THE GROSS // THE END

 

Rewind two decades from yesterday's CRIME 84 post and you'll find turn of the century Indonesian street punks blazing their own trails. This was still the relatively early days for punk after dictatorship, and the scenes were all exploding - so much so that I don't think I will ever reach the bottom of the well as long as I keep searching. THE GROSS and THE END are both strongly influenced by early UK punk and Oi!, but you'll hear similarities to late '80s Eastern Bloc punk in tracks like "Nonton Bola" from THE END, THE GROSS lean more towards gruff melodic Oi! - every song is a hook and every hook is an earworm and in a different world a song like "Life Style Skinhead" would have made it on the Ringi-Ranga mix tape. 

DEDICATED

CRIME 84

 

Sharp and earnest UK82 influenced chaos punk from Indonesia - there's something about CRIME 84 that keeps grabbing me even though they check all of the boxes just a little too well if you know what I mean. "State Power" is the repeat jammer, but the whole demo is a keeper (and then some).

KIDNAPPED

BAD HIPPY

 

You ever listen to something and feel like it's probably best if you never meet the humans responsible for it? That's BAD HIPPY. Because in the trailer park you might have that one kid who fucks with HATEBREED and that other kid who drinks too much and wants to sound like EYEHATEGOD and those are the only people the dude with the DYSTOPIA back patch can find to make music...well there's the guy who just hangs out on his porch doing whippets all day - no one really knows what kind of music that dude listens to but he has a drum kit so fuck it. Combine that energy and you have....well, you certainly have something. This shit is terrifying, raw DIY punk with all kinds of outsider energy culminating with the exhausting 10+ minute "Die Dogfucker," a wholly unrealized epic that could have changed the world. If this were a different world. 

ENTHRONED

GRAVENITES / CIPOLLINA BAND

 

I picked this up on a whim because......well just look at the shit. You're curious, right? I made the right choice. Hard swinging Bay Area blues rock from ex-HOLDING COMPANY dudes and if you know where I'm coming from here then you're going to be well pleased. Recorded live in 1985, fifteen years after Janis Joplin died - fifteen years that seemed like a lifetime when I was less old. But damn, these dudes had played on legendary records that I read about in Rolling Stone and were already back to shredding the Chi Chi Club in SF in those fifteen years and it probably seemed like just a blip on their radar. The closer "Party" is the jam here, but every song is a literal party. For everyone? Nah. For me? Definitely. And that is the point. 

THUNDER & LIGHTNING

HOSTILE ARCHITECTURE

 

Gloriously dark instrumental broodsCome for the cat on the cover, stay for the gloriously dark driving instrumental broods. Monotony and repetition with indie hooks - like SPECTRUM reinterpreting INTERPOL and a touch of RAKTA energy. There are only four songs here...but it will make a lasting impression. 

SLEEP JOURNALS

MARTYRDÖD

 

It was a Pointless Fest, and honestly it might have been my first one. Maybe. Ken had mentioned MARTYRDÖD; he said they were like Swedish DBeat with tinges of black metal - this was when a "tinge of black metal" was a thing rarely mentioned in conversations about punk and hardcore bands.  I bought their first record at that Pointless Fest and I was fukkn floored when I got home and dropped the needle. It was pieces of things that I knew but it was something completely different. Soon there was In Extremis on Havoc and then after Ken helped with Sekt and NO STATIK toured the west coast with them in 2011 they started working with Southern Lord and it seemed like they were being presented to a world who didn't quite understand them. Maybe the world understands them now....but I cannot imagine that world appreciates MARTYRDÖD. This is all of the things that should be in all subgenres - listen to "Tentakler" and tell me different. Elddop was released in 2014 - there are (at least) two more after this one, and they are also perfect. Thursday is MARTYRDÖD appreciation day. 

ELDDOP

The fact that this tape is kinda fukkd makes Elddop spound even more sinister. 

LIMITED OPTIONS

 

A few weeks ago I was eating a burrito in the Mission and this nice dude casually slid a few tapes across the tabla as we chatted between scoops of salsa verde. He had a little tale to tell about each of them, but honestly I don't remember what he said about LIMITED OPTIONS. And once I jammed this think I didn't need to hear what anyone else said about the band because I was obsessing on what I was feeling while listening to themfor the first time. Fortunately, subsequent listens only increased my connection to the sounds so much that I don't even think about burritos when I listen.....and I think about burritos a lot. This is perfectly executed Y2K fast/thrash/hardcore that sounds not at all like a rehash of anything. The 1-2 punch of "Still Fighting" into "Tired" is one of the most powerful things I've blasted in 2026, this tape is a master clinic.

LIMITED OPTIONS