ANOTHER DESTRUCTIVE SYSTEM

This seven song banger comes courtesy of LA peace punk/anarcho crust/activist rockers ANOTHER DESTRUCTIVE SYSTEM circa 1986. Super heavy CONFLICT influence with a raw delivery...nothing to complain about here. Vocalist Mark reformed A.D.S. in 2005 and they played around Southern California until '09 when they hung it up once again...new recorded material from the second incarnation is certainly cleaner, but lacks the power of this demo and the one that followed. A shame this band never put out records, as I'm sure they would be considered the top of the American anarcho heap.

ANOTHER DESTRUCTIVE SYSTEM

BLACK FUNERAL

There was an interview with BLACK FUNERAL's leader Baron von Abaddon in Pit magazine in 1995/6 that received countless yucks in our tour van. He said something about wanting his music to inspire someone to commit suicide and talked all kinds of trash about how evil he was and how much he loved Satan. Understandably, we wanted to know more about this mystical Satanic evil doing forest dweller, so when we passed through his hometown on tour we spent most of the evening asking everyone who would listen (and those who didn't care) where we could find The Baron. Not surprisingly, the denizens of Eviltown, USA (also known as Indianapolis) were not too forthcoming with information on The Baron's whereabouts, but near the end of the show a shy longhaired chap approached our merch table and said in a hushed voice: "I hear you're looking for The Baron." We whooped with excitement, but the fellow nervously quieted us down and started hesitantly sharing only after we swore to never reveal the source of such top secret information. Apparently, if memory serves, the Baron von Abaddon was (in 1996) a thirty-something fat white dude who lived in a trailer park with his mom, had shrines to both Hitler and Satan in his room, and worked the night shift at Pizza Hut (his mom drove him to work so he wouldn't have to walk through the scary black neighborhood). Perhaps the kid was talking out his ass, but he was legitimately spooked while telling us about The Baron, so we took his words as truth (also, this new image of Indiana's premier Satanic Black Metal purveyor was about to provide us with hours of entertainment in the van).  I didn't hear BLACK FUNERAL until later in 1996, when I picked up this '94 demo cassette in Nagoya, Japan (go figure) for 200¥, and imagine my shock when I loved it. Lo-fi bleak and ethereal howling black metal that sounds like it just emerged from the frosty depths of the walk-in freezer at Pizza Hut. 

JOURNEY'S (sic) INTO HORIZONS LOST

DICKHEAD

I know what you fukks want: raw driving punk. DICKHEAD are from Indonesia, and back in 2001 they dished out this 10 song ripper - like UK82 all jacked up on homemade moonshine and tempeh. Maybe it's not the new school hipster version of Noise Punk that wears tight pants and has all the right bands they discovered on the internet emblazoned across their perfect jackets, but DICKHEAD are raw as shit, noisy as fukk, and quite likely punker than you.

Escape From Genocide System

THE ACCÜSED

I never really got into THE ACCÜSED. I had the More Fun Than An Open Casket Funeral tape in high school, but it didn't exactly float my boat, and the whatever other shit I've heard over the years hasn't moved me to delve deeper into their output. Who the fukk knows where this tape is from, but if I had heard  this monster back in the day, then I have no doubt that I would have spent the last years wrapping myself in the ACCÜSED flag, because this shit rules hard....REALLY hard. The songs here appear on 1985's Martha Splatterhead EP and The Return...Of Martha Splatterhead, released the following year, though I do not know if these are the same versions (I kinda think not, since these seven songs are pretty clearly from the same session, and it seems odd that they would have used the same shit for a Combat Records full length as for an independent EP); hopefully some super fan can clue all of us in. Is all of THE ACCÜSED shit this good? "Lonely Place" by itself makes the whole demo worthwhile - the term "raging" has rarely been used more appropriately to describe blistering hardcore jams. Splatter Rock demo is written on the tape, but frankly I could give a shit if this is a demo or just a recording of vinyl releases, except that if this is the EP recording then I guess I have officially added that slab to my meager but hopelessly optimistic want list. Even the ridiculous "Fuckin' For Bucks" is a fukkn killer, and I can think of few better ways to kill a few Sunday brain cells.

SPLATTER ROCK Demo

RECTIFY

I posted the Ebullition demo last year, and here is the follow up release from the Welsh band RECTIFY. They were an ocean away, but cranked out a sound that was right in line with their contemporaries in the US (mostly New York).  There's a touch of cock rock in the vocals, and even more so in the occasional tasty leads, but it suits the tunes just fine...I picture this dudes being stiff and uninteresting to watch live, the kind of band you keep watching because they can all play their asses off but you want them to just unleash. '90s US hardcore meets HELMET? It totally works. 

VIRTUAL REALITY

HMMM...

If you aren't sold by the cover and the stable of UK punk that it promises inside, then there's not much my pleadings will be able to do to encourage a fast download. The Casio drum machine bedroom recordings from A LOVELY WAY TO DIE? are an amusing headscratcher, but the rest of this tape is blown out top quality '80s UK punk...you know you love SUBHUMANS, NAKED and DESTRUCTORS but delve deeper and get into 3/D SCREAM, PATROL (best tunes on the tape) and 4 MINUTE WARNING. A killer comp tape from Hit Ranking Fanzine, enjoy your Friday.

HMMM...

OUR TURN

I moved from Oakland to Milwaukee in 2002 (though it was a gradual move, and I wasn't completely Midwest based until summer 2003), and was lucky enough to be in the Midwest during a very fruitful few years for punk and hardcore. Killer bands from all over the region passed through frequently, bands from overseas frequently used our house to sleep and shit in, and Milwaukee kept cranking out great hardcore and punk bands the whole time I lived there. But I missed a whole wave of shit from the Bay Area while I was gone...like OUR TURN. The cover kinda gives this one away: ripping youth crew drenched hardcore from San Francisco, but they only existed for a short time and aside from tracks on 625's Barbaric Thrash comps, left us with only this demo. Practically every early '00s youth crew/fastcore revival cliché can be found on these seven tunes, but when Carl urges you to "swallow your pride and take the higher ground // keep your fucking hoods up // and your fists down!" you stop caring that you've heard these riffs before, because now it's OUR TURN. 

STEP ASIDE