FUN CONTROL

 

I saw FUN CONTROL last weekend in a batting cage in San Francisco and they opened with the first song on this tape....here are the thoughts that I had watching this song live, which correspond perfectly to the thoughts I had listening to the tape for the first time:

HICKEY

CAPITALIST CASUALTIES
Y2K Thrash 

D-CLONE

UNA BESTIA INCONTROLABLE...and then I'm hearing '90s Merge Records shit start the second song before more erratic thrashcore wastes my sorry ass. More songs bring more brilliance and more confusion, because the current crop of San Francisco hardcore bands give no fukkn shits (and that's before we address the "Emptiness" issue - when you listen you'll understand). I haven't even scratched the surface.

TEST RUN

GRASP OF DYNAMITE

 

This is the embodiment of '00s stadium crust never realized......except that it was realized. TRAGEDY and and THE TOTAL END and ZEROID and FALL OF EFRAFA and....GRASP OF DYNAMITE but a decade later. They took the sounds and the energy and made it something else entirely. Something you already know but something you've never felt before...not like this. 

THE ABYSS

FULL MEAT JACKET

 

There's another (relatively well known) release titled My War but goddamn that shit if that shit doesn't escape me because it doesn't sound nearly as fucked up as this shit. FULL MEAT JACKET come off like a real and desperate internal struggle manifested as improvisational noise punk. If mental anguish had a sound, it would be FULL MEAT JACKET. If emotional frustration was a band, it might be FULL MEAT JACKET. If punk lost all pretense....it might sound like My War in 2004 (say it out loud to get the rhyme). 

MY WAR

The label boss says it better than I can, naturally. 

SOLVENT

 

Bombastic, raw Covid-era DBeat from Seattle. Six minutes of insistent distortion drenched urgency punctuated by a 55 second manipulated missive that sounds like you're standing at apocalypse beach watching studded jackets wash up onto the shore. That's how I want the world to end. 

SOLVENT

KASHAIOF

 

Deliberate and cerebral industrial tinged dark electronic mania. Their sound seems to fill unknown voids; existing in darkness and shadows - existing, as in "A Sofa," awkwardly and with no real definition of (or?) purpose. But the duo exists, and 2020's Home is a master class in presence. This is the experimental goth I needed when I was a teenager...better late than never. 

HOME

DÉFAITE

 

If someone wants to get into a deeper discussion about subgenres and why I like what and when I prefer one thing or another and which sounds push certain buttons in certain ways...? Well, obviously if you've been here before then you know I can do that. To a fukkn fault. But sometimes you're talking to a civilian and you just want to say you listen to punk music but then they want to start with a story about how they saw TOOL or took their kid to see SUM 41 and they try to create a false equivalence and there's no hierarchy or judgement but it's just....different. It's not the same and they aren't going to understand (and that's okay). And sometimes in those moments if someone seems receptive, I think about playing them a punk music to show them what I mean when I listen to punk music - the next time that happens I'm going to play DÉFAITE. The shit just captures so damn many things that make punk perfect - CRIMINAL DAMAGE, SOVIETTES, LES THUGS, NEON PISS, GENERACIÓN SUICIDA....you know, punk music. I like punk music. 

DÉFAITE

SUMMER JAM LOVE CLASSICS

 

Summer is right around the corner - shit, looks like the Central Valley is going to kiss 100 degrees this weekend - and that means it's time to dust off some summer love jams. Don't worry though, we've got you covered. I don't know what subsequent volumes of Summer Jam Love Classics had to offer, but it's entirely possible that the creator/s simply looked at this first volume and decided it would be pointless to try to top perfection. Kinda like SLAYER should have done after Reign In Blood - even South Of Heaven was a lateral move at best, but I digress. A solid hour of slow soul grooves, late '70s to early '80s R&B...Summer Jam Love Classics, just like the title says. ENCHANTMENT, WHISPERS, SKYY, DENISE WILLIAMS, ATLANTIC STARR all anchored by PEABO BRYSON's excruciatingly sexy "I'm So Into You." Yeah, summer will be here before you know it. Get ready to sweat. 

SUMMER JAM LOVE CLASSICS Vol.1