JUST A PRODUCT

 I've shared a couple of JUST A PRODUCT demos before, and these songs also appear on the Free As A Tree demo so maybe one could argue that I don't need to share them here today. But some piece of shit yuppie didn't have to call SFMTA and have my van towed for blocking their driveway today....but they did it anyway. Here's the thing though; while you can not honestly argue that I actually blocked their driveway, you can certainly argue that these tracks are worth listening to (again). If ever there was a band that bridged '80s UK punk and '90s college/alt/grunge, then Bulgaria's JUST A PRODUCT is exactly that band. 

8 TRACKS

FOGBANK

 

This shit is fukkn nasty and after the weekend that just dominated my reality FOGBANK is precisely what I am looking for. Take S.H.I.T. caliber squirms then inject shirtless '80s Detroit energy and a healthy dose of ferocious Midwest basement hardcore and....well, FOGBANK are precisely what I'm looking for. "Fed Smoker" on repeat is all I want in my life today, and raw bombastic hardcore is what I need. Tomorrow I'm gonna start with "Marlboros And Molotovs" and then probably terminate existence. Because....why bother? Hardcore rules. 

[REDACTED]

FAMILY STONED

 

First off, FAMILY STONED is legit one of the coolest names I can remember hearing. Next....? FAMILY STONED are (still) one of the coolest bands I can remember hearing. Timeless early-(last)decade collage/alt on speed - hopelessly infectious and gloriously awkward except when they're perfect.  You ever hear something lazily described as "early '70 Ann Arbor meets late '80s Amherst with a tinge of sad drug addled college basement/alt" or do you read boring analytical descriptors? Just curious. "I'm not the man who wears the crown" sayeth the vocalist....and I couldn't agree more. 

DON'T BE ABOVE ME

STAND PROUD, STAND DISORDER

 

Seventeen Yogyakarta street punk bands you've (probably) never heard of unless you're from Yogyakarta. I'm not from there....hell, I've never even been there....but I have heard a fair few street punk bands in my day and I didn't know anyone on this taper until I heard this tape. So let us learn together, punks. Let's learn about PO'O'OI!, POSON OF YOUTH, S.L.S., SOUTHERN DISORDER, DIRTY CIVILIAN, PEPPERMINT and more. Let us get loud and coarse. 

STAND PROUD, STAND DISORDER

KASIDAH

 

Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî is a long form poem from the 1800s, presented here by Daniel Higgs with sonic interpretation/s by Buck Curran and Jefferson Zurna. "The Kasidah is essentially a distillation of Sufic thought in the poetic idiom of that mystical tradition." It's Thursday as I write this. 

THE KASIDAH

LOWEST PRIORITY

 

Short lived Seattle hardcore. I never saw them, didn't even know they existed until the tape fell into my lap. By the numbers, from the heart: hardcore. The riffs are there for sure, but it's the thing that you can't describe that makes LOWEST PRIORITY feel so fukkn important....and that's the thing that takes a good band and makes them special, you know?

LOWEST PRIORITY

NOISE INSIDE

 

There are so many micro-scenes that will likely remain unexamined except by serious archivists and documentarians; a reality resulting from too many pockets of punk for the greater community to dig into all of them. We're separated by geography and genre and time and it's simply not possible to go down every rabbit hole because the further you dig, the more to isolate yourself from the other rabbit holes and micro-scenes. But holy fukkn shit.....someone needs to immerse themselves in the first few waves of Indonesian DIY hardcore and punk. The context of the sounds is incredibly important and powerful, but even blasting the sounds without context will melt your face and every time I turn around there's yet another band I had never heard from a scene I knew nothing about and....and they fukkn destroy me. Enter NOISE INSIDE. This one dropped in 2002 and I swear it has not lost an ounce of intensity in the last two decades. "Police Shit" is worth the price of admission on its own, but it's the whole damn tape that gets me charged - imagine high energy DIY hardcore that delivers guttural UK crust with '80s crossover velocity and Y2K thrashcore intensity. Think about that shit. I typed the last sentence just as "My Life" kicked in and it was like "oh yeah, all of that shit plus raging Japanese HC" and now all I can think about is the Killed By Indonesian Hardcore comp that need to exist. So yeah, try to have a Monday that leads to a week of some kind of life knowing that this tape exists and no one knows about it.....and good luck.

EXPLODE

THE DAMNED

I've always tried to be pretty open about my relationship with the classics. With the traditional starter bands. Part of it was geography and general exposure, but really I just started down some different rabbit holes in a pre-internet world and I knew about punk for a good five years before I really had anyone to bounce ideas and discoveries off of or network with - and by the time I met those people, many had moved on from punk and were more interested in the burgeoning grunge and college indie scene/s. They wanted to talk about the new SPACEMEN 3 record, not the Legless Bull EP they hadn't pulled out since they were a teenager. As a result, I missed some shit along the way - but I really missed the UK standards. Aside from the SEX PISTOLS album my cousin bought me on a visit in '86 I didn't know shit about UK SUBS, SHAM 69, EDDIE & THE HOT RODS, CRASS (or any anarcho punk for that matter), 999, CHELSEA....none of it. I copped the first Punk And Disorderly on a trip to Tulsa because it had mohawks on it, but I wouldn't find out until years later that DISORDER and BLITZ and VICE SQUAD were connected to larger scenes (and had volumes of material that would have blown my mind). I don't think that kind of 'discovery" (or lack of discovery) is even possible in a post-internet punk reality, but the relics of The Breadcrumb Era are still lurking, and I still get excited when I come across one...like this. 

THE DAMNED - PEEL SESSIONS (1976/77) // LIVE 1977

These tapes changed the game for the creators and the recipients and I feel like I'm discovering THE DAMNED all over again as an average middle aged man when I listen. Tracks from the Dodgy Demo, live from the London Roundhouse and both CBGB's sets in April 1977, plus Peel Sessions recording in November 1976  and May 1977. This band was absolutely screaming...but most of you already knew that. I was just a little late to the party, and that's okay. 

WHITE DOG

 

I have two options, and both are correct. I can either spend a lot of words trying to dissect sixteen minutes of guitar bursts and blurts and applying a deeper meaning to the sounds on 2009's Beer Guzzle. Or I can just say that WHITE DOG offer made ten minutes of droning, meandering guitar blurts and then played one of the sides backwards because I guess that's what you do when you're from Texas because drugs. You know how good it can be to put on a music and then forget that it's even there because it becomes a part of your environment? That is what Beer Guzzle does. I guess I had a third option, and I chose it. 

BEER GUZZLE

Members of: TOTAL ABUSE, THE SNOBS, MENTAL ABORTION, RAYON BEACH, MUTATING MELTDOWN, BREATHING PROBLEM, CAPTIVE, ARCHITECTS, FINALLY PUNK...but somehow it sounds like this tape was made by two-and-a-half stoners. 

SMALL REACTIONS

 

Not even really sure I have words for this. It came to me in a box a few weeks ago and I was smitten from the first listen just as I am smitten on a Thursday evening in preparation for a Friday posting and a long Friday at work. What is Night Reactions Mix 001 exactly? Shit, I can't even say what it is approximately....but it's more or less a politely damaged dark indie shoegaze thing that sounds like it escaped from 1992 Manchester through a tunnel and emerged in a basement covered in mud and sadness. You know....more or less. It's a truly gorgeous recording and it led me down a rabbit hole of releases that spans from the peppy "Cult Hero Jonathan Lewin" (2010) to the advanced indie pop of last year's Your Face Replaces Mine. This tape though? Today's tape? This shit will make you weep. You'll hear Movement-era NEW ORDER and early SISTERS dredging post modern dark indie like WAX IDOLS and TJO through '70s NY No Wave, but mostly you'll hear a brilliant and beautiful tape that came to me in a box. I opened the box and this was inside....it's the little things. The little things still happen, and they're still important.

NIGHT REACTIONS MIX 001

ZUDAS KRUST

 

Twelve minutes of blistering raw Indonesian DBeat? 

Sounds like a perfect Thursday. 

HERE LIES YOUR GODS

TSA

 

TSA were around SF in the 2010s. I never saw them, but this fuzzed out low end heavy hardcore was probably an absolute motherfukkr live and the bass-on-top mix is total an absolute motherfukkr. Shit sounds wilder a decade(ish) later than it ever did then. I guess. I don't know. I never saw them....at least I don't think I did. Seven minutes of destruction headed straight for your earholes. 

19814

SLINKY X

 

I love a tape that asks more questions than it answers. It's like when I listen to FANTASY (which doesn't happen nearly as often as it should) and I can't decide if the band is simply brilliant or just a brilliant pisstake (or both). And here I am listening to SLINKY X wondering if they are conjuring T. REX or VASELINES and accepting that it's probably neither but also potentially both....you know? And if you know what I mean, then you know what it means to love listening to a tape that asks more questions than it answers. Darn. is fully realized, brilliantly constructed and simply gorgeous to listen to. If Todd and I had listened to this in our 1991 Norman, Oklahoma living room we would have bent to the altar of SLINKY X....which makes me wonder how Todd is doing these days. I'm gonna write him tomorrow - because friends and shared experiences are not just important; they are irreplaceable. 

DARN. 

DEKREPIT

 

Fist banging white noize kång from Tacoma is pretty much all you need to remind you that the week is going to be a shitsystem. Te good news is that you will not just get through it, you will conquer it - don't believe me, then just blast "Cologne" and reassess. High points on this banger include the pop punk stutter riff in "Peace Or War" and "Taught To Bleed," the guitar tone/s throughout, the anguish in the vocals, the guitars in "Cosmetic Living" (and the backing vocals in same). A ferocious offering across the board....just let the title track lead you to victory. 

IF IGNORANCE IS BLISS...

•••

I would be remiss if I didn't comment on the name. I don't remember if I first heard the split with SCATHED or the split with CEPHLATRIPE, but they both rule and Seattle's DECREPIT remain one of the fiercest under the radar DIY crust/grind bands from the '90s. The Tired Of Licking Blood From A Spoon LP is an unfuckwithable masterpiece, and it's wild that a band 30 miles and 30 years down the road can just step into the same name by just switching out a consonant. 

SUBPIT

 

Once again, an envelope in the mail and once again, I'm amazed. The compulsion to create is once that I sometimes think I can identify with.....and then I look at the YSFWP / Music For People / Hair Clinic Family of savants and I remain quiet and humbled. This offering pairs frequent Escape visitor Max Nordile with one Sam Lefebvre (PREENING, WARM SODA) and features two quarter hour improvisational missives made from electronics, horns and found sounds - that compulsion is truly a thing of wonder. Respect.

THE MAIN DRAIN

NANDAS

 

This scene did for New York in the mid-'10s what the Silenzio Statico ponx had done for LA a few years earlier. I don't mean NANDAS specifically (or even Toxic State in particular), but for a while you could just tell something was happening and you knew that it was something you wanted to hear. Even if everything didn't grab you (me), you (I) still picked it up and checked it out because there was a thing happening and that's what happened when I copped the Exo EP and I fukkn loved it. Murky, cold, monotonous pogo squirms fronted by uncompromising demented snarls? Yeah, that's the shit I was looking for at the time, and NANDAS delivered. I missed the demo but I caught up eventually (obviously, because here it is) and a decade later I'm still mentally moshing....

DEMO SPRING #)14

BLUE CHEER MIX TAPE

I ripped two ripping BLUE CHEER sets from 1968 last week, and there was some other shit on the tape that I liked even better. Honestly, one of the BC sets kinds sounded like shit but it's still BLUE CHEER from 1968 so it's worth it, you know? But it was still the other shit that got me all charged up, so here you go: EJERCICIOS ESPIRITUALES (probably '80s, probably Spanish, definitely rocking fuzzed lout garage punk with keyboards and wildly distinct vocals). MINT TATTOO was a BLUE CHEER offshoot I had never heard of but I'm not actively seeking their sole LP from 1969. Then there are four sweet ass '60s lite-psych numbers from a band I can't identify. Mix tapes rule, even and especially when they are accidents. 

BLUE CHEER MIX TAPE

CONTROL GROUP

 

Eight years after I posted five minutes of fury from a Grand Rapids outfit called CONTROL GROUP, I'm posting another five minutes of fury from a Grand Rapids outfit called CONTROL GROUP. Anchored by the searing "Parachute," their second offering hits much like the first....which is to say that it hits fukkn hard. Everything is mixed on top of everything else to create a wall of raw sound fronted by vocals pushed to the absolute brink with desperation and rage. The delivery is off the rails and teeming with indescribable intensity until the aforementioned "Parachute" threatens to implode. The end of the tape is almost merciful, and even almost hopeful if you listen without the benefit (or curse) of time. "Pissed Away" could be a youth anthem for the elderly - "where did my youth go? / where did my life go? / where did my time go? / where did my mind go?" sliding the life affirming refrain that closes the tape: "I'm in my 20s / I'm in my prime / now is my time / I won't piss it away."

CONTROL GROUP - II

TEENGENERATE

In the '90s SF world in which I existed, there was a general consensus that the Maximum Rocknroll folks were old and elitist and their institutional affinity for "traditional" rock 'n roll was outdated and irrelevant. That wasn't the case, and I wonder (now) if the adherence to some strict garage/punk sound was actually a revolt against the metal and indie and grunge sounds that permeated so-called punk sounds at the time but...I was an outsider so who fukkn knows. But what about this TEENGENERATE demo? So...in in something like 1996 TEENGENERATE played Kilowatt in SF and it was a "thing" at the time because they were popular in the MRR world that loved garge punk and I went to the show and they were really good. After the show.....

TEENGENERATE 1993

Look....there are stories I could tell related to the night of the Kilowatt show and the band in general, but I will spare you the uncomfortable reading and I will share you a killer eleven song garage punk banger from 1993. You're welcome (twice), but it was a really funny story. 

CRIMINAL CODE

 

You remember CRIMINAL CODE, right? The '10s are starting to sound like they're going to age really (really) well as I reach back and pull out things that I either never gave the time they deserved or never listened to at all in the time that I had. CRIMINAL CODE falls into neight of those categories however, I spent hours with their driving, brooding punk with guitars ripped from the pleading clutches of '80s college shoegaze and injected with uncompromising ferocity from a rhythm section who urge this band constantly forward. They were eventually from Tacoma but I first saw them in a Reno basement circa 2010 or so - I was floored that first time and CRIMINAL CODE only got better as I got worse while we each cruised through a decade filled with glorious sounds, inseparable bonds and incomprehensible conflict. Yeah, the '10s were where it was at, and this band was fukkn great.

THREE SONG TAPE

CRIMINAL ASSHOLE

 

There has been a deluge of Indonesian punk and hardcore in these pages over the last couple of months. I know that many of the tapes have been really good - like really good - but I fucking implore you to get down to this CRIMINAL ASSHOLE tape that was released 25 years ago. Holy fukkn shit. 

CRIMINAL ARMY

A.D. SKINNER

 

Somehow the picture of the monkey smoking the comically oversized cigarette kinda sums up the sound here - just some Aussie mutants bashing out six minutes of not giving a fuck and going hard. The title track is the closer and that guitar intro is like what one of those chef's kiss emojis would sound like if it could talk, but by the time you hear that you'll already be head bopping and bedroom moshing. "Stink" is like "Rise Above" if RADIOACTIVITY had written it (and honestly "Dogabone" seems to lift another part of "Ride Above" and if this was intentional then A.D. SKINNER are even bigger geniuses than I thought). "Beggar's Pride" is a perfectly filthy stomp...every song here makes an individual statement when you isolate them, but it's the whole damn thing that sounds like the monkey puffing on that cancer stick. Aussie punk are brilliant. 

DICKSWEAT

DIALER

 

Someone feel like telling me how a present-era band manages to effortlessly conjure '80s Albini and early '00s indie alt in the same apocalyptic punk track? Twenty seconds into "Palpitation" and I swear they move from BIG BLACK to BLOC PARTY and I just have so many questions. "War Reality" just offers more confusion - a chaotic, jerky proto-industrial track presented as North American basement punk that just makes me wonder where DIALER has been all my life. Or where I have been for the last few years of mine while they were creating these sounds. On the subject of sounds, the final cut is an eleven minute War Of The Worlds caliber thriller that will stop you dead....it seemed so unreal until it didn't. Doesn't. 

PALPITATION // WAR REALITY

MAREFUMI KOMURA

 

Leaning more into the execution than the title, Komura's 2008 release is a glorious exercise in sound "created by walking through many rooms with a hand held cassette recorder" rather than a traditional mix tape. When my first listen was complete I realized I was just sitting and reflecting - it's like he allows you to hear the past and allows you to see joy while constantly reminding you that you live in a very tumultuous present and you can't go back; a dystopian journey of dead sound and current anxiety.  Tough to describe the power that a thirty minute aural collage can have when it lands on the right ears, and I'm glad that this one found mine.

MIX TAPE 1

SIN RAZÓN ZOOCIAL

 

I don't know where this came from but I am over the fukkn moon that it made its way into my earholes. Ultra-primitive Mexican dark punk with synths. Contracultura was recorded 35 years ago, describing the recording as simply 'timeless' would do the band a disservice.....it's timeless to be sure, but this twenty minute cassette hits so many nerves and I have been listening incessantly since I popped it in for the first time. Brilliant, anthemic, every track is a stunner and "No Mas Presos" is from another dimension and "Crucificcion" is absolute perfection. Speechless. 

CONTRACULTURA

PANDEMIX

 

Even though they named themselves four years too early, these Boston punx kicked the fukkn doors in with Pathological Culture. From the monologues in "Total Immersion" and "Conceptual Fuck" to the off the rails unrealized UK anarcho on pharmaceutical speed vibes in "Second Opinion" just wind them up and hear them roar. They've grown into a new and compelling animal since 2016 and the new(ish) Love Is Obliteration is a total killer that showcases this early vision fully realized...but in typical elitist fashion I'm still gonna point you to the demo first because you gotta start where shit starts, you dig? Four modern hardcore burners that manage to not sound like anything you've heard....or at least not like anything you're comfortable with (which is arguably more important).

PATHOLOGICAL CULTURE

SOCKEYE

 

It's been a while since SOCKEYE have graced these pages, and when it comes to SOCKEYE...? "A while" is always too long. This one was released around the time we first crossed paths with them at The Mantis in Kent - maybe it was the time we all hit a thrift store in Stowe for blank shirts to turn into FUCKFACE shirts, or it might have been the next year when we went for a bike ride and got caught in a Midwest flash thunderstorm and I didn't have a change of clothes so I had to explain myself to some cops while I was chilling in the nude while my clothes dried. It was the mid-90s and SOCKEYE were fukkn king - they were like HICKEY without the hooks....actually they had the hooks, you just had to wait waaaaaaaaaaaayyyy longer to hear them. Because for every  "Boy With Breast Implants" there is a "Yo Me Gusta Cum," a "Baby Boogers" and a "Your Dick Is A Junkie," you know? If you don't know, then it's time to learn...and if you already understand, then it's time to get some more SOCKEYE in your life. I wonder if Dave Schall would do a split spoken word release with me - maybe I could get Max Nordile to contribute the backing track. Ideas....

WARNING: BURN HAZARD

ANTI MILITARY

 

Even casual followers of so-called Third World punk will know Indonesia's MARJINAL...but first there was ANTI MILITARY. The connection is linear and if you know either one then you'll be able to hear the  through line, but the focus here should be on how timeless Satu Bumi Tanpa Penindasan sounds in 2025. This is raw, forceful, political, honest punk that will suck you in with anthemic ferocity.....and the almost-SUBHUMANS cover just seals the deal. Please pay attention to the guitar leads on tracks like "Darah Juang" because the shit is ultra sick and highlights their ability to inject melody into rough, ramshackle political hardcore. "Bangkit Melawan" and "Demonstrasi" are the choice cuts here, and I guess there's another ANTI MILITARY tape now at the top of my want list...

SATU BUMI TANPA PENINDASAN