PROLETARIAT

 

Gratitude to the old punks who captured and distributed this shit. PROLETARIAT are perhaps (somewhat) under-appreciated, but this boot shows that real-time punks knew what was up (I see you, Felix). A live WERS set and tracks from Soma Holiday and the elusive Distortion demo....you need this. A full 60 minutes, and you need all of it. "Events / Repeat" on repeat, and then "Options" forever. 

RADIO SHOW BOSTON

MANDRILL

 

In the never ending world of things I didn't know I needed in my life, I present MANDRILL. I feel like I have had them forever, but I heard them (consciously) for the first time in July 2025. Better late than never, yeah? Sounds I never knew I needed until I had a taste - these kids shared the stage with JAMES BROWN and DEEP PURPLE and if you need a more rousing endorsement than that then I'm not really sure I can help you. Gorgeous 1970s psychedelic funk that channels SLY STONE and PHARAOH SANDERS with equal ferocity and in real time. There are twenty MANDRILL albums to choose from, and I would be an ignorant fool if I said that you should start with this one - but I started with this one and it's amazing. 

JUST OUTSIDE OF TOWN

VOCIFERIAN

 

This is one of those "sit down and just listen" tapes. Two tracks, thirty five disturbed minutes of Belgian black metal that doesn't sound like anything else. Ever. The vocals are so bizarrely manipulated that you'll wonder what's happening in your earholes while you're sitting down (and listening, as I asked). Soaring, triumphant sounds from a different realm, and the drum solo on "Ode Aux Rats" should settle any debates about the normalcy of sounds contained on this cassette...and then there's the interlude/buildup that follows. This is something else. 

ɔ d ɔ ʀ a

DIMENSION MUSIC LIBRARY

 

Keep it weird?  yeah....why the fukk not, right? Keep it weird.
Comments welcome, comments encouraged.

If you have the courage. 

HOLOPHONIC PRODUCTION SOUNDS OF THE 80'S

PENTAGON'S PINBALL SOUNDS

 

From Pinhole to Pinball, more questions and more wonder from a storage unit in the Central Valley. Someone from Always Jukin' in Seattle mailed this tape to a Dan in Sunnyvale who may or may not have invented the track-ball controller used in the Mission Impossible arcade game. Why the the fuck did Always Jukin' do this, and why does a Radio Shack Concertape brand cassette with a custom Radio Shack mailer even exist (and where can I procure a truckload of them?) and what in the fukkn world are we even listening to? It's five minutes of doo-wop interludes punctuated by pinball machine bings and dings. That's it. It doesn't make any sense at all - it shouldn't exist, and no one should have bothered mailing it to another person and I certianly never shouldn't have encountered it (much less purchased it). But all of these things happened...and now you're about to download it and ask all of these questions yourself. Luckily, there are no answers. 

AT THE CANDY STORE

HOWLIN' AT THE MOON

 

First - go back and check the first three Pinhole Mixtapes. Please. They're perfect. Then - download this fourth volume and just fukkn relax. Wallow in the joy that comes from listening to a perfectly crafted and meticulously curated mix tape. The first three are near perfect, and Howlin' At The Moon continues the tradition. Off the beaten path essentials from ESCO HANKINS, CHARLIE FEATHERS, VERNON WRAY, JOHHNY SKILES and TERRY FELL rubbing elbows with lesser known classics from PATSY CLINE, GEORGE JONES, WAYLON JENNINGS, LORETTA LYNN and a few others you thing you don't need to pay attention to because their very names are institutions in themselves. Listen to BILLY RUFUS sing "A Way To Die" and tell me you don't need more country music in your life...the shit is the realest, and Mr. Pinhole is doing an amazing job of keeping the sounds simultaneously mysterious and relevant. 

HOWLIN' AT THE MOON
I was appropriately whiskey drunk and may or may not have been crying when I edited this cassette, so typos (should they exist) in the track listing are not just excusable, they're a part of the experience.

SUBCULTURE

 

I really should pop this onto the live blog (but you know I don't always do that when I "should" because rules are for suckers). I should also leave all of the context and importance to the folks at Sorry State who are responsible for the important document. This SUBCULTURE shit is a clear labor of love, which should not for one fucking second imply that this SUBCULTURE shit isn't important and/or essential (hint: it's both). This is just USHC that you might no know about if it weren't for a dedicated crew of fans from North Carolina who simply refused to let them die. I recommend grabbing the Fred 12" if you haven't already, and I demand that you blast this 1986 live recording today. 

LIVE '86

BOYS CRY WOLF

 

It's all curious, right? BOYS CRY WOLF are quintessential '80s pop - maybe a little off center like BOOK OF LOVE covering Zappa's "Valley Girl" or some shit. The heavy keys and soaring guitars seem like Top Gun soundtrack outtakes, then "Talking To Myself" sounds like a rom-com wedding party band trying to cover B-52's and it's clear that this recording was an effort to reach for something 'bigger' - whatever 'bigger' meant to BOYS CRY WOLF. No cover, scrounged from a box of dusty crap in a storage unit in Fresno full of shit from some dude who had a bunch of collectible Atari gear and ephemera from the early years of video games. There was another dude who wanted all of the Atari shit, I shelled out $50 for all of the tapes and a grip of ELVIS records, a battered player copy of MOUNTAIN's Nantucket Sleighride and the way under the radar Jesus Loves You Concert LP. I feel like it was a win. Do you need this? Definitely not, but it's all curious. And that's why we dig.

BOYS CRY WOLF

OPHIODIAN FOREST

 

I wasn't expecting this. I wasn't expecting the keyboards flying directly in the face of the raw, discordant black metal. I wasn't expecting the melodies lurking under the distorted bombast, to find hooks in the murky blasts. Everything sounds like it was captured on an AM radio, perhaps a dashboard unit in a battered Ford LTD (my pal Todd drove a grey one in the early '90s and I still miss that car). I also wasn't expecting that OPHIDIAN FOREST would be the product of a dude who drummed for the last incarnation of UTTER BASTARD. I got all of those things and more. Susurrus was released in 2016 and I wasn't expecting to find like a half-dozen more OPHIDIAN FOREST releases that I need to dig into....I got that too. 

 

SUSURRUS

VAGUE

 

I spent a couple of days last week cranking through a bunch of rips and edits - mostly recent acquisitions with a few shelf stragglers mixed in for good measure. I checked my body of work as I started to schedule posts for upcoming trips to the Valley and The Island and realized that FOTE are gonna pretty hardcore deficient for the rest of the month. So as you read these words know that you'll have your ears properly blown out in September....and know that the time between now and then will be filled with some different joys. Live comedy, for example. Today, however, that means a sprawling and gorgeous indie/post-hardcore/college-alt/shoegaze offering from Jakarta' s VAGUE. "Inadequate" is the fukkn song here, but please don't stop listening just because it's the second cut because it's all beautiful and earnest. 2014's Footsteps was their first fill length (tracks from the 23/Nothing EP appear here as well) and they spent the rest of the decade cranking out songs drenched in layers of guitars and generous Rev Summer undertones. It's just...really good. You can always thrash later. 

FOOTSTEPS

JON HANCUFF

 

Looks like a comedian bit the cover of Movement for their comedy cassette. I'm fine with that move, just like I'm fine with the hi-brow comedy the cassette contains. I wasn't expecting this (I didn't read the text at the bottom of the cover - sometimes I don't really pay attention), and I was fine with that too. 

I MADE A WISH

HOUSE ARREST

 

Absolutely fukkn screaming hardcore from Indonesia. No bullshit, pure ferocity, USHC influences are front and center but HOUSE ARREST sound like the best version you've never heard of the shit you've been listening to for your entire life. Six songs in seven minutes, punctuated by "Too Close" and the sinister bludgeoning of "Can't Fix Stupid." This shit was so good that Extinction Burst gave it a US reissue - copies of both are long long gone but they dropped Food On Your Table a few months ago and positively I'm smitten. 

HOUSE ARREST

99 LUFTBALLONS

 

I recall a post from years ago where I used the term NDW ("Neue Deutsche Welle" = "German New Wave") to describe IDEAL or EXTRABREIT or some similar artist. Someone got annoyed at the distinction because, well, isn't New Wave music just New Wave music? Why is there a Deutsche Punk or a Kraut Rock when we don't have designated and commonly accepted terms for punk, classic rock or new wave from other specific regions or countries? Perhaps it's because the Germans did (do) just hit differently, but also it's because it's just what the fukkn Germans called their shit, you know? Case and point, this stellar collection of commercial NDW bangers from 1983. Like a K-Tel cassette from across the pond, featuring hopelessly palatable and undeniably addictive cuts from EXTRABREIT, HUBERT KAH, FRL. MENKE (the least interesting artist on the tape, and the only one with two tracks), TRIO (you know the song even if you don't know you know the song), SPLIFF, NEON BABIES, JAWOLL and others, plus the title track from NENA. Just solid ass '80s summer hits - off kilter, infectious and definitely Deutsche. 

99 LUFTBALLONS
NDW - HITS FÜR UNTERWEGS

IDX

 

Total stench/crust obliteration from Singapore. This came a few years before the mind blowing Onslaught Within, and the sound is slightly (if predictably) more primal. Meticulous howling lurches open the tape, and then they open it up on "Unanswered" and don't look back. By the books? Pretty much. But absolutely flawless execution, and I'm here for it. 

STARK REALITY

SNICKERS

 

I could dig into the internet archives and regurgitate the things that pundits pre-me have said about SNICKERS....instead I will leave these sounds here for you. This lands somewhere between bedroom 4-track experimentation, (early) MERCURY REV and wallowing in a murky lake in the middle of America at sunset. What a gloriously damaged collection of sounds. 

ON THE HI-FI VOL.2

WRATH

This CD was in one of the last promo packages I received when I was doing radio in Oklahoma, though by 1990 I was immersing myself in whatever goth and/or industrial and/or punk stuffs I could get my hands on so I wasn't particularly juiced on some Midwest thrash metal. But Insane Society scratched an itch even then, and when I saw a pristine copy of the cassette sitting on a shelf last week, I did not deny myself a little trip down memory lane. This was the third and final album released in WRATH's initial run (they got the band back together in the '10s) and their sound was fully realized here. Razor sharp mid tempo US metal clearly weaned on The Big 4 with a hollow rumbling bass vocals that teeter on the edge of being too over the top. Choice cuts are "Swarm" and "Law Of Lies," both a touch faster and more melodic, and the glorious stomp of the title tracks, but you really need to crank the whole thing - preferably while working on bikes in your garage or something. 

INSANE SOCIETY

SATELLITE vs. PROLETAR

 

Strap in, young punk/s. I don't think you're ready, but honestly I don't think anyone is ready for this assault. PROLETAR with a unbridbled white-knuckle fastcore/grindcrust assault - shit is simply terrifying to listen to, even more so than the Rakyat Jelata tape I posted last year. And then there's SATELLITE, godfathers of the Jakarta crust scene dishing out maniacal metallic raw crust. Check "Amerika = Imperialist" and think about your life. Then reach for the volume knob (or toggle switch thing or whatever) and drown yourself in noise. 

DERITA TANPA AKHIR // THERE'S A SPECTRE HAUNTED

VELVET MONKEYS

 

VELVET MONKEYS were so damn far ahead of the curve, and this collection of oddities and live cuts shines the spotlight squarely on that reality - even the shit they didn't bother releasing in real time blew the doors off of everything. "All The Same" is a picture perfect '80s college alt number that would have smoked TEENAGE FANCLUB except that this song came half a decade earlier. 1981 version of "Everything Is Right" fukkn screams. The damaged BEATLES mini-set is a thing you didn't know you needed (you do), and the demo version of "You're Not There" is Milwaukee DEATH caliber dark genius while "See You Again" is simply a perfect power-pop track disguised as garage punk. Even the damn TROGGS cover works.  So yeah - maybe you didn't know you needed VELVET MONKEYS in your life, but now you don't have an excuse. 

ROTTING CORPSE AU-GO-GO
(IMPRESSIONS VOLUME ONE)

HATRED JACKALS

 

This is what I wanted today. Vicious mid-teens anarcho crust steeped in now-classic '90s USDIY sounds and ethos. The guitar leads are going to grab you first (and I warn you that they won't let go), instantly familiar anthemic melodies that float over ferocious dual vocal clenched fist hardcore that borrows liberally reinterprets so you're listening to something that you feel like you already know even though every songs starts with a "holy fukk what is this?!" I first heard the band ages ago on the Singapore Punk Holocaust (with DISTRUST, a recent Monday visitor to The Escape), and was thrilled when I pulled this one out of the stack. It's as good as I wanted it to be. 

DEBELLATO

Controversial Opinion: One of the vocalists kinda sounds like Ernesto on the first LIFES HALT record. 

SEMARANG INDEPENDENT YOUTH

 

The title (and cover) should tell you everything you need to know here - fourteen raw punk tracks from the tail end of the first wave of DIY Indonesian hardcore. G-SQUAD, COP IS DEAD, PSYCHOTIC ILLUSION, REJECT, EJAKULATOR, 921 SUCKS, MORTAL SYATEM, LAYUR RIOT and a few more that you've never heard of unless you're way cooler than me (which, now that I think about it, isn't a terribly difficult accomplishment). Some "skinhead" tracks as the title suggests, but listen to the sonic brutality of NIHIL and know that this is ferocious street punk with some backing 'whooa-oooh's in the chorus. The recording and replication quality are part of the charm here and fidelity seekers will be suitably disappointed - the real punks will know that SUCK IT FRUIT sounds better when SUCK IT FRUIT kinda sounds like shit. 

SEMARANG INDEPENDENT YOUTH: PUNK SKINHEAD HARDCORE

WEIRD WOMAN

 

Two fifteen minute messages that may or may not have originated from the brain of a toddler. I'm going to assume they had some parental assistance while I hope that they did not. The tape is deliberate, slow, vaguely terrifying. Listen to "You Will Not Sleep Again" while you sleep tonight.

THE MORE I SEE

Worth noting that WEIRD WOMAN lands right next to WEIRD UNKNOWN GUY alphabetically and I strongly suggest you (re)visit that post from 2018. 

MOJO HAND

 

I keep finding things that I missed in real time and I guess maybe that's just part of what being mildly obsessive is all about. I don't need to find everything or to hear everything, but I don't ever want to stop looking. MOJO HAND may have been a short blip, but what a fukkn document they left. Dusty Nuggets-tinged garage punk that feels utterly timeless (it was recorded a decade into this millennium) and screams for volume and beers and lighting shit on fire. If there was ever a band that sounded like they were very fucking seriously about good times and good jams, that band was called MOJO HAND. Grande from FIELDS OF FIRE and Harley from RABIES, though you mutants probably know them from ANNIHILATION TIME and THE PHANTOMS (respectively), but once you hear their "Let It Bleed" you won't give two fukks where it came - you'll just be grateful that it's here with you now.

THE COMPLETE MOJO: THEIR COMPLETE RECORDED WORKS 2009-2010

CULVERT CORPSE

 

Got a nice little package from the Sewercide folks last week. I say "when" when what I really mean is "filthy," of course. Three offerings from Halifax's newest export and tariffs be damned because this fukkr is worth every penny and more. You want my lazy comparison? '90s DIY crusters recording primitive black metal on a boom box and using a kindergarten synth for the leads. Yup, it's as good as you think it is. "Blood Streams" is relentless knuckle dragging raw NABM and worth the price of admission on its own....but what about "Warpath," you ask? well it sounds like a fucking war path, obviously. This was the only tape in the package, so you're going to have to seek the MISANTHROPIC MINDS // HÄPEÄ split on your own - it shouldn't be too hard to find. 

DEMO 1

DISTRUST

 

Greater than the sum of its parts, Greatest Very Fuvkin' Shit$ gives you everything that you might be (should be) expecting from the promises made by the cover, but DISTRUST gives you something else. DISTRUST gives you more. Wild studded jacket dis-crust mixed with stench and a healthy dose of Detestation, this collection of tracks smothers you like an avalanche from the unhinged Scan-DBeat of "Nuclear Tomorrow" to the hollow metalcrust of "Doomed To Oblivion," these Singaporean veterans do absolutely nothing half-assed even when it's painfully simple two riff offerings like "Protect And Save" (okay, four riffs if you count the breakdown and the second solo). Plenty of bands hump the corpse of G.I.S.M. and there's a touch of that here to be sure, but DISTRUST just harness that sonic energy and fuckkn own it in the most diabolical way imaginable. Just filthy, desperate and essential metallic hardcore. Listen to "Nightmares Of War." You're welcome. 

GREATEST VERY FUVKIN' SHIT$

SERVICE

 

Someone wanna tell me how I missed this shit? I know NO STATIK and STERILE MIND both played Santa Rosa around 2016 and I swear I never heard of these foos in real time.....thank fukk I'm hearing them now though. Dark, urgent punk with a keyboard that provides texture and mystery instead of being over-present. It's very much a sound "of the time" that sounds absolutely essential with these 52yo 2025 ears. Maybe I never heard them then because I need SERVICE now - if that's the case, then gratitude to the universe that made me wait. 

MK II