PATHETIC SOCIETY

 

Ripping '10s project from San Diego who left just two cassette releases in their wake....but oooooohhhh dude is this one a monster. Full throttle MEANWHILE-caliber hardcore punk with an underlying darkness that manifests as frustration and rage. I wish the band had been more than a side project, because this one hits just fukkn right. 

PATHETIC SOCIETY 

X-77

 

Hard to think of a more aptly title release than Nightmare. X-77 doesn't create a soundtrack to darkness on this 2021 Deathbed Tape; it's as if they create darkness itself. Murky ambient slow motion convulsions that take only seconds to develop...envelop you for what feels like an eternity. "Butcher's Window" is a masterpiece on its own, and in the company of ten more master/pieces it simply suffocates. Brutality has rarely sounded so measured. 

NIGHTMARE

•••

HOT LOAD

 

For the finest in UK hardcore influenced MotörPunk in the modern era, please look no further than Los Angeles deadbeats HOT LOAD. Mutants from bands you already love (SMUT, FUNDAMENTAL, RUINED AGE, CEMENTO, HARM and others) joined forces in the new decade and dropped an absolute bomb in Love Bag...high energy, sweat soaked punk rock 'n roll. This is what you want your sex to sound like, assuming it's dangerous sex. 

HOT LOAD

FASTBACKS

 

Gonna hold onto this FASTBACKS energy as tight as I can today. They are dirty and determined, addictive and anthemic, punk...and full of promise. I think it was Mooneyham who first turned me onto them (might have been Todd though), back when this 1983 demo was a scant seven years old.  Pretty sure my introduction was The Answer Is You but it didn't matter because I quickly scooped up everything I could find and felt like every day was full of wild hooks and hope. I don't feel like that anymore, but there is hope in the shadows and sometimes getting hooked is just what needs to happen. So yeah, FASTBACKS energy all damn day. 

FASTBACKS

DR. LIGHT

 

Well this one just dropped in from the past as a reminder to pay a little more attention to the releases that slip under the radar. Fully realized Sage/Westerberg caliber earnestness by way of late '80s college/alt, the approach and intent on DR. LIGHT's 2015 tape is relatively straight forward - but listen to "Out Of Thin Air" then listen to "Static Eyes" and know that there is nothing at all 'simple' about the result.  

DR. LIGHT

ANFO

 

If you were digging through crates in the early '00s, then you came across ANFO records. The La Sangre.... EP seemed to be in every bin for a while, the split with D.F.C. was my first exposure to the Brazilian thrashers (who I'd finally get to see ten years later) and there  and I feel like there's probably a CD (or two) sitting on my CD shelf (ok - shelves)....but naturally, it's the tapes. There are a couple of splits that predate LatinoAmerica Resiste, and this first full length length harnesses all of that power and then some. Throaty, churning political crust punk - emphasis on punk, you know? I wonder what would happen if a band like this dropped in 2023, but I know what happened the first time I heard ANFO: I got chills. Shit is real. 

LATINOAMERICA RESISTE

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COMMANDING THE FURY

 

Brutally primitive lo-fi dungeon synth pairing, combining the singular closet casiotones of CIMMERIAN FURY with dark and hesitant improvisational missives of FOGMOON TOWER. As with many tapes that I share here, these sounds do not come from my world....but as with many tapes I share here, that's exactly the point. 

COMMANDING THE FURY