EMACIATOR

Droning and harshly beautiful electronic noise. The title tracks builds steadily to an ugly climax, while "Defiance" whirrs uncomfortably over oscillating distortion. Defeat is more deliberate than this 2006 effort, which comes across as rather primitive and earnest. Awesome sounds.

TRIUMPH

MIDNITE BRAIN

Yet another new killer SF hardcore band - they are breeding like mosquitos lately, but I hope that they live a little longer. MIDNITE BRAIN play raw and noisy, and they play fast, three things I like in my music. I missed them last weekend, arrived at the show just after they wrapped up. But conveniently they are playing their second show tonight at the Lipo Lounge in Chinatown with CULTURE KIDS, OPT OUT and CRIMSON SCARLET. What a coincidence.

MIDNITE BRAIN

SCUM

More of the same - sometimes I wonder why I bother trying to come up with words for these Monday posts. You people come here for raw, noisy, blown out blasts of hardcore influenced by '80 bands from Scandinavia and Japan who were in turn usually influenced by '80s bands from England...well, OK mostly just the one band...and then distorted to oblivion. That's what SCUM do, and they are very fukkn good at it. This is why you visit, the guitars are piercing, the vocals are harsh and desperate, and the pace is relentless. Success.

NUCLEAR WINTER

FAITH ADDICTION

Hardcore. Four songs in two and a half minutes. Florida. Killer vocals. Really fast. Good breakdowns. Snare drum sounds like a hollow turd but it sill doesn't mean that this band isn't really good. Probably better than yours, in fact (nothing personal). No Reprieve used to sell these, but they are gone now (the label is still there, and still good, they just don't seem to have the tapes anymore). I bet you are glad that I shared it with you, since you might have to wait until some teenager grows up and gets married and sells all his/her tapes in a lot on the internet to get a copy for yourself.

FAITH ADDICTION

INANGER

Cassette version of the Reality Blind EP on Tribal War (please read the interview with Neil/Tribal War in the recent MRR, excellent stuff) and an excellent rehearsal recording. 15 tracks in all, driving political punk from Scotland...exactly what you need.

WITHIN THIS CORRUPTION

UG-IT

I wasn't initially sure if this was a compilation packaged for actual release, or if it was just a mix tape of bands that Dan Riffe played in or was friends with.  Dan's bands VAN GOGH'S EAR (will share their unreleased Clear Album soon - brilliantly subtle psychedelic noise) and ILLEGITIMATE SONS OF JACKIE O make appearances on this comp, along with BIG SKIN HEARTS and freaked out sounds from NOEL BOLTE. Dan set me straight via the internet, and it seems that UG-it was released by Ron King, who was in Dan's words, "a fucking genius." The HO tracks are the highlight, a complete assault of fuzzed out psych-punk guitar mania from BIG SKIN HEARTS frontman and the Dick Dog Records impresario responsible for this release, tasty jams for the freaked out hippie queer trapped inside each and every one of us.  The SONS tracks are characteristically excellent, and the PLOPS tunes are the epitome of the weirdness that was going on in our little neck of the woods at the time. Circa 1992/3 in my corner of Oklahoma, guitar noise and punk rock were on a collision course with frequently fantastic but often shitty results...Dan was an accidental mentor who made me several mix tapes while we worked together and played in a couple of bands, including the one with this compilation sandwiched in between the BRTUAL GARDENERS demo (that was our band, not sure why he put it on a mix tape for me) and X-MAS TREE, one of his SONS side projects. It was through him that I first heard WRETCHED, NOTA and a host of other forks in the road that got me pointed down the right path and I blasted the shit out of all of those tapes countless times. Hopefully they will all eventually stop by The Escape for a visit...and we'll start those visits with UG-it.

U-GIT COMP

GRUDGES

It has all of the appeal of low end heavy death metal, but the majority of this platter is delivered with a bare ferocity typically reserved for grinding DIY crust. "Marylin" is the slow paced exception, and provides more than enough gutteral punishment to satisfy even the most gluttonous of visitors while "Net Worth" lets '90s NYHC sneak into the mix with guilt ridden success. A new band with personnel from TERROR LEVEL RED and DEATH FIRST, this will grow hair on your chest.

GRUDGES

SENTENCIA

For whatever reason, the Spanish seem better than just about anyone else on the planet at making painfully amateur hardcore punk sound like the most intensely brilliant music on the planet. KANGRENA and MG-15 in the '80s, with bands like DESTRUCCION and today's visitors SENTENCIA carrying the fine tradition well into the new millennium. Über simplistic and rudimentary ramshackle hardcore built on the D-Beat model but delivered with a grade school charm and an urgency impossible to fake. The vocals are desperate and pained, while the guitar and bass struggle to keep up, even though they are playing the most simplistic three chord punk imaginable. Nine songs in ten minutes, but then you get to listen to them all over again, this is pure brilliance. Vida O Muerte was recorded in 2007 and is well worth your internet time, and your euros if you can track down a copy.

VIDA O MUERTE

63 EYES

Far removed from most of the fodder that worms its way onto Terminal Escape, this tape slowly wormed its way into my ears and I can't seem to shake it. Late '80s college rock from West Virginia, this falls somewhere in between MOVING TARGETS and VIOLENT FEMMES. If you want to get even further away from typical Escape posts, apparent 63 EYES frontman Todd Burge is still active and making music (he even worked with some dude that won a grammy), but I'm guessing that his current output won't be to most of your liking. This tape, however, is a perfect blend of not quite commercial guitar rock and Homestead/SST influenced post-punk/pre-alternative sounds - a poor quality and well worn cassette enhances the washed out 25 year old warble that somehow gives this music a legitimacy that it would not have if I managed to uncover a long forgotten self released CD. No artwork, no song titles, very little information...and I'll get to work tomorrow earning back the punk points I have just squandered.

63 EYES

After a pleasant email from Mr. Burge this afternoon, I request that you visit the up-to-date 63 EYES bandcamp here, or peep his current solo efforts here. The demo I unearthed was a poor reproduction of the first 63 EYES cassette release, which you can still get directly from the band. 

LIMBS BIN

A trying aural assault, LIMBS BIN blast through 24 tracks of purely digital hardcore in under a quarter hour. Chicago's BLOODY MINDED are the closest musical comparison, bursts of harsh electronic noise delivered in the style of (and with all of the fury of) primitive nihilistic powerviolence. A painful test to see how far you really want to push that Noise Not Music envelope. Courtesy of Tickled Meat, this tape compiles tracks recorded and released from 2008-2010, but you could probably figure that out from the cover, huh?

FAMILIAR COMBATANTS

BLISS THE POCKET OPERA

Listening in the future, these songs could have easily been from any number of second tier late '80s goth bands - vocals wailing like a banshee over morose indulgent music. There is an attempt to highlight the guitar in a couple of tracks, which helps them come off with more of an edge than they probably intended, but the star on 1988's Tribal Dance is "Paradise Island" with it's COCTEAU TWINS meets Jimmy Sommerville on quaaludes vocal delivery. Go ahead, we won't tell the punks.

TRIBAL DANCE

SICK FUCK

Super heavy, super pissed, super good. If the first two numbers don't beat you into submission, the title track will spend the next few minutes letting you contemplate your next assault - one that will commence five minutes and 13 seconds into "Storytellers" after some anxiety ridden buildups. Seriously personal hardcore that might have been born in the wrong decade, but it has fallen on the right ears. The band broke up in 2010, but if this is your legacy then you could do a lot worse.

STORYTELLERS

WE DON'T WANT YOUR FUCKING LAW! // WE DON'T WANT YOUR FUCKING WAR!

Terminal Escape turns 900 today. 900 cassettes lovingly converted into a soulless barrage of 00s and 01s just so you can enjoy the music on the tapes that fill the stairs, shelves, nooks and floors of my tiny flat and drive my wife batshit crazy. Seems appropriate to return to the UK punk that kicked my ass into starting this thing in the first place, and I happen to be sitting on a package mailed to me by a F.O.T.E. a while back containing two essential Mortarhate comps, 1983's We Don't Want Your Fucking War! and We Don't Want Your Fucking Law! released two years later. No introductions required, and yeah, I know the UPRIGHT CITIZENS song is missing...we can only work with the tools we are given, you know?

WE DON'T WANT YOUR FUCKING WAR!

STRESS

Last November when the CONQUEST FOR DEATH tour ended in Belém, Brasil, we had a few days to explore the city (the tourist books say it's a dump, punks in São Paulo told us not to bother, and of course our time there was fukkn great). On one of those days we cruised the open air markets that surrounded out hostel with a few local punks who hosted us, and came upon a record stall. Nothing interesting looking, but it was a nice day and the stall butted up to a park so it was a good place to hang out for a while...and then the dude pulled out the metal records. Fortunately Devon had already given up (he would be my only real competition in this department) so I got first crack, and pulled out a few sick looking Brasilian gems, including a double LP comp with a sinister title like Death Noise Assault Party or something like that. Well, the comp was full of really shitty pop punk (I can only imagine how sad the teenage death metal skulls on the cover must be having to spend their entire existence with third rate NOFX clones) and the metal records were all crap - I lose. But one of our hosts suggested I blast this STRESS album, claiming that not only were they the first Heavy Metal band from Brasil, but that they hailed from Belém, the town we were busy touristing the shit out of. The needle dropped, and I was sold. Pure, primal and primitive Heavy Metal with '70s prog undertones hiding beneath DEEP PURPLE meets MOTORHEAD riffs. The keyboards that kick in on "2031" are essential to the driving fury of the record, as much as the ALICE COOPER rip off "Oraculo Do Judas" makes me wish that my favorite right wing Arizonan spoke Portuguese. The price was a little steep, so I passed on this slab, but then the stall steward flipped this self titled debut and I reached into my pocket for what was likely the last of my cut of our meager earnings. I had no choice, STRESS is that good. Listen to "Stressencefalodrama" and tell me you would have done different. 

I came home and shared this gem with Aesop (I had to tape it and rip it - a little backwards, but it allows for inclusion on The Escape), who is kinda the reason I started sharing music here in the first place and who liked it as much as I thought he would, and he disseminated it on Cosmic Hearse a couple of weeks back, which seemed appropriate considering the make-up of our two blogs and their respective followers. Now, I share it with you. Apparently, this was the first speed metal record from Brasil, and somehow Pepsi appears to have been involved in it's release...not really sure how that worked out, but I'm glad that it did.

STRESS

MASAKARI

Hardcore/crust in the two thousand teens is a tough one...the subgenre has been distilled and watered down through generations of punks trying to recreate either the magic of SACRILEGE, the power of MISERY or the soul baring aggression of HIS HERO IS GONE, and the modern result is often an insipid limp dicked shadow of music that used to go straight for the throat and move people. There are exceptions. Ohio's MASAKARI is one of them. Clearly reared on Japanese HC and the third band in the the immensely influential trilogy mentioned in that earlier sentence, they dish out absolutely essential jams, trumped only by the power of their live performance. Allergic To Fun put The Prophet Feeds LP to cassette, and so I share it here.

THE PROPHET FEEDS

SELF ABUSE

Refreshing to hear a band just blaze through gnarly hardcore tunes. Sweden's SELF ABUSE (not England's SELF ABUSE) do not concern themselves with pushing limits of weirdness of creativity, and they seem to have little interest in your opinion of their sounds, they are too busy annihilating the foundation of thick and crunchy riffs left to them by three decades of predecessors. Early '80s USHC? Meet early '80s Northern European punk rock. This'll put hair on your chest, and "Senseless Violence" is the soundtrack to my life until further notice. 

SELF ABUSE

From Adult Crash.

ZATSUON

Just like the title suggests, seven ear piercing tracks of distortion drenched chaotic noise crust. The sounds that create the base of this recording are painful, and then ZATSUON heap piles of insanity on top with a vocal assault that makes me wince. Worshipping at the altars of GAI, GLOOM and D-CLONE, ZATSUON have a clear mission, and they are well on their way. Personnel from various NYC noise purveyors and the frontman from NERVESKADE. Yeah, it's good.

VIOLENT NOIZE CRUSTER

BLASTING AGENTS

These kids clearly had hopes of stardom, or at least the kid who made this tape did. Rudimentary, inept and lo-fi snotty punk from one of the many outlying armpits that the Bay Area plays host to. "City Life" is the jam here, mid-era FLAG given the suburban treatment half a decade too late...

BLASTING AGENTS

NO MORE ART

Not sure what I was expecting from this tape, the first I've heard musically from an old bandmate since he relocated to Germany a couple of years ago. Whatever my expectations were, consider them well exceeded with this four song dance party. Comparisons to MASSHYSTERI and other catchy female fronted acts are inescapable, as are nods to Will's recent stint with RED DONS, but there's definitely more here than a rehash of clean guitars and hip swinging beats. Completely infectious, and though you might feel like you've heard it before, a few songs spent with that voice and you'll want to hear it all over again.

NO MORE ART

Kink put this out, you should get a copy for yourself.

NORTHERN SOUL FLOORSHAKERS

Motown. '60s R&B. Hundreds of undeniably brilliant songs that we all know inside and out (even if we don't know it - the shit is drilled into our subconscious). But one day I was working with an English dude with a penchant for talking about his rockabilly band and he played some shit that blew my mind...it was like those soul songs I had heard a thousand times but it was raw and the beat was insistent, almost demanding a dance party. "Northern Soul" came the response when I asked what we were listening to, with an implied (and justified) disgust at my ignorance. I asked my pal Tim about this new (to me) discovery since he is from England also, and he was much more nurturing, and excited to share the glorious world of all night dance parties and impeccable fashion and endless searching for unheard records with an eager neophyte....in this case, me. This mix tape was the result:

 NORTHERN SOUL FLOORSHAKERS

On its face, Northern Soul has virtually everything in common with the popular soul, Motown and R&B jams of the late '60s, but to dismiss the genre as an extension of the popular sounds of the day would be like equating RANCID to IRON LUNG or saying that THE CLASH hold the same spot in history as LOST CHERREES. Northern Soul was all about finding the unknown gem, unearthing the unheard would-be classic. The legendary singles were records scooped up by English DJs on record finding missions to the US, scouring the country for copies of short run independent press dance floor creamers. Their searches paid off in the form of essential tracks that would have been all but forgotten - many of the biggest Northern Soul hits were songs from the mid '60s that went virtually undiscovered until years after their release. English DJs catered to clubs packed with sharp dressed teenagers jacked to the nines on amphetamines ready to dance all night long to the latest unheard deep cut - not at all unlike a room full of sweaty punks eagerly waiting for the next song from the the band that no one has heard so that they can tell everyone tomorrow what they missed out on last night. The whole scene seems perfectly in tune with the world of punk record collectors, and the music is fukkn excellent, so I consider myself a fan (not an expert, just a fan). While I have delved deeper since, this tape was my real introduction to a world of songs that were never hits, but were revered by music fans and early morning dance maniacs. Songs like "Shoes, "Pain Stain" and "That's How Much I Love You" are certified bangers, earnest DIY numbers filled with legitimate floorshaking bass and more soul than any new millennium motherfucker should be allowed to expect. This is our world, 20 years earlier...seeking the shit no one else has heard, turning your friends on the to jams, and getting totally annihilated and rocking out till the sun comes up. Yeah...it's like punk but with sharper outfits and better beats. Standout artists: BOBBY BLAND, SOUL CITY, MARVELETTES, LITTLE ANTHONY & THE IMPERIALS, HOLLY ST. JAMES and SIDNEY BARNES...but seriously, all of this shit is brilliant. Cheers to Tim...I hope you have all these 45s, but even if you just taped a modern day KTel "Beginners Guide to Northern Soul," you still opened my eyes. Now lets suck down a pile of pharmaceutical speed and start dancing - it is the weekend after all...right?

FERAL BABIES

Simple and forceful hardcore from Florida. Vocals have that nasally Porcell tone and the songs mix to-the-throat '80s HC with the more discordant guitar driven sounds that came as bands started discovering they could write more interesting and complex songs within the narrow confines of testosterone fueled hardcore punk. Five songs (including a WEIRDOS cover) that will set you back about six minutes...come for the circle pit, stay for the songs.

FERAL BABIES

WINDSCALE

Sonic annihilation from WINDSCALE, featuring personnel from THE ENDLESS BLOCKADE. Brutally uncomfortable harsh electronics supplanted periodically by industrial skull worship, this was released in 2008 by the noise/cassette wing of 20 Buck Spin, and I thank both the artist and vehicle for bringing these sounds into my life.

WINDSCALE

SHARKPACT

A glorious cacophony made with just drums and keyboards, this Olympia duo creates a racket that should by all rights drive me insane with aggravation, but instead I find myself returning to these songs over and over again. I'll fall back on my initial impression to prepare you for what you are about to get yourself into: ANDREW W.K. meets THIS IS MY FIST. Yeah, it's weird, and yeah, it's that good. This multi gender duo creates a fantastic racket, and any song that starts with the line: "Haven't laughed this hard in a long time // my face is turning red" gets my vote, even (especially) when the song appears to be about people we love who are dead. This is great, and I recommend it highly.

DITCHES

This was released as a 12" by Rumbletowne.

NÖ PÖWER

This is exactly what you people want from me on Mondays: chaotic and frantic reverb drenched thrashing hardcore from the backwards ass woods of North Carolina, where the ponx make this music because they need to, not because it's cool. NÖ PÖWER payed Terminal Escape a visit a few months back, and now they are gracing you maniacs with a second session filled with blazing distorted guitars and chanted vocals manipulated to the nth degree...fortunately underneath all this chaos - if you are willing to look - are some fukkn brilliant hardcore songs. Side one features seven jams (including one of the most simplistically crushing intros to have graced my ears in recent memory), while the flip has their first demo, which you can get into by going here if you need more (you do), since it seemed silly to rip the damned thing twice. Seriously killer shits.

NO AXIS

Band is here.

4 MINUTES

Mid tempo and catchy melodic Scottish punk from 1982. This is a rehearsal tape from one of the hundreds of bands that sprouted up in the second wave of UK punk and then faded away just as quickly as they appeared. No information available, no track listing available, but a companion post on Escape Is Terminal of a live set from the same year is this is what tickles your pickle.

4 MINUTES

VACUÜM

Second (and final) full length from VACUÜM, Holland's weirdest '80s drum machine bizarro punks (though I imagine Jos might be able to contradict me on this point). While this one didn't grab me as immediately as their self titled debut platter, these songs are excellent far beyond their sing-song exterior. I wish that the soul nice enough to copy 1985's Feest onto this cassette had been nice enough to include song titles, but we punks are used to making do with less, so I'm sure you will have no problem overcoming this obstacle.

FEEST

UNDERGROUND TAJIKISTAN

A baker's dozen from a place you have probably never been to, and likely know little about. Yeah, there are punks there. Admittedly, some of these bands have little appeal to me aside from the "Holy shit, where the fukk are they from?" factor, but RAGNAROCK and ZAPADNY are legitimately great (the former in the "whisky, beer and fist in the air" department, and the latter in a perfectly Eastern European anarcho punk manner) and ZLO are brilliantly intense bedroom/drum machine punk suffering from a painful mix. Noise punk madness from SLUM and Tajik psych pop from ZVUKOVAYA complete the circle of weirdness that came to me in cassette form years after Tian An Men 89 shared these sounds with the world (vinyl version still available, and totally worth the effort). Nothing short of eternal respect for Luc and the effort he continues to put in exposing the (western) world to third world punk. Amazing.

UNDERGROUND TAJIKISTAN

MEN AS WITCHES

Droning, ugly and menacing sounds punctuated with bursts of pained and distorted sludge. There is nothing attractive or appealing about the next 16 minutes of your life. MEN AS WITCHES are just plain nasty.

MEN AS WITCHES

STILL HAVE A FAITH // MAKE A CHANGE

STILL HAVE A FAITH cranked out their demo in 1992 - ultra high energy US influenced hardcore, the kind of attack that countrymen TOTAL FURY would master a few years later, but still packed with all of the adolescent enthusiasm required to take this rapid fire HC to lofty plateaus. Brief flirtations with melody, and if this were a few years newer I might think that these punks owned a few early NOFX records (fortunately, I think the time line is off and this ill advised comparison is just a coincidence that resulted in a little bit of speed picking on "Oneself").  Predating fastcore (or the term) by nearly a decade, STILL HAVE A FAITH rip through their tracks like they are running from a fire. Killer.

Three of the four dudes cranked out this demo a year later, more youth crew influenced, but rawer and with more of an edge to the vocals. The breakdowns (and the YOT cover) suggest that someone had been listening to a bit of NYHC, and the resulting demo has more teeth that their previous effort. It's pretty cute that they named their demo after their old band. Also killer.

STILL HAVE A FAITH // MAJOR LEAGUE

Just over ten minutes for both demos...it seemed logical to share them together.