POWER OF IDEA

 

How the fukk does this band still get overlooked?! Yellow Thrash is a brilliant piece of grinding Japanese thrash, and there's no logical reason why the band is not held in the highest regard....but you can still find the records in bargain bins. Heavy speed/thrash metal influence, which truly sets their brand of Japanese hardcore in a league if its own....this was the first full length, and to really appreciate "Fashionable White Rice" into "Brownrice" is to know that POWER OF IDEA were more than just a band with a bottomless barrel of riffs - these punks fucking meant it.

YELLOW THRASH

ASSAULT

 

Fuck I wish people still released tapes like this (hell, I wish I released them myself). Seminal '80s SLO hardcore band ASSAULT only dropped one vinyl release, so most of their legacy is left to the die hards...like the lucky Fresno punk who snagged this demo along with a healthy clutch of bangers in a San Luis Obispo antique mall a few weeks back. As the title suggests, this performance was broadcast on KCPR almost 40 years ago, and features the band ripping through the title track from that 1990 EP along with "Vivisection," "Never Ending Greed," "Jesus Died For Our Sins" and a grip of other tracks that will remind you that there is always more hardcore that you don't know that you need. You also get a thirteen minute interview segment, a few WIMPY DICKS tracks and picking some cuts off of Welcome To 1984 and the station closing their Locals Only show and moving into an episode of Maximum Rocknroll Radio - only the first block is here, but closing out this hour long adventure with. MANIFEST DESTINY, FLOWER LEPERDS, COMPLETE DISORDER, DON'T NO and a cut from the first NOFX demo....? Well, I figure that's a pretty solid way to end your week, no? Fuck....I wish people still released tapes like this. 

LIVE ON KCPR • 06 APRIL 1985

DICK CONTINO

 

Posted without comment, because he is The Legend. 

If you didn't know before, then you know now.

"THE LEGEND"

SPECTRES

 

Hard to believe that SPECTRES have been in the game for almost twenty years now (check last year's stellar Presence full length), just as it's hard to believe that when they first popped onto the collective punk radar it was still novel to hear punks making new wave and/or goth sounds. While that progression is almost a given in these 2020s, Vancouver's SPECTRES have spent the in-between times forging their own path towards something that is instantly familiar. Nostalgia is a perfect dark wave recording - period, You don't need the DIY scene context or the members-of or anything else, just know that these sounds stand completely on their own. If you're from my "era" and came up the way I did, then you're going to hear things that make you feel at home (THE FIXX, THE CALL, THE ALARM), but these punks make all of it theirs and I'm kinda beside myself while I listen to "Along The Waterfront" on a tape that came in a box of crust and grindcore tapes from Indonesia. Do yourself a favor....savor this one. Please. It's special. 

NOSTALGIA

STAND CLEAR

 

There was a hot minute in the early 2000s when it felt like there were three kinds of hardcore - there was retro-PosiCore, Y2K fastcore and crust (an all-emcompassing and criminally non-descriptive descriptor). Of course there was power violence too, and shitpunk and shit...but the whole point of my stupid declaration is that STAND CLEAR rehashed the first two of those first three subgenres as well as any band I can think of. Breakneck SXE 'core with perfect breakdowns - the shit makes me feel like I felt when I was listening to OUTLAST on 24th Street back in 1999. Scottzy was making fun of me (which was fair) and still all I wanted was more of that lighting fast finger pointing shit with those breakdowns, you know? That's what Starting Point feels like, and if you know me (or read these posts) then you know that's a very (very) high bar. They make an SSD song sound better than SSD did, and they just fukkn rip - and STAND CLEAR are still doing the damn thing in 2025. 

STARTING POINT

VOIMATON

 

Maybe I should have dropped this on the live blog, even though most of y'all skip that one completely (your loss). Because it's live, I should...but because I had never heard (or heard of) VOIMATON before I snagged a party pack of dead stop metal tapes a few months ago and I suspect most of you haven't heard (or heard of) them either I dropped it right here. In your lap. So you can let the downtuned death/doom cover and smother you. You're welcome. 

LIVEWIRE LOUNGE 2019

BOTTLED VIOLENT

 

Talk about a fukkn time warp - Bandung's BOTTLED VIOLENT perfectly manifest TOTAL FURY's turn of the century manifestations of early '80s DC hardcore. They make it completely seamless, neither aping one nor copying the other but flying both flags proudly and alongside their own. Because this hardcore belongs to all of us, and BOTTLED VIOLENT have made it theirs. Get ready for five minutes of magic.

BOTTLED VIOLENT