TEENAGE WAISTBAND

 

These mutants were like ass shaking freak punk in a high speed head-on collision with Hi-NRG non-music. It's infectious, you want to dance, and it relates to no music you've ever heard...aside from the beat/s. TEENAGE WAISTBAND don't play and scream, they jerk and bleat. This tape and I Saw What I Wanted To See appear to make up the band's entire discography, but damn...you'll be exhausted after listening to either one of them, if you are doing it right. 

WHAT'S ONE FOR ME?

TEMPERANCE

It was a time and a place, I guess. We played with these bands a lot on the first couple of FUCKFACE tours...down tempo, emotive (if not outright emotional) vocals and those lead guitar chords way up on the neck, all with a few chugs to keep them from sounding like straight radio rock. I think I will have an eternal soft spot for this subgenre. It's not a soft spot I am proud of and not one I can explain or justify, but it's a link to that time and that life. TEMPERANCE is an extreme example, nothing more than some guitar squeal between them and BUSH at times, and a vocal delivery that reminds me more of Billy Corgan than anything I would associate with punk and/or underground music. And yet, to throngs of young boys across the northeast....this was hardcore. Searching For Silence came out in 1995, it was the only TEMPERANCE full length after a couple of EPs and then....well, I guess they found the silence they were searching for. No other bands of note, no "ex-TEMPERANCE" on flyers after the turn of the century, no chatter on message boards about Rhode Island's most crucial emo/'core export, just a few tracks and then nothing. 

SEARCHING FOR SILENCE

Also - it looks like someone left this tape on their dashboard for a few months in 1996 while they were listening to ALICE IN CHAINS and/or PROPAGANDHI and the thing started to melt. Still sounds fine, but the shell is fukkd and the B-side doesn't play. Completists and the generally curious are welcome to scour the internet for the other four tracks....but I'm telling you they sound pretty much like the first four. I bet Daniel Gatewood loves this band. 

CLEAN

This one is filthy....like really grimy. Low end heavy bass driven dirges that sound like they are being unearthed as you listen....like SEIZED on some dust stepped on hard with speed and rat poison. You can't help but think that something is missing the whole time you listen, but instead of a feeling of absence or want, CLEAN adds the void into their mix as if the void itself is an integral part of their plan and/or presentation. Ultra primitive sounds, skip the flourishes and just go straight to bludgeoning....except for the lead bass in "Pharaoh's Serpent, which sounds like a damaged MONK MONTGOMERY, but I digress....

HELL SO STRONG

THUMBSCREWS

This shit is severely damage and sounds like the very recording might disintegrate at any moment. In other words: This shit is great. Check the guitar break near the start of "Death Goes On' and if you're like me you might find yourself rewinding repeatedly to try to figure out if you actually just heard what you think you just heard. Trust me though....you heard it. And it sounded super fukkd. And you fukkn loved it. It's not like the rest of this thing sounds any nicer (it doesn't), it's just that that moment really captures their vibe; the vibe is weird and the vibe is dark and the vibe is tortured. It's pure and primitive hardcore and it just feels wrong and it totally feels right. 

THUMBSCREWS

TIMEGHOST

TIMEGHOST either casually dropped an homage to primitive analog noise compositions, or managed to harness the originality of artists like IVO MALEC and JOHN PFEIFFER...blips, monologues, whirs, digital oddities, found sounds. From the subtle beats in "Delicate Resonances" to the gnome-esque murmurings that weave in and out of the electronics on "On Airs, Waters & Places," Cellular is a dark and deliberate offering. Released in 2014 by Load on wax and Chondritic Sound on cassette...this one is not so much a listen, but a journey.

CELLULAR

DEATH VACATION // THUMBSCREWS

Sometimes you're at work and a dude from another Union hands you a couple of tapes and says "I think you might like these." And sometimes that dude is correct. Distorted and bombastic HC from New York and Rhode Island, respectively; remorseless and relentless power from both.

DEATH VACATION // THUMBSCREWS

Physical copies from: Serenity Now Tapes

TEENAGE WAISTBAND

I suppose I could be lazy and just refer you to Greg's assessment of this east coast outfit, but you're worth too much for me to just phone it in like that. And the tape warrants more than a casual "this dude said it sounds weird, check it out" - because it's really out there. Like, really out there. Guitar sounds drawn from '80s avant/post/art punk, shrill vocal squeals that land somewhere between MELT BANANA, BRATMOBILE and OLD SKULL are dropped with precision over drunken lurches masked as songs...and it all works. But it's weird as shit. The longest track on the demo, "Transitions Into Victory," features the most damaged sounds coming out of a guitar while the drums and bass lay back with an early '80s Rough Trade groove and the vocals start to get a soulful swagger, but that's as close as TEENAGE WAISTBAND get to anything normal on this 2011 release...and they make sure to wipe that impression clean with the tape's closer "Ghost In The Boombox." This one took be by surprise. Enjoy.

I SAW WHAT I WANTED TO SEE

DROP DEAD

Two decades later, and this still lays waste to most of the bands on the planet. This is DROP DEAD's first two demos from 1991, issued in Japan by D.I.Y. Records - the incredible live radio set on the flip side can be found at Escape Is Terminal. DROP DEAD are important.

DROP DEAD

EXTREME HARDCORE

Leaning more towards the DIY metal that was floating around the underground tape trading world and concentrating on bands from the South, Extreme Hardcore is a 90 minute excursion guided by cult hessians and determined small town thrashers. Texans DEAD HORSE start the party with three tracks - this band was just a whisper to us Oklahomans at the time, but their tracks hold up brilliantly. BLUCK, crossover maniacs TRANSGRESSION, and downtuned churning primitive death metal from Alabama's RANDOM CONFLICT continue the battle while raw noisy hardcore from RADIATION SICKNESS and SKELETAL EARTH wrap up the first round. After a 6 minute death metal opus from NOCTURNUS, Tennessee's FOREVER UNGRATICAL CORINARIC TECHNIKILATION (F.U.C.T. - whose Dimensional Depth Perception full length completely melted my high school mind some 20 years ago) blaze two bombastic burners that are worth the whole download and are followed up by ripping old school HC from fellow Tennessee denizens REDNECKS IN PAIN. CONFRONTATION dish out three tracks (one from their 1989 EP), and we take a trip to the Northeast for legendary weed thrashers EXIT 13 and PHLEGM, who offer three more each to close out the party. This comes from a time when snail mail was just simply mail and underground legends were born...and before the word Extreme had anything to to with sports.

EXTREME HARDCORE COMPILATION 1990

BLOODHUFF

How does a band from Providence with a song called "Raper" make music that is this good?  Actually...how is a band this good? I don't know, but I will keep listening until I find out.

BLOODHUFF

WHITE LOAD

I cannot endorse the use of the Black Panther on any recording released by a bunch of white dudes in the new century (it was fine when HICKEY did it, but that was last century, and it was propaganda aimed at gaining Aesop's release from jail - where he was being held for being a sharpie wielding anti-pig terrorist). But I can heartily endorse the sounds that hide behind that image on this 2007 demo from Providence's most brilliantly named and brilliantly damaged garage punks. There has been a wave of bands approaching ramshackle garage music and delivering it with the intensity of '80 Midwest hardcore, and I'm full into it. Raucous and rebellious, these tunes are in your fukkn face and balls out rock 'n roll (no balls in your face jokes please, it's too easy). Four demo tracks, two covers that might offer a better clue to where these kids are coming from (and where they might like to go), the tunes from their then-unreleased My Wall EP and a live set on the flip side that captures every drop of the intense load left on the studio floor. Sorry, I couldn't resist.

WHITE LOAD

GET KILLED

The only thing wrong with this demo is that it only has two songs. This Providence, Rhode Island band made a handful of these after their first recording to get people like me fired up. It totally worked. Even after my friend left the band, I was still floored by their combination of 90s hardcore (the kind that was almost emotional, but still took your head off) and pure chaos, all channelled through the mind of kids living in an art school haven (Providence did give us KITES and LIGHTNING BOLT, after all). Their records are few, but all well worth your time, get 'em.

Get Killed