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

WHO WILL BE NEXT

 

Yeah....more Indonesian hardcore. This shit sounds like it was ripped out of the early '00s "old school meets emotional melodic hardcore riffs" subgenre. Like, you're gonna know what I mean when you hear the shit, I swear you will. Dan Gatewood would (probably) love this shit, I can see him rocking back and forth patting an open hand on his chest and smiling until he thrust a fist in the air and mouthed the chorus to the title track "Straight Edge Today." I miss that dude, but I miss a lot of things and alas I digress..... First half of Dari Sini Kita Mulai was recorded in 2014 but the other three tracks were recorded seven years earlier and are a touch more on the Y2K tip. It's just twelve minutes all in, but the shit takes you on a fukkn journey and I am (still) here for it. 

DARI SINI KITA MULAI

STAND CLEAR

 

There was a hot minute in the early 2000s when it felt like there were three kinds of hardcore - there was retro-PosiCore, Y2K fastcore and crust (an all-emcompassing and criminally non-descriptive descriptor). Of course there was power violence too, and shitpunk and shit...but the whole point of my stupid declaration is that STAND CLEAR rehashed the first two of those first three subgenres as well as any band I can think of. Breakneck SXE 'core with perfect breakdowns - the shit makes me feel like I felt when I was listening to OUTLAST on 24th Street back in 1999. Scottzy was making fun of me (which was fair) and still all I wanted was more of that lighting fast finger pointing shit with those breakdowns, you know? That's what Starting Point feels like, and if you know me (or read these posts) then you know that's a very (very) high bar. They make an SSD song sound better than SSD did, and they just fukkn rip - and STAND CLEAR are still doing the damn thing in 2025. 

STARTING POINT

OUR TURN

 

Turns out there are two different covers for this demo (I'm talking about the tape - I know there are several versions of the vinyl reissue) and I uncovered this copy of the live photo version a few weeks ago. Does the world need more fast, energetic, earnest straight edge crew 'core? I guess so, because OUR TURN has been blasting on repeat at TEHQ today. Every trope and pitfall is here, and all you want is more of all of it. Shameless emulation heavily influenced by early '00s fastcore. "Explanation For Action" and "step Aside" all day long, and someone please convince Neck to finish that documentary? If you know, you know.

STEP ASIDE

Yeah, I posted this in the early days of TE, but that link is long dead and who's gonna comb through 5,600+ posts to fond some crucial 'edge jams and also....why not post the shit again since this one has a different cover? Right?

IN REACH

 

Where the fukk was this in 1998 and why wasn't I there with it?! Index finger stabbing the air on every chorus, fastcore meets posi-crew....absolute OUTLAST energy (with a touch more 'core) from the first Vermont band I've ever posted on The Escape. Pretty sure that leaves Alaska as the only state still unrepresented on these pages, so naturally I welcome Alaskan cassette submissions. This tape though, you're going to have to dig deep to find a band who did it better. If Dan reads this, Dan's gonna love this. 

DEMO '98

TONAL SHIFT

 

Remember twenty five years ago when TOTAL FURY kicked North America in the ass by reinterpreting '80 DCHC and making it sound impossibly familiar and completely original at the same time? The hardcore they were drawing from was twenty years old when they were doing their shit (or by the time that shit made it to us), and they were doing it without the benefit of immediate digital access to all punk. Vienna's TONAL SHIFT are doing the same thing, but they're pulling the meat off of a forty-five year old bone and fuuuukkkk does it sound juicy. I haven't heard a band use this formula this well since 13 Songs, and they use the distance and perspective to their extreme advantage. "Act The Big" is quintessential early Dischord leaning into Rev Summer sounds, "Mentally Checked Out" has the adolescent strain that made (makes) the pure pre-internet hardcore feel....different. Even if this is a band who stepped into the world and looked at all of their options and decided, "we're going to do that" instead of making something 'new,' what they've done is take the 'that' in question and make it new. They've made it theirs. And now it's ours. 

THE E.P.

EX YOUTH

 

The things you miss when you look away, you know? It's happened more in the last few years unfortunately, but I suppose it's more looking at something else instead of looking away so I'm not gonna beat myself up about it. I wasn't looking away in 2015 either, but I must have blinked at exactly the wrong time because EX YOUTH were gone in a flash. Everyone perked up when the murmurs started - Tobia (LABAL, MUTILATED TONGUE),  Val (LOMA PRIETA, PUNCH) and Anthony (CEREMONY, SKIN LIKE IRON) in the same band is certainly murmur worthy - and I really paid attention when I heard this five song sonic detonation. But by the time I heard it....they were gone. Maybe you can't always pay attention to everything - you'll drive yourself bonkers trying. But don't forget to look around you, to look backwards, because even the things you missed can bring you joy. Or, in this case, rip your fucking face off. 

EX YOUTH

RAZORXFADE

 

They were a quick blip around the turn of the (last) decade, but RAZORXFADE's blip was fukkn loud. Completely unhinged Midwest SXEHC with wild song construction and a COLD SWEAT caliber vocal assault and the way the guitars break in the recording - tiny amps bursting at the fukkn seams with squelches and squeals permeating any dead space in the songs - puts the listener on edge from start to finish. I recommend paying particular attention to "Choke" crashing into "Called Out" because...well, because that shit is just something else. Six songs in a little over seven minutes, and then the 12" they dropped in 2011 was the final word....

RAZORXFADE

HAVE NO PART

 

All I've got is these kids on the flyer for a stacked new year's eve hardcore gig at Che Cafe (OUTSPOKEN, UNBROKEN, STRIFE, MOUTHPIECE...) and this five song tape. It's hardcore - but it's hardcore punk (and yes there's a difference). Even while "Never Withstand" is kicking my ass with a by-the-books breakdown I still feel like I'm listening to a band who avoid the "typical" trappings of generic testosterone fueled 'core. Intentionally or not, this comes off as a sonic bridge joining '90s DIY melodic punk ("For A Moment"), hard moshing hardcore ("Mistaken Identity") and late '80s Southern California SXE ("Have No Part"), and they do it all with a rough 'n loose approach that truly helps this tape feel fresh. Like, I hear hints of LIFES HALT in the opening track and that's gonna perk me up every time. 

HAVE NO PART

THINK TWICE

 

Listen to THINK TWICE and it feels like you're listening to a relic. This dose of tinny, thin, raw, determined straight edge hardcore is not so far removed at all from the chaotic hardcore that made Italy famous just a few years earlier but equally influenced by YOUTH OF TODAY and CHAIN OF STRENGTH. And what happens when you came up on a steady diet of NEGAZIONE and EU'S ARSE but then you start digging on a third generation recording of that first SOIA slab and you're defiantly straight edge in a country that serves wine like Texans serve salsa? Maybe, just maybe you get THINK TWICE. Their 1990 debut It's The Time lands like the first time I heard OUTLAST, but rougher, more out of tune, more....innocent somehow. The theme song is great, the breakdown in "Be Aware From Me" is great, Sergio (Of Today)'s lead vocals are painfully strained and gruff while backups drop like claps of thunder echoing in the distance. These thrashers from Venezia were somehow new to me, but I'm all in on this shit.

IT'S THE TIME

DESTROY ALL MASTERS

What a fukkn great way to fill up a C90, the kids from Fucksafe Tapes outdid themselves on 1987's Destroy All Masters. Mostly under the nostalgia's radar, this comp is a glorious relic from the tape trading days - BHOPAL STIFFS, CRUCIAL YOUTH and SCREECHING WEASEL are the most notable contributors, then throw in STRAIGHT ARM, HARD STANCE, FLUORESCENT CONDOMS, CURIOUS GEORGE, TREBLE KING, N.H.C. and WARLOCK PINCHERS and you've got yourself an example of why people fetishize the pen pals and mix tapes era of DIY punk and hardcore...because fukk a playlist. Not band for some kids from Iola, Kansas. 

DESTROY ALL MASTERS

STRESS RELIEF

State of Jefferson monsters STRESS RELIEF released the devastating Losing / Failing EP back in 2018, but sneaked out two of the tracks a few months earlier to get people stoked. Or maybe to have something to sell at shows...I don't actually have any idea why they did it, I just know they did. Because here it is. "Pig" and "Power" sound utterly disgusting in their pre-EP incarnation, harnessing all of the energy of the vinyl incarnation and cramming it into 81 seconds of lo-fi distorted madness. The primitive brutality of the recording (and replication) sets a stage filled with angst and anxiety - it's so fucking nasty and it feels incomplete in an indescribable way...it's like STRESS RELIEF knew exactly what I wanted. 

LOSING / FAILING PROMO

xATMx

 

There might be a guitar in there somewhere, the kick drum drops out when the blasts kick in, check the singer gurgle "LET'S GO!" before the stomp that closes "Hit The Trash" - I'll take these five minutes of raw straight edge power violence all day long over mindless bullshit destruction presented as rage. 

ALL THIS MURDER

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

I'm fine with ignorant hardcore.

Ignorance in hardcore is a different matter. 

If you know better, do better. 

If you don't know better...then that's separate issue entirely. 

Keep the ignorance in the riffs, and out of the scene. 

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

BENCHMARK

For the thousandth time: 1990s DIY hardcore rules. Bands took their influences and used them instead of aping them, and sounds spread as slowly as the letters mail so those influences had time to develop. And in places like Arkansas (or, in my case, Oklahoma), those influences were more spread out, more varied, and they were simply harder to come by...so bands had to make it happen. And often what the made was a whole far removed from any of its parts (or even from the people who made them). BENCHMARK were all of those things, and the result was fierce, emotional and personal hardcore - hoarse screaming about animal rights and sexual assault and they left everything in the room when they played. The chugs are formidable and the vocals are deadly (check "Tickle" in particular), and it all just feels fucking honest. For folks concerned about such things, three dudes in this band would later form BURNED UP BLED DRY, and one was in FROM ASHES RISE for the first two full lengths....yeah, the '90s weren't half bad.

 THANK YOU

WALRUS

Not suitable for the faint at heart or the discerning listener, this excretion from WALRUS is a straight edge shit-fi boombox attack from a long gone era of not giving a shit. Grinds and blasts and manic fastcore and would-be gnarly breakdowns all fight a losing battle with fidelity on Tuskill...but maybe victory isn't really the goal here. Perhaps the fight itself is the whole fucking point. 

 

TUSKILL

TØRSÖ

Straight up: I miss shows. I miss playing, and I miss watching my friends play. I miss volume. I miss seeing Mae stomp around like a teenager in their bedroom. I miss watching Ktrü jump like he's showing off every time he hits an open chord just because he's in better shape than me. I miss Giacomo laying waste to a DBeat with casual precision, and I really fucking miss having my face melted by Jasmine, without a doubt my favorite bass player of the last decade. I miss shows...but I can wait.

TØRSÖ 

The TØRSÖ demo dropped around 2014, and records seemed to follow immediately in its wake. The only bad thing about TØRSÖ is that, selfishly, they were never ours. They were never a "local" band even when they all lived here. There's something special about getting to experience a juggernaut before you have to share it, and that never happened with TØRSÖ...but when a band is this damn good right out of the gate, that's gonna happen. 

SOCIETY'S PUPPETS

Midwestern suburbia in the late 1980s was a motherfucker for punks, and probably even worse for hardcores who were in touch with the progressive politics of punk's perceived heyday that was a half decade in the rearview mirror. But some of them persevered. SOCIETY'S PUPPETS were punching way above their weight in 1990s when they recorded Time To Care, and it's that earnest attack that makes it so good 31 years later. Let the rough recording settle in and tracks like "Your Country Kills You" hit even harder, shades of late '80s UK anarcho/thrash filtered through a blatant affinity for NYHC. Positive, honest hardcore with a raw guitar chug ripped straight from the clutches of Sgt. D - anti-violence, anti-nuke, pro-animal rights, straight edge suburban hardcore from the conservative lily white streets of Waukesha, Wisconsin. Members went on to do stuff like TEN BOY SUMMER (the band) and/or normal life and/or moving into VIOLENT FEMMES house. 

TIME TO CARE

In case you're wondering (and I was): 

WAHC = Waukesha Area Hard Core. 

COMBINED EFFORT

 

What do you do when you love playing hardcore and all of the people you hang out with all the time also love playing hardcore? You write songs. And you record them. Because they're good. Even if you're (all) already in other bands, you're not constrained by the style of your other projects - no expectations and no prior presence means no rules. So if you wan't to write a batch of '97 Youth Crew revival bangers, then you write a motherfucking batch of '97 Youth Crew bangers.  And you blink, and there's a demo. Maybe there's only one, but it slams. 

COMBINED EFFORT

Crank that windmill riff into the breakdown of "Learned Nothing." Brutal. 

RELY

 

You can let the cartoon cover fool you if you like, but it would be your mistake. Killer mid '90s hardcore from the far reaches (especially pre-internet) of the Bay Area, RELY left us with this one demo before most of the members found god (or at least talked about it) and formed TOWARDS AN END. These kids knew their breakdowns, and young RJ's vocals were far more powerful than his years should have rightfully allowed...drop these tracks into a different time and/or context and you're talking about legit positive hardcore shits that would make fools sweat. The crew vocals on "You Thought" that yell "fuck you up again!" is almost as sick as the entirely of "Clear Time To Fight" - listen loud enough (and in solitude) and you turn into a seventeen year old suburban kid. I tried it...it works. 

CLEAR AND PRESENT ANGER

update: Apparently there was another recording after this one...it's good. 

HALFMAST

Md-90s emotive straight edge hardcore from upstate New York. Honest. Earnest. This shit seriously rules.

SUNRISE