RAZA DOLLS

THE RAZA DOLLS came from Bournemouth, and brought us this four song opus in 1988.  Goth drenched post punk that nods as heavily to THE MISSION as to HOUSE OF LOVE and other more commercial versions of the vaguely shoegazing music made by lots of former punks in the late 80s.  Quite often, that shit sounds about as good as a monkey playing a banjo through a reverb pedal, but on this rare occasion, THE RAZA DOLLS came up with a lotto jackpot.  Obviously it worked out well for them, because you remember them being plastered all over MTV and hearing their songs play while the credits to your favorite romantic comedies scrolled up the screen and they all made heaps of money being in this band that made commercially viable but yet artistically poignant and important music...right?  Oh wait, I forgot, there is no justice in the world, and things aren't fair, and Jay Reatard died and he was 29 years old.

THE RAZA DOLLS

THIEVES

THIEVES are a current, and currently burly, hardcore band from North Carolina.  When I say "North Carolina hardcore" I think CORROSION OF CONFORMITY, and when i think "CORROSION OF CONFORMITY" I think the 1980s hardcore, and when i think "1980s hardcore" I think MINOR THREAT, and now that I put that all together: THIEVES kinda sound like COC playing MINOR THREAT songs.  This is really fkkn great, no bullshit hardcore with everything played full out and/or to the max, whichever form of praise you prefer.  There is a B-side, it's all live shit from later in 2009 and it kills, but seeing as how you can easily buy this shit for cheap from these folks right here and support the band, it seems pretty silly for me to just give it away.  Cheers.

THIEVES

SOCIAL ABUSE

SOCIAL ABUSE came from Falkirk, which is somewhere northish of Edinburgh, and they are punk as fucking shit.  They rely almost exclusively on the plodding floor tom heavy mid tempo UK punk beat, which is completely fine by me, but it's the vocals that make this six song demo totally indispensable... strained and insistent in the way that only a teenager can really be.  The songs are rudimentary and rather monotonous (this is a good thing) but well played, and fueled by the vocals there are some incredibly catchy bits on this tape.  "Society's Prisoner" gets my vote for punkest tune of the lot, with it's long winded howl "Did you have a nice day at the office deeeaaaarr?" while the band lumbers through the two notes that make up the entire song.  Yeah, it's brilliant.  This is from 82 or 83 (I think), and I don't believe they released anything other than this tape, so dig in.

FIRST OFFENCE

ABOLISH AUTHORITY

I'm not even sure where this shit is from, much less when ABOLISH AUTHORITY made this magic, but these four songs are fucking stellar crusty metalpunk, and I love it!  The word "areti" (second song: "Operation Areti") is Greek for "virtue," the blank tape that this demo came recorded on has banal instructions in English and Greek, and if I listen to these tracks alongside ANTI and CHAOS GENERATION I can hear similarities...so I guess they are Greek? If someone knows anything about this band, please let me know.  These songs have been on heavy rotation at Terminal Escape for several weeks, and I think you will enjoy them...if you don't, then I'm not sure what the problem is.

ABOLISH AYTHORITY

CHAINSAW KITTENS

I've posted Oklahoma bands for the last few Sundays, and I'm keeping the run going today with the first two CHAINSAW KITTENS demos, released on one tape back in 1990. In the wake of grunge, there was a flurry of mostly fictional major label buzz infesting the music scenes of most college towns, and I was certainly not the only person in Norman who thought that CHAINSAW KITTENS might be "the one" that would break out.  They toured all the time, had a charismatic and flamboyant frontman (Tyson Meade, who previously fronted DEFENESTRATION), they wrote killer pop songs and they delivered them live with an energy that was equal parts NEW YORK DOLLS, MARC BOLAN and MC5 (or at least that's how it seemed to me at the time).  They signed to an indie label and released an album that I still pull out regularly, Violent Religion, and then it happened.  They got a new rhythm section, and then CHAINSAW KITTENS signed to fucking Atlantic...I knew they were gonna be huge.  Flipped Out In Singapore was heavier, perhaps the influence of a post NIRVANA Butch Vig at the control board had an impact on the band's saccharine sweet songs.  I watched the first video (for "Connie, I've Found The Door," a stellar pop song more than worthy of heavy rotation on "alternative" radio) on MTV and then, just like that...they flopped.  Maybe they got too normal and strayed away from their more glamorous roots, but I guess the recipe was just not quite right.  Don't bother downloading this if you're after raging hardcore (just scroll down for the Stockholm Hardcore tape), and come back tomorrow if you want anarchist minded glue sniffing UK rockers. But if you are a fan of well crafted power pop mixed with 70s glam, and don't mind the occasional love song thrown in the mix (seriously, "I'm Waiting" is one of the best punk love songs I've ever heard, and it made its way onto more than a few fruitless mix tapes created by yours truly during young adulthood), then click below, and then start scouring the dollar bins for copies of their first two records. And when you come across a vinyl copy of Flipped Out In Singapore, please drop me a line, I have wanted one for so long that I'm starting to think they only bothered making CD and cassette versions of the fucking thing.

CHAINSAW KITTENS

The first four tracks are from the 1989 demo, including a way ill-advised, overproduced and too heavily stringed version of "She's Gone Mad" which appears on Violent Religion in much better form, and was given the treatment a few years back by THE FLAMING LIPS.  The 1990 tracks are rawer, and far slower than the versions that were on Violent Religion. There are a handful of live tracks as well, but they are just messier and perhaps drunker incarnations of the songs that are already on the two demos, so I exercised a little editorial control and left them on the cassette, where they belong. 

URGE

Feel Our Intense Urge indeed.  Four tracks of raw abrasive hardcore from Japan.  Place emphasis on "raw" and "abrasive," because this shit is not pleasant and certainly was not not recorded in anything close to what we might call a "studio." This is (most likely) the best 7 1/2 minutes of your Saturday, so get into it.

FEEL OUR INTENSE URGE

STOCKHOLM HARDCORE 1983-1986

If this doesn't get your blood pumping then perhaps you should have your heart checked: a blistering six band whirlwind of 80s Swedish hardcore rammed onto one cassette. Sweden's finest are represented, legendary bands like MOB 47 and PROTES BENGT contribute jaw dropping tracks, but the tracks from AGONI and CRUDITY are nothing short of perfection (the latter is so fucking underknown and/or underrated, their shit blows my mind every time I hear it...so fucking fast, and the riffs are as close to perfect as one could hope for, flawless Swedecore).  Raw D-Beat chaos from DISCARD, the best fist waving madness this side of ANTI-CIMEX, and then the tape wraps up with three burners from R OJERS that are the roughest of the whole lot. I shouldn't really need to explain this shit or write anything about these bands, Sweden's contribution to hardcore has long been well documented by better wordsmiths than myself, and the genre has been analyzed to death for two decades and counting.  I know that (most) of these tracks come from vinyl releases, but there are a few that I've not come across, so download away and perhaps you'll get lucky.

MOB 47 - AGONI

CRUDITY - PROTES BENGT

DISCARD - ROJERS

I've split this up into three downloads, and hopefully that will not result in folks just burning the MOB 47 tracks...but if that's the case, then I suppose it's your loss, and me and my CRUDITY backpatch will just smile and drink beer.