LAXX

 

Another shining example of the resilience and infinite international appeal of Y2K fastcore and DIY hyper thrash. You can drop LAXX in 2001 New Jersey or 2009 Belgium or 2003 Brasil or 2011 California or 2009 Japan....or 2023 Indonesia. Ripping TØRSÖ cover to seal the deal - DIY punk and hardcore rules.

OUT OF CAGE

LIMITED OPTIONS

 

A few weeks ago I was eating a burrito in the Mission and this nice dude casually slid a few tapes across the tabla as we chatted between scoops of salsa verde. He had a little tale to tell about each of them, but honestly I don't remember what he said about LIMITED OPTIONS. And once I jammed this think I didn't need to hear what anyone else said about the band because I was obsessing on what I was feeling while listening to themfor the first time. Fortunately, subsequent listens only increased my connection to the sounds so much that I don't even think about burritos when I listen.....and I think about burritos a lot. This is perfectly executed Y2K fast/thrash/hardcore that sounds not at all like a rehash of anything. The 1-2 punch of "Still Fighting" into "Tired" is one of the most powerful things I've blasted in 2026, this tape is a master clinic.

LIMITED OPTIONS

PSYCHO SIN // INSECTS VIOLATOR

 

OG Jersey noisecore veterans PSYCHO SIN disbanded before Clinton was elected, but they left an outsized impact on the shit-fi community while they were active. And then....they were back. Since reforming sometime in the 20101 they've cranked out dozens of releases and only grown more immature and/or brilliant. Nine tracks here spanning three minutes - starting with "Grow Up" and ending with "Die Trump Die" (don't forget "Shut Up" and "Mind Your Fucking Business" somewhere in the middle). Harsh noise presented as noiecore - hard to tell if there are riffs or instruments involved and not even point caring. The lkegens find themselves paired up with Jakarta noisecore acts INSECTS VIOLATOR who fly the flag with pride - there are ruthless fastcore/grind riffs buried under the tape hiss and "recorded this from the street outside the basement where the band was rehearsing" recording quality....but if you're still reading these words then that is exactly what you're here for. Two bands, eighteen songs, six minutes.

MAXIMUM HARDCORE

BOLO

 

Twelve minutes of putrid, bombastic fastcore / pv from St. Petersburg. You know the feeling when you think you know what's coming and you're waiting with outstretched earholes because you know you want what's coming and then....it's better than you wanted it to be? Well, that's BOLO. Imagine LACK OF INTEREST listening to '90s Florida death metal and then colliding with PARLAMENTARISK SODOMI in a damp (dank) alley on a Thursday morning before sunrise. Oh wait....today is Thursday isn'y it? Interesting.

FRUSTRATION

ZABØGART

 

You're standing at the intersection of Crust & Grind just minding your own business, and then a dumptruck drops a healthy load of Fastcore right on top of the pavement and a steamroller with a flipped up hat starts crushing it all. And then, just six minutes later, you have ZABØGART. Fourteen doses of relentless distorted fury, and it's done before you even know what happened. URBAN WASTE and CHARLES BRONSON covers to keep them honest, but ten years from now some kids on the other side of the world are going to record their version of "Polotik Identitas" and I hope I'm hear for it. 

FUCKSCENE

====================================

DISSÖLVE

 

Nostalgia is a frequent visitor to these pages; I suppose it comes with the territory when you're posting old(er) sounds and documents alongside newer versions, the comparisons provide context and the nostalgia is inevitable. We can't live in it though. We can't live in what used to be or what we used to have or what we used to be a part of. We can, however, use those lived experiences as a starting point for new ones. Somehow this wisdom relates to DISSÖLVE's debut release Oathbreaker and how I feel as I listen to twelve blasts of furious hardcore from Indonesia. This could have been a band I heard twenty (five?) years ago...ballistic crust tinged with DBeat and fastcore fronted by throat searing vocals from Sleepy...and those words should be all the motivation you need. The band's sound is embodied by "Unforgiveness," which lands near the middle of the track listing - the fasts are faster here, the vocals will raise the hairs on your arm and then after a breath or anticipation, DISSÖLVE the fiercest breakdown outro imaginable. But it's the whole damn thing and not just one track, it's blast after relentless blast for a solid half hour, and it's awesome. This tape from 2024 makes me feel alive and makes me feel like I have lived...which is putting that nostalgia to good use.

OATHBREAKER

UNIT X

 

You tell me you know a band called UNIT X and I'm gonna tell you that I think I know what they sound like. Well....that's what I thought when I picked up this tape. And I wasn't wrong. We're talking ten minutes of smart Y2K fastcore and classic SXE 'core and a little bit of that less-posi energy to keep listeners honest (think LACK OF INTEREST sharing a bill with LIFES HALT). The shit hits the spot.

WAR ON SELF, WAR ON EVERYTHING

REALISTIC

 

This is a band I'm in called REALISTIC. Alex, B and I started doing this (very slowly) after the Conquest Fro Death LP came out and the band was finally done. Adult schedules and toilet life made progress and productivity virtually impossible, but we recorded a sub-seven minute demo at House Of Faith in 2023....then came nothing. That's until Lory (RAD, FALSE FLOWERS, SICK BURN) stepped in and gave us life. So we're a band now, and we have a demo. 

REALISTIC: DEMO 2025

===================================
Speaking of bands, I'm also in a band called VEXXYL who are releasing our first demo tonight.
You can get one in person.

In Pacifica, California.

FUN CONTROL

 

I saw FUN CONTROL last weekend in a batting cage in San Francisco and they opened with the first song on this tape....here are the thoughts that I had watching this song live, which correspond perfectly to the thoughts I had listening to the tape for the first time:

HICKEY

CAPITALIST CASUALTIES
Y2K Thrash 

D-CLONE

UNA BESTIA INCONTROLABLE...and then I'm hearing '90s Merge Records shit start the second song before more erratic thrashcore wastes my sorry ass. More songs bring more brilliance and more confusion, because the current crop of San Francisco hardcore bands give no fukkn shits (and that's before we address the "Emptiness" issue - when you listen you'll understand). I haven't even scratched the surface.

TEST RUN

MORALLY STRAIGHT

 

In a way, MORALLY STRAIGHT came two years too late......but isn't that want makes them perfect? 2012's Normalitas is a master class in posi-Y2K fastcore, giving off serious LIFES HALT vibes with shades of 97A and some of the more 'crew iterations of the era. I wax nostalgic about this period every so often, choosing to remember the positives and skip the frustrations, and it's bands like this that really drive home how many great people and relationships came out of that time....bands like MORALLY STRAIGHT that help me remember that while hardcore rules, your hardcore (whatever era and/or genre you're a part of) rules more. Pretty sure these kids from Bandung are never going to forget the bonds they made in the early 2010s, and that makes this old white guy smile. 

NORMALITAS

CONTRASESSION

 

The early 2000s were fukkn magic - so were the early '90s of course, and I guess the adolescent twenty-tens didn't suck either. I focus on today on the aughts though, because posi-political-hyper-fastcore took over the fukkn world and holy shit it was fun. You could argue that 2005 was on the back end of the shit, but try telling that to these Indonesian motherfukkrs. "Awas Prosess"personifies a tape filled with twenty three sub-60 second rippers culminating in the brilliant "The Only Time I Think About Romance Is When I Wonder Why I Don't Think About It." So here's to the tape you didn't know you needed until now....I guess I drop a lot of shit like that in your lap, huh?

LIDAH BERBISA...

Notable: "Topeng" kinda starts off like "Deny Everything" from a different universe.

KAGAMI

 

I feel like it was just yesterday when I posted a five minute long hardcore tape that felt like the greatest thing since sliced bread (a ridiculous saying, by the way....sliced bread is fine, but it's nothing special unless the bread itself is special). These five minutes come from Tokyo circa 2021, and they manage to grab early '00s fastcore, US82 by way of TOTAL FURY style retro hardcore and modern Japanese treble heavy punk all at once. They get in, they get out, there's no bullshit. Who wants bullshit? Nobody wants bullshit.

KAGAMI

NINJA HATORRY

 

Full throttle metallic thrashcore from Jakarta.....there's not much analysis required here because 2021's Fase is more akin to a beating than a listening experience. Twenty three exercises in grind mania with a conscious eye towards Y2KThrash - shit sounds like fukkn magic to my ears. It's great from start to finish, but "Youth" into "Me & My Holiday" gives me exactly what I needed this morning. Sometimes, my friends.....faster really is better.

FASE

PRAXIS // ALTERCADOS

 

I hope it never seems like I'm buried in or obsessed with nostalgia here - I love sounds. Period. I have connections with a lot of sounds and some sounds are important to me for different reasons than other sounds are important to me...but I get a charge out of listening to something that meant something for someone else to create. I always have, I still do, and I hope that I always will.  That said....this split makes me feel nostalgic, and that's okay. Two ripping political fastcore bands from Chile circa 2000. That's it y'all, that should be all you need. ALTERCADOS give serious LIFES HALT vibes while PRAXIS land closer to what we called "melodic hardcore" at the time, and there are moments where I feel like I'm listening to a subgenre of Japanese punk that I can't quite put my finger on*...plus the lead guitar is out of fukkn control. I like 'em both, but the ALTERCADOS side is legit next level shit. So I heard it for the first time and I thought of shit from a different era-  but this is from a different era and I'm hearing it for the first time. Fukk - what if this split is actually just a time machine?

LA MAQUINARIA DEL DESCONTENTO

* Yes, I fully realize how stupid it is to compare something to a "subgenre of Japanese punk that I can't quite put my finger on." Sorry. 

SPORADIC

 

I ran into my pal Mike at OMC tonight when I was loading in for rehearsal (new VEXXYL track is utterly disgusting in the best possible way, by the way) and we had a pleasant stop 'n chat. In addition to the band he's been working on with Laura and HannahLynn for the better part of a decade, he said he's got a new skate-rock project in the works. I was intrigued....because of course I was intrigued. Mike said it's skate-rock because all of the members are skaters even though it doesn't fit the "skate rock" genre stereotype, and I was like "shit dude - coming from a guy who has never skated who was in a band that wrote songs about skating? this is a real skate rock band you're talking about!" Can't wait to hear his shits....and also this SPORADIC tape is rips and I bet it's really good to skate to. Maybe not? I don't know. I don't skate, remember? Never have. Twelve Y2K fastcore rippers in less than thirteen minutes here...also, none of the songs are about skating except "Skate And Destroy" which is about skating (and the title does stronly imply a pro-skating stance). The rest of the lyrics are fierce and political and I think if I skated I would probably want to listen to SPORADIC. Also there's a VITAMIN X cover, but the discussion about that band's relationship with so-called "third world" DIY punk is a discussion for a different day. I've said enough (read: too much and/or nothing) here - this tape rulz. 

HALF PIPE ON YOUR HEAD!

MARVELOUS

 

Wild Japanese fastcore in the early '00s tradition with all of the hooks and quirks that made that shit stand out (think FUTURES / JRRH and the like, but with a bit more melody from the riffs). It's over in a flash, but MARVELOUS leave their mark and then some over eight absolute rippers. Crew For Life manifested the wax, and the fine folks at Thrash Tapes were nice enough to repackage inside a plastic shell for Western consumption - I can only imagine what these cats are like live (but I'm gonna assume it's killer).

BARENO!!!

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

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

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

GEIGER COUNTER // ZUDAS KRUST

 

It's hard to know what to say when something is executed this perfectly. GEIGER COUNTER harness '00s epic crust, Burning Spirits, face melting fastcore and DISRUPT and create something that is so instantly infectious that....it's hard to know what to say. So you flip the tape to blast ZUDAS KRUST. Epic and apocalyptic crasher crust borrowing from the classics but delivering with wild thrashcore energy. Two tracks from ZK, three from GC.... and every single one of these five tracks is an absolute berserker. 

GEIGER COUNTER // ZUDAS KRUST