SATELLITE

 

When CFD went to Indonesia in 2008, SATELLITE were OGs. We didn't play with them (would have loved to, of courser), but the shirts were everywhere and bootleg CDrs seemed to be in every distro. I snagged a couple and jammed them when we got home and.....there was just an urgency hiding in the simplicity of their songs that I couldn't seem to wrap my head around. While I still can't put a finger on why they are so good, this copy of 2000's About War And Violence serves as an excellent reminder (to me) that STELLITE do the fukkn thing right, and sometimes that's worth way more than a bunch of words trying to describe why and how. Sometimes.....it just is. A little out of tune sometimes, a little loose most of the time, a little rudimentary in general and absolute fucking fire from start to finish. Because the shit is real, and when it's truly real you can hear it. When it's truly real you can feel it. 

ABOUT WAR AND VIOLENCE

WEST COMBAT

 

I was trying to figure out exactly why Reality Is War hits so perfectly. I got deep enough into the jams that I almost forgot I was trying to solve a mystery, and the the opening bars of "Tom & Jerry" solved my mental mystery. It's the damn guitar - sounds like a metalhead just landed in a small town and couldn't find any thrashers to play with so he recruited some spikey punks. The thing about this metalhead though...he plays it ultra loose and the guitars come off kinda unhinged as a result. If you can't read between the lines here....this is a serious compliment and ultimately it makes WEST COMBAT stand out from the crowd. I think I know what you want, and ripping anthemic street punk from Jakarta is what you need, and that's exactly what you're getting today. 

REALITY IS WAR 

           

MEAT PUPPETS

 

There are probably some people reading this who don't realize that they need to listen to early MEAT PUPPETS recordings from two sessions in November of 1981. You might be one of those people and, if I'm being honest, I was one of those people until I popped this morsel in my ear holes. So if you are one of those people who simply don't know (yet) until now.....? You're welcome. Because now you know. Desert weird is an entirely different kind of weird, and these recordings are so gloriously fukkn raw that it makes me feel like I never need to listen to the first two LPs again (even though I'm going to listen to them on my ride downtown as soon as I eat this sandwich). Again...you're welcome.

FIRST ALBUM OUTTAKES

CONCRETE NIGHT CENTAUR

 

Another offering from Yard Sale For World Peace, another journey into the most curious recesses of the mind. P.E.A.C.E. Benefit is...something. It listens like aural voyeurism to the point that I want to look over my shoulder and see if my downstairs neighbor is walking through the wall to ask for privacy. Not walking through the door....walking through the wall. Blips and bloops share space with eerily manipulated found sounds struggling to exist in the damaged analog medium until "Complete Shame" ends the cassette like an elegy. It's the only 'song' on P.E.A.C.E. Benefit and it packs a serious punch...desperately distant vocals and a painfully minimal acoustic guitar expand to occupy nearly four minutes of sound, though the sounds will sit with you for a while after the sound ceases. 

P.E.A.C.E. BENEFIT

GULAG

 

Got this little piece of magic from Matt a few years back and was extremely pleased to pull it out earlier this week for a late evening rip 'n blast. As I confessed a few years back, I'm far from a Greek punk aficionado, so I file this shit in the extremely pleasant "listen and enjoy" category....although this shit piques my interest at a dangerous level. GULAG hit the same verve that DAVOVA PSYCHOZA did when I first heard them in the back room at MRR decades ago - it's addictive and melodic punk and it sounds like it's not just coming from the other side of this world...more like another world entirely. Simultaneously gorgeous and intense, these tracks are culled from the Big Talk EP, In The Showyard LP and the debut Είσοδος Κινδύνου 0°C 12" from 1987 and literally every song feels essential. So enjoy Γκούλαγκ like I did...and because Matt is a real one, there are a few SAD LOVERS AND GIANTS tacked onto the end of the mix. 

GULAG

DEMON SYSTEM 13

 

I remember the first time I dropped the needle on Aborted Teen Generation - it was one of "those" punk moments that you just keep with you. It was instantly familiar but it was also new...and it was more. I ordered a copy from Ebullition based on a MRR interview (my copy still has the ghost image of the Goleta address that pressed through the polysleeve), and I was not remotely disappointed. We hosted then in Oakland, and arranged summer travel plans to see them in Reno and Chico because...things were different and we were younger and that's just what you did then. So imagine my excitement in the new reality when I laid eyes on this tape while BAD WAITRESS was playing in LA last weekend....because I love the shit out of DS13 but I didn't have this tape. Well, now I do and my new reality self is giving a hearty nod to old (young) me for knowing what the fukk was up, because motherFUKKR this is (still) the shit that I need. The Studio Shit demo is more raw and in your face than that first EP, and the live set from Nyköping (aka Fukktown, apparently) is straight fukkn fire, even though and/or especially because Tom talks a lot. Fukk dude...I love punk and/or hardcore. 

THE COMPILATION SESSIONS + LIVE IN FUKKTOWN

SOCIAL DRESS

 

Overt and in your face street punk a la WANKYS, TOM & BOOT BOYS or any other modern punk with gruff, snotty vocals and a healthy UK80 obsession. The real genius was keeping the demo at four songs (including a SPECIAL DUTIES cover), not because the songs aren't great (they are) but because even greatness has limits. As presented, however? This is damn near perfection.

SOCIAL DRESS

SILENT ORDER

 

Here it is, the shit Mondays were made for. The shit that used to fill the void left by the evaporation of freedom and the return to reality for weekend warriors turned office zombies. When I started posting so-called 'noise punk' tapes on Mondays, it was a different time. When I started posting so-called 'noise punk' tapes on Mondays, I was still in VACCUUM and the world of extra-damaged and over-manipulated hardcore was a world where rocks were still being uncovered. VACCUUM hasn't existed in well over a decade now, and so many rocks have been  uncovered by over-manipulated and extra-damaged hardcore freaks that they started playing generic street punk as some weird kind of revolt.....but the gems are still there. There are still sonic reminders from the past reminding you that on this day - the start of your week of futile toil - you are making the wrong decision. Because what you should be doing is searching desperately for more noise. There are bands who tortured their instruments for you....and you haven't heard them yet. Ottawa's SILENT ORDER did it in 2014 and they did it for you. To remind you: It's Monday. You fucked up. It's all noise. 

SILENT ORDER

DARK DAYS

DARK DAYS happened just as I moved back to San Francisco - not even just if I barely missed them or if I wasn't even close, since the onset micro-scenes means that if you aren't completely in a loop then you're completely outside of it. Regardless of the why, I've spent a fair bit of time with 2009's How Have We Done This in the years since and I am (still) impressed by the band's ferocity. The shit is just....ugly. GEHENNA and COP OUT vibes. Some bands have raspy, desolate sounding vocals; with DARK DAYS it's the whole fukkn band. It's only six minutes, of course....sometimes that's all you need to get your point across. Sometimes that's all you need to communicate desperation. 

SURVIVAL: MONEY IS THE KEY

ATRET

 

I first heard ATRET on Max's Barbaric Thrash Demolition comp more than twenty years ago - that was only three songs though, so I was psyched to pull this discography cassette from a box of tapes form Indonesia recently. Forty tracks of blistering fastcore/grind from Yogyakarta, I'm not sure what else you could ask for...you can ask for something different if you like, but I don't think you're going to find it here.

DISCOGRAPHY

••••

KALX CHRISTMAS

 Remember those appliance stores that would have Christmas In July!! sales to try get your parents to buy shit they didn't need or couldn't afford? Well this is like that, except it's October and I'm not selling anything - I'm offering. On the 25th of December in 1984, a gentle man named Pat Wright put this broadcast over the Bay Area airwaves via radio station KALX in Berkeley, and for this we are (all) grateful.

KALX - 25 December 1984

S.O.P.S.

 

Barebones and beautiful, 2015's Singing And Pogo from S.O.P.S. is littered with should-have-been anthems like "Fuck Police Fuckin Crew," "Living On The Street," "Fuck Seniority" and "Government Slaves." Steady 4/4 drums and blistering buzzsaw guitars challenge conventional concepts of what is 'good' by cranking out one burner after another, shamelessly addictive high energy Indonesian street punk of the highest order. Please don't look for anything revolutionary here...unless you are trying to be a part of the S.O.P.S. revolution, of course. 

SINGING AND POGO

WEAKLING

 

I don't know how black metal entered your world in the '90s, but it was this weird organic anomaly that just appeared in mine. Punks and punk adjacent metalheads started chattering about these bands from Scandinavia, of course there were the churches and shit that gave the whole thing an element of 'hmmmm, this is interesting' even beyond the music. On tour in 1995, FUCKFACE came across an interview with BLACK FUNERAL and we clowned that dude relentlessly in the van (later found out he worked at a Pizza Hut in Indiana and lived with his mom) before we used a quote from the interview as the center label for the Don't Hate Us 'Cause We're... EP and still...black metal was just curiosity. Meanwhile, black metal was consuming the scene in San Francisco - Lucifer's Hammer started hosting shows on Tuesdays and were responsible for MAYHEM, MORTIIS, EMPEROR, IMPALED NAZARENE and countless others playing a dive bar on Folsom street...on a Tuesday. And while this was happening....people were starting bands, and these bands made it very fucking clear to casual consumers that this new 'thing' was much more than a curiosity; this shit was for real. There was UNHOLY CADAVER - a recording project that came out of THUNDERCHIMP and evolved into HAMMERS OF MISFORTUNE. There was LUDICRA, who featured the guitarist from HAMMERS OF MISFORTUNE, the guitarist from MISSILE COMMAND, and the drummer from HICKEY along with Jessika from a drunk band called KETAMINE.

And then....there was WEAKLING...WEAKLING were different, and 1999's Dead As Dreams is as much a genre defining record as anything I can conjure. The drummer from SANGRE AMADO, the guitarist from FUCKING CHAMPS and the dude from VOMITORIUM made something that changed everything.  And then in 2023 this dude I know wanted to sell a bunch of tapes and I offered to help him more the units.....couldn't put a price tag on the WEAKLING tape so after some friendly discussions it lives with me now. This shit is so important (to me) that I don't give two shits how important the band was (is) in general - no one in North America did this better. Period. And this is seventy five minutes of proof.These tapes were dubbed off sporadically - I never saw this for sale anywhere....you got a copy of this if you were there, you dig? So I am honored to give this copy a (new) home. If you don't know....listen. 

DEAD AS DREAMS

HOT MESS MONSTER

 

For the days when you need to listen to punk that makes you feel free. For the days when you need punk to make you feel free. No constraints, slightly awkward and stilted, honesty and uncomfortability holding the same space...the feeling you get as a person from a pretentious place walking into a place where no one cares about anything about you - they just care about you. Though this was recorded in the mountains of North Carolina a decade ago, HOT MESS MONSTER are making me (helping me) feel those feelings this morning and I'm going ton listen to "The Rigors Of Self-Improvement" several times before I face the day.

ALL FIVE OF US

APPARATUS

 

Hard to believe that APPARATUS has been delivering damage for (almost?) two decades, but here we are in 2024 and I'm getting my brain melted by the same Malaysian juggernaut that slapped my face with Total Mangel Product back in 2006. Absürd 19 is a master class in Scandi-worship, eleven doses of relentless mania including a D.N.A. cover with Nils on vocals in case you needed to know where they were coming from. APPARATUS are dedicated to their craft, and seem determined to keep perfecting it....and I'm going to keep listening.

ABSÜRD 19

SHIT FETISH

 

A few months ago I got a message from a stranger asking if I wanted some tapes. Listen closely, punks: YES. Like - even if I don't want them, I need to have them  so I can determine whether or not I want them, you understand? So I responded to this stranger in the affirmative, and kinda forgot about it because.....well, punks is flakes, you know? Then my lady (of the night) friend sent me a message and said she had received a package from Australia with my name on it...so I asked her to open it. Punks, try explaining SHIT FETISH to your girlfriend. Never mind me trying to explain SHIT FETISH to you (dear reader) because that would take more words than I can muster at the moment, but think about explaining SHIT FETISH to someone who doesn't fuck with noise punk at all. So yeah, that was an entertaining conversation. There was another SHIT FETISH tape in that package.....so I guess I'll talk about the band when I post that one (until then, crank "Undergarmet" and "Food Fight" because this is perfect punk)....maybe we can also talk about how scrawling your song titles on the inside of the j-card with a magic fukkn marker so it bleeds through and wrecks the cover art. No? Fine...I'll talk about that somewhere else. 

SHIT FETISH - DEMO TAPE

•••

Last show of the (short) SUBHUMANS tour is tonight in San Pedro. They're playing with NOFX, supposedly the last NOFX show ever. I'm writing these words in September as I'm preparing to head out and I am realizing that I have never seen NOFX - which I am totally fine with. The question is: will I watch them when I have the chance? I guess we will find out. 

BONE AWL

 

The world of raw black metal was not the same with BONE AWL in it, straight up. The approach was so deadly simple and the execution was meticulously careless. I've never been an expert on the genre and its assorted offshoots and subs, but I know what I like and when I hear something that I like...? I keep listening. This is the reissue version that Klaxon dropped when they gave 2007's Almost Dead Man the vinyl treatment a few years ago...and it sounds like my life: Disgusting. 

ALMOST DEAD MAN

MARI BUNG BANGKIT KEMBALI!

 

Absolute fucking scorcher from 2002 with 29 Indonesian hardcore bands, many of whom don't appear to pop up anywhere else. Impossible to go through band by band without getting lost in the filthy glory of underground DIY hardcore/punk, but some highlights: DIRTY CHAOS, GARPUTALA, BORGOL, PAPER SKIN, SPUTNIK, COP IS DEAD and BHH - it's hard to find a clunker in the mix. Raw, harsh, low fidelity, intense, honest and powerful hardcore punk? Sold.

MARI BUNGBANGKIT KAMBALI! - KOMPILASI NUSANTARA HC PUNK

THE RESIDENTS

 

If you're like me (and for your sake I truly hope that you are not) then you've seen this record (or tape) a thousand times and wondered just what exactly The Third Reich 'n Roll might sound like. And listening to THE RESIDENTS as I write these words, listening to a bunch of absolute freaks from the past make music that defies description, I still don't know what The Third Reich 'n Roll sounds like. This recording was (self) released in 1979 by THE RESIDENTS, and it's no easier to wrap a mind around now than it was then..equal parts psychedelic freakout and irreverent pisstake this collection of montages of radio hits doesn't make any sense....at all. And what really doesn't make sense is how much  I (still) like it. Draw a line between MOTHERS OF INVENTION and NEGATIVLAND and you're gonna run into THE RESIDENTS, but there's nothing like THE RESIDENTS.  Mushrooms advised. 

THE RESIDENTS PRESENT: THE THIRD REICH 'N ROLL

•••

First: This is (still) one of the coolest looking record covers ever.

Second: The members of THE RESIDENTS were (and are) ever r/evolving and remain eternally mysterious. It's my understanding that I work with one of them.....but I legit have no idea who/m, and I love this.

DETH CRUX

 

A few years before the full length on Sentient Ruin came this untouchable (albeit brief) death rock opus from DETH CRUX. There's something about Los Angeles goth punks that hits different - just as punks often play goth better than goths play goth, Los Angeles goths play goth punk like only Los Angeles punks can play goth punk. The CHRISTIAN DEATH to CIRIL pipeline birthed these dreary souls and in this world for which so many have so little for which to be grateful....? Listen to "Swallowed" and then listen to it again. DETH CRUX was just different.

PEARS OF ANGUISH

BUNGA HITAM

 

Threw this one on when I was digging through the 'to be listened to' box and ended up sticking with it for a couple of rounds. Some folks gonna listen to COCKSPARRER or some other kind of infectious street punk with hopelessly addictive choruses....but me? I'm gonna hum along to this shit I can't understand and crank "Menghancurkan Dan Membangun" for the third time in a row.

UNTUKNU KOMUNITAS

••••
SUBHUMANS hit Templeton, California with HUMAN tonight.

Always pysched to see them in a smaller town, but particularly and specifically excited to sneak away to Paso Robles with Kelsey and hit The Vreamery.

DISCLONE

 

First Question: How can there only be one band named DISCLONE? It's so damn obvious that I think I need to start a second one just to demonstrate the point.

Second Question: How the fuck can hearing "yet another dis-clone band" for the first time hit so damn hard and sound so damn good?

•••••

So there I was sitting in El Buen Sabor with Spencer a few weeks back, poring over the bounty he hauled back from his most recent trip to Europe and marveling at the simple genius of a dis-band called DISCLONE. It was the first tape I popped in when I got home that night, and even with maximum expectations I wasn't prepared. Harsh Raw Affront collects four separate releases with disparate recordings that keep the ears on edge and the heart pounding. DBeat mania distorted to absolute oblivion, which is exactly what I want out of this life: to be distorted to the point of being unrecognizable. Success.

HARSH RAW AFFRONT

•••••

A short tour with SUBHUMANS continues today with a stop in Fresno, California. 

Interested parties are encouraged to attend - guest list spots in exchange for cassettes. 
I'm the old guy slinging shirts.