ROTE ZORA

 

The sole release from ROTE ZORA is everything you could want from a frantic, anxious hardcore punk explosion. Blast after blast of erratic mania - just barely out of tune, mostly not quite in time, recorded in a cardboard box, guitar freaking out as much (or more) as it plays a riff. Fourteen minutes of marginally competent and fukkn brilliant total primitive snotty hardcore. "Represión." They're fukkn pissed, and you can feel it. 

ROTE ZORA

KAUPUNGIN VALOT

 

Maybe this is like looking so far through yesterday's post that you can see the an alternate realm where everything sounds different. Or maybe Huomiseen is just an example of a sonic mission realized, much like Spread Plague Hell before it. To say that the first full length from Tampere's KAUPUNGIN VALOT is infectious would be a supreme disservice to the recording - these are MARKED MEN and GENERACIÓN SUICIDA caliber hooks and you'll want to (or wish you could) sing along to every song. At once gloomy and pleasantly resigned, this is a band who know what they're doing and what they're trying to do...and there's no reason why you should feel uncomfortable moving from "Perverted Lunacy" straight into the dreamy "Tän Kadun Päässä" - because you (also) know exactly what you're doing and exactly what you want. 

HUOMISEEN

RUIN

 

I know it's not quite Hallow's Eve yet, but this putrid offering from RUIN will surely get you in the right mood. For one dozen minutes, your thoughts will be churned and dismembered by churning blasts of classic death metal...injecting the plague of hell itself into your veins. These four songs were the beginning, and the amount of filth this crew has churned out in the last few years is pretty terrifying, so carve that shit into your pumpkin.

SPREAD PLAGUE HELL

JAMS (AND OTHER EROTIC DAYDREAMS)

 

Listening to this mothermukkr was an absolute thrill from start to finish. Compiled by the folks at Get Loose, Jams And Other Erotic Daydreams is a perfect (if not comprehensive) snapshot of DIY hardcore from the mid 2000s through date of conception. The big dogs (SKITKIDS, DIRECT CONTROL, SEX/VID, DOUBLE NEGATIVE) sharing space with the pups who made smaller, more regional splashes (ACID REFLUX, SOCIETY NURSE, RAYOS X, GOUKA, N/N) and a reminder that I (still) don't give half a shit about MILK MUSIC. Maybe they were really nice people. Ninety minutes to remind you that punk is cool, and that it was cool too. 

GET LOOSE TAPES: JAMS (AND OTHER EROTIC DAYDREAMS)

CRUDE DRUGS

 

You like BLACK MARK? You American hardcore punk? You like KEINE KLASSE? All of these things are connected to KC, MO rockers CRUDE DRUGS. Seven minutes of hardcore from the end of the first decade when fukkn everyone was cranking out the serious no bullshit shit. CRUDE DRUGS was first, then BLACK MARK dropped the same demo with a different cover, then two of the dudes did the NO CLASS thing. And it all ripped. The same thing is happening now, somewhere. So pay attention. 

ORANGE SODA TAPE

PRE HUMAN BLASPHEMY

 

I'm kinda surprised this one hasn't been unearthed and (re)heralded in this continuous age of nostalgia, because PRE HUMAN BLASPHEMY are a missing piece in the '90s California fastcore / power violence puzzle. With just this one demo and a couple of posthumous comp appearances to their name, it's easy to see why they continue to fly under the radar...until you listen to these ten songs. I use the term "desperate" a lot when a band really gets me because translating that emotion into is perhaps the single hardest thing to accomplish, and faking it is almost impossible. PRE HUMAN BLASPHEMY are desperate - the song construction is erratic and disorienting and the performance/s are nothing short of desperation. "Woxs And Xadys" is NO COMMENT/MITB caliber Southern California destruction, just born a few years too late for the recognition it deserves - Isaiah sounds like he doing battle with his bass and neither man nor machine is sure whose side the other is on. Listen to the drums incinerate the last twenty seconds of "Anti Breeding Committee" and question your very existence. That's what desperation sounds like when it becomes sound. Listen to "Placebo." That's what violence sounds like when it is reborn as sound. The core of PRE HUMAN BLASPHEMY morphed into RUIDO shortly after this recording, but I don't feel like that's a good indicator of the fury that's lurking in this digital file...because this one changed me. 

PRE HUMAN BLASPHEMY

MAX NORDILE

 

More sonic missives from the mind of Nordile - twenty two minutes of improvisations, manipulations and multi-instrumental monaural mania. It's important to remember that this...this is music. 

VYING FOR A DIME

POGO VOMIT

 

Remember when you (or someone like you) was obsessed with ignorant high energy distorted punk stomps and then someone started injecting that cartoon guitar into the genre and you were like "this ain't noise punk, this is just distorted pop punk" and you started reminiscing about unnecessarily overproduced anthemic crust? I was there with you, and if POGO VOMIT had been in my life then, perhaps I wouldn't have soured on the subgenre as quickly as I did (and for real, that affinity didn't last more than a couple of months for me). So yeah - crank the Piss N Puke demo and think about what could have been.

PISS N PUKE DEMO

FUCKED UP FUCKIN SYSTEM

 

Three motherfukkrs from OKlahoma City hooked up with a fierce motherfukkr form Chicago sometime in the mid-teens. They thought it was going to be a one off because they were all friends and it was a good excuse to hang out....next thing you know they went on your and made a couple of demos. You like LEMONADE? You like JUDY & THE JERKS? Then I'm thinking you're going to like FUFS, because these motherfukkrs.....

FUFD UP // TO BE A FUF

HOLY COW

 

HOLY COW make a mockery of fast hardcore on their 2016 self titled tape. Fast and wild, also wildly catchy (SIDETRACKED tempered with PUSRAD). Erratic, also irreverent (MELT BANANA tempered with DEAD MILKMEN). Thirty songs in well under twenty minutes from a Philippines trio more concerned with doing what they want than they are with what you're going to think about it. So don't think, just blast "Punk Nga Eh!" all damn day. 

HOLY COW

GREENEARTH TAPES

 

Not going to take up a ton of space talking about how important international tape comps were (read: are) again, instead I'll just let you know what's waiting for you on this 1990 slammer.  RESIST, NUNCA MAS and INSURGENCE representing the US (hard to believe no one has unearthed the INSURGENCE catalog for a fancy reissue...yet), SEDITION and CRITERIA from Scotland, plus European hitters like VERDUN (France),  STRAWBERRY (these Polish punks were new to me), SILENT WATER (Belgium) and AKIE MAU MAUS (Germany). Throw in Canadians HYPOCRICY and English crustlords DISASTER and you've got an hour of fucking rage that starts with "Dismember Nazi Scum" and ends with "Growing Greed." 

DIE FREIHEIT VOL.3

NEGATIVE STEP

 

In early 1995, FUCKFACE embarked on a nine week North American tour that we booked when we still called ourselves MULTIPLE CHOICE. We put a "drummer wanted" ad in the SF Weekly and found Joey a couple of weeks before we were scheduled to leave, had a few practices, packaged up our MULTIPLE CHOICE records in FUCKFACE sleeves Matt scammed from his job, Joey took us up to Santa Rosa so Gavin could build us a sketchy loft and....and we were on our way. I'll save the stories for my memoir, but at our show in Austin (which was, if memory serves, uncharacteristically good) we met a chap named August who was, also uncharictaristically, on our wavelength. He sang for CROWN ROAST, who I knew of because they featured members of RIG (whose Warthole EP is an underappreciated essential dose of '90s US DIY punk), but mostly he was a freak in the same way that we were freaks and we all just clicked. Fast forward to the next evening in San Antonio and the show just felt dismal - it was cold, attendance was sparse (teetering on the brink of non existent), we didn't have a place to stay that night and then...August rolled up. He had convinced a friend to drive him to the show so now we had TWO attendees. I don't remember if anyone else came, but I do remember that August sang a couple songs with us (songs he'd learned from the record he bought the night before) and he gave me an INITIAL STATE tape that we played to death on the rest of the tour. We all hung out, were paid a sixer of Coors Light, we may or may not have had a weird night staying with folks from NOT MY SON, and we solidified a friendship that continues today - which is ultimately what the shit is all about. A few years later, August sent me this tape of his then-new band NEGATIVE STEP of songs would later appear on their blistering 10" and the split with PLF. It's gnarly, weird hardcore...which seems appropriate. August has spent the next 25 years blowing minds (SOCIETY OF FRIENDS, LORDS OF LIGHT, VX GAS ATTACK, BIG HORNY HUSTLER, PLEASURE CROSS...and some brilliant home recordings) and I mailed him a tape yesterday. NEGATIVE STEP rules. 

HELLO, MY NAME IS NEGATIVE STEP

C.T.S.

 

There's a really good EP that came out on Underestimated sometime in the mid-00s - got a random kid with a mohawk on the cover, logo is hand written (read: scrawled) on the top. Looks stark and weird, like an unearthed Mexican punk bonzer from the '80s, but it sounds like ferocious Midwestern skate rats thrashing their brains out. It doesn't look anything at all like this Michigan Y2K worship...but it's the same band, and I recommend both releases heartily. The tape you can have now, but you're gonna have to hit the dollar bins for the single...it's there, I promise. 

CAMPAIGN TO SHRED

UGGLESEDD

 

I ask the same question/s each time I think about this tape....what is it? where did it come from? More succinctly: What did it come from? UGGLESEDD land like a deconstructed project that was never constructed in the first place. Space synths, minimalist black metal monotony, drones upon drones upon drones, cavernous horror, and then "Saivo" on the flip - a thirty minute underwater experiment/al journey through and/or to (a)nother realm/s. I don't know what UGGLESEDD came from, or what became of UGGLESEDD, but I appreciate the mystery (almost) as much as I appreciate the sounds. 

UGGLESEDD

VERMIN

 

Just stick to the fucking plan. People have spent decades solving these sonic equations, leaving us with formulas. The formulas work...if you follow them. Strict adherence is not required, but encouraged. And VERMIN studied every measurement, studied every component. VERMIN stuck to the fucking plan. And the result is not a statistic, not an anomaly. Our Noise Is Music is the sweat that has lubricated punk generations. Our Noise Is Music is the further realization of a concept. Our Noise Is Music is proof. Just stick to the fucking plan. 

OUR NOISE IS MUSIC

YOUR KINGDOM IS DOOMED

 

It's easy to get fooled by YOUR KINGDOM IS DOOMED - they start with a blazing raw DIY crust number that sounds like it was dragged from a filthy Michigan basement in 1997. That vibe continues for the first few songs, but you'll notice this demo start to get...weirder. Spastic blasts, off kilter riffs and you (almost) think you're entering power violence territory on "Menopoz Türkiye" but then "Hiçsin" drops and you're in this whole different realm of freak punk. Fortunately, there are three songs left and they refuse to reign it back in so you're left with this feeling that maybe PLAID RETINA played a one-off gig in Istanbul after that first EP and planted some seeds that became trees because this shit just sounds way out there. They slam the door shut with "Şehir," a sub two minute ripper that's just all over the musical map - blurred riffing and pained high/low vocals and the general feeling that this is the sound of a band who is going to evolve into a grind behemoth but not until they've finished kicking your ass with this song. When sounds develop outside of the trend loop...sounds develop in interesting ways. 

YOUR KINGDOM IS DOOMED

HOWLING MAD

 

Absolutely raging UK hardcore infected by the mid decade proto-thrash craze and fronted by an almost metal and and almost Biafra vocalist. Listen to them just decimate riffs, playing them into the fukkn earth until there's no life left in them before lurching into a solo and then back to flogging that dead riff some more. And they are good riffs - buzzsaw riffs that infect you - and you want to hear more of them. Seems like this 1987 recording is all we're gonna get, so clench fists and strap in. 

A TASTE OF THINGS TO COME

KREMLIN

 

I remember hearing this demo and loving it. Then later that same day Kat and J were at practice talking about how fukkn good the KREMLIN tape was and then it seemed like the next morning every punk I knew was talking about KREMLIN. And for good reason - this tape is (almost) eight minutes ripped from a would-be Version Sound catalog, suitable for legendary EP status had it been release 30 years earlier. KREMLIN doesn't sound like a throwback, they sound timeless. It was North American hardcore punk of the highest fucking order...and then all of a sudden everyone was talking about some other band, and even when KREMLIN finally released records (one small one, one big one) I feel like folks didn't care like they did when the first tapes started buzzing around. In the big picture, consider this a critique of our criminally short New Reality Attention Span and our seeming inability to let things fester, develop or (sometimes) flame out on their own. In the smaller and more personal picture, it means you can scoop those records up for not very many dollars. But really, the point of all of these words is that this KREMLIN tape is an absolute motherfukkr. "Zero," "Abuse Asylum" and "Unscrewed" on repeat all day. 

UNSCREWED

15 SEPTEMBER 1987

A slice from a random Wednesday in September, thirty five years ago. The airwaves of Berkeley's KALX were teaming with wit and jams - Australian VICTIMS, DILS, a contentious debate between the station's editor/program director and the news director, MEAT PUPPETS,  JOHNNY OTIS, an R.E.M. song that I hadn't heard in over two decades....not a lot of hardcore (or even punk) on the radio that afternoon, but this is one that you can pop in and use as a vehicle for transport. To another place, if you like, or just another corner of your mind. I sometimes wonder what would happen if I removed all present day stimuli for a time and just played tapes from Pat's collection chronologically. It would take months of constant listening...and what would I be when I was finished? Would I want to come back? Would anyone recognize me if I did?

KALX - 15 SEPTEMBER 1987
=======================

The fifth volume in the Copy Wright series has arrived - copies available soon from Iron Lung, General Speech and Sorry State. Limited quantities were available from my own little (emphasis on little) Bigcartel, but they sold out very quickly (thank you). The next three volumes are in the works and should be in hand by the end of the year. 

ESCAPE CASSETTES

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

REALM OF TERROR

Raw crust ain't dead, but the stench is real. Six bursts of low end hyper speed mania, a complete blur fronted by desperate throaty vocals interrupted periodically by filthy churns. From the DISRUPT/DEFORMED CONSCIENCE school of brutality - with determination, without nuance. 

ACCELERATED EXTINCTION

BLUEROOM

 

I can easily imagine going all in on BLUEROOM had I found them when Love & Fear was released in 1989 and and they probably ventured up to Norman, Oklahoma (where I moved in 1990) with some frequency because that's where the cool college/alt bands played. And BLUEROOM play cool college/alt music. You picture them with candles and shit, maybe some tapestries, flowing shirts and effects pedals...that's their sound. That sound wasn't heavy or punk enough to be grunge and they lean on blues rock as much as (or more than) the brooding goth persona they portray so they were perhaps outdated before they started, but they were also from Pauls Valley in south central Oklahoma where time and/or trends may have been somewhat skewed - though that town with a scant 6,000 residents that also gave us CARNAGE and SUBSANITY, so there's that. There's a place for BLUEROOM (or there was a place for BLUEROOM in 1989) in a far away world of guitar based dark alternative rock, and Wayne Hussey aficionados will surely find some comfort in Love & Fear...which is so say that this writer found some comfort in Love & Fear...

LOVE & FEAR

ANARCHIJOS INVAZIJA

 

Thanks for Music Not Noize for this burner from Lithuania - I only knew one track from ANARCHIJOS INVAZIJA before this tape from 1995 came to me and....ooffffff now I need more! A ruthless buzzsaw guitar that lands somewhere between HELIOS CREED and STRESS leading a band cranking out stark cold metallic hardcore bursts that could form a bridge between summer '84 SIEKIERA and Legenda. It's always great to discover something new, but when it opens a door to a world full of new sounds...? Well, that's even better. 

PROTESTAS

CRUSADE

 

You ever wonder what the world would be like if middle America hardcore bands kneeled before VENOM and HATEBREED instead of CRO-MAGS? Sorry punks, Age Of Quarrel is over rated and unnecessarily revered. And Missouri wild men CRUSADE are cavernous brutality. Listen to "Karma." CRUSADE sound fucking terrifying. 

CRUSADE

PUBLIC EYE

 

This is the shit that I reach for when I need an addiction (unrelated, the opening verse of "My Michelle" has been stuck in my head for days), and PUBLIC EYE have been delivering nothing but the finest earworms for years. This tape came first - dark and addictive Portland punk born from of the remnants of AUTISTIC YOUTH and educated by WIPERS, COMPLICATIONS, OBLIVIANS and the like. I want it to go faster, I want them to go harder ("Soft Strain" in particular sounds like a lost STOOGES demo that's missing its teeth), but PUBLIC EYE are so good because they don't do what I want them to do. They're on a mission. 

PUBLIC EYE

TWO-FISTED TALES

 

I've said it already and Im going to keep saying it as long as I keep feeling it: Comp Tapes Rule. Flush Productions from Richmond, California started cranking out a shitload of them in the late '80s (I am absolutely in the market for other volumes - please slide into my DMS) and really had things humming by Two-Fisted Tales, their seventeenth volume. We're talking way late decade shit here, so expect some pre/proto college rock and even some funky jams, but WORKING MOTHERS should have been a hit and more NAKED HIPPY tracks are always welcome in my life.  FORTHRIGHT, YOUNG LORDS, INFECT (holy shit on this one, for real), GRIEVANCE COMMITTEE and loads more. A solid hour of "who the fuck is this" followed by "why haven't I heard this before now?!" because, like I've said before: Comp Tapes Rule. 

TWO-FISTED TALES

SSTD

 

Coolest name. Coolest logo. Wildest no bullshit Texas punk stomps from the UGLY and/or SLIMY MEMBER camp. Dallas was ripe in the mid '00s man, for real. "Sanitized" on repeat. 

SSTD

SOCKEYE

 

Listen to the first few tapes and think about an alternate reality - one where SOCKEYE evolves in to a raging hardcore band who tempers blazing riffs with irreverent wit. Then again...maybe that's what happened, and maybe the rest of us (still) take ourselves too seriously. 1989's It's A Crazy Elderly World features "Everyone I Know Is An Asshole," "Kill Yourself," "Messiah Sandwich" and an early version of their future hit "Sexual Retard" along with DOORS and CRASS covers. I've met the people who make these sounds - but I really want to meet the people who listen to them. 

IT'S A CRAZY ELDERLY WORLD