MONOLITH // DEAD SYSTEM

 

Raw blasting grind/crust from Austria's MONOLITH. I hope you're ready. 
Raw blasting crust/grind from Indonesia's DEAD SYSTEM. I hope you're ready.

You're going to want to hydrate before listening.

MONOLITH // DEAD SYSTEM

OSCAR PETERSON

 

I will never pretend to be knowledgable in this realm, but I know what I like and I honor my connections to sounds. This is me with Barbara and Morris in the Lovelight bakery at 3am - Barb taking care of business while Morris was still flying from the gig he had played that night, trying to help but distracting me and frustrating her in the process. He was so consumed, obsessed...he was so into it, and he wanted to share his joy. I feel that, and that feeling transcends genre. This 1964 recording is something special - shit is simply beautiful. Morris knew that (and Barbara understood and let him hold court and hold space in that bakery), and I remember. I'm grateful and I remember. 

THE TRIO: LIVE FROM CHICAGO

UNDERGROUND FRON SPILS

Another great collection of lesser known Latvian punk from the early 1990s, picking up right where Naïve Years left off. Thirty tracks from ten different bands including SEPSIS, 33-Х ЛЕТНИЙ ПОДОНОК, ORGASM FAKERS (my personal favorites on the tape), ЭВОЛЮЦИЯ КАКТУСОВ, TERMOPSIS KAPITANA GRANTA among others. A solid hour of new (to me) punk is always a treat, and it's even more delicious when it's this tasty. Easy to imagine most (or all?) of these bands sharing bills with my hoard, and even easier to image ТОРЕЦ ТОТАЛИТАРРИЗМА absolutely laying waste to a drunken warehouse crowd in some desolate not-yet-rehabilitated corner of San Francisco thirty years ago with an indescribably brilliant blurrcore track called "Я Приду Поздно, Пьяный И Не Один" - what I would give for a time (and space) machine. 

UNDERGROUND FROM SPILS 2

PAPER GANGSTER

 

I've probably told the tale before, but in 1996 FUCKFACE were quasi-stranded with HICKEY at the FAT DAY house in Somerville, Massachusetts for the better part of a week with no shows. We were well taken care of and the show at the end of that week was one for the ages (Matt was green, enough said), but I made a mix tape in their living room...and that's the connection here. We were light years removed from the tough hardcore scene (see also our show with UNDERTOW, UNBROKEN and JASTA 14 in New Haven on the 1994 tour, and the handful of shows we did with BURST OF SILENCE....lest I digress). These dudes were in New England, and 'that kind' of hardcore was everywhere. And the Firestorm EP was in their living room, and that record made it onto the mix tape and that was really the first time I had spent any time with this shit. 1996 - wild, right? 
Anyway, PAPER TIGER are from Depok, not far from Jakarta, and this 2004 recording takes me back to that living room except that Season Of Destruct is undeniably more interesting and innovative.
This isn't 'my kind' of hardcore (whatever that means), but try to tell me that "New Empire" doesn't resonate and I'll tell you you're wrong. Then we can talk about "Behind The System" and "Hope" and "Civil War" and then I'm going to start to wonder if straight edge groove metal is my new favorite genre because....well, because of PAPER TIGER.

SEASON OF DESTRUCT

UNIT X

 

You tell me you know a band called UNIT X and I'm gonna tell you that I think I know what they sound like. Well....that's what I thought when I picked up this tape. And I wasn't wrong. We're talking ten minutes of smart Y2K fastcore and classic SXE 'core and a little bit of that less-posi energy to keep listeners honest (think LACK OF INTEREST sharing a bill with LIFES HALT). The shit hits the spot.

WAR ON SELF, WAR ON EVERYTHING

DAVID RUSSELL

 

Shit sounds like a compilation made by a person on all of the drugs. This person grabbed bits from the Poltergeist soundtrack and used their phone to record some noise band testing out their gear before a show, then looped some squelches and manipulated them before dragging their $20 thrift store keyboard down into the basement, documenting the sounds as it bounced down the stairs. They broke some things (and recorded it). They walked past a stranger's window and heard a baby crying (and recorded it). They put it all together and made everything sound so...fucked...up. A noise recording that sounds like a sound collage - a noise recording that defies description and never even suggests what might be coming next. Eighteen minutes of complete (controlled) cacophony awaits. 

SYNTHESIZER IS A DEAD SCENE

SLAKTATTACK

 

Textbook kång from Göteborg; d-takt mania of the highest order. You've got the breather tracks where they ease off ever so slightly, then you've got blast after blast of full throttle assault. I think the 2009 recordings (from the BIO-CRISIS and ANTIPROTOKOL splits) embodies the subgenre perfectly but SLAKTATTACK clearly don't stop there. Forty-one tracks all in, compiling the aforementioned splits, another with AKTIV DÖDSHJÄLP, tracks from DOOM and DISCLOSE tribute comps and two digital-only releases. If you're thinking MEANWHILE, DISMACHINE, TOTALITÄR then you're thinking correctly - you know what to do. 

DISCOGRAPHY 2006-2013