SICK BURN

 

From a 2010 Texas collection released in Poland to a 2019 California collection released in Japan, let's get ready to fukkn GO! with Sacramento's SICK BURN. They came from the ashes of RAD (really they just switched a guitarist and kept thrashing) and the Crew For Life kids recognized the greatness immediately, dumping SICK BURN on an unsuspecting Japanese audience a few years back. Their ability to be deadly serious about thrashing and content while clearly having a blast (while blasting) is exactly what made RAD so good, and SICK BURN carried the mindset into the new decade. I love this shit.

A GRAND EXCLAMATION OF GO!-ING

DESKONOCIDOS

 

You remember when DESKONOCIDOS dropped, right? The South Valley punks had converged on Austin and the Dallas punks had made the predictable generational migration and they all kicked the Austin punks in the ass and holy fuck did the rest of us get some really good bands out of the arrangement. The DESKONOCIDOS full length is a true modern classic to my ears, but it had been a (long) while since I had pumped the early recordings compiled on this 2010 cassette. Nothing sounded like it then, even while you can hear the bands they were listening to in their own sound/s. And does it hold up....? Fifteen years after these songs appeared, I'm sitting in a sun bathed third floor apartment and I am all in. Again. So yeah...it hold up, amd I'm grateful.

SINGLES COLLECTION

PEASANT YERMO

 

I was ripping There Be A Breeze Though Da Wind Has Gone in the background last week while I was doing some other things around the apartment. Maybe I was making dinner? Might have been finishing up some work? Not sure, but I was doing some other things that didn't (directly) involve listening to PEASANT YERMO. At some point I noted that the tape was pretty cool and that I should pay closer attention when I got around to editing the tracks and preparing them for (your) consumption. And then I found myself on the couch just...listening. Carefully listening. Might have been sitting next to the cat (or she next to me, because that's the dynamic here at TEHQ3) but really what I was doing was listening. Deep Listening. As the cover (or the title?) suggests a sonic journey into into a completely different time and mental space, and "Nathan's Lamento" spends a quarter hour making sure you get there safely by drawing you a path with glitches in the frame. When you listen deeply, those glitches will draw that space and you're welcome to spend the next quarter hour inside PEASANT YERMO's world instead of living as an observer. Take a recording of a tent revival made from the dark side of the woods, press it onto a scratched slate 78 and run it through Sonic Boom's quiet addled imagination. Nothing sounds like it. I think PEASANT YERMO is associated with a punk band in some kind of way, but I truly hope that this is not (or does not become) a side project of any kind - this is Level Five Genius Sound. The power of repetition and patience manifested in the form of a thirty minute cassette. I eventually got up off of the couch (when the cat said it was time), but I was never the same. 

THERE BE A BREEZE THOUGH DA WIND HAS GONE

WARHEAD

 

One look at the cover and I thought I knew what I was getting - I judged the book (so to speak). From the outside This Is A Propaganda screams tough, negative, metallic hardcore and...well, that's exactly what you get. The midpaced two riff monotony of "We Don't Like You" sets the tone you can feel that the second track is where they are going to unleash. And then they unleash. Seeing WARHEAD in 2001 must have been absolutely terrifying - they sound like a bulldozer churning dead earth. Dark fucking hardcore with dual vocals and some of the fiercest two chord riffs I've ever heard - early GEHENNA energy fronted by a deadly high/low vocal assault. It's worth repeated listens to deconstruct the assault, but doing so only exposes what you already know - WARHEAD are about the fukkn fight. 

THIS IS A PROPAGANDA

COMUNIONE

 

When the fine folks at Iron Lung Records exposed the world to Italy's COMUNIONE a couple of years ago, these seven songs were the soundtrack to my world for days upon end and I was surely not alone. Cold Euro-anarcho punk with a primitive early black metal presentation, these seven songs sounded positively (or negatively) deranged when I first heard them...and in this case familiarity breeds dementia. A lifetime later (read: last week) I pulled this self titled cassette from the shelf, popped it in the deck and waited for the feeling to fill me. The feeling is brilliance and knowledge, but neither is intentional - COMUNIONE is the sound of compulsion and provenance, the foundation of an as-yet-unknown but undeniably great thing. You might find comfort in the familiar aspects of the sound of COMUNIONE, but whether or not you find hope in the promise buried in those sounds is entirely up to you. 

COMUNIONE

WFMU

A glimpse into the East Orange, New Jersey airwaves on this day 32 years ago.
ENJOY.

WFMU - 30 NOVEMBER 1992

PROVOKE

 

I did this one already, but it was a few years ago. I'm doing it again today because PROVOKE were a band that absolutely crushed me when I saw them the first time, absolutely crushed me every time I saw them, and absolutely crush my every time I listen to them. This was the first thing, and while there were only a couple of things after this thing....all of the things will crush you. So yeah - maybe you already know them. If you do, then this is your reminder that you need to listen to them again. Now. And if you don't know them...? You're welcome. Also, this one has a different cover so I get to do it again because I make the rules around here.

SIX SONGS