TOZCOS

Los Angeles Ponx hit another home run, which should come as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention for the last few years. Driving, dirty feisty punk with shouted female vocals in Spanish. Every song bounces and demands full body attention - I'm talking about getting into these jams, not just listening - and I can only imagine that this effect is magnified when TOZCOS is experienced in a live setting. The sub-minute "Nos Estamos Desangrando" is my choice jam, so simple but so damn good. 

TOZCOS

HIPOKRYZJA

Ignore the cover (I actually considered not posting it because the full color amateur photoshop so blatantly dates this release) but dig the jams...please. How many bands like HIPOKRYZJA must there be? Earnest and fierce Polish punk along the lines of masters like ARMIA and TZN XENNA, but this tape comes from 1997, when the style was (perhaps?) out of vogue at home but the internet had not yet become the great geographical equalizer. This tape is almost an hour long, and parts of it might be too produced and "modern" for some, but take a look at some of the other shit that QQRYQ released (POST REGIMENT, SCHIZMA, CITIZEN FISH, DEZERTER, loads more...) and perhaps you will decide that diving into Nie Jesteście Inni is a good idea. And you will be correct.

NIE JESTESCIE INNI

TRRASH

Never has a warble been as comfortable as it is at the start of the four song bizarro assault from Seattle's TRRASH. The cool paradigm is absolutely blown to smithereens in the coolest way imaginable. Blown out, truly and unpretentiously fukkd sounding punk rock. 100% mutant hardcore.

TRRASH

SUPERMIX

You ever been to Bakersfield? Probably not, and there was a time when I probably would have told you that there was no reason to do so. And while I might have been giving the correct advice at the time (like the time I got maced by security guards at a pizza joint on new year's eve), I would suggest that, in these modern times, Bakersfield is at the very least and interesting place to visit...and it is potentially awesome. You can see punk bands in a boxing gym, you can look at the America that used to be (or perhaps never really was), you can go to a thrift store and then pop across the street to a porno theatre, and you can go to Going Underground and lose hours looking at records. And while you are looking at records, if you are me, you'll probably get distracted by the tapes too - the cover and title alone intrigued me here, and I was prepared to buy blind when the proprietor told me it was a space mix of dancehall and reggae...hmmmm...I don't really give a shit about that shit (it's an apathy born of ignorance, I admit), but when a dude who seems to have impeccable taste presents an hour of faves from relatively foreign genres, then I'm intrigued. From the source, this is: "60 minutes of reggae and dancehall hits taken from my records and space mixed."  I do not know a single artist on this tape, but I found it to be 60 minutes of sheer bliss. 

SUPERMIX: OK FOR ROCKERS, OK FOR PUNKS

This was taken around the corner from Going Underground. Refuse To Lose.

JACK WITH KILLER

First off, I would like to note that the cover here indicates that people around the world have been getting bent out of shape at Maximum Rocknroll reviewers for decades, which (as a longtime MRR reviewer) I find entertaining. I've seen JACK WITH KILLER's name for years, but only heard the band recently...my loss. Two demos in today's download (you win, punk), the five song ripper pictured above and the decidedly more noisy and off the wall sounding Black Sheep. This shit is unconventional and struggles to color inside of accepted hardcore lines (I would argue that while the Black Sheep demo fails at staying inside of the lines, it succeeds at being awesome). Totally off the wall early '90s Japanese hardcore, not even remotely cool...which is exactly why you should like it.

JACK WITH KILLER

Ignore the sticker, ain't nothing straight forward about this shit...

HOG SONG

I know that most of you don't delve into the noise and "non-punk" shit I post here. That's cool, we are still friends (in the modern, electronic sense of the word at least). But sometimes I just need to sink into something, you know? Sometimes sound is something that is meant to be a part of instead of simply a witness to, and that's how I felt when I heard this tape. And that's how I feel while I'm listening to this tape as I type about this tape. It's subtle and alluring, the embodiment of an aural escape...and every now and then you might need one of those. This 15 some odd minutes came to me as two separate sides of a somewhat damaged cassette - the damages have been preserved but I have squished the sound into one track. Technology.

SIDEWAYS WALLS IN THE SHITPIT

INSTED

A first person dub of a nine song INSTED banger, taped over a screaming live HÜSKER DÜ set (that honestly got me more stoked than the INSTED shits). Slick and energetic late '80s straight edge hardcore, but you probably already knew that. This band travels the 7 SECONDS to UNIFORM CHOICE road more than the MINOR THREAT to YOUTH OF TODAY highway...no song titles, I'll leave that (and perhaps the actual source of these jammers and whether or not they are available elsewhere) to the true hardcores.

AT LAST