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

NEVER FORGET THE CAUSE

Nine bands, 14 songs, and music from all over the punk spectrum. After an admittedly slow start (SCREWHEADS and ANAK NG KAPRE are charming, if rudimentarily inept and traditional ska from the brilliantly named TOILET SCANDAL follows), things really get rolling with the chaos thrash of DRASTIC NOISE and killer catchy street punk from DEAD SPERM. Then on the flip side the tape kicks into high gear: metallic motorpunk (BIOFEEDBACK), amateurish political street punk (BAD OMEN), gloriously incompetent Oi (PUTANG I NAS) and my two favorite songs on the tape: chaotic ragers from the female fronted MONGOLOIDS. These two tracks alone are well worth the whole tape, but a document like this is valuable on so many different levels....being punk in Philippines in 1993 was a world apart from the zine trading and workshops that were taking place in the US, and had little to do with the black clad anti-goverment crusters roaming Europe. Never Forget The Cause highlights bands on the first wave of DIY punk in Southeast Asia.

NEVER FORGET THE CAUSE

TEMPESTA

TEMPESTA play crushing modern crust...the kind that will make you happy if new Euro-crust is just not quite metal enough - or perhaps if you find that the metal coming out these days just doesn't have enough of a punk edge. The vocals are what make this for me; harsh and brutal, and spit out with sinister precision. The music is a charged metallic onslaught filled with more than enough riffing and thrashing madness to please the most judgemental hessian, with start/stop riffs and a crushing pace that hardly lets up for longer than a gratuitous intro. TEMPESTA are all of the good things about fast and nasty hardcore - and they come to us via cassette courtesy of Trabuc, which is a mark of quality if there ever was one. Oh yeah...there's a KREATOR cover that kinda rules.

DEMO-NIACA 2011

UNWISE

Another two song banger today, this time from Kobe's UNWISE. Gruff and unintelligible vocals and a ramshackle delivery that all but omits the guitar from the mix make this sound like cookie monster with a speech impediment singing for VERRÄTERISCH. UNWISE have been kicking around since the early '90s, and have several worthwhile releases under their belts (1993's Worth Of Existence on Vinyl Japan is especially sick, though it frequently languishes in the discount bins for some unknown reason), but this demo shows them at their most primitive.

UNWISE

SHIT MAYOR

I can't even pretend to describe this. I can only say that SHIT MAYOR are awesome, and that the two song, seven minute investment required to discover whether or not you agree with me is a rather wise gamble. Maybe this is somebody's idea of an inside joke, or maybe some modern day outcasts managed to create a demo that sounds like a garage punk version of 1000 HOMO DJs, and either way I am smitten. 

SHIT MAYOR

TOTAL WAR

I dare say that Vancouver is in the process of supplanting Portland as the punk capital of the West Coast, especially after our visit there last weekend. Killer show, great bands, and amazing punks (not to mention the carloads that were raging in Seattle show the night before). And now, enter TOTAL WAR. Blazing blown out Scandinavian influenced chaos that will melt your face for the next ten minutes - you can practically feel the studded jackets digging into your arms as you flail about...completely freed by the distorted riffs digging into your ears. Yeah, it's that fukkn good. TOTAL WAR.

TOTAL WAR

WHITE TRASH SUPERMAN

FUCKFACE crossed paths with WHITE TRASH SUPERMAN twice on our 1995 US tour. First in Biloxi, Mississippi, where we played with five touring bands and a couple of local ska acts in a rented hall, and then in New Orleans on afternoon that followed the most exceptional (frightening) displays of alcohol consumption I have ever seen (participated in) and our drummer was still talking to his dead friends (out loud) while we were playing. The following year, we got towed to a show they arranged for us sometime near Christmas (I can't recall if it was in Starkville or Columbus, and I don't remember if WTS or Jayson's next band THE GRUMPIES played...I just know it was real close to Jesus's birthday, and kids got crazy - perhaps because they were crazy). WHITE TRASH SUPERMAN are from Starkville, Mississippi, and their songs will seep under your skin and melt your icy jaded veins...this tape and their other demo were on heavy rotation in the van for many tours to come, and we were happy to spread the word to friends back home. Their sound is dredged through '90s poppy punk, but their delivery is all adrenaline and alcohol, placing them somewhere between HICKEY and SUPERCHUNK on my "awesome melodic bands from the '90s" meter. These tracks became WHITE TRASH SUPERMAN's only two EP's, Punk Rock Hero and Couldn't (If I Tried) b/w Wheaties, both released in 1995 or so. "Couldn't (If I Tried)" is as close to a perfect song as I've ever heard, and the words still get stuck in my head on a regular basis. The other two songs on this tape, "Can Man" and "Staring At Your Walls," never made it to wax, but they are both brilliant in the same innocently mature manner as "Couldn't (If I Tried)," and shows a band years more advanced than their actual years. In a different world, WHITE TRASH SUPERMAN would have (should have) been playing to hundreds of college punk fans for the last half of the decade, but in our world, they recorded brilliant songs themselves on a 4-track, released the songs themselves on cassette and EP (using the imprint Did It Ourselves Records), and filled a handful of lives with memories. That's a pretty nice legacy.

PUNK ROCK HERO