DEATH RIDGE BOYS

 

Punk needs DEATH RIDGE BOYS more now than it did a decade ago when the band first reminded us that punk is protest music. "Leaders Don't Speak (For Me)" is the flagship for my ears even though every track is a stone cold classic - clenched fist power chord punk of the most inspirational order. "Out Of The City" into "Right Side Of History" will remind you that punk doesn't just offer.....punk demands. Listen. 

RIGHT SIDE OF HISTORY

I believe in truth and justice - everybody has the right to be free
I believe in human rights and basic fucking decency

I believe that black lives matter - I believe in the women's march

I believe in the veterans who stood with the people at Standing Rock

SANGUINE MOON

 

The polar opposite of yesterday's bludgeoning, Portland's SANGUINE MOON creep their way into your soul with one 19+ minute dungeon synth missive. Raw, distant, bleak, minimal.....haunting, introspective....complex in its deliberate simplicity. It would be a lie to say that I seek these sounds, but it would be dishonest to not acknowledge how tight their grip on me is. 

HAUNTING DREAMS OF AN ANCIENT TIME

VIVID SEKT

 

Maybe it's odd to wax nostalgic about a 'current' era, but then I realize that 2009 was two or three punk generations ago - shit, Jan's Room was not even a decade old when I learned about hardcore so I'm really talking about the before times when I blab about bands that were playing fifteen years ago. And fifteen years ago it felt like a damn rebirth. There were the Silenzio Statico ponx in LA, SF and Oakland felt like the same scene (even though SF really only had Thrillhouse to compete with the energy of East Bay warehouse gigs) and you could get wild at HOTDR in San Jose or roll up to Sac....and there was Portland. Not like that place wasn't already on the map, but the punks were doing something different there MORAL HEX, ARCTIC FLOWERS, BOG PEOPLE...and VIVID SEKT. I posted this demo when The Escape was only a couple of months old and when I came across a double copy a few weeks back I felt like I was catching up with an old friend. This particular brand of forceful, straight forward punk tempered with UK anarcho sounded like nothing else at the time, and when you listen to day it's almost as if VIVID SEKT are (still) standing determinedly mid stream just letting decades of sonic trends flow past them. They're awkward in the most juvenile way, a presentation that requires concentration results in tracks like "Horde" that are absolutely timeless. 

VIVID SEKT

PUNGENCE

 

Woooooof, this tape is fukkn disgusting. Damaged and derivative downtuned PDX crust with guitars that sound like they were recorded onto magnetic tape scored out of the 7-11 dumpster while the drummer was shoplifting some .40s so the band could all get shithoused before they hit the 4-track. Dive bombs drop in from nowhere, guttural low end vocals are punctuated by high aaaaaaaahhhhh screams that hit like DISCLONE on Dilaudid. PUNGENCE are a raw crust pisstake, a band intentionally punching way below their weight in the most gloriously neaderthal-ic manner - you either have to try really hard to sound like this, or you sound like this because you don't know anything else. And the fact that the lkistener can't tell the difference....? Is beautiful.

PUNGENCE

CIRRHUS

 

CIRRHUS were an ugly band. Raw, forceful black metal with no pretense or nuance and vocals that sound like a desperate animal just before expiration. And then....listen to the guitars. Listen to the sounds. CIRRHUS were truly a beautiful band. 

PROMO 2012

HAUNTINGS

 

Another post in the spirit of "you hear what I hear even if it's fukkd up." This one came out in 200i9 and the years have warped the tape into a completely different beast - "haunting" is a good descriptor though, and the sonic damage translates to the fukkd analog medium perfectly. You can find the sounds the way they were intended on the internet (if you want to), but I'm going to keep listening to HAUNTINGS the way they were presented to me: Super damaged.

BLACK MASS GRAVES

MIXED COMBAT

 

I hadn't pulled this tape out in fucking years before I ripped it earlier this week and....well, this is the part of the blog where I feel compelled to tell stories. To reminisce and remember by click clacking away at a solitary keyboard with the tinny sounds of forgotten years reduced to digital files screaming at me from a pair of desktop speakers. These are the tapes that transport me - it's not that the sounds are good (they are), it's the place in time that these particular sounds represent. It's the space they hold. It's knowing that in today's punk there is another scene holding a similar space for a different punk. And if I'm just click clacking away just hear my own memories come out of my fingers....then so be it. Because they are really good memories. 

MIXED COMBAT VOL.1

DEATH RIDGE BOYS

 

It's impossible (for me) to put on a DEATH RIDGE BOYS record without getting sucked in completely. This band doesn't "sound like the classics," this band sounds fucking classic - absolutely essential modern rock 'n roll steeped in street punk and North American hardcore/punk. All pretense stripped away, no hook off limits, politics on their sleeves right next to their hearts...with three covers to remind you where they are coming from. Gonna blast this shit while I ride six miles to sit in a cubicle and think about my decisions. 

BOOTS ON THE STREETS

NERVESKADE

 

Do you remember when this happened? The noisy, chaotic shit was already a thing and other bands had started pushing the envelope to be sure but NERVESKADE was different. And after NERVESKADE...? Everything was different. 

NERVESKADE

WRETCHED OF THE EARTH

I can't tell you how hard this tape hit when I listened to it earlier this week. This tape (fukk - this band) is precisely why formulaic mid-'00s political DBeat crust is timeless and essential - the power is real, and this shit will take you back (if you were there). There are riffs, to be sure....but you can hear the desperation and the determination. You can hear the hope, misguided and disillusioned as it may be (or may have been), and you can hear the honesty. You aren't listening for the riffs, even though there are riff for days...you're listening for the hope. 

FIRE TO THEIR HOUSES

VHOL

I remember how VHOL was presented to me via drunken scene chatter - the word was that Aesop and John from LUDICRA were teaming up with Sigrid (HAMMERS OF MISFORTUNE) and Mike (YOB) and they were going to make a DBeat band....and with that lineup, it was all set to be a DBeat band that would blow the doors off of the whole damn world. Even though the first record delivered as advertised, it was still apparent that they weren't going to be able contain themselves...and by 2013's Deeper Than Sky the train has fully left the station. Imagine a combination of the above elements with a healthy nod towards DISFEAR and early MAIDEN and you get the general idea, but suffice to say that no one sounded like VHOL then and no one has sounded like them since. I listened a lot when it came out, but Aesop gifted me this tape a few weeks back and it's been on re-regular rotation since...I am not bummed.

DEEPER THAN SKY

COFFIN APARTMENT

 

To (try to) describe Portland's COFFIN APARTMENT would be to do them a disservice. I can say "psychedelic death/doom" and you might think of a sound, but you wouldn't think of this. Ferocious technical death and metallic hardcore clashing with early KYLESA and CAVE IN and even inexplicable tastes of Revolution Summer vocals through a '90s WCBM filter. Even if you know the sound/s (and you likely do), you can't know COFFIN APARTMENT until you hear the sound. 

COFFIN APARTMENT

WHOLE WORLD 1

 

A most excellent dose of synth-heavy art/freak punk to carry you through the weekend. Whole World 1 comes from Germany, and features bands who came through Germany and crossed paths with the creators. Featured bands include TOP DOWN, NUNOFYRBEESWAX, THE BUGS, FREAK GENES and THE DO NOTHINGS - and I dare say there's not a single clunker during the whole half hour..though TOP DOWN's "Let's Do It" steals the show.

WHOLE WORLD 1

THE CYSTS

 

It was the late 2000s and DIY punk on the West Coast was a motherfukkr - killer bands popping up in scenes that seemed to come out of nowhere and it was impossible to keep up. So what happens? You miss out of on a few things, but thankfully there is the internet (right....we are thankful for the internet?). So here are four damaged and demented chaotic punk tracks from the state of Oregon, released sometime around the era referenced in the first sentence - they slipped by me once, I suggest you don't make the same mistake.

DESTROY MASTERS

TUSKS OF BLOOD

 

This one comes from deep in the Satan's Pimp archive - a dreary stoner violence slog from turn of the century Portland that sounds like it was ripped from the clutches of hell herself. It's easy to imagine these sounds coming from those lost decades....but think about them now. That's the point. The now. 

TUSKS OF BLOOD

LIFE DURING WARTIME

 

In a world before podcasts, there was radio. And the thing is...there still is radio, but The Generation doesn't care about that and even though it might make me (kinda) sad (sometimes), it's reality and that's okay. So here's an hour of radio: Life During Wartime. Here's a story about pigs and a dance party. Here's a story about The State from a time that seems like a(nother) lifetime ago. Here's some people, sharing stories.

LIFE DURING WARTIME #6: THE TROUBLES 

CHOW LINE

 

What does it say on the cover? Can you fukkn read? No shame if you can't, modern industrialized educational constructs are an absolute motherfucker so it's probably not your fault. Let me help you out: SIX TRAX RIPPER. Can you read that? Because that's what it says, and that's what it fukkn is. A ripper with six trax. You're welcome. Fuck school. Listen to punk tapes all day. 

SIX TRAX RIPPER

MONGOLOID

 

Portland miscreants channeling damaged early-SST results in a gloriously raucous dose of sonic nihilism. The Deranged 12" that came later in the decade is sorely overlooked (based on how often I see it cheap and used, at least), but why not start at the beginning, you know?

MONGOLOID

 

MSHR

 

Dark and expansive noise-scapes from Oregon's MSHR...the embodiment of a "sound as journey" approach to creating the sonic reality from other realms. Two complimentary pieces on 2011's Nesting Face; two pieces that will take you away...if you let them. 

NESTING FACE

THY INFERNAL

 

In a very real sense, THY INFERNAL is everything that yesterday's ARGUMENT? post is not. Released in 1997 at the very front end of the first real wave of USBM, Satan's Wrath is a fully realized searing black metal assault, absolutely massive and bleak in every way. Guitar melodies drive the title track, a minor solo driven by punishing double bass before the return of the verse and a chorus of demonic screams. The ungodly crunch during the first half of "Our Past Victories" defies all sonic logic, because sound is simply not meant to be this fukkn sketchy and/or evil. But THY INFERNAL are both. There are only four songs here, all of which were rerecorded for their full length released in 1999 (also titled Satan's Wrath)...brace yourself.

SATAN'S WRATH

For the dedicated few, I will note that the band includes members of VITAL REMAINS, IOMMI STUBBS and IMMOLATION in their thanks list. If you're one of those dedicated few, then you'll understand why I mention it...