NO COMPLY // LOS CRUSTÁCEOS

 

On one side you've got ten minutes of furious blastcore/PV/grind from Chile's LOS CRUSTÁCEOS with a. blatant and heavy West Bay Doomryderz influence. And it would be simple enough to tell you that the other side rips and recommend a DL+listen....but NO COMPLY is on the flip. You know NO COMPLY, right? Fuck me (and fuck you) if you don't, but if you don't....please do. NO COMPLY are (were) a special thing - Florida's SUPPRESSION perhaps. Like...if you know and you were there then there's no replacement, even though an outsider might raise an eyebrow. NO COMPLY's contribution to the second wave of DIY/PV is impossible to understate, and this 1999 live recording captures them in a rare, raw moment of ferocity. It would be very hard to find a band more dedicated to the craft than NO COMPLY, and when Justin passed in 2023 we lost a real one. Listen with volume and listen with intent, my friends. 

NO COMPLY // LOS CRUSTÁCEOS

MERKED

 

Fifteen minutes of anti-capitalist mince/grind from Oakland. You can say that there's nothing special here, and I'll respond by saying that you're wrong. It's fierce and ugly....there are now sounds for now times. And if you don't thing "Soothing Sounds Of Slaughtered Rapists" is special, then I suggest you visit a different and/or worse/r blog. Choice cut: "Remove The Burden." Mandatory listening: Start to finish.  

MURK MOB

PAIN IN MY HEART

 

I don't know how often I need to remind you how much impact the right mixtape can have in the right moment. There's an art to curating a cassette the right way - it can't just be bangers and it can't just be unknown gems (even if the gems are all diamonds), it's better if there's a through-line but if you deviate from the mission it can deaden the impact. A perfect mix is indefinable, but when they come to you.....you know it because you feel it, and you cherish them. Bailey makes them. Jensen makes them....and apparently Pinhole Collapse makes them. Pain In My Heart is the fifth in a twelve tape series, and is among the most gut-wrenching and excruciating listens that I have endured. Ever. You want to talk about variations on a theme? You want to talk about heartache in song? You want to talk about fucking pain? REUBEN BELL and BILL BRANDON and JOE WILSON and MARION BLACK and JOHNNY THUNDER and CALA THOMAS are gonna tell you about pain, motherfucker. The only hope on this tape is the hope that hopefully you'll be able to make it through the pain. The pain will never go away, but maybe you'll make it. I told you a few months ago that Howlin' At The Moon was perfect....and Im here to tell you today that this next volume hits ever harder. Absolutely devastating. Listen to DIANE LEWIS' "Please Let Me Help You" and cry. Cry, motherfucker. 

PAIN IN MY HEART

ATAUDES

 

I don't even know (or remember) how this one came to me, but I am glad it's with me now. Black infused blasting death metal from Argentina presented with a powerfully determined focus, ATAUDES will lay waste to your earholes and calmly remove all hope from your heart. Shit sounds that bleak because shit is actually that bleak, and ATAUDES are the soundtrack to that reality. It's dark and determined, listen to "Nos Merecemos La Extincion" if you have any doubts. And when you listen to "Nos Merecemos La Extincion" you will surely have additional doubts. 

MERECEMOS LE EXTINCIÓN

EATING

 

I do not know how to (best) describe EATING, because EATING defies description. Sure, it's avant-improvisational jazz/punk......if you want. But it's something else even though it's also not. All of the sounds are here, punks - the foundation of everything that you do is here in one form and/or another. So listen and learn and fucking create everything that you are compelled to create, because that is exactly what makes the Music For People punks very very special punks. 

EATING

SKATEBOARD & THE PUNKS

 

I remember a conversation a lifetime ago about the then-changing dynamics (and admittedly, economics) of DIY punk record production, distribution and consumption. The internet changed shit (...duh) and there were so many more options - options in general but specifically options without the realm/s of things classified as DIY punk. Gone were the days when a mediocre band could self release a mediocre EP and go on tour and hit a few distros and move 1000 copies (or more) with relative ease while the "bigger" bands could reliably crank through five times that number. We were (at the time of this conversation) in a place where even the flavor-of-the month bands would struggle to sell more than a few hundred records and hope that their online streams and bandcamp DLs might result in enough visibility for their live shows to be well attended. Maybe they'd sell some shirts, you know? And it's not about money - it's about survival. It's all connected. Anyway, as a contribution to this conversation, my buddy mentioned a band from Buffalo called BROWN SUGAR who dropped a stellar full length back in 2011 and flew through 500+ physical copies like it was 1994 when they hit the road. See, the internet didn't care....but the punks did. Tour. Put it in their faces. Play shitty shows where none of the people are cool - they'll recognize that you aren't cool either and you will all realize that you're on the same team. Fuck selling records, it's about getting to the next place to connect with new freaks - or connect with the one freak in that next place, you know? 
Why do I say these things? Because the dude who played guitar for BROWN SUGAR later played in a band called SKATEBOARD and also in a band called THE PUNKS. Each band released a demo in the 2010s and some genius packaged them on one destined-to-be-overlooked cassette in the 2020s. But let us not get bogged down in the connection to a conversation about punk economics, instead lets talk about how fukkn much undiscovered DIY punk lights a fire under our collective ass. The five tracks from THE PUNKS are enough to make your old-ass self want to go start a new band (tonight) and the twenty punk minutes on the SKATEBOARD side...well, sometimes the shit is life affirming even if there isn't a story attached to it. This time though, there is. Kinda. 

SKATEBOARD & THE PUNKS

FLEXITD

 

FLEXITD blew the fukkn windows out of my apartment and wrecked my earholes. It's like a crasher crust LP played at 45rpm....but faster. The bass that opens "Stabilized Destruction." The midtempo part near the end of "Only Death" (that's only midtempo because everything else is so fukkn fast). The piercing distortion that opens "Killing Nation" and gives way to the face melting cacophony. The complete lack of low end anywhere in the mix creates a void that the vocals fill with crushing efficacy. Everything. I'm telling you.....this is an eleven minute masterclass. Readers remotely interested in noise punk, bombastic DBeat, FRAMTID-worship and/or anything close to any of those things...you've found it. It is FLEXITD.

MASSIVE SUFFERING OF THE EMPTY WORLD VERSES