THE PADILLA BROTHERS

It might be good to occasionally venture off of your path, to sink your teeth into tastes that challenge your palette. Maybe you find something you like and start on a new musical journey, or maybe you just solidify your affinity for whatever brand of hardcore and/or punk and/or minimal electronic noise that happens to float your boat. Enter Albuquerque's THE PADILLA BROTHERS, a schmaltzy trio who belt out syrupy sweet easy listening '70s country with an apparent obsession with a dude from Bethlehem. But religious affiliations aside, when they pick up the pace on "Buenos Dias, Señor Jesus" it kinda swings like The Nashville Sound but without the strings. These three dudes don't just bring killer hair to the table, their vocal harmonies are stellar and though the guitar licks are subtle, they are extremely effective. Perhaps not an accident that the Spanish language tracks are the most successful, as these are the songs that lay it back and just kinda roll, but the questionably titled closer "His Hand Is Touching Me" crushes at such a slow and deliberate pace that it's the song I keep coming back to. So step off the trail, young punk...even if your journey only leads you back to where you starts, you'll at least know you're headed the right way.

A MAN CALLED LOVE

HINGE

Karoline and I just had a discussion about the HICKEY/FUCKFACE show she booked in Milwaukee in '96...I have always thought that HINGE was one of the locals on that show, she thinks that they had probably split up by then, but we both agree that we spent most of the show making out in the front seat of a double parked brown Ford on Oakland Avenue, so the memories are good ones either way. I have had a different HINGE recording floating around since that era, but I snagged this one from Daniel when he was purging a couple of summers ago, and it's way better than the one I've been listening to. Four tracks of impassioned basement DIY with a heavy DC influence and killer swarms of guitars. I've said it countless times in these pages, but I miss bands having the freedom to write like this without instant access to every subgenre at their fingertips...I miss songs like "How The West Was Won" popping onto tapes and steering your listening in an entirely different direction. So whether I saw HINGE or not, I'm glad to have the sounds. And if, in fact, didn't see them? Well, it was a really good make out session, so no regrets.

HINGE

CRAZY BULL

Shameless modern heavy metal from Philadelphia...there's nothing wrong with a killer blues based guitar lick, and if your vocalist can pull, off that gravelly swagger then by all means: let that flag fly, my man. I was struck immediately by this tape...I was supposed to be analyzing the latest international punk offerings and I was rocketed back to adolescence the moment I pressed play. It's like KYUSS without MELVINS, or PENTAGRAM without SABBATH...it's timeless heavy metal music, loud and dirty.

CRAZY BULL

NO PEACE

Sometimes you like to get bashed in the face. Repeatedly. And for moments like those, I suggest listening to the NO PEACE demo. Repeatedly. The guitars alone will likely be enough to start you pounding your face into the nearest wall with maximum force. Repeatedly. But the whole package here is some UK82 punx snorting baby arm sized rails of phencyclidine. Repeatedly. NO PEACE sound so brilliantly fukkd, so horrifically pissed...and "Rat Maze" is pure filth snorting crank thats been stepped on so hard that you blow a line, immediately take a shit and then sit around wondering if you're high or not. Since you aren't sure, you do another line. And repeat. But I digress.

VOLUME 1

ASESINATO DEL PODER

As simple as it is ferocious, this 2013 banger from northern Spain drops eight solid punk jams right in your lap. "Atrapado" and the four note "Celdas" slow the pace to a creepy crawl, but the rest of this tape is some kind of DBeat/pogo hybrid - fast, pure, raw, and very punk. You like the way it looks? You'll like the way it sounds.

ASESINATO DEL PODER

RHYTHM OF CRUELTY

Once again - I'm getting tired of the hoards of kids dishing out regurgitations of the new wave and goth that a sunk into as a teen. And once again - I hear bands like RHYTHM OF CRUELTY and all I want is more. The brutal simplicity of the opening track, with the caterwauling vocals sharing reverberating frequencies with the over treated guitars and a two track monotony that continues for three and one half minutes...that simplicity can also be described as perfection. The next two are slightly more up tempo, vocals lost swimming in those guitars while the phasered (of course) bass drives the train (actually, the drum tracks might be the most interesting aspect of this whole recording, but they are sadly buried in the mix...if only they had an effects pedal for drums - oh wait: it's a drums machine, so they've got that covered too). By the time "Still Life" settles into a 4/4 to close things out, you might be as addicted as I was. Lucky you, because this tape is from 2012, and this Canadian duo has been rather busy since then.

STILL LIFE

IMPLEMENT

Somewhere between emo (from the before-it-was-a-bad-word era) and UNIFORM CHOICE, this is perfect teenage Southern California punk. You can practically feel the sun. 

IMPLEMENT