PRIMITIVE

 

Sister band of the equally uhhhhh....primitive DENIM posted a few months back. PRIMITIVE (and I dare say there are fewer bands more aptly named) dish out six minutes of utterly ignorant Oi! that's more than a little (and very intentionally) rough around the edges. Say what you will, but when you want to turn it off and just stomp around a bit....well, this shit hits the spot. 

PIGS FOR SLAUGHTER

LUPITA D'ALESSIO

 

Today is for '80s Mexican smooth pop rescued from a thrift store in Pomona on the way to House Of Fortune last weekend. So now I've given you The Sleeping Lioness and a portal to one of the best meals you'll ever have...two things that you didn't know you needed, and I can't think of a better soundtrack to a wonderful meal. It's still early, you've got time to plan you're evening. You're welcome. 

SOY AUTENTICA... Y PUNTO

UFFIZI

 

This short-lived trio would have been just as comfortable on a bill with SISTER FUCKER as with LIVID....but they were just a few years too late for either. The songs are so gloriously honest and bratty that they could have come from literally any era from 1978-present (which is their charm and their staying power) but they are quintessential mid-10s Bay Area. But really, I'm posting Nous Sommes Riches at 12:11 on 12/11...because you need to hear "The Fucking Song" immediately. 

NOUS SOMMES RICHES

MEZTISOUL

 

Half hour chill-house mix from Central (CA) Valley's MEZTISOUL. Bump under heat during the Season Of The Disappearing Sun if you'd like to have the same listening experience I had.....and it was a sensational listening experience. 

PRESCRIPTION PART 1

VAARALLINEN

 

Spent some time at practice tonight learning an IMPALERS cover that we may or may not play in a few days, and honestly I can't think of a better  thing to settle into than this VAARALLINEN tape. The bands that tweak the DBeat formula and make it sound different are special bands - and these punks from Singapore do (did) exactly that, just like those punks from Texas. This is the 2012 demo with tracks from the Hautausmaa EP crammed onto one cassette, and if need a reminder that Scan-DBeat hardcore rulz then I suggest you look no further. Shit is absolutely mental, even (especially) while it's more than a decade in the rearview mirror. "Ei Jumalaa" at full volume, all damn day. 
 

SOSIAALINEN KONTROLLI

TOPSY TURVY

Seven minutes of dual vocal Indonesian crust brutality. Not exactly sure what else it was that you thought you needed today, but rest assured you didn't actually need that...you needed this. You needed it before, and I gave it to you. You needed it again today. You're welcome. 

ELEMENTS OF RESISTANCE

NO COMPLY // LOS CRUSTÁCEOS

 

On one side you've got ten minutes of furious blastcore/PV/grind from Chile's LOS CRUSTÁCEOS with a. blatant and heavy West Bay Doomryderz influence. And it would be simple enough to tell you that the other side rips and recommend a DL+listen....but NO COMPLY is on the flip. You know NO COMPLY, right? Fuck me (and fuck you) if you don't, but if you don't....please do. NO COMPLY are (were) a special thing - Florida's SUPPRESSION perhaps. Like...if you know and you were there then there's no replacement, even though an outsider might raise an eyebrow. NO COMPLY's contribution to the second wave of DIY/PV is impossible to understate, and this 1999 live recording captures them in a rare, raw moment of ferocity. It would be very hard to find a band more dedicated to the craft than NO COMPLY, and when Justin passed in 2023 we lost a real one. Listen with volume and listen with intent, my friends. 

NO COMPLY // LOS CRUSTÁCEOS

MERKED

 

Fifteen minutes of anti-capitalist mince/grind from Oakland. You can say that there's nothing special here, and I'll respond by saying that you're wrong. It's fierce and ugly....there are now sounds for now times. And if you don't thing "Soothing Sounds Of Slaughtered Rapists" is special, then I suggest you visit a different and/or worse/r blog. Choice cut: "Remove The Burden." Mandatory listening: Start to finish.  

MURK MOB

PAIN IN MY HEART

 

I don't know how often I need to remind you how much impact the right mixtape can have in the right moment. There's an art to curating a cassette the right way - it can't just be bangers and it can't just be unknown gems (even if the gems are all diamonds), it's better if there's a through-line but if you deviate from the mission it can deaden the impact. A perfect mix is indefinable, but when they come to you.....you know it because you feel it, and you cherish them. Bailey makes them. Jensen makes them....and apparently Pinhole Collapse makes them. Pain In My Heart is the fifth in a twelve tape series, and is among the most gut-wrenching and excruciating listens that I have endured. Ever. You want to talk about variations on a theme? You want to talk about heartache in song? You want to talk about fucking pain? REUBEN BELL and BILL BRANDON and JOE WILSON and MARION BLACK and JOHNNY THUNDER and CALA THOMAS are gonna tell you about pain, motherfucker. The only hope on this tape is the hope that hopefully you'll be able to make it through the pain. The pain will never go away, but maybe you'll make it. I told you a few months ago that Howlin' At The Moon was perfect....and Im here to tell you today that this next volume hits ever harder. Absolutely devastating. Listen to DIANE LEWIS' "Please Let Me Help You" and cry. Cry, motherfucker. 

PAIN IN MY HEART

ATAUDES

 

I don't even know (or remember) how this one came to me, but I am glad it's with me now. Black infused blasting death metal from Argentina presented with a powerfully determined focus, ATAUDES will lay waste to your earholes and calmly remove all hope from your heart. Shit sounds that bleak because shit is actually that bleak, and ATAUDES are the soundtrack to that reality. It's dark and determined, listen to "Nos Merecemos La Extincion" if you have any doubts. And when you listen to "Nos Merecemos La Extincion" you will surely have additional doubts. 

MERECEMOS LE EXTINCIÓN

EATING

 

I do not know how to (best) describe EATING, because EATING defies description. Sure, it's avant-improvisational jazz/punk......if you want. But it's something else even though it's also not. All of the sounds are here, punks - the foundation of everything that you do is here in one form and/or another. So listen and learn and fucking create everything that you are compelled to create, because that is exactly what makes the Music For People punks very very special punks. 

EATING

SKATEBOARD & THE PUNKS

 

I remember a conversation a lifetime ago about the then-changing dynamics (and admittedly, economics) of DIY punk record production, distribution and consumption. The internet changed shit (...duh) and there were so many more options - options in general but specifically options without the realm/s of things classified as DIY punk. Gone were the days when a mediocre band could self release a mediocre EP and go on tour and hit a few distros and move 1000 copies (or more) with relative ease while the "bigger" bands could reliably crank through five times that number. We were (at the time of this conversation) in a place where even the flavor-of-the month bands would struggle to sell more than a few hundred records and hope that their online streams and bandcamp DLs might result in enough visibility for their live shows to be well attended. Maybe they'd sell some shirts, you know? And it's not about money - it's about survival. It's all connected. Anyway, as a contribution to this conversation, my buddy mentioned a band from Buffalo called BROWN SUGAR who dropped a stellar full length back in 2011 and flew through 500+ physical copies like it was 1994 when they hit the road. See, the internet didn't care....but the punks did. Tour. Put it in their faces. Play shitty shows where none of the people are cool - they'll recognize that you aren't cool either and you will all realize that you're on the same team. Fuck selling records, it's about getting to the next place to connect with new freaks - or connect with the one freak in that next place, you know? 
Why do I say these things? Because the dude who played guitar for BROWN SUGAR later played in a band called SKATEBOARD and also in a band called THE PUNKS. Each band released a demo in the 2010s and some genius packaged them on one destined-to-be-overlooked cassette in the 2020s. But let us not get bogged down in the connection to a conversation about punk economics, instead lets talk about how fukkn much undiscovered DIY punk lights a fire under our collective ass. The five tracks from THE PUNKS are enough to make your old-ass self want to go start a new band (tonight) and the twenty punk minutes on the SKATEBOARD side...well, sometimes the shit is life affirming even if there isn't a story attached to it. This time though, there is. Kinda. 

SKATEBOARD & THE PUNKS

FLEXITD

 

FLEXITD blew the fukkn windows out of my apartment and wrecked my earholes. It's like a crasher crust LP played at 45rpm....but faster. The bass that opens "Stabilized Destruction." The midtempo part near the end of "Only Death" (that's only midtempo because everything else is so fukkn fast). The piercing distortion that opens "Killing Nation" and gives way to the face melting cacophony. The complete lack of low end anywhere in the mix creates a void that the vocals fill with crushing efficacy. Everything. I'm telling you.....this is an eleven minute masterclass. Readers remotely interested in noise punk, bombastic DBeat, FRAMTID-worship and/or anything close to any of those things...you've found it. It is FLEXITD.

MASSIVE SUFFERING OF THE EMPTY WORLD VERSES

TONI TENNILLE

 

Are you listening to some lounge crooner? Maybe some proto new age singer/songwriter shit? A musical score? I don't even know, man....I bought it for a quarter and it was on in the background for a solid half hour and didn't realize this was the "Tennille" of CAPTAIN AND TENNILLE until I was writing the words you're reading now. So there you go....but also here you go, because this "Deep In The Dark" is a legitimately different experience. I'm conflicted, punks....because I want to roll my eyes and dismiss it as it is truly and utterly dismissible but I just fukkn can't. It's okay, I'll blast some raw DBeat tomorrow. 

NEVER LET ME GO

GUDANG GARAM

 

THS
IS 
FASTCORE

I don't think I can think of a better example of furious DIY fastcore than GUDANG  GARAM. 

Maybe it exists...but also maybe not.

SKULL CRUSHING HARDCORE

LOWRIDER

 

Nothing says "lazy Friday" like a killer collection of freestyle, funk, R&B and street dance jams. Straight up. MC FROSTY. DAZZA. THE FLAVA SYSTEM. WORLD CLASS RECKIN' CRU. SETH LUV. BABY G. There's more, but really you just need to freak to ROCKY & MS. VEE "Dance Freak To The Beat" and fuck literally everything else. I know I said some things about punk music yesterday....you know what motherfuckers? I'm saying the same shit today listening to BY ALL MEANS KINGS and MILDRED BLACK so think about that maybe. Or just listen and fukkn ride...low.

LOWRIDER SOUNDTRACK VOLUME 2 

DISSLATE // PERDICIÓN

 

I like how this blog typically pays no attention to "special" days and/or dates, because what is important to a person in a place or space may mean nothing whatsoever to another person in another space or place, you know? Punk is important though, and I know I share a lot of no necessarily punk things here but punk is what started this nonsense and punk music in all its forms is what keeps me breathing. So fuck a colonial "holiday" and listen to Mexican hardcore punk...right? DISSLATE are more ferocious than ever. PERDICIÓN are raw Mexican punk on a diet of DYSTOPIA and I'm here for it. So yeah....fuck your aunt's pumpkin pie recipe and who gives a shit about the sports game. Punk rules. 

TE•PER

CHRIST STEPS B.C.

 

I don't have much to contribute here beyond strongly suggesting that you....listen. I have no background, no context (no information). I just have these sounds sneaked onto a Poi Dog Pondering cassingle given new life by entities that are either aliens or hippies or geniuses. Fuck man, I don't even know how to tell you how beautifully engrossing this tape is. It clocks just under a quarter hour - you can spare that much time to just put everything down and listen...right? You should. You deserve that much at least. Probably more, but at least that much. You deserve at least this. 

CHURCH STEPS B.C

RUINS

 

Like countless other alt-adjacent post adolescents in the early '90s, my first introduction to Shimmy Disc records was KING MISSILE's "Detachable Penis." So after Shimmy Disc led me to BONGWATER and 1/2 JAPANESE (through Jad Fair) I was intrigued to find RUINS, a band who I connected (rightly or wrongly) to BOREDOMS, who I already knew through Zorn (who, in turn, collaborated with RUINS). I tried....I really did. I tried, but I simply wasn't ready for RUINS. It was total freak-punk, intentionally impossible to listen to with unrefined ears (like mine). Not saying 1992's Burning Stone is any more palatable today, but perhaps my palate is just a little older today. Like the rest of me. 

BURNING WORLD

MELEE

 

The thing that made MELEE cool is that they were so decidedly not cool. They seemed to sit at the perpetual kids' table while the USDIY scene subdivided itself and anointed royalty in the early '00s. Meanwhile, they delivered consistently ferocious raw hardcore every bit as fast as the th/en vouge Y2K thrashcore explosion, harnessed the political (and sonic) rage of CRUDOS and made the shit sound like they owned it.  Were they game changers.....? Perhaps not. But this demo, along with the EPs and splits that followed over their brief existence, have aged extremely well. Unpretentious, honest hardcore. 

MELEE

DANNY KAYE

 

Pretending isn't always bad. Faking it isn't always negative. Sometimes even a little white lie to yourself can help you make it through. Deception is a motherfucker though, so keep yourself in check. But if you want to spend 20 minutes with a national treasure from another time, from another reality, then allow me to offer Mr. Entertainment DANNY KAYE for your listening and escaping pleasure. Go ahead; lie to yourself. Everything is fine. Everything is fun. This isn't a dystopian hellscape. You aren't quietly counting the days, hoping that your life comes to a natural end before everything implodes. You aren't looking over your shoulder wondering how long until they're after you. It's all good "Down By The Riverside" though, and today is the first "Great 'Come And Get It' Day" of the rest of your life. Enjoy.  

MR. ENTERTAINMENT

LEMOTS // DISPLOISUCK

 

Arguably two of the best and/or most random band names that have appeared on this blog in the last sixteen-plus years, DISPLOISUCK and LEMOTS team up for a raw and blistering fastcore assault more than worthy of your full attention. The way LEMOTS use a machine gun double snare hit to accent their verses is tough to describe even while I find myself getting sucked way deeper into their sound than any typical '00s fast/thrashcore should warrant.....which is exactly the point: they aren't typical.  TOTAL FURY-meets-CrasherCrust energy set to absolute maximum speed and punkest fidelity, it's truly something special and I hope that (the punk) TE visitors take note.
• Oh shit - there's another side!!! •
DISPLOISUCK are an entirely different animal that makes use of many of the same descriptors as their tapemates, but DISPLOISUCK hit more like an unhinged and out of tune street punk band who listened to the first two CASUALTIES records way too much and couldn't quite pull it off while they were wasted but compensated by trying harder. I don't know what else I can do to suck you in today....except that the physical tape is slightly fukkd and turns both recordings into a phaser a few times and it makes both of them even better in a way that feels like nostalgia even though you're likely hearing both for the first time. 
• You're welcome. •

PAST TOMORROW AND FUTURE