ZYGOTE

 

No introduction necessary....right? Two blokes from AMEBIX and two from SMARTPILS, that should be enough if you don't already know. There's the collection on Skuld that was the introduction for most folks (including me), and the LP on MCR that was a little harder to track down (before the internet), but this tape was elusive as fuck...so I reissued it in the early TE days. No one sounded like ZYGOTE then, and no one has sense...and I swear these two recordings hit me harder today than they did when I first heard them.

ZYGOTE

IN TIME

 

I listen to IN TIME and I wish that they had been in my life in 2001. They didn't exist in 2001 (fukk, they were probably still children in 2001), but I try to not let semantics and logistics get in the way of my dreams, especially when I'm dreaming about seeing hardcore bands in a time and place where they would have made the greatest impact (on me). IN TIME doesn't make me nostalgic for that time...but IN TIME makes me happy that someone else is living that reality today. Of course this demo comes from Extinction Burst, a label who pretty much embody all of the feels this hardcore demo dropped in my lap today. Play it loud, punks. Play it so loud you can feel it. Because it helps. 

IN TIME

FUCKHEADS

 

Holy fuck is it a face blast to crank this tape after it sat on a shelf for a decade!!! FUCKHEADS took the over the top noisepunk guitar manipulation that NERVESKADE dropped on the DIY world in the late '00s and injected it into a blistering embodiment of intense rapid fire East Coast hardcore. The foundation is hardcore punk - period - and that's what makes their treatments so perfect. Absolute face melting supremacy with erratic ADHD guitar treatments that make FUCKHEADS simultaneously difficult and fascinating to listen to, and check "Traitor" to learn about appropriate BPM implementation in hardcore punk. I feel like future punk is creeping in from the past to tap me on the shoulder and remind me that it's not quite time to die...yet. July 25th 2024 and listening to FUCKHEADS makes me feel alive. 

2011 SUMMER TOUR TAPE

TOTAL CON

 

This is one of the fiercest recordings I have heard in....in a long time. Holy shit. TOTAL CON sound like they are ripped from the clutches of the best BCT compilation you were never able to get your hands on, the kind of band that seemed to exist in only in legends told by people who weren't even there. But TOTAL CON are fukkn real, they are from Leeds, and they are unbelievable. Eleven scorchers in fourteen minutes, this is a perfect hardcore punk recording. 

ELEVEN-SONG CASSETTE

DEATH CULT

 

Four more short blasts, this time from San Antonio's DEATH CULT. Dark, in your face PENI obsessed mutant punk done exactly the right way. There are a few other tapes floating around and I recommend seeking this recording on wax....but really I'm here to applaud these folks for blatantly ripping the name from DEATH CULT. Respect. 

SPIRITUAL CONUNDRUM

HUMAN

 

Gloriously blown out chaos from the sun baked streets of Fresno, California - HUMAN make it clear they are the real fukkn deal long before this five minute demo is over. Maximum energy high distortion pogo freaks, exactly the kind of noise I want when I need to be reminded what a fukkn shit we're in. These are folks responsible for Power Glove Dub and a deadly series of DIY gigs and happenings, including a pop-up shop in Fresno's Tower District this afternoon....so if you find yourself rolling up (or down) CA-99 then you've got yet another reason to stop and hang out for a spell. I mean...if you like punk. You like punk...don't you? 

HUMAN

ABYSSAL

 

Doom is hard y'all. And when you're setting up in a sweltering warehouse to play for a cowd of maybe half a dozen people...? Doom gets real real hard. That was the scenario facing Tijuana's ABYSSAL afew weeks ago in Fresno, and I was one of the "maybe half a dozen" in attendance. They got their shit dialed in and calmly announced 'We're going to play one long song for you" and then embarked on an absolutely epic journey of sound. You could hear a pin drop in that warehouse during the introduction...and then came the tonnage. This is the hard part - because doom is (to a large extent a formula) and the audience often knows what's coming, the artist needs to surprise the listener with the how more than the what. And when ABYSSAL got heavy that night, we weren't surprised as much as we were completely blown away. It was hot, the room was awkward, and the band was mesmerizing....doom might be hard, but that night it was as if there was nothing else in this world more important than doom. It was perfect, and listening to A Deep Sea Funeral will always take me back there. 

A DEEP SEA FUNERAL

ROTTERS

The nerds are gonna know "Sit On My Face Stevie Nicks" (the nerds-in-training should get to know it) and there's a solid retrospective LP that came out in the '00s that captures a lot of the brilliant madness of THE ROTTERS. But tape traders....man, those fools had our backs before we were even paying attention. This discretely (read: poorly) labeled cassette has two brilliant bare bones ROTTERS sessions, one labeled Moor Punk College Session (1979) and one label Mystic Session (1984) and I swear if the fools who collected material for the aforementioned LP had had access to this tape then it would have been a double album. "Thank God I'm Damned" sounds demonic, "Autolobotomy" hits like a lost KBD burner, "Delousing Shower" is like DWARVES with roughshod GERMS energy. These songs are absolutely in your face and the recordings are about as perfect as you can ask for. So if you're tryna get a little dirty this Wednesday morning...then look no further. 

THE ROTTERS - MYSTIC & MOOR(E)

THE ROTTERS - MYSTIC & MOOR(E)

DEFACEMAN

 

The Yard Sale For World Peace family of artists is exactly what I want from a label and a group of creators; I never know what I to expect and I always expect that I will be engaged and intrigued. DEFACEMAN playing A Poem About You is no exception (of course) and after several consecutive listens I am still wrapping my head around a truly magnificent collection of sounds. Outsider poetry, primitive punk, reimagined sound....interesting. "Interesting" as in: a cassette that holds your interest. This is what the special artists offer us, and I am (still) here for it. 

DEFACEMAN PLAYS A POEM FOR YOU

LEBENDEN TOTEN // SKITKIDS

 

This tape was released twenty years ago. 

Let that sit there for a minute. 

This tape was released twenty years ago. 

•••

When I first started posting on Terminal Escape in 2009, I was sharing seminal UK crust demos that were just barely twenty years old. And now...I'm posting a split between two bands who are my contemporaries, and the tape is twenty years old. 

Weird things happen when you don't die, I suppose. 

DISTORT THRASH DISTORT HOPE

KONTRA

 

Fist banging beer pounding street punk from San Jose.

  Walk these streets is what we do / Can't you see that we're sick of you.

I'm wondering what exactly it is you're waiting for, punk? 

TERROR CONSTANTE

MOCK EXECUTION

When MOCK EXECUTION exploded out of Chicago a few years ago it kinda felt like the floor dropped out from underneath me. It wasn't that we'd never heard anything like them, it was just that MOCK EXECUTION did the shit better. The riffs were fire (like, every single riff was fire) and the delivery harnessed a ferocity that defied description. And now....a half decade and several heralded vinyl releases after that first tape split my ears into pieces, Milwaukee's Unlawful Assembly gives them a platform to demonstrate that they still dominate the cassette format. 

 

REBELS WITHOUT A CAUSE

KOSHER CLASSICS

 

You think it's going to be a tape with songs about hot dogs when you pick it up at the thrift store, and it's only a quarter so fuck it, right? But there are no songs about hot dogs. There's a song called "Makin' Whoopee" and there are some show tunes from Milk And Honey and Marry Me! Marry Me! and I'm really not sure that any other songs have anything to to with hot dogs except "Coney Island" but even that's a stretch. I used to eat hot dogs on Roman Meal wheat bread with mayonnaise.

MUSIC THAT ANSWERS TO A HIGHER AUTHORITY

WEAPONIZED FLESH

 

Sometimes it's wise to sit down and take stock of your surroundings before you blast a cassette for the first time because, if you're like me, you might find yourself lost, confused and searching for your ass after the first track. It can be disorienting to not know where (or who) you are when you realize that your ass has just been blown off, so I suggest proper preparation before blasting WEAPONIZED FLESH for the first time. After that first listen? After that first blasting? Game on, motherfucker - you're gonna realize that you didn't even need that ass anyway and the whole Who am I? Where am I? quandry is going to see so very petty and meaningless. 

HURTFUL

MALICIOUS EXISTENCE

 

Face ripping grindcrust from Naga, Philippines, rooted firmly in 2000s fastcore/thrash mania. You only get ten minutes here (two of which are spent on samples in the truest '90 PV/grind/crust tradition) but MALICIOUS EXISTENCE prove their point on the eponymous opening track and spend the rest of the tape driving it home. Crushing slows are your only respite until "Personal Hell" comes to a merciful end and you can exhale - this is an all killer, no filler, no bullshit, black clad sonic assault. There's more where this came from, but Operation Noise Pollution will keep you busy for a brutal minute.

OPERATION NOISE POLLUTION

PARLAG

 

Some of the nastiest raw black metalpunk I have ever heard comes from Budapest. Paper thin no-fi treble rebels blasting impossibly bleak sonic destruction over the course of six movements....steel yourselves. You're welcome.

PARLAG

THE WASTED

If the punx aren't doing it for the punx, then why are the punx even punx?

PUNX FOR PUNX

 

TÉLÉCOMMANDE

 

Here's another repost. Even though TÉLÉCOMMANDE's swan song only popped up here five or six years ago, I recently snagged a copy with a cover and I know that if I just quietly edited a post from 2018 then something like zero people would even notice. My admittedly mild OCD would be satisfied, but that wouldn't do shit for the minions who have yet to experience this brilliant but relatively short lived French outfit. I mentioned SOVIETTES and SPITS when I first posted this tape in 2018 and I'm gonna stick by those references while I think about how much you're going to enjoy spending your Sunday  listening to high energy French punk with heavy synths. Lots of tasty morsels in those old posts...treat yourself. You're worth it.

EN LÍGNE DE MIRE

SQUELCH CHAMBER

 

As much as I liked the Everything Turns To Shit release from Wet Cassettes, this recording from Philadelphia's SQUELCH CHAMBER is absolutely feral. All consuming grind tracks devour themselves as the band descends into sludge and noise portals to create an indescribably terrifying assemblage of sounds that nods to Fair Warning-era VAN HALEN and MUERAN HUMANS of back-to-back tracks. Not only is it that varied, but Much Drugs is simply that fucking good. Listening to this tape is a white knuckle experience from start to finish, and I am truly in awe. 

MUCH DRUGS

DELTOIDS

 

Absolte face melter from Berlin's DELTOIDS. It's hard to believe that a band can drop a recording that's this essential and then just drop out, but it seems like that's exactly what they did. I suppose if you're going to leave the world with six minutes of music then you might as well make then count, which is exactly what these cats did. So blast "Lab" all damn day and wish that you were one of the lucky ones who got to see DELTOIDS live. 

DELTOIDS

ISTUKAS OVER DISNEYLAND

 

Stalwarts of the Manila punk scene for nearly thirty years, ISTUKAS OVER DISNEYLAND keep cranking out essential records and show no signs of mellowing. 2020's Kalbaryu is a master clinic in catchy street punk - a timeless recording that transcends scene, genre and region from a band still fiercely connected to (and integral to) the DIY scene in Philippines. Sometimes the best things are so perfectly executed that all you can do is shrug and say "yeah - of course it's that good." And this is what ISTUKAS OVER DISNEYLAND have been doing for longer than many of their fans have been alive.

KALBARYU

MYSTERIOUS SKIN

 

Kinda blows my mind that MYSTERIOUS SKIN never made it to wax. The last 15 seconds of "Red Light" are as good as half this shit that came out in 2014 and the opening riff from "Wet Trash" is like if CFD's "Double Standard Bearer" was a way better song. I only saw them once, and they were every bit as good as this eight song suggests they might have been. Nine minutes - that's all the time MYSTERIOUS SKIN needed to cram hook laden ferocity into your earholes. The best nine minutes of your miserable day, I'm guessing.

MYSKN

FUTUR INCIERTO

 

If you feel like spending time with melodic '90s punk bands from Peru, then might I suggest starting with Lima's FUTUR INCIERTO? I know what you're thinking here, you're thinking "You just handed me my ass with that IMPALERS tape yesterday, I don't think I'm ready to be further disconnected from my body." Or maybe you're thinking "I don't really need any more melodic '90s Peruvian punk in my life." And either of thoughts are forgivable....until you look at this fool's glasses. Resistance is futile, my friends.

...TAN LEJOS

IMPALERS

 

You know IMPALERS, right? Then you know what's up. Hold out your hands. Thanks, here's your ass. How does that feel? 

Sometimes it be like this.

It's a new week.

THE BEAT SESSIONS

S L E E P D E A T H

 

A stunning journey through thought and sound, S L E E P D E A T H created something truly special with 2013's Reality. Sounds found and manipulated, ancient synths resurrected. Emotions manifested as sound. It would be a disservice to describe Reality as a soundtrack to an imaginary film, though it would be easy to do (and perhaps that film should exist). These sounds deserve to be experienced solitarily, in the world that they have constructed. This release will consume a solid hour, and if you're listening properly then you will be enriched by that hour even though you will never get it back. It won't be time lost, but it will be time spent. And enrichment takes time. It's worth it. 

REALITY

SADO-BABIES

 

Pretty sure the first song isn't even SADO-BABIES, and the three songs listed on the cover don't appear to indicate the tape's contents. There are eight songs here, and five of them appear twice. My goal has always been to present the sounds as presented, not as intended, so here is a collection of growling dupa-dupa that may or may not be the product of some miscreants from Boyle Heights called SADO-BABIES. Hopefully someone drops a comment here, because this shit is actual lo-fi fire and I would like to hear more. 

THE BROOD SESSIONS