GRIMACE

 

In retrospect, GRIMACE were far more deadly than when I saw them law waste to a taqueria in San Francisco ten years ago. That show was wild, and they were filthy - I mean like actual dirt - and wild eyed. GRIMACE were dangerous, and they were real. The kind of kids that you want on your side even though you feel like they should still be at arms' length...just in case. They rolled with HYSTERICS and they both rolled deep (like the kids from Mississippi I talked about a while back), so it seemed like the entire room knew every word to every song when they played, even though most of us had never seen them (or heard of them before). The music was violent. The band wasn't violent, but you got the feeling that the music itself was the only thing between the people making it and the violence itself.  I revisited the demo last week and oooofffff does it ever hold up. Primitive, marble mouthed, bare knuckle North American hardcore punk. Not contrived, maybe not even intentional, GRIMACE just happened because they needed it to happen. 

GRIMACE

JLK // BABYSITTER

 

Gorgeous, spacey, numbing presentations on the first of a few collaborations between Montreal's BABYSITTER and Jane Kasowicz. Like a drug addled gospel conjuring, these three tracks meander and reach, and of course you can make early VELVETs comparisons if you are so inclined, but I feel like you'll be selling your listening experience short if you do. On "Don't Drop It," it's as if the guitar and the bass and the other sounds spend almost the entire seven minutes searching for each other, and then they journey out together for the mind melting "Wanderings" to close. Much of this tape feels slightly off, like an involuntary twitch that you finally submit to - at once disorienting and peaceful. 

JLK // BABYSITTER

There's more (lots more), but today just these three....the rest you should find on your own (links please)...and praise to Dub Ditch Picnic (again) for the work.

CRAZY BUGS

 

Brace yourself before you start listening to CRAZY BUGS - the scream that starts "Dexedrine" will make you feel like you're at the tail end of a four day slide and you're ready to give up entirely. Give up everything. Bug-Out Bag is a sub-seven minute desperate disaster by a band who sound like they've been told that if they can just finish this one riff then they'll be allowed to stop...but there's another riff and another song and another scream waiting for them and they just get more and more frustrated as the tape continues. "Murder In The Cathedral" is the most coherent, and "Castration Fantasy" is the most deadly...appropriate that these are the final two tracks, because I don't know how much more I could have taken. 

BUG-OUT BAG

DEAD BUT STILL KICKING

 

A time capsule of unknowns, 1991's Dead But Still Kicking crams a dozen of your new favorite bands into one hour of beer soaked punk and hardcore. Detroit's SCRUFFY TEARAWAYS open the comp with two sinister crossover rippers and THE VACANT follow up with shrill UK influenced punk, good enough that you stick around for TATTOOED CORPSE and VOODOO LOVE GODS dropping by with their distinct brands of sleazy bar punk. Primitive crossover from BLINDED DESTINY, roughshod melodic punk from THIRSTY, then GRIEVANCE COMMITTEE, ZOMBIE TERRORISTS, X WOOLHEAD, COMMONWEALTH and A.D. plow through the second side before SHARK FETISH bash out a harmonica drenched garage hardcore stomp to close the tape. Bands are from Portland, Germany, Maryland, Michigan and parts unknown - I might have been familiar with two of the twelve before I popped this plastic wonder in the deck....and comps still rule. 

DEAD BUT STILL KICKING

MESSAGE TO THE RAT KING

 

Greg passed this to me a while back, and I kinda like that I don't really know anything about it. It seems that the world just opens up a bit more when there are no bandmates and no conflicting opinions involved - and likely that's what's going on with MESSAGE TO THE RAT KING. Greg plays drums on a track, and there are a few other guests who stop by, but this Rat King messenger lives in one brain and it's kinda brilliant. "Lagos" conjures '80s college/indie in the form of a W/IFS demo outtake. Roy Wood's WIZZARD and Jay Reatard and SPACEMEN 3 and Sandinista all make make historical sonic visits, which really just reinforces that MESSAGE TO THE RAT KING is operating unfettered. If this weren't a one-off (and I'm just assuming that it is), then we would all be analyzing a genuinely advanced approach to punk creativity as the experiment continued and gained momentum. But what's more likely is that this one will go mostly unnoticed by all but a select (chosen?) few who recognize the brilliance and extoll the virtues to the uninterested masses. Because that's how low key genius typically works. 

MESSAGE TO THE RAT KING

YOUR PEST BAND

 

Listening to YOUR PEST BAND is like walking aimlessly through the nowhere and finding yourself staring into a deep gorge. You scramble down one side to get to the rich black stream at the bottom, making your way down one side of a steep shale wall...and you've ended up inside the grooves of a lost Nuggets recording. And that's not a freight train coming around the bend - some shit wasted lovelorn 22 year old is playing that record at full volume and the needle is coming straight for you. 

YOUR PEST BAND
This is the cassette version of the 2014 Let It Go LP, sold on their US tour with HOLY SHIT!
Listen to "Don't Leave Me Alone" with special focus, because it's great. 

MALICE

Someone wrote me about this one a few days back, and their message reminded me that I hadn't pulled MALICE out in far too long. I initially posted this demo in 2009, when The Escape was just a few weeks old, and I swear it sounds even more special years later. The band lands somewhere between more standard hard driving UK82 fare and the brainier Bluurg and/or small town Welsh punk of the time. Making their own rules and just being fucking punk....very happy that I came back to MALICE. But now I'm really after the other tape, if it actually exists. 

 MALICE