (in both German and Italian) are frequently delivered in an urgent, clipped bark in stark opposition to David Byrne’s buttoned-up poindexter yelp. Most of Familie Hesselbach’s seventeen tracks are around two minutes or less each, just ping-ponging from one idea to another with the sort of econo-minded attention span of the scrappiest DIY outfits, but executed with the necessary tightness and control required to translate to the post-punk dancefloor. Won’t completely burn down the haus, but some flames are still sparked.
As 2020 pulled up stakes, FUGITIVE BUBBLE shoved this butterfly knife of speed-racket jerk anthems into its ribcage with zero remorse. It’s getting harder and harder to sort out this type of punk—the kind that is impossible to nail down with regards to its immediate antecedents. Sure, there’s some C.C.T.V. in the DNA, but with a heaping portion of KBD to make sure all six songs leave a mark. Check the boxes—jackhammer drums, rusty razor guitar spray, somersaulting rhythms, and super-sarcastic vocals that sound so cool you almost hope that they’re making fun of you. This debut tape is, no doubt, Cool Fucking Punk, which is good for you, cuz you are a Fucking Cool Punk. Whew.
The A-side sounds like dad-rocky pop punk. Mid-tempo, kind of bouncy, pretty restrained, and a chorus that sounds just like GREEN DAY or the INFLUENTS. It’s pretty catchy but also unimaginative. The B-side is a slightly more punky cover of the LEMONHEADS’ “Rudderless” with an instrumental outro tacked on to the end.
When a band is named after a KURO song, you can pretty much expect that it is going to be an instant win. Hokkaidō island dwellers HUMAN GAS bring on the finest in raw and noisy ’80s Japanese hardcore not that far off from bands like GAI or CONFUSE. This box set is a true labour of love by the punk devotees at F.O.A.D.: double-LP, CD, DVD, book, and extra case-wrapped box. Seventy-nine tracks that originate from the split 7″ with STALI NISM (1985), Noice and Hardcore first demo (1986), Explosives second demo (1986), tracks from the Street Punk in Obihiro Omnibus tape (1986), Lackluster third demo and extra studio songs (1987), and unreleased studio jam session with members of STALI NISM and MIDDLE CLASS (1987). This is a must have for any classic Japanese hardcore enthusiasts out there still bummed about the GISM reissue on Relapse.
The Finnish band who dropped one of my favorite records in 2019 released this record in 2020 that’s fast becoming my favorite EP of 2021. Finland’s KOHTI TUHOA has progressed with each release, and Elä Totuudesta is no different—vocals have developed a pronounced NAUSEA-meets-POST REGIMENT bark here, driving the songs themselves with force. Even the title track that opens with such a furious downstroke guitar doesn’t really start until the vocals kick in. The Scandi-beat charge is definitely present, even dominating at times, but the leads are classic punk and the vibe is determined and not dark, reflected in the lyrics and delivered by the sound. You’ll never find anyone categorizing this by saying it “sounds like…,” well, anything. A future classic slab to devour in the present—highly recommended.
This comes ultra-recommended if you fancy hearing some guitar-based underground rock music—stay with me—which ventures past obvious Western comfort zones, incorporating Arabic and African motifs and rhythmic tics into its arrangements without coming off at all tokenistic or white-dreadlocky. LES CONCHES VELASQUES was a solo project at the time of this debut album, released digitally in 2018 and now as an LP with two extra songs; during this interim period Pablo Jiménez, from Zaragoza in Spain, has turned it into a band, one who have a second album due out pretty soon. For now, dig this set of hypnotic trance-punk: sage-voiced (Spanish-language) vox over shuffly Afrobeat percussion, raw buzzy guitar tuned so it sounds like a horn section being played through a transistor radio, lyrics borrowed from early 20th century poet Pedro Salinas or, on one occasion, covering 1960s Ethiopian star singer Asnaqètch Wèrqu. The EX, 75 DOLLAR BILL, and LUNGFISH are the closest comparisons in terms of the “rock band format,” but LES CONCHES VELASQUES (like those groups) works with far wider horizons.
This is the third release from Lyon, France’s LITIGE. A ten-song escapade, this album is loaded with nostalgic, at times melancholy, melodic punk. Think early FASTBACKS, or the STOPS—driving mid-tempo with winding lead guitar melodies sailing over heavy riffs. Lyrics oscillate from French to English, and themes range from “Nique Tout” (“fuck everything”) to “Remue-méninges” (a method of generating new thoughts and ideas). Yep, that pretty much covers it.
When you’ve got this band’s chops, two songs are all you need to make a point. The down-picked chug of the single’s opener pushes uncut adrenaline right out of the gate, and both tracks keep up a blistering momentum throughout. This band has only gotten more fiery and exciting over their decade-plus in existence, and these tracks continue to up the ante. The guitar work is scrappy, furious, and wonderfully weird, and lead vocalist Dulcinea continues to command attention with a presence that’s impossible to ignore. I can’t wait for more.
Minimalist, lo-fi punk with a beach theme and decent dose of angst. The message is mostly unintelligible except the emphatic, “fuck cops!”. Waves crash in the background of the instrumental third track, behind a menacingly repetitive surfy guitar riff accented by some female screams suggesting a shark attack or other seaside calamity. This would be a great record to get stoned and zone out to, except that it’s not quite long enough to get lost in—clocking in at just over six minutes. Definitely curious about what these beach-oriented weirdo punks from Kansas will come up with next.
To call this a SOULSIDE record feels pretty misleading. Sure it’s the same people but it sounds much more like SOUNDGARDEN than any of the band’s releases from back in the ’80s. Not surprisingly, it has more in common with post-SOULSIDE bands. Musically, it is pretty hard rock or grungy, tonally in the GVSB range but it doesn’t flow quite as well as those songs did. The vocals here don’t have that stunted, yelled/sung feel. They fill out the songs a little more, sounding like a deeper aged version of RAIN LIKE THE SOUND OF TRAINS. Even more disappointing, the best song on the digital release, “Survival,” an upbeat, catchy tune that still doesn’t sound like the old version of the band, is not included on the vinyl.
This is sick. SPY wastes absolutely no time kicking off, a squeal of distortion followed by some seriously fucked-off stomping hardcore. I’m stumbling for comparisons to make but it sounds so fucking furious, with that sweet tinge of delay on the vox that allows for a real fucking snarl to seep through. The stomp that comes through on this tape is so fucking prevalent I can feel my bad knee begin to throb beneath my desk and I’m only two tracks in; hardcore is best when it doesn’t try reinvent the wheel, but rather uses it as a vehicle for genuine aggression and frustration. This is some desperately pissed-off shit from the Bay Area and it shows. I’m a sucker for Bay Area HC, but regardless of your tastes in regional HC, this should easily tick all your boxes.
If you really appreciate powerviolence, you know that you have to get through a ton of INFEST rip-off bands to find a real powerviolence band that keeps it in the tradition of MAN IS THE BASTARD and the Slap-a-Ham alumni. Brooklyn-based STIMULANT is such a band (previously under the name WATER TORTURE, who they also released a split with), with their off-putting brand of crushing, noisy powerviolence evoking a grindier IRON LUNG, focused on start-stop motions and dramatically slow or fast parts, and this is the major upgrade from the WATER TORTURE moniker: the fast parts are faster and the slow parts are slower, always with room for noise and samples. WATER TORTURE was exceptionally good and STIMULANT is a step above, a great soundtrack for the COVID isolation era.
There’s a lot going on within the walls of these four tracks—a blast of hardcore rage on the first track, a grunge ballad complete with emotive compressed vocals, and a punchy, melodic punk anthem. The fourth track is a cover of the WIPERS’ “Telepathic Love,” steered in a power pop direction with singing along the lines of the EXPLODING HEARTS. The cover really works. It makes me consider how Greg Sage’s unflinchingly earnest delivery defines the WIPERS’ sound just as much as the songwriting itself. Stoked to see STUD COUNT playing around with that and re-imagining such a great song.
Another root around in the catacombs for the TEMPLARS with the second volume of their Reconquista series. Taking in various odds and ends from their storied career to date, including a lot of early stuff that has been out of print for a minute, so definitely one for completists and obsessives. A handful of covers including a relatively played-straight version of a ROLLING STONES number add a bit of light and shade to the proceedings too, but realistically one for the megafans.
It’s nice to be reminded that punk doesn’t always have to be miserable. Bleakness is great—and usually appropriate for the goings-on of the world—but thank God there are still bands like Ballarat, Australia’s THESE THINGS to offer sweetness in bitter times. There is plenty of melody and hooks on display here, and the band’s sound is reminiscent of gritty late-2000s garage pop acts like CHEAP TIME and BAD SPORTS (especially the latter). This album doesn’t improve on a winning formula, but it’s done well and a pleasure to listen to. If I have a gripe it’s that the lyrics are a bit rote on tracks like “Cigarettes and Booze,” a subject well-enough-covered at this point, but overall it’s still a solid LP.
Exhumed and remastered from a tape that had been stored in a private stash box that JOHNNY simply labeled “Thunders Tapes,” Live From Zürich 1985 captures a live Swiss radio session recorded six years before his passing. Thanks to a sharp remastering job, the sound is super-crisp, and THUNDERS’ usual disaffected and snotty charm is on full display throughout. The fourteen songs here are a bit of mixed bag, ranging from highlights like the opening rocker “Blame It On Mom” and the Jerry “Needles” Nolan co-written “Countdown Love,” to obligatory DOLLS and HEARTBREAKERS covers, to duds like the ill-advised dub of “Cool Operator.” Die-hard fans will dig it, and this is the first of a series of these “forgotten” recordings to come, so they can look forward to digging more.
Backed by a wall of alternately jagged and dreamy post-punk instrumentals, vocals are manic and theatrical in a way that feels almost like an avant-garde spoken word performance. Songs have a no-holds-barred weirdo edge. PRIESTS immediately come to mind, as do LUNACHICKS. Everything about this band feels very intentional, from cover art, to lyrical content, down to the construction/production of each song. This is the kind of record you can listen to over and over and discover something new each time.
USA NAILS deliver a new LP of noise-rock-inspired bummer punk. They have played with IDLES and METZ, and did a split 7″ with TONGUE PARTY. If you like those bands, it’s a pretty safe bet that you will like this, too. The songs are stripped down to muscular distorted bass, dissonant guitar stabs, pounding drums, and shouted working-class sloganeering. “I Don’t Own Anything” starts out with the very relatable line “This is modern life / And it is full of heartache,” and ends with “I experience everything / I don’t own anything.” It’s not as moving as “Merchandise,” but it’s a potent anti-commercialism anthem for our times. The last two tracks caught my attention in how they step a few feet away from the post-hardcore pummeling into post-punk with syncopated drumbeats and disaffected vocals that sound like a slower WIRE or GANG OF FOUR. The recording sounds great: clear and crisply produced. That’s the only negative aspect of this for me—I like a good speaker-ripper and this is a bit clean. Worth checking out.
Contrasting this optimistic album title, I naively venture to the recording: epic, despairing neo-crust from Portland. To that point, I’m feeling the renaissance of FROM ASHES RISE and TRAGEDY here. The true personality is emulated between various vocals. I’m picking up like three vocalists, but this is perhaps being expressed by two. But even more remarkably, in several languages: English, Spanish, Arabic, African? Indigenous or Polynesian? I’m sorry, I’m not sure the origins of some of these songs and lyrics, but the variety of dialects here is inspiring. Certain spaces of this remind me of REACT and SCUMBRIGADE with, again, that multiple vocal energy. Within the barrage of hardcore crust pummeling, WRETCHED OF THE EARTH have riveted down some ominous melancholy passages as well. After all, this album gets better as it escalates and plateaus and fades out. I bet this band would rule live, if we ever get there again.
This is a follow-up to the first release of Anaiah Lei’s one-man HC assault on hypocrisy and performative justice. Showing no sign of slowing down, a vicious and heavy listen that echoes the more modern PV bands (think mid-to-late 2000s) or grind that sits on the HC end of the spectrum, with tinges of youth crew coming through (especially in those massive breakdowns). A release that is thick with frustration as the opening poem, bluntly explaining the persistent hypocrisy a Black woman faces on a daily basis, sets the tone for this tape; melded together expertly with samples from the classic EDDIE KENDRICKS track of the same name, this reminds me of classics from the early West Bay grind scene, where you were just as likely to hear a sample from an old Black Panthers chant as you were to catch a horror movie snippet. Recommended and definitely one to keep an eye on.
I’m too stupid and narrow-minded to be writing this review. ALPHA HOPPER is for self-assured smart punks who like the experience of walking down a long hallway of practice spaces and hearing a fucked up amalgamation of shrieks, needling guitars, brief moments of respite, breakdowns, and bashing drums—a.k.a. hardcore people who’ve never listened to the NEGATIVE APPROACH 7″. It’s more jagged and technical than a group from rusty old Buffalo would have you believe. Responsibly haphazard mathcore for people who could barely pass geometry, with schoolgirl bully vocals on top. Alpha Hex Index is for those who survived the ’90s, people who want more from modern hardcore or who want their No Wave to have crunch.
There was a time when you just had to see the name BEYOND DESCRIPTION and you knew that uncompromising Japanese crust was in your near future. And you were pumped. These recordings are more than 20 years old at this point…and I’m (still) pumped. Tokyo’s BEYOND DESCRIPTION delivers brutally fast political HC/crust, and time has done nothing to make 1997’s Calm Loving Life session sound any less intense. The three cuts from the Live in Germany 5″ however….holy shit, these dudes are absolutely insane live. Just pure speed and relentless hardcore, two things I could use a bit more of in my life.
An all-around great compilation of highly ferocious, emotive, and danceable Japanese hardcore from the early ’90s. I found the vocals and repetitive structure to be annoying at first, but if “Skill!,” “Why,” and “But Nothing Ever Change” don’t immediately hit your pleasure receptors, then you should give up on hardcore. The glossy record contains a booklet with extraordinary colored mohawks and crusty street punk looks, but the real substance lies within the CD collection containing all studio material plus seven extra demo tracks. I’ve never heard anyone play drums like this and the mastering is perfect, allowing everything to come through crystal clear. I would say the LP and CD combo is the way to go on this one. An essential reissue considering you’re getting all the bands’ output for only like 1/5th the price of the original 7”.
I had to mull over this one to get it and avoid jumping to easy conclusions. Ex-MANSION helmer Candace Lazarou has built ten warped and weary pop songs that evoke familiar notes of ’90s indie rock with industrial flourishes, pulsing guitars, and even momentary shoegaze walls of noise. It sounds like I’m describing a vintage wine or something, but the production on this is so dense and the lyrics so cryptic that it almost asks to be picked apart piece by piece. Like a problem you keep turning over in your head and can’t fully resolve. At its best it reminds me a bit of NICO’s Camera Obscura album where she sang “Show me the way to warning / Warning for the morning light / I will stab it with a knife / The blinding sun / The heartbeat for the time to come.” Lazarou flips this foreboding blade and light imagery with her own “I was born in a violet light / Sniffin’ sand off a paper knife / I was born with a gun in my face / I was born in outer space.” Am I overthinking this comparison? Maybe. But some people want music that’s awkward to access, that you puzzle over. That’s BODY DOUBLE.
BONDAGE is a solo noise garage project from Peru, and this tape collects about a decade’s worth of demo releases. The first track starts out with a drum machine and distorted bass groove that gives off “Cough / Cool” vibes with spoken-sung vocals. Then comes the haunted house keyboards. Yikes. The rest of the tape more or less follows this pattern: fast drum beat, repetitive bass lines, reverbed guitar with tons of flange, and spoken or screamed vocals. To be fair, there is enough decent feedback damage to call this noise or maybe industrial, but I never really feel the menace that I expect from those genres. There is a SUICIDE cover, which I can hear as a major inspiration (I’ll stick with the original, though). There is some CHRISTIAN DEATH energy here as well. I don’t know about the lyrical content, as the singing is in Spanish, but the cover art and accompanying zine feature cut-and-paste artwork of wild animals, explicit gay imagery, and blood. Many of these tracks stretch past the four-minute mark, which tests my patience for what seems like a well-intentioned bedroom project. Maybe check it out if you are into deathrock or industrial, but it’s a pass for me.
I confess that I don’t think I spent enough time with this record to really try to capture it with words—but in my defense, I think that False Flowers will keep maturing in its own grooves for many, many listens to come, a sonic fermentation process. It’s easy for bands who are all over the place to sound…well, all over the place. Disjointed. Lacking cohesion. But CITY OF INDUSTRY flows with purpose between monstrously powerful modern hardcore to emotionally introspective to blastbeats to an acoustic piece that closes things like a damn WEAKERTHANS track before exploding into fifteen seconds of raging crust—and it feels natural. This is a record realized; there’s no “why the fuck are they doing that?” but there is plenty of “holy shit, they are doing that!” and it all works. They could have settled for just melting faces, and they would have melted faces. They could have chosen to make their listeners cry, and we would have cried. They could have written a record where all of the kids would have clenched their fists and shouted along to every word while they listened, and we would have clenched and shouted. Instead, they did all of that, and they did a lot more. So I’m just going to leave this here, to be continued.
I hate to judge a record by its jacket, but the antiseptic early-2000s radio rock vibe of this full length’s cover betrays the contents therein. There is nothing outright terrible about these twelve well-packaged tracks, but overall it lacks depth. The production is thin, for a start, with guitars that don’t so much crunch as gently chew and vocals that sound like they’re put through a digital telephone filter. The songwriting itself is power-pop-by-numbers—a genre that when done well can be transcendent, but so often it feels like an oversaturated market. It’s hard to say which facet of COLD CALLERS’ sound needs the biggest touch-up. If it were recorded nastier, maybe it could bang with the best of them. If the songwriting were really top-notch, maybe the squeaky-clean contemporary rock production wouldn’t matter. As it stands, this album just floats in purgatory—it’s not good enough for heaven or egregious enough for hell.
Legends CÁ”LERA started in 1979 and are one of the most iconic punk bands to come out of a post-dictatorial Brazil. They were one the first Brazilian punk bands to tour Europe and sold 85,000 copies of their second album Pela Paz Em Todo Mundo when it was first released through Ataque Frontal Records, making it the second best-selling independent punk record in Brazil, only being outdone by GAROTOS PODRES’ Mais Podres do que Nunca. This is class struggle turned into the sound of punk rock: the lyrics are sharp as a razor and work so well because they are sung in Portuguese, which makes them stand out with very notable themes for their time and their place like ecology, pacifism, and anti-militarism. This is a great introductory record if you want to get into the scene that spawned the greats like OLHO SECO, RATOS DE PORÁO, and MERCENARIAS. “Paz é algo pelo que se luta!“
“Escuela“ (at least via my shithouse translation methods) means “school,” so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but what I got was seventeen tracks of punishingly heavy grind-violence that achieves what should probably be the goal for people seeking to write a grind LP, making something that careens by with all the gusto of a 7″. The riffs in this remind me of more modern grind, admittedly, but the sheer aggression on display and abrupt time signature switches and that utterly relentless blasting make this a band I’d love to see fucking destroy a basement show. If the labels on the back of this LP didn’t make it a blind buy for you then take this recommendation to heart and blow out your eardrums.
FAMILY FODDER pretty much existed in their own separate orbit of the late ’70s/early ’80s UK underground—too genuinely strange and experimental to fit in as a straight new wave act, too much disposable-pop bounciness to be embraced by the era’s more serious/dogmatic post-punk factions (Rough Trade apparently rejected them twice). They operated as a CRASS-like quasi-hippie musical collective, but their mish-mash of spacious dub nods, avant-garde tape manipulations, warped psychedelia, and skewed outsider pop sounded more like a meeting of the minds between THIS HEAT and the FLYING LIZARDS (both of whom were FAMILY FODDER collaborators at various points), by way of HOMOSEXUALS/AMOS AND SARA-style anarchic UK DIY. “Best of” collections can often be a bit of a cop-out, but for a band this all-over-the-map, Savoir Faire serves a practical purpose, bringing edited highlights from their early years (1979 to 1982—they’re still actively releasing music!) into focus when the unabridged discography might seem like too many different reflections in one broken mirror. A sampling from this LP-length crash course: sing-song femme vocals and blasts of funhouse organ on the bizarro new wave smash hits “Savoir Faire” and “Debbie Harry,” coldwave minimalism on “Der Leiermann,” the surreal and RESIDENTS-esque electro-damaged “Playing Golf (With My Flesh Crawling),” coolly French-accented chants and Afrobeat-inspired rhythms in “Cerf Volant,” the piano-spiked, early ENO-descended art-glam of “Cold Wars.” It’s all worthy of a much deeper and more thorough dive, but this is a pretty spot-on entry point for the uninitiated.
A little background: bands like BREAD AND WATER and GARUDA (who shared two members) were paramount for budding suburban anarchist punk kids like myself in the Dallas area circa the late ’90s-early ’00s. Their live presence was distinctly formidable, and everyone agreed they were one of DFW’s finest acts, regardless of musical taste. My focus split between the singer Brian, headbanging from the waist up (upper-torso banging?) even while singing, the entire set, and the mesmerizing drum patterns. Every song had an awesome heavy melodic dual-guitar breakdown part that would coax a collective headbang from everyone in the room whether they realized it or not, like some kind of cult lulled into hypnosis. On to this recording: nine tracks, three or four that I recognize were in rotation of their live set back in the day, all newly recorded. The punchy and heavy production suits them perfectly! And would you believe that nearly twenty years later I’m listening to this and still anticipating certain drum fills and guitar riffs because I remember the songs so clearly, and fucking goddamn it’s giving me the same dopamine hit! And to top it all off they close with a rendition of BREAD AND WATER’s “Nakedness As Insult?” with Amie doing guest vocals, successfully bringing the fucking house down, and by “house down” I mean tears of nostalgic joy to my eyes. I’m going to call GARUDA hardcore with death metal elements, and I’m allowed to pretend to know a little about metal because I listen to IRON MAIDEN. Marvelous drum dynamics, without any of that double-kick nonsense, punctuate every transition with precision. Brian’s guttural isn’t actually too far off from his speaking voice, and he is apparently unconcerned about keeping time, which throws chaos into the overall tightness of the band. The guitars are borderline acrobatic but not too flashy, ultimately responsible for the hooks that get stuck in your head. These elements give GARUDA an authenticity that endures all these years later. If you are into no-pose fast and heavy shit, or caught them on tour in the US/Mexico back then, you should be more than pleased with this record. Additionally, someone should start a petition to put their 2002 CD-only Cold Wired Sentiment on a 12″ (I still wear the t-shirt, faded and sleeveless of course!).
The GEROS from Osaka have an uncanny knack for channeling the pure mischievous spirit of early punk from the ’70s and ’80s. This talent, embellished by the mastering of GEZA X, results in an orgy of raw and snappy punk on the band’s third 7″. This single oozes KBD juice and memories of the MAD, and both songs have an addictive quality that’ll keep you flipping the Japanese wax til it’s well-worn. Enhance your existence with this and the other two excellent GEROS records at your earliest convenience.
Mark Perry broke up ALTERNATIVE TV and formed the GOOD MISSIONARIES soon after out of a conscious desire to distance himself from concepts of “punk” that had grown more and more rigid and predictable over the course of just a few short years, and the experimental art-destruction approach of his new group exemplified the whole “rip it up and start again” ethos perhaps the most literally of any UK outfit from the post-punk era. Fire From Heaven was recorded live while the GOOD MISSIONARIES were touring with the POP GROUP in 1979 (and not long before Perry abandoned this project, too)—both bands shared a common interest in the liberatory sounds of dub, free jazz, and improv, but while the POP GROUP synthesized those influences into a fiery, serrated punk-funk, the GOOD MISSIONARIES’ tended toward abstract and fractured shambolic sprawls (including a number of completely exploded takes on ALTERNATIVE TV songs) that were almost completely outside the orbit of even the most “post”-adjoined punk: a defiant jumble of antagonistic shout-sung vocals, collapsed beats, and kitchen-sink interjections of everything from warbling organ to blasts of sax and clarinet to chimes and melodica. Mark Stewart guests on the mic for an abbreviated and completely skronked-out reimagining of the POP GROUP’s “Thief of Fire,” and it’s only further down the rabbit hole from there; true freak sounds that out-mess most Messthetics acts.
Fifteen micro-songs from a rando 1993 session by these Miami noise rock ultras, unreleased until now though HARRY PUSSY headz ought to know “Youth Problem”’ as the opening track on their debut album from that same year. The vibe on Superstar is not wildly dissimilar, which is to say it’s wild—total primordial beast blues guitar from Bill Orcutt, Adris Hoyos’ collapsing drums, red-faced fits passing for vox from both, and apparently a teenage accordionist, which, uh, if you say so. There’s no Mark Feehan on this one, yet it feels like HARRY PUSSY’s closest throwback to mid-’80s FL funnypunk (BROKEN TALENT, etc.) he and Orcutt crawled from. Essential for “Robert Ranks Reed (Alphabetically),” whose complete lyrics are the titles of six LOU REED albums and the grades awarded them by Robert Christgau. Vinyl looks to be long gone/at collector prices now, however.
I don’t know an awful lot about the New England region of the United States, but from what I can gather from this record, it’s fucked. Miserable and bleak. I say this with all the speculation a punk way down on the other side of the planet can; my interpretation of KIDNAPPED’s home state is made purely based on this record. What a fuckin’ ride it is. Furious, pummelling HC, more so in the vein of bands that tackled that slightly stranger side of 2010’s powerviolence (holy shit, remember WATER TORTURE and ROBOCOP?). I say slightly stranger, but there’s no element of pretension here, just a hell of a lot of anger and speed, followed by some truly crippling breakdowns. There’s a bleakness to this kind of HC that I really fucking like, it eschews poeticisms and goes straight for the throat. Despite appearing to be a compilation, this thing whips by like an LP, highly recommended. (PS: The DOOM riff cutting into that pinging snare on “Shit Tier Kinda Guy” is the chef’s kiss on this record.)
LUMPEN is the spirit of the South American punk dissidence. With an UK82 backbone to their sound, product of much time spent listening to CHAOS UK or CRIMINAL JUSTICE, they create a similar approach to what fellow countrymen PRIMER REGIMEN do: a pure anthemic, unrestful Latin punk sound. Three Colombians and a Canadian relocated to Barcelona, with help from Lexton from UNA BESTIA INCONTROLABLE, LUMPEN managed to impress with this great debut, five tracks of pure “desesperación” of growing up in a violent corrupt country. Just look at the amazing cover by bass player Mateo Correal and you will get a taste of what is inside. “Tribus a la calle.”
I do not know if the band name M:40 is in reference to a weapon or what, but M:40 of Sweden is weaponized with dooming folksy acoustic landscapes that remind me of ACURSED, GUTS PIE EARSHOT, and some tinges of blackened metal. My favorite thing about Arvsynd is the way all the musical levels are blended together. There is not much breathing room here, but it is not overwhelmingly aggressive either. It’s like a dense Scandinavian fog of heavy turmoil. This is the kind of hardcore that can usually get exhausting to me, but M:40 breaks it up with casual D-beat such as UNCURBED, sinister metal riffs such as NIHILIST, and fuzzed-out duo vocals. Favorite track: “Viskningar I Mörkret.” Melodic crustcore with finesse.
Total metalpunk maniacs from Japan bring on their GISM herritage and write a modern piece of metallic hardcore, the Japanese way. After their debut Metal Punk Ironfist, these terrorists stepped up their game with Blood For Freedom for more incendiary riffage that just shows that they wear their metal and punk influences right on their sleeves. Fans of fellow countrymen PARASITE will be more than happy to bump this record on their next binge-drinking night out. And what an amazing band lineup: Infernal Pyromaniac, Goblin Acid Strike, Branded Rebel, Lusty Pervert, and Hellbrain Venomizer. You can’t go wrong with a lineup like that!
Opening with an impassioned rush of melodic Scandinavian punk riffs, MOTORSAV delivers a familiar sound with a sprinkle of synth lead on top to spice things up. The record progresses into darkwave territory that maintains a driving punk tempo while taking on a dreamy, ethereal tone, and then explodes back into blasting hardcore. All the songs are good, but the mood is a little all over the place. The melodic tracks have surprising twists and turns, with super-tight performance and dreaminess in the production quality. The synth adds depth, and makes the sound stand out within this genre. Definitely recommended for fans of dark, melodic punk like GORILLA ANGREB, MASSHYSTERI, or Portland’s the OBSERVERS.
“It’s not disappointing” may not sound like a ringing endorsement, but in an era where many aging, or aged, rockers are attempting to get the band back together without understanding that their musical sensibilities and energy have changed dramatically, Ken Chambers doesn’t seem to have changed at all. While 2019’s comeback record Wires sounded very much like Brave Noise, this one is a little more poppy, very much in the Fall/Take This Ride realm. In fact, it’s so similar that you might wonder what the point is, like why did AC/DC put out so many records? (Answer: because people kept buying them.) If none of this makes sense to you, MOVING TARGETS, along with folks like DOUGHBOYS, BIG DRILL CAR, and PEGBOY, were one of direct ancestors of the melodic pop punk that gained widespread fame in the mid-1990s. It’s melodic and catchy but still driving and probably closer to ’80s hardcore than it is to the BUZZCOCKS. Should you start your MOVING TARGETS journey here? Probably not. But if you can’t get enough, have at it.
Burning Spirits hardcore is a movement of top-notch Japanese bands that play an energetic and uplifting form of heavy metal and punk hardcore hybrid. Give Notice of Nightmare, originally released 1990 on the legendary Selfish Records (SYSTEMATIC DEATH and LIP CREAM), is Burning Spirits hardcore at its finest, with an incessant tempo, NWOBHM-like leads, amazing songwriting, and a self-empowering attitude. NIGHTMARE is right there at the top of the game with BASTARD or DEATH SIDE and is still going strong to this day, being one of the few classic Japanese bands that did not break up along with GAUZE and WARHEAD. The album comes with the original artwork, a 350 gram cover, and has English translations for the Japanese lyrics. If looking for a fix of Japan you will definitely give notice of NIGHTMARE.
Metallic hardcore that uses a lot of technical guitar work, for lack of a better term. The first song starts out with some kind of guitar thing that sounds a lot like a drill. That shit is annoying and almost kinda ruins this from the jump. Luckily it’s not super prevalent in the rest of the songs. There’s nothing groundbreaking here, just your standard fare for this type of band. The bad? Aside from the weird guitar thing on the first song, the last song has one of those parts where there’s a sing-song-y dude that was all the rage like fifteen or so years ago. To me, that ruins a perfectly good hardcore band more often than not. The good? The vocals. While they may be pissed-sounding, the singer isn’t trying to sound to cookie-cutter metal/hardcore tough. Solid outing here, enough to have me interested in hearing more.
