VIOLENCE OF CRUSDAE

 

A message to virtually every North American and European punk: You will never know the true depth and reach of so-called Third World Hardcore. If you're looking, then you will find another new (to you) band every time you take a breath....and if you want more, then every one of those new (to you) bands will lead you down a new (to you) path where you will open more doors and find even more new (to you) bands and scenes. But the parentheticals are important here - because these bands and scene exist outside of the first world DIY structure even though the influences are often apparant (and sometimes blatant). Enter VIOLENCE OF CRUSADE from Kediri, some ten hours roughly east of Jakarta. They left us with a small handful of deadly metallic hardcore releases form the mid-2010s and 2014's Dead might be my favorite. Dark and intense hardcore that leans on technical melodies and uses stadium crust tendencies without ever falling into the subgenre's trappings. "Dead//Suicide" into the dreadfully intense "Balada Rimba Malapetaka" (roughly translated: "Ballad Of The Jungle Disaster" so draw your own conclusions and sit with that shit) will make your hair stand on end but the whole damn thing is incredible and it just makes me think: "Shit - there's more where this came from?!?" And yes, there's always more. 

DEAD

CHRISTIAN COSMOS

 

Deliberately minimal dark ambient techno from a world that I will never be able to penetrate. I will forever exist as an observer....and that is okay. 

THE SHARP LINES THAT DELINEATE HIS ROBES

ADAM VOID & CHRIS FISHER

 

I've developed several virtual connections through Terminal Escape - people and artists I've never actually met (and likely will never meet) but whom I have followed and communicated with over the course of several years. There's one person who just sends me tapes sometimes - no note, no nothing, just their music - and I return the same. Tapes from the label, Wright Copy volumes, the occasional mix tape. We've been trading sounds for a decade and never exchanged a single word. But...we're connected. Enter outsider Appalachian outsider folk visionary ADAM VOID joined here by Unread Records empresario CHRIS FISHER. The listen becomes a thing in and of itself here; it's not that you listen, it's that you are when you're listening. Force Majeure / Forced Manure is the full experience; never a hint of the next move, just like I never know what 's inside when I open the envelope. I love this shit, and I am grateful.

FORCE MAJEURE // FORCED MANURE

BLINDED HUMANITY

 

Blazing mid-00s Lion City street crust with just enough earnest energy to keep them honest. The way "Sensou Soochi" stomps, the way "Vanished" flies completely off the handle after the intro - they're a product of their influences and it rules. '90s US crust and classic Japanese hardcore all doing battle with ramshackle DBeat, using distorted guitars as weapons. 

ENDLESS MASSACRE

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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