OUTRAGE FACTOR

 

Some people are just geniuses. I have a few in my orbit and I feel lucky to know them - their compulsion inspires me. Biff is one of those people, and a couple of years ago he got a hair up his ass to make an '80s USHC band to he could get better at playing drums. Oops, motherfucker got a hair up his ass and made a perfect USHC recording. Blatant stylistic ripoffs that are just disparate enough that the whole fukkn thing ends up sounding more like a relic than mimicry....file this recording alongside ADOLESCENTS, ZERO BOYS, Blood, Guts & Pussy, CIRCLE JERKS and no one would ever know the fukkn difference. And some cat in Buffalo just whipped the shit up on a whim then recorded and played everything himself. Shit makes me want to puke before I get dressed and go to my stupid job in the morning. (I'm a) sellout.

NOTING EVER CHANGES

THE MUSICAL TRACING ENSEMBLE

 

I think the best way to describe (or sell?) the release is to describe the project (and the process). THE MUSICAL TRACING ENSEMBLE is a rotating group of musicians who perform live. A rotating group of musicians who don't know what they're going to play...and then they play it. They set up and they each put on headphones. A song is played for them, and they play along. They cannot hear the other musicians, just the song that are meant to play along with. The audience cannot hear the source material, only the sound/s the musicians are making. As a concept....it's kinda genius. As a product....it's irresistible. Hear twelve songs that you know, as you never imagined hearing them. 

THEY DIDN'T KNOW WHAT THEY WERE GOING TO PLAY...AND THEN THEY PLAYED IT

Alternate Description: Elevator Music On Acid. 

STRANGE FACES

 

The Bay Area in the 2010s was really damn special - the quantity and quality of bands that were popping up was astounding. STRANGE FACES shared a rhythm section with THE NEW FLESH and popped up when THE NEW FLESH fizzled and followed a very similar path. STRANGE FACES were more punk, harnessing Dangerhouse energy at times while sticking to a primarily four on the floor approach. April's vocals are like a modernization of AVENGERS' earnest desperation and sometimes sit on top of the rest of the band like she's their protector. B gifted me this tape last weekend at practice and as near as we could remember they only played one show....damn. Listen to "Vicious Cycles" please. 

STRANGE FACES

CRIME 84

 

Just under the wire, CRIME 84 may have just delivered the toughest punk tape I've heard all damn year. Straight up. UK82 all amped up real fukkn high with a sinister snarl and a swarm of guitars. Maximum energy hardcore street stomps - crank "Louder Than Bomb" up to the appropriate volume and you'll never be the same. Now...I need to cop that 12" they did last year, and fast. Because I'm about to wear this tape the fuck out. 

STOLEN

SHIT FETISH

 

I waxed on about the difficulties of describing SHIT FETISH when I dropped off their first demo a few months back. Number Two is easier to get your ears around though...until it isn't. A few tracks of deeply damaged hardcore punk with FLIPPER by way of early '00s DIY punk energy. "1989" opens with starts and stops and tweaked guitars and it's almost like EDDY CURRENT mingling with STRAIGHTJACKET NATION (to keep the referenced country-specific). And then....well, and then SHIT FETISH starts to deliver. A raw and punishing hardcore dirge, and mid tempo meat swerve, a piece called "Slakto" that almost hits like some '60 fuzz rock until it takes a turn and I don't even know what kind of freedom I'm listening to anymore. There's just one cut left, and SHIT FETISH saved the.....best? for last with "Nasty Boy." The recording itself has gotten progressively weirder by this point in the tape, and the guitars are something entirely foreign and unrecognizable which is perfect because this is where the FLIPPER really starts to come out. And then comes the electronics and it all just falls the fuck apart and I'm just sitting here looking at my cat. Goes without saying that this middle aged Sepo is really looking forward to Demo III to plop. 

DEMO II

JÄVLA

 

Fuuuuuukk I wish I had gotten to see this band. Textbook DBeat hardcore with a blatant nod to the Swede School, but this DC quartet simply cannot get away from their USDIYHC roots and it gives JÄVLA a little extra (but undefinable) something. This was the first one, they dropped a two songer and an ripping EP the following year and then they bounced. I'm glad we got what we got. 

DEMO 2014

B.G.K.

 

DEAD KENNEDYS were my first real starter band. I followed the 1985 PMRC hearings as a new teenager and avid TWISTED SISTER fan, and heard DK mentioned here and there as an example of a band to be feared (their name often mentioned alongside BUTTHOLE SURFERS, of course). But there was no internet, so it was name and notoriety only for a while until a visiting cousin gifted me a copy of Give Me Convenience... and it was fukkn over. I devoured the lyrics and the visuals, but the music? Fukk dude, I had simply never heard anything that raw and that fast before - I knew some punk by then, but this was different. On top of that, you could straight up send them money and Alternative Tentacles would send you more records from different bands - I got KLAUS FLOURIDE's solo platters like this, more DK records, heard TSOL and MDC for the first time and I also got my first real taste of '80 European hardcore when I traded a paltry $6 for a copy of Nothing Can Go Wrogn! that I still own today. I didn't have the context, but I knew the shit ripped and I drove the damn grooves off of that record...I often wonder what it might have been like if I have been able to put the pieces together then, in real time, but everything just seemed so completely foreign and impossible to reach so I focused intently on the magic that was in my hands and in front of my face. Funny that BGK were one of my first 'real' underground hardcore discoveries, but when WHAT HAPPENS NEXT? covered "Action Man" fifteen years later I had still not heard the White Male Dumbinance EP - good that didn't (still don't) feel like I have anything to prove, I suppose. But this tape is a much more recent acquisition - a relic from the '90s tape traders that compiles both the EP and both LPs...a flawless discography. Fitting that fan club tape label Poison Planet named this release Best Of and then included essentially every song BGK recorded. I kinda feel like BGK were the European NOTA, which I guess brings the whole Oklahoma thing full circle, right?

BEST OF B.G.K.

Also, Poison Planet popped singles from MORNING CRESCENT and ULTRA VIOLENT on the end of the tape, and we are all grateful. 

DISOBEDIENCE

 

Eleven minutes of completely maniacal crust/grind from DISOBEDIENCE. They spend thirteen songs making music sound like punishment - fidelity be damned, competency optional, tuning a mere afterthought. This one is to totally off the damn rails - good luck.

FIGHT WAR FIGHT CLASS

GREEN AYGS & HAMM

 

There was a DIY punk explosion in 1990s Oklahoma. I was around for a piece of it but I admittedly only caught a glimpse of what was coming and was gone before the effects were really recognized. The '80s stuff is well documented (like most micro and/or region specific '80s scenes) but people still think the '90s are a forgotten punk decade. Which people think that...? Dummies, obviously. I don't think this GREEN AYGS & HAMM recording every actually dropped, but Ross was kind enough to resurrect it a few years back and share with the real heads. Ross isn't a dummy, see....? And these five songs are brilliantly adolescent hyper snotty middle America DIY punk. Does "Fart" ages very well? No, it doesn't. Is the vocal creak in "Aliterate" endearing beyond words? Absolutely. Never will I argue that these recordings are essential, but I am so happy that they exist in this present, and I'm more than happy to keep scooping this shit up as long as people keep feeding it to me.  Now, listen to "I Want A Girl" and enjoy your day. 

ANIMAL FUN GANG

JANGAN BIARKAN NYALA PADAM OLEH HEMPASAN MODAL

 

Fastcore, punk, thrash, Oi!, hardcore....from fourteen Indonesian bands who were completely new to me (plus a track from SATELLITE). ILUSI, AKAL BANGSAT, STRESSSICK, BRETEL, BOMBARDIR, MURDERAT, SCEPTIC OFF and others...it's really damn good. 

JANGAN BIARKAN NYALA PADAM OLEH HEMPASAN MODAL

PUNK ROCK INDONESIA KOMPILASI VOLUME: 1

NARB

 

Fidelity be damned, this punk is fast, fierce and raw as fukk. Three songs that make up half of the band's recorded output - like stripped down skinhead shitpunk on pharmaceutical speed. I guess they just did shit different in the South Valley.  You want to hear adolescent angst captured on 1/4" magnetic tape and dumped into the digital aether? Welcome to NARB.

NARB

KMET

 

The patience required to make dungeon synth actually work is impressive, and the artists who can properly pull it off are few and far between. To create sounds that are equal parts sinister black metal, Stranger Things soundtrack and FLOCK OF SEAGULLS is one thing - to do it with a straight face is something else entirely. Croatia's KMET will have you suspend belief....anxiously waiting for a crescendo and/or a conclusion knowing that they're only inviting you along for the journey, not the destination. Smrt Feudalizmu compiles five painfully deliberate tracks all released digitally over the last few years - final cut is the magnificent "Kuga" but don't think you'll be free when it's finished. 

SMRT FEUDALIZMU

AFERDEATH

 

If you're thinking about starting the week by spending some time with a dis-crust trio from Singapore....? AFTERDEATH has got you covered. What More Must They Suffer checks every box, a ruthless pummeling that channels Soul Scars-era DISFEAR and pushes the guitar to the very edge of the sonic cliff and lets it teeter precariously for seventeen tense minutes of DBeat. Choice cut? "Greed." Seems appropriate. 

WHAT MORE MUST THEY SUFFER

THE GLASNOST

 

I woke up this morning around 7am with a cat purring in the crook of my knee and the sun washing over my face. Clicked the space heater on to take the bite out of the chill, hung out with the cat for a few minutes and then got out of bed to feed the cat and make some coffee. Took mental stock of shit I need to take care of before I head to Oakland for REALISTIC practice in a couple of hours (yeah, old people schedule rehearsal on weekend mornings) and I thought about Indonesian communist Oi!. "Wow, I really want to blast some clenched fist communist Oi! from Indonesia while I drink my coffee this morning,' i thought. So I did. And now you can too. 

WE STILL FIGHT AND AGAINST

DEAD BHUTTOS

 

Rarely have I wished for more than three songs harder than I am wishing there were more than three songs at this moment. Raw and desperate hardcore is supposed to sound this raw and desperate, and Lahore's DEAD BHUTTOS just fukkn nail it. I wasn't sure what I wanted today...until I heard this. 

DEMOCRACY IS THE BEST REVENGE

TAMTAM ARCHIVES

 

Two earlier TamTam volumes have appeared on these pages, and I highly recommend the full set if you missed them the first time/s around. If there's a through line then it's 'freak punk, no rules," but it's better to listen than to try to categorize. STRAWBERRY JAM hit like BIG BOYS if they had cut their teeth in '80s Czechoslovakia. ПАРАШЮТЬІ ХИ-ФИ are completely off the rails punk with an (almost and likely accidental) '80s industrial tinge. TEQILAJAZZZ would have fit in nicely on a random Doomryderz bill in '90s Redwood City while ХИМЕРА seem ripped from the grooves of a long long Rough Trade comp...and the rest of the twenty-two hitters here are just a master class in outsider sounds. The joy of spending time with a collection of completely new sounds from another time and another world cannot be understated, and listening to sounds from post-USSR Russia when anything (might have) seemed possible nails that feeling this morning. Listen to this one, then snag the first two volumes. 

TAMTAM ARCHIVES VOL.3

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

ANTISEPTIC

 

If you want me to wax on with marginally "informed" observations about '90s SE Asian DIY punk then I am definitely willing, but I think it would be better for you for crank this 1997 ANTISEPTIC recording and appreciate how different and intense that world was. These songs are so much better than my words, you know? And parts of this tape remind me of listening to DAMITOL in 1993 and that's like....that's a solid win, folks. 

FINALLY

MAXIMUM ROCKNROLL

 

On this day thirty-two years ago a DJ named Michelle hosted the five hundred fifty-fourth edition of Maximum Rocknroll Radio. To be fair, Michelle likely recorded the edition some days before, but it was broadcast on cool stations across this great land (and other greater lands) on November 27, 1992, which is this day (but thirty-two years ago). Heavy on the garage rock bangers, with a sprinkling of modern sounds du jour - ROCKET FROM THE CRYPT, TRASHWOMEN, GENBAKUKAIDAN, MUMMIES, DC BEGGARS, SENZA BENZA and even a PENNYWISE tune that sounds decidedly not sucky in context. It was 1992 man....we couldn't see into the future. Yet. Remember when we were excited to protest Clinton because at least he hadn't started bombing Iraqi civilians? Yeah....that was cool. 

MAXIMUM ROCKNROLL #554

ROUGHDRAFTS

 

If there were a world that would let me stray further from yesterday's raw Indonesian grind then I would live in that world....instead I (sadly) live in this one and I can only offer you Roughdrafts. If you believe the liner notes (and what choice do you really have?), this is a collection of songs written by and for members of THE HOPE BOMBS that were either in formative stages or were not quite suitable for the band in its (then) form. So you get acoustic manifestations of could-have-been '90s East Bay punk classic. Annie from BORED TO DEATH makes a few appearances as well, most notable on a killer STRAY CATS cover, but the real cats are coming here to listen to some heads try and croon their way through some conceptual tracks and......I am still not sure if it works but I keep coming back to "Revolution Song?" and "About Tonite" and listening to the shamelessly amateurish "Church St." while I wallow in my decisions on Church Street is something altogether other-worldly and it just works. I'm not going to lie to you; ROUGHDRAFTS are a harsh listen. But it's not the kind of noise that you're used to....and it just works. I'm not here to explain, just to share. 

ROUGHDRAFTS

PROLETAR

 

Even the most casual TE viewer has surely noticed the deluge of Indonesian punk that has filled these posts lately. I will not apologize. I will keep blasting, and as I blast? I share. PROLETAR is perfectly suited for a Monday - absolutely unhinged grind mania of the most maniacal caliber, fidelity and competency be damned. Think about Indonesian punk freaks conjuring abrasive black metal and you'll get close, though in their infancy PROLETAR sounded like nothing else before or since.  Rakyat Jelata was released in 2001 and is sending fukkn chills up my spine two decades later....so no. I will not apologize. 

RAKYAT JELATA