GRINCH

 

I could write about GRINCH a lot. A few anecdotes from when I lived in the same flat with Ron, some second hand road tales from their last tour in the late '90s. but mostly I could write a lot about the music. GRINCH built this bridge that no one seemed to want to cross, though with hindsight I think maybe no one else was brave enough to cross it (the split with LOST GOAT was a perfect pairing of the two bands who really dared and really put it out there). Firmly rooted in Bay Area hardcore and punk (members did time in CHRIST ON PARADE, SCREW 32 and CRIMPSHRINE, among a host of others), they played a dark brood that was almost accessible, almost grunge, almost stoner rock, almost UNSANE, and always distant and...interesting. No one sounded like GRINCH, and no one has since. What if this is the line that connects JAWBREAKER to EL DOPA....see? I could write a lot about GRINCH. 

GRINCH

Edit: I uploaded an empty file. I apologize. Now I have uploaded a file that contains excellent rock music.

KATASTROPHE

 

Another pick up from the recent Music Not Noize purge, KATASTROPHE was new to me and I have been eating this tape up ever since I popped it in. Fierce, plodding Oi! / hardcore hybrid from Germany - five cuts that land somewhere between Punk And Disorderly, NORMAHL and EA80. "In Viefalt Vereint" is a perfect dark punk number, well worth the entire tape honestly, but every second of these eight minutes floored me. And made me want to smash things. 

TOD IN GEWAHRSAM

GRITOS DE ASKO

 

First heard GRITOS DE ASKO several years ago on the Distort Colombia comp, but nothing else until their 2013 recording was reissued last year. "Apunaldo" appears on that comp with one other track and it just left me hungry...and Extincion is what I have been hungry for. Galloping, menacing metallic Colombian crust assault fronted by a nasty guitar crunch and urged constantly onward by enviably throat searing vocals, I don't even know what else you could want from the (sub)genre. Just brutal, and they save the best track ("Un Poko De Mugre") for last. 

EXTINCION

EBOLA FUCK

Looks closely before you hit that link, because EBOLA FUCK kinda sounds like it looks. Late '90s suburban Oklahoma punk weaned on GRIMPLE, DIE KREUZEN, and FYP, throw in a little misbehavior and record the shit in a tin garbage can. Not really sure how much more motivation you need. 

I WILL FUCK YOU TILL YOU DIE

 

WOLVES OF HEAVEN / NYODENE D

Crushing dark electronics from NYODENE D - like the dust left from the joint disintegration of industrial noise and black metal....hell, like the dust left from disintegration in general. When there's no world left, this will be the soundtrack while the unfortunate languish in hopelessness, waiting to die. COLUMN OF HEAVEN offshoot WOLVES OF HEAVEN occupy the flip and offer no relief at all, instead they act like a warning beacon in sound. Desperate, anguished screams on top of a blinding, pulsating hiss - it's the moment of realization and your last breath, encapsulated in sound.

WOLVES OF HEAVEN // NYODENE D

GREETINGS FROM BULGARIA

 

Absolutely killer mid-90s comp from the folks at AON Productions, collecting tracks from 17 Bulgarian punk acts to document the scene from its inception. From '77 punk to dark proto goth to no bullshit fast hardcore, Greetings From Bulgaria truly listens like traveling through your way through a scene...and that's exactly what I want from a comp. On top of that, JUST A PRODUCT was the only band I was familiar with before blasting this tape...and that's also exactly what I want from a comp. Favorite discoveries: MEANSTREAM, AVE MARIA and CONFRONT, but there is not a single track on this tape that I don't endorse. 

GREETINGS FROM BULGARIA

TIGER BEAT

 

You ever want your acoustic indie twee sounds to be happy and melancholy? Vancouver's TIGER BEAT have got you covered....or at least they did in 1993. That was a long time ago, so i'm hoping that by now they've settled into bliss-filled and carefree middle age life. Maybe an acoustic guitar by the fireplace on a fall evening. Maybe a farmer's market on Sunday morning. Or....maybe quiet, determined rage manifested through power electronics. I got no idea. But I know that TIGER BEAT sounds like a would-be-but-never-was unplugged collaboration between WEAKERTHANS and SPITBOY and I know that "Go Home" just....it just lands perfectly. 

TIGER BEAT

 

ENDLESS STRUGGLE

 

Remember the liner notes on the GRIMPLE EP? I think about the note that read "fuk in every song" while I listen to the first (?) tape from Salt Lake Drunk Punks ENDLESS STRUGGLE, and I wish that they had included a warning that read "Oi! in every song" because then the casual listener might be able to prepare themselves a little better. Perhaps you remember the full length on Charged that dropped around the turn of the century - that record put them in a league with VIRUS, CASUALTIES and the like but my ears hear something closer to DEFIANCE. The songs are a little more ridiculous perhaps; "Red Alert" (me and the boys going out tonight / something something start a fight), "Fault" (it's not my fault), "Beer" (uh....beer), right into "Let's Start A Riot" (just as self explanatory as "Beer," honestly) and honestly this is where ENDLESS STRUGGLE kinda win. It's so fukkn simple, the appeal is so baseline and easy....you just can't go wrong. A note indicates that the bones tracks on the flip are from an Upcoming 7" but I don't know if that record ever materialized. "Punk Rock Girl" (not a cover), "Lost Generation," "Just To Survive" - clearly they figured out what worked and just just kept rolling with it. Tape starts to disintegrate during towards the end...almost sounds like you're watching four studded warriors fading into a hazy orange sunset on the mean residential streets of Salt Lake City.

ENDLESS STRUGGLE

BEING // VILLA VALLEY

 

Harsh Noise? Meet: Harsh Noise Wall.

Fifteen minutes of sonic abomination from BEING that sound like aural strangulation. Fits, starts and piercing jabs of noise - their side is best heard in sequence, so you can gently let yourself feel like everything is going to be OK and finally exhale as the final track takes your final breath. VILLA VALLEY is no so subtle. Listen to your own demise as they spend a quarter hour reminding you that you are, and have always been, nothing. This tape, my friends, this tape is the sound of your failure. Congratulations. 

MIDWEST DEDICATION

VIVISEKTIO

 

Steel yourself young punk, because this one is hard work. There's a line that separates "primitive and raw" punk from "inept punk," and for the first few years of their existence, Finland's VIVISEKTIO blurred that line until it was as irrelevant as the tuning pegs on their guitars. Compiled from six rehearsals and two demo recordings, this collection of tracks features the same songs over and over (and over), but if you can stick it out through the first twenty (or so) songs you're treated to a couple of real nasty mid paced punk stomps that were apparently recorded in junior high school music class (maybe I'm wring here, but I'm going to roll with it). There's a second incarnation of the band that started in the 2010s, but this shit? This is for tue heads only...the rest of you don't have what it takes. 

TOTALLINEN KAMOS: 1984-1986

PRESIDENT FETCH

 

I'm not going to dissect PRESIDENT FETCH. I made some sonic comparisons when I posted their tracks from Pass The Elixir a couple of years ago, but mostly these Danes don't sound like anything else. If this demo had dropped a few years earlier I feel like the cool kids would be crawling over themselves and (rightly) referring to the back-to-back-to-back "Bestial" into "Ill Dog" into "Police Crime" as one of the high points in European hardcore punk. Maybe '87 was just too late, or maybe the LPs are far enough removed from hardcore that the cool kids just never bothered digging deeper....but there are few bands who put this much snotty punk into their hardcore, and PRESIDENT FETCH don't sound like anyone else. 

PRESIDENT FETCH

PERIOD BOMB

 

What a mess. I mean in the best possible way of course, and I use those words simply because I have no idea how to accurately describe PERIOD BOMB. Permanently Wet is the sound of sounds in a blender: damaged noise/psych, '90s riot grrl, savage punk stomps, swinging electronic chaos - it's all in here, and the deeper you listen then more you hear. PERIOD BOMB were (are?) exceptionally prolific and constantly all over the place, and while there's something special about pressing PLAY without really knowing what you're going to get, this collection administers that feeling in the space of one tape. I tried to track the titles....but, well, it was hard so I kinda gave up.  

PERMANENTLY WET

GREENEARTH VOL.6

 

This was an impulse grab with an overseas purchase of an Acts Of Defiance comp, and I can't seem to put the motherfukkr away. Absolutely killer collection of turn of the decade punk and hardcore from Europe, US and Mexico - some you should already know (SVART SNÖ, VALSE TRISTE, AUTODESTRUCCIÓN) and plenty of new faces for your ears. Feast upon SHATTER, REAKTION, ROLANDS GOSSAR, and a track from 23 TILL that is the fukkn summer jam for the summer that I always wish I had lived. 

GREENEARTH VOL.6

CULT MIND

 

Nothing fancy, just a fiery burst from San Jose. Rough hardcore with a metal guitars...just like the late '80s. Think CAUSTIC CHRIST, think about punk. 

CONNECTED

105 LUX

 

Over the weekend, I got a few tapes from the folks at Music Not Noize (no new posts in several years, though most of the links are still live and you can still get lost there for hours). It's going to take months to really poke through everything, but I had never heard of 105 LUX so I popped in Przeciwko immediately. It's basically been on repeat since (so it's going to take me even longer to get through everything, it seems). Infectious early '90s Polish punk with a heavy (if inadvertent) UK anarcho influence, especially in the vocals. I ripped POLITICAL ASYLUM's Walls Have Ears collection yesterday, and I feel 105 LUX would be an excellent companion - song structures often 'too complicated' for punk, some metallic high end guitars with sung, poetic vocals. Not sure what makes vocals poetic, but once I typed the word I couldn't think of anything else, so I'm sticking with it. 105 LUX feels innocent, feels urgent, feels real - this one is going to be in regular rotation until I can track down their other two tapes. 

PRZECIWKO

DISASSOCIATE

 

If you flipped through a crate at a US punk gig in the early 2000s, then you almost certainly passed up a copy of DISASSOCIATE's second album Symbols, Signals & Noise because that thing was everywhere - I feel like I had twenty dead stock copies that I was trying (and failing) to move for $1 each. The singer was an institution in NYC, a huge physical presence that always made me feel like I was not a completely out of place dork (hint: I was) the few times I interacted with him, and the band was synonymous with the darker, hard partying side of the ABC No Rio scene. So there's your context...now let's talk about this fukkn tape. It's the six tunes from the 1993 demo, dubbed onto the A side of a copy of RDP's Brasil (DISASSOCIATE rips, but there's no excuse for eliminating a copy of Brasil), and the band sound so damn ugly - more in common with BONGZILLA and BUZZOV•EN than NYHC and that's just fine to my ears. "Body," "Smoke" and the filthy churn of "Destroy The Planet" are pure devastation, and make me want to revisit that LP I mentioned earlier...pretty sure I've still got a few copies squirreled away somewhere. 

RECYCLE

DEATHMOB

 

Honestly, it's kinda silly. Four bursts of rote early DISCHARGE worship offered in ear shredding simplicity. It sounds like Uranium Genocide could have been conceived, written and recorded in one lazy afternoon (and perhaps it was)...but as that afternoon in 2012 faded into memory as 'just another day,' the world was left with four short minutes of noise. So yeah, maybe it's a little silly, and maybe that's just fine. Because it's been a decade, and we're still listening. 

URANIUM GENOCIDE

NO DATA

 

Soft Power is anything but, folks. Soft Power is a thirty (plus) minute darkness mindfuck, a psychedelic swarm of sounds interrupted by disjointed pulses and absent, passive electronics. It's like a clown car from a slasher flick showed up to a synth wave show and invited OCCULT BLOOD to join them on stage. And just like that - your fukkn show is wrecked. 

SOFT POWER

DIVORCE

Y'all need to think about DIVORCE. Totally off the rails SE screamo/fastcore hybrid that imploded after this demo and the ten song EP that followed. The songs are so fast, so erratic, just head spinningly wild from start to finish - imagine '90 West Bay without the slow parts, played by END OF THE CENTURY PARTY. Nine songs in under eight minutes; hard to describe how refreshing this approach sounds now, twenty years after it was recorded. 

DIVORCE

THE UNVOICED

 

I felt like someone just splashed cold water in my face when I put on THE UNVOICED - this shit shocked me thirty years into my own past and made me feel like it was all new again. The Gatewood! cassette is scrappy, snotty, feisty DIY punk from a time (1990) when USHC influences were still dominant but bands were straying in their own (weird) directions. The vocals will make you smile and cringe...and sing along: don't think about what you want but what you have // and if we come across as a little weird, you're not so normal yourseeeeeeeelllfff

GATEWOOD!

==================

But even better than those eleven songs is the other North Carolina shit some punk used to fill up the rest of the tape. The demo from YOUTHFUL IRREGULARITY is brilliant early Dischord worship with a posi tinge - possibly my favorite discovery on the whole tape. Quintessential DIY basement hardcore from TONKA - an eight song rehearsal with songs like "Butt-Ass" and "Co-Ed Dance Song" and a couple of funk breakdowns that may or may not have been tongue in cheek, but their accents alone are worth the price of admission (and a couple of these kids went on to ASSFACTOR 4). Three raw hardcore rippers from Raleigh's LIVING IS SHAME (who might actually be called LIVING IN SHAME?). An eight song dose of catchy hardcore from RIGHTS RESERVED, and a you Al Burian fronting CELIBATE COMMANDOS on what's listed as the Food For Thought demo, though I can't find most of these tracks anywhere else. All of this shit is listed as being from 1990 or 1991, and I give all thanks to the young punk who decided that THE UNVOICED just wasn't enough...

SPEWTILATOR // COFFIN DUST

 

No surprises here, just brutality. COFFIN DUST (Philadelphia) open with "Necronomibong" and never looks back - clicky bass and DBeat and filthy mosh breakdowns and blast beats you almost don't even need the rest of their side (hint: you actually do need it, and it actually slays). On the flip, SPEWTILATOR (Atlanta) can't seem to get themselves out of a mosh - classic party thrash spending loud night with guttural grind. Both bands fucking reek, which is exactly why you will listen to them. 

ANCIENT RITES OF GETTING CONJURED

NOSFERATU

 

Hold on tight, this one will leave you breathless. NOSFERATU were unknown to me until Lalo sent a box of bangers my way a few months ago...and I have yet find another banger that comes close to this Mexico D.F. outfit. Brutal and forceful sounds from 1998, borrowing some of the breakdowns from (then) modern hardcore and melody from late decade crust but forcing those riffs into a gruff Mexican crust/hardcore band and it hits unbelievably hard. The cassette has been through the ringer (a few times) so don't expect a crisp presentation, but NOS4A2 has me bouncing off the fukkn walls over here and it's exactly the kind of hardcore and punk I need in my life. 

NOS4A2

DRAPETOMANIA

 

Some of the most sinister, the most primitive, the most punk sounds to come out of the South Central/East LA scene in the early '10s. Maybe it's the guitars - think DS13 LP or AMDI PETERSEN through a Mexican dirt punk filter. Maybe it's the vocals - think gruff knuckle dragging Oi! sung just off key.  But probably it's just everything...that brief burst of energy fucking exploded in Southern California a decade ago and created so many bands and the dust has surely still not settled - I feel like we will learn about more in the future and punk archaeologists will (wisely) flock to junk shops in Compton looking for cassettes. DRAPETOMANIA was just one of them, but DRAPETOMANIA were a really good one. 

DRAPETOMANIA

I first this tape back in 2011, but that link is long dead.
Their second cassette, Cabesas De Odio, appeared here last year. 

GENETICA

 

Monday. 
Some people are starting their work week.
These fuckers though...they never stopped. 

GENETICA

JASPER PATTISON

A wonderful gift arrived in our box some weeks ago, simply titled A Short JP Collection. Aural musings from CULTURE SHOCK/CITIZEN FISH bassist Jasper Pattison created and compiled in the early months of Covid. Twenty minutes of dub breaks, spoken word, subdued oddball angular punk freak outs - there's a level of creative genius in Bath that is astounding, and sadly I feel like it's going to take a (punk) generation for folks to realize what they've been missing. Listen to TEN TENNANTS, listen to THE CLUTTON BROTHERS, listen to BURGLE KING, listen to Jasper. 

A SHORT JP COLLECTION: AUG 2020

STAY THE FUCK AT HOME

 

We all felt kinda cooped up and some of us got creative. Whatever spawned STAY THE FUCK AT HOME, it's a serious kick in the teeth. Maybe it started as a joke, maybe just an outlet. Maybe it was in there all along and someone had the time to get it the fuck out while staying the fuck in. But instead of focusing on the why, time to blast the what. And the what in this scenario is STAY THE FUCK AT HOME - a nine song, six minute primal fastcore/mosh hybrid. So maybe spend a little extra time at home today. 

THIS CITY IS HEADED FOR A DISASTER

REFRACTION

 

More improvisational mania from the Pacific Northwest. This mysterious tape arrive in my mail slot with no note, no background, no information whatsoever....just sound housed in a crude, handmade cover. The sounds are as curious as the delivery method; spaced out, minimal, monotonous creations that seem to go nowhere. But they just keep going as if, perhaps, they've already arrived. You will find just over 30 minutes of sound on this cassette - I do not know if it is available for (or even meant for) public consumption, but I don't think most visitors here consider themselves to be members of or contributors to any kind of "normal" society so....so consume these sounds. They are meant for you. 

REFRACTION

FULL BONEY

Much like the NATURAL CAUSE tape posted a couple of weeks back, I figure the target audience for this one is pretty small. But also much like that tape, interested parties may be intrigued by this nugget from FULL BONEY. I suppose the band is most commonly known as Karin's post-SPITBOY (I believe this band ran concurrently with INSTANT GIRL) project, a four piece with ex and future members of ME FIRST and ORGAMI rounding out the group. This rehearsal is probably from 1996, and you hear them working out three different tracks before ending with a melancholy fourth. Maybe you have the EP and always felt like a "behind the scenes" look. Maybe you have never heard of the band but are just curious? Maybe....just maybe, you aren't interested at all. 

FULL BONEY

ACTITUD SUBVERSIVA

 

Puerto Rico's ACTITUD SUBVERSIVA hit (me) like melodic 1990s European hardcore (think SIN DIOS by way of FUNERAL ORATION....which makes no sense at all). They left a couple of full length tapes in their wake, and a killer split with TROPIEZO that's still pretty easy to come by. I got back from tour yesterday and this one feels just right this morning - pay special attention to "Mentiras del Poder."

NI TU , NO DIOS, NI EL MUNDO

04 AUGUST 1987

You really need me to keep blabbing about these broadcasts?

I will if you like. 

But I shouldn't need to.
Just let me know. 

OK?

KALX - 04 AUGUST 1987

CZERWONA CHORĄGIEWKA

 

Brutally lo-fi and gloriously grinding Polish grind crust circe 1991. What the fukk were you doing in 1991....? For most readers, the answer will be: Not this. And that's why you should listen to CZERWONA CHORĄGIEWKA. Because they were. And these seventeen songs fucking prove it. Noise - not fucking music.

IDŹ STĄD