LOOSEY

 

This is absolutely the best alt/grunge rehash I have ever heard. Simple Machines and SUPERCHUNK and an irresistible guitar crunch and....this just sounds like I'm listening to my past. I'm guessing LOOSEY get pegged as a Pacific Northwest band even more because they're actually from there, but their sound encapsulates an era more than an area, and for that I am grateful.

SUN SPOTS

FAGGOT

 

Look...FAGGOT were legends. I never even saw them play, but I celebrated the band and their mission openly. I met Jason in '94 when MULTIPLE CHOICE and his band RESIN opened for TOTAL CHAOS in Mankato and I met the Profane Punks for the first time. I met Saira in '98 when ARTIMUS PYLE played with DETESTATION at the Wasted In The Woods festival in Tenino, Washington. And then sometime in the mid '00s they were in Minneapolis....and there was FAGGOT.  You can dismiss them as a schtick if you want, and you'd be forgiven because the name and the song titles bend the needle towards gimmick....but listen. The subject matter is real, the compositions are advanced and FAGGOT just don't hit like. a regular band - or any band for that matter. You take this demo a few steps in another direction and you're on a whole other trip - it jams, it grooves, it's just......different. I don't think FAGGOT would give half a shit about my opinion though (then or now), but I do think that FAGGOT would be happy to know that someone is (still) listening, you know? Check the LP on Profane Existence to be sure, but check this tape and know that FAGGOT were revolutionary punks. 

FAGGOT

YOUNG GUV

 

I don't even know with this tape. You've got some wild SPITS-TARDS damage, you've got killer cuts by a band called MARVELOUS DARLINGS, you've got a live cut from THE BITTERS....and you've got weird interludes and acoustic and 'other' things by GUV. Full disclosure: I don't know who the fukk GUV is. But damn this is a cool sounding (and feeling) tape...I like things that sound (and feel) cool.

GUV LUV MIXTAPE VOLUME 1

HUSTLER

 

Remember that pile of heat from Indonesia that dropped in my lap a few weeks ago? Well get ready for more of this hot shit hardcore punk action in your future, because I have yet to blast a dud. Turn of the century fastcore/crust from HUSTLER that's recorded every bit as raw as the band sounds and of course the recording only adds to the intensity and power. Brutal class consciousness immortalized with tracks like "Red Punx," "Failure Of Socialist Front '98" and "Class War." Unapologetic ferocity in word and deed....from a time and a place where the importance of both cannot be understated. Play this shit loud so you can feel it in your bones. 

WE'RE THE CLASS THEY COULDN'T TEACH 'CAUSE WE KNEW BETTER!

FREAK VIBE

 

A bit of a nonsequiter if you'll allow me....last weekend I listened to AFGHAN WIGS' Gentlemen from start to finish for the first time in a few years, and fukk me what a beautifully painted bleak picture that record paints. I remember the lines that grabbed me in the early '90s, grim and poetic and so seemingly far away before exposure to the actual darkness of the human condition. Why do I bring this up on a random Wednesday in 2024? I don't know man....FREAK VIBNE kinda hits me the same way sometimes. It just sounds so totally on the bring of falling through holes in the floor - the holes that only some can see, that everyone can succumb to. I like a lot of FREAK VIBE jams, but this one it suiting me just fukkn right. 

CUSS

UNHOLY SATIVA

 

You might think you're ready, and Budapest's UNHOLY SATIVA are about to prove you wrong. Absolutely off the rails hardcore somehow rooted in boogie rock and heavy metal....it just doesn't make any damn sense. The same was ANNIHILATION TIME flipped the script twenty years ago, these maniacs channel FLOWER TRAVELLIN' BAND, DUST, MOLLY HATCHET and early DARK THRONE and they make it sound normal. They make it sound like they're in a hardcore band - because UNHOLY SATIVA are a hardcore band. One of the truest (and hardest) sonic accomplishments is to create something that doesn't sound like anything else....and that's what this is. I don't know what is happening to me. I want to ask them to lay off the drugs but also (and mostly) I don't want this to ever end. 

VULKÁN

WARTHREAT

 

This is Monday. This is the most isolated place on earth (well...kinda, but also totally yes). This is Perth. This is birth (day) madness. This is raw, pummeling brutality. This is buzzsaw guitars. This is sonic pain. This is excruciating....this is also perfect. This is exactly what I need. This is WARTHREAT. This is complete. I am complete. 

WARTHREAT

REZILLOS

No bloviating or blustering today. Instead, a REZILLOS Peel Session recorded in 1978....you know what it is and you know it's good. You might even be able to here it somewhere else, but I don't know why you would. That rhymes.

REZILLOS - PEEL SESSION 1978

HAUNTINGS

 

Another post in the spirit of "you hear what I hear even if it's fukkd up." This one came out in 200i9 and the years have warped the tape into a completely different beast - "haunting" is a good descriptor though, and the sonic damage translates to the fukkd analog medium perfectly. You can find the sounds the way they were intended on the internet (if you want to), but I'm going to keep listening to HAUNTINGS the way they were presented to me: Super damaged.

BLACK MASS GRAVES

COMP AGAINST CENSORSHIT

 

My copy came without the booklet, so I'm offering you the same listening experience that I had...two hours of brutal crust, grind and mania with no song titles, no artists, no tracks. Just brutality. I'm sure the information is on the internet somewhere, but I started ripping while I was folding laundry the other day and I just kinda kept it going. I suggest doing the same - don't think too much, just blast. 

COMP. AGAINST CENSORSHIT

MOZART

 

When I shared The Tick with the world in 2016, someone commented "Wow - tupa-tupa-tupa-tupa and fuck it all" but I'm going to guess that the anonymous commenter had not heard Wormeater when they wrote those words because few punk things sound as "fuck it all" as Wormeater. This tape contains something - I'm not sure what it is or how to describe it, but it is definitely. simultaneously meticulous, hesitant and completely carefree, MOZART does an about face and turns their back on punk...solidifying their status as true punks in doing so. Strap yourself in because you aren't ready, the worm is gonna find you. 

WORMSEARCHER

FIRST BLOOD // A SISTEM RIJEK

 

Listen to "Destroy." FIRST BLOOD's opening salvo on this split reminds me of everything from the DBeat drenched 2000s, and the rest of their side continues the theme. Howling, rampaging fist banging hardcore....can't really imagine you need much more of endorsement than that. Obligatory SHITLICKERS cover and a song called "War" tomtop it off. As if that weren't enough, this tape has a backside and it starts with "Absolute Country Of Violence." A SISTEM RIJEK are the blown out and completely fukkn destroyed version of '00s DBeat worship. Everything absolutely pegged, drums awash in pulsing distortion - brainfuck hardcore that makes you tired just listening to it. The riffs are there, turning into weird proto-dubstep mutations on tracks like "Fucked Up Justice Fucked Up System" - I love not knowing if a band tried to push the sonic envelope with the recording or if they were just going real (really) hard and thought this sounded good. Well, punks...? It sounds great.

A ROARING INFERNO

NO BUSINESS

 

The Bay Area isn't big, but there are micro scenes that rival the micro climates, even (especially) in the punk realm. I knew Jonny was in NO BUSINESS after DIE HARD and they ran concurrent with FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS, but I don't remember seeing them live. I wish I had. The Bay Area in the mid-teens was teeming with killer hardcore, and I suspect that NO BUSINESS might have seemed a bit more....rock?....at the time, but I also suspect that Nicole's vocals would have blown people the fukk away in a live setting. Parts remind me of SMUT (the Minneapolis SMUT), but ultimately it's just a really damn good recording of some really fukkn good songs. Better late than never - and a decade after the fact I'm all in.

NO BUSINESS

PULSE DETONATIONS // DEATH CULT RITUAL

 

Twenty minutes of sonic mind fuckery courtesy of Death Bed Tapes. While the people of the country take a day to celebrate the end of summer (under the government imposed guise of celebrating Labor) by cooking food outside and drinking cheap beer, the true believers will hunker down in the dark and listen to the harsh reality of the world we live in. The world we have created. It'll still be here when I'm gone (this world), and likely long after....but the damage we have done to the social and infrastructural fabrics of this Earth is immeasurable. This Earth will be fine - better after we're gone. But our demise is not just impending, but it is inevitable. Harsh sounds for harsh realities, folks. Enjoy your cookout.

SOUNDTRACK FOR EARTH'S IMPENDING DEMISE

IGNORANTES COMEDIANTES

 

You know the times you can't explain why you do...... you just acknowledge that you do? This is one of those times. I didn't see IGNORADOS COMEDIANTES when they were in Oakland a few years back, and their style definitely falls into the "not typically my thing" category....but as I listen on a Friday afternoon before rolling to Fresno for the weekend? It hits kinda perfect. Fast, unapologetic melodic hardcore with just enough teeth ("Destruyendo el Planeta" as an example) to keep them from slipping between the cracks. So I'm just here to acknowledge that I do. 

PARALIZADOS