MARTIRIO

 

The feeling I get from seeing an honest hardcore band is impossible to describe. It's internal and visceral, and I felt it last month when I saw MARTIRIO. Fierce anti-colonial DIY hardcore from Fresno, California....the shit just feels right. 

FUERZA ANCESTRAL

SPACE INVADED // JAMES BOND

 

The first time I even thought about paying attention to soundtracks was when I was listening to a Zorn interview - shortly after I got that nudge I was consuming Morricone like it was candy but thirty-plus years later I fully accept that I have (still) not even scratched the surface. So this....well, this is just another nudge. The BBC: Space Invaded side is a gorgeous escape and the James Bond side is exactly what you might expect from a tape scavenged from a Fresno, California storage unit with a hand-written label that reads "James Bond Greatest Hits." So I guess...sometimes you get what you want and you just might get what you need.  

BBC: SPACE INVADED // JAMES BOND: GREATEST HITS

BURN UNIT

 

It's 2025, and there are (likely) people in this world who think there is no place (in this world) for ignorant hardcore. But here's the thing/s: which actual world is (this) world, and also what the fuck is "ignorant," right? Lower Central Valley Hardcore of the highest fucking order here, utter destruction creeping in under the cover of punk....one quarter hour of visceral power. There is absolutely a place in this world (my world....our world) for BURN UNIT. If your knuckles are bleeding...? That's your problem. 

BARELY HUMAN

CHARLES MINGUS

 

I left Ponca City in 1990 when I was seventeen. Enrolled in classes at the University of Oklahoma and moved into the dorms (required for first year students) and learned some life lessons that I should have paid more attention to (especially in retrospect). Spend a few months working in the scraping room at the cafeteria, which was every bit as nasty as it sounds) and then got a job as a graveyard baker at the hippie cafe, where I would remain until I left for Los Angeles in '94. The bakery was run by a powerful woman named Beverly who new her shit and took no shit - lots of stories and lots of laughs and just generally a good person to work with and/or for. Her partner was a jazz pianist who occasionally helped out and would sometimes just chill in the wee hours after gigs....and it was on these nights that I had my first real exposure to jazz. I really only "knew" the starter artists that would get mentions in mainstream rags so I understood that John Coltrane and Miles Davis were important and I had that Spy vs. Spy record andthought I knew something about Ornette Coleman (I didn't). But Beverly and her dude would play Sun Ra, Cannonball Adderley, Gábor Szabó, Pharoah Sanders, MODERN JAZZ QUARTET and countless other acts that I had never heard of while they tried to describe to me the nuances of free jazz, hard bop, Afro-Futurism and third stream. I never fully switched gears and I never really dove in, but those lessons and those sounds made the $4/hour I was getting for those bakery shifts seem more than worth it. Somewhere in that mix was my introduction to Charles Mingus....which is obviously the only connection between that story and this post. Check Larry Coryell's guitar on "Noddin Ya Head Blues" because that shit is just....damn. 

THREE OR FOUR SHADES OF BLUES

BRICKLAYER

 

I can't even with the lineage here, and I can barely even think about getting into an honest analysis of the contents. You like intense, raw hardcore / punk? Then you like BRICKLAYER. I have a vague unfounded memory of CHARLES BRONSON covering HÜSKER DÜ's "Bricklayer" and slagging off people who worshipped at the altar of Zen Arcade on the lyric sheet, but it turns out they were actually covering "Punch Drunk" which doesn't change the fact that I felt slagged off when I read that lyric sheet. How does that relate to this band called BRICKLAYER? Well.....it doesn't, but somehow that anecdote felt relevant. You know what else feels relevant? This Washington band called BRICKLAYER. Apparently there's an LP that I need, several of these songs are on it. 

BRICKLAYER

DEHUMANIZED

 

Treat DEHUMANIZED as a reset; let their sounds drag you back into the depths. Brutal and unforgiving OSDM with proto-slam breakdowns that were way ahead of their time (in 1998). Let Prophecies Foretold act as a reminder that the primal can be beautiful....shut out the noise and sink into beauty. The noise will still be there when you're finished, and your path after "Doomed To Die" fades away is entirely yours. 

PROPHECIES FORETOLD

SUMATERA DISTORTION

 

Wild fukkn hardcore/DBeat comp with eighteen bands from Sumatra I had never heard of until yesterday. The cover says nineteen bands but.....maybe I just suck at editing which in turn sucks for you if you're tryna figure out what is what. But don't concern yourself with annoying details like than because every song rips so fukk it. Right? Right. Hardcore, grind, DBeat, crust, modern dupa-dupa squirms...the island of Sumatra fukkn delivers. CFD played the capital city of Medan in 2008 and there were 27 bands on the bill...I think it was a Tuesday. This collection was released in 2021 and all of the raw energy is still there - I'd love to go back and do that all again. Fukk - what I would give to just do the whole fukkn thing over from scratch, you know? Experience it all for the first time again. Instead there's this...and it's a killer consolation prize.  MEJA MAKAN, B.O.O.T., TOTAL GALAU, KUBU RIOT, THE PUNX TERIGU, TORRENT, RAWAN and loads more. Comps still rule - enjoy your Friday. 

SUMATERA DISTORTION: CASSETTE COMPILATION

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DISTORTION CASSETTE COMPILATION