It sounds like Girl School. The fuck else you want?
Showing posts with label 2013. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2013. Show all posts
Tuesday, 21 October 2014
Saturday, 4 October 2014
Hard Skin - On The Balls & Why Do Birds Suddenly Appear?
"Oi! Oi! Oi! Oi! Oi! Oi! Think about Oi! Oi! Oi!" - The Crested, Think About Oi
"STOP THINKING! START DRINKING!" - Hard Skin, First Day Angry Song
Like the Formby Channel, Hard Skin are a band that could only have emerged from this sceptred isle. And when I say sceptred, I mean shithole, grey bitter dank sarcastic nimby fading delusional shit-fucking hole-isle. Some real John King spirit imbues these songs, that mixture of soaring terrace community, the kicks and knocks of poverty, a familiarity with violence, a tense heartworn tearing underneath, a faded rug at your nan's with the colour scuffed out of it but the pattern still peeking through, the warmth in the brokenness.
Sure America has OIL! with their pumped up ridiculous violence, cliches stacked high and smashed down, Crucified Hammerskins, Proud of my Pride, Pulling on the Boots, but Hard Skin are cut through with sharper, more poignant silliness, beyond their bluntfuck singalongs, like Beer and Fags's loutish drunken joy in the face of the grim march of history on Hard Nuts and Hard Cunts, drawing on Cock Sparrer's England Belongs to Me, and its investment in the smaller twists of home, Cock Sparrer sang of England looking not at verdant fields and glory, but 'the dirty water in its rivers', the little grotty shit that you hold deep in your heart as signifiers of a private belonging, stake a claim to what you have, no matter how insignificant or crap it is.
Still Fighting Thatcher they roared twenty odd years ago, and she lies six feet deep but her stabbing hate lives on. Council Estate deals, with surprisingly affectingly, with the lasting brutality of her legacy on ordinary people. Dark fucking times when even your comedy Oi! bands are painting bleak landscapes of the grueling slog of austerity. A pained tale steeped psycho-geography, the malign concrete, infecting its residents with a certain hard heart. No jokes just a desperate cry. "EVERYONE DIES! BUT NOT EVERYONE LIVES! I'M SOMEBODY! I'VE GOT SOMETHING TO GIVE!" Real shit right there.
On The Kids Are Innocent that nebulous notion of 'the kids' invoked in that Upstarts, Blitz, Sham, way, they're the kids that you meet, they don't care and if they're united then they'll never be divided. A warm cuff-about-the-ear for scamps and tearaways, embracing the young as just weird fuckabouts, like they are, like we were, it's an idea that fights back against the real youthhate of mid-market tabloids, terror scattered across newspaper pages, feverish whispers of 'feral' and 'inherent criminality' burning with that eugenic tang. The Kids Are Innocent, the homeless are treated with the same warmth on You Still Here? and it's dismissive toss-off of PCSOs, as angry at the fact that it's not a real cop doing the bothering as it is at the fact that a cop's bothering them, and a lot of this album, is anti-nihilistic, a vaguely charming vision of Britain full of salt-of-the-earth cunts stumbling through interesting times, punches and police harassment.
Hard Skin bounce between modes. There's the storming self-mythologising of Another Terrace Anthem, boasting of "Bit of Sparrer, Rejects and Sham/I'm taking it back to where it began!" and cracking apart with purposefully lame jokes. There's the triumphal violence of rougher-uppers The Man Who Ran the Town with skins as avenging angels, puttin in a loan shark's head, and We're Gonna Do Them Cunts, rolling on that terse economy of threat, "I'm gonna do you" carrying more power than any super-specific murderous hyperbole. A take on I, Ludicrous's Preposterous Tales in That's Bollocks, Mate and its pissed-off pissed fuck-off of a mouth-running pub bore. The lonely swaying whisper of The Gipsy Hill, a wander round South London, a litany of a neighbourhood's comforting peculiarities. It all sits together in a cordial crash of streetlights and dogshit, belligerent barroom stompers, sidestreet serenade, flitting between cock-o'-the-walk swagger and softer more morose musings, but all invested with the slap of the pavement, the roots of meandering alleyways, the shortcuts and graffiti of a living city.
And even better, beyond the instant classic of On The Balls, is Why Do Birds Suddenly Appear?, the same album, the same songs, but coming from a murderer's row of female vocalists, real punk sneer, relishing that snap of melody and power. The notion of guilty pleasures has been well wrung out to dry as a bullshit concept born of insecurity and snobbery, but if there was one thing I'd classify as that, it's the sheer amount of generic female-fronted streetpunk I can consume without tiring, no-one should have listened to The N.Y. Rel-X as much as I have. And this is far from that, Hard Skin's melodic chops, their songwriting skills, their ability to appropriate those bits of Sparrer, Rejects and Sham with total aplomb, make this play like a whole album of Action Pact's London Bouncers, something like Atlanta's Man's Ruin with better tunes, a beefed-up sweary Gymslips, from Joanna Newsom's (yeah that Joanna Newsom) cackle on the jubilant The Man Who Ran the Town, to Miki Berenyi's ire on You Still Here?, the runaway sting of Liela Moss's Police Car (Chasing You), 2013's second best song about a police car, Debbie Smith's bellow on the innuendo of Sausage Man, it's even better than On the Balls, feeling more chaotic (the cadence of the vocals, which were probably more hastily recorded than On The Balls occasionally slips and clatters up against the forward power of the songs) and more vital, rougher. While both albums are fucking great, I'm picking this one if given the choice every time.
Like Who Killed Spikey Jacket?, like Who's a Punk?, like Fuck You! Get Pumped!, it's a joke than runs deeper, hides truths in the smile behind its mugging and gurning, stiob vs slobs, the communal catharsis of screaming "TWO CHORDS! TWO FINGERS!" or "YOU STILL 'ERE? WE TOLD YOU WHERE TO GO!" is strong no matter how silly it is. I've seen Hard Skin live maybe half a dozen times over the past two years (one of the joys of seeing them in London is the chance that one of the vocalists from Why Do Birds... might pop up and sing a song) and every time I've felt better afterwards, running out into a city of council estates, police cars, two bob cunts; fulfilled, feeling deeper and more cognizant, feeling unbreakable, heartstrong and in possession of some hardy urban truths, at one with the bullshit. "SING LOUD! SING PROUD! LET'S GET AT 'EM! THIS IS ANOTHER TERRACE ANTHEM!"
"STOP THINKING! START DRINKING!" - Hard Skin, First Day Angry Song
Like the Formby Channel, Hard Skin are a band that could only have emerged from this sceptred isle. And when I say sceptred, I mean shithole, grey bitter dank sarcastic nimby fading delusional shit-fucking hole-isle. Some real John King spirit imbues these songs, that mixture of soaring terrace community, the kicks and knocks of poverty, a familiarity with violence, a tense heartworn tearing underneath, a faded rug at your nan's with the colour scuffed out of it but the pattern still peeking through, the warmth in the brokenness.
Sure America has OIL! with their pumped up ridiculous violence, cliches stacked high and smashed down, Crucified Hammerskins, Proud of my Pride, Pulling on the Boots, but Hard Skin are cut through with sharper, more poignant silliness, beyond their bluntfuck singalongs, like Beer and Fags's loutish drunken joy in the face of the grim march of history on Hard Nuts and Hard Cunts, drawing on Cock Sparrer's England Belongs to Me, and its investment in the smaller twists of home, Cock Sparrer sang of England looking not at verdant fields and glory, but 'the dirty water in its rivers', the little grotty shit that you hold deep in your heart as signifiers of a private belonging, stake a claim to what you have, no matter how insignificant or crap it is.
Still Fighting Thatcher they roared twenty odd years ago, and she lies six feet deep but her stabbing hate lives on. Council Estate deals, with surprisingly affectingly, with the lasting brutality of her legacy on ordinary people. Dark fucking times when even your comedy Oi! bands are painting bleak landscapes of the grueling slog of austerity. A pained tale steeped psycho-geography, the malign concrete, infecting its residents with a certain hard heart. No jokes just a desperate cry. "EVERYONE DIES! BUT NOT EVERYONE LIVES! I'M SOMEBODY! I'VE GOT SOMETHING TO GIVE!" Real shit right there.
On The Kids Are Innocent that nebulous notion of 'the kids' invoked in that Upstarts, Blitz, Sham, way, they're the kids that you meet, they don't care and if they're united then they'll never be divided. A warm cuff-about-the-ear for scamps and tearaways, embracing the young as just weird fuckabouts, like they are, like we were, it's an idea that fights back against the real youthhate of mid-market tabloids, terror scattered across newspaper pages, feverish whispers of 'feral' and 'inherent criminality' burning with that eugenic tang. The Kids Are Innocent, the homeless are treated with the same warmth on You Still Here? and it's dismissive toss-off of PCSOs, as angry at the fact that it's not a real cop doing the bothering as it is at the fact that a cop's bothering them, and a lot of this album, is anti-nihilistic, a vaguely charming vision of Britain full of salt-of-the-earth cunts stumbling through interesting times, punches and police harassment.
Hard Skin bounce between modes. There's the storming self-mythologising of Another Terrace Anthem, boasting of "Bit of Sparrer, Rejects and Sham/I'm taking it back to where it began!" and cracking apart with purposefully lame jokes. There's the triumphal violence of rougher-uppers The Man Who Ran the Town with skins as avenging angels, puttin in a loan shark's head, and We're Gonna Do Them Cunts, rolling on that terse economy of threat, "I'm gonna do you" carrying more power than any super-specific murderous hyperbole. A take on I, Ludicrous's Preposterous Tales in That's Bollocks, Mate and its pissed-off pissed fuck-off of a mouth-running pub bore. The lonely swaying whisper of The Gipsy Hill, a wander round South London, a litany of a neighbourhood's comforting peculiarities. It all sits together in a cordial crash of streetlights and dogshit, belligerent barroom stompers, sidestreet serenade, flitting between cock-o'-the-walk swagger and softer more morose musings, but all invested with the slap of the pavement, the roots of meandering alleyways, the shortcuts and graffiti of a living city.
And even better, beyond the instant classic of On The Balls, is Why Do Birds Suddenly Appear?, the same album, the same songs, but coming from a murderer's row of female vocalists, real punk sneer, relishing that snap of melody and power. The notion of guilty pleasures has been well wrung out to dry as a bullshit concept born of insecurity and snobbery, but if there was one thing I'd classify as that, it's the sheer amount of generic female-fronted streetpunk I can consume without tiring, no-one should have listened to The N.Y. Rel-X as much as I have. And this is far from that, Hard Skin's melodic chops, their songwriting skills, their ability to appropriate those bits of Sparrer, Rejects and Sham with total aplomb, make this play like a whole album of Action Pact's London Bouncers, something like Atlanta's Man's Ruin with better tunes, a beefed-up sweary Gymslips, from Joanna Newsom's (yeah that Joanna Newsom) cackle on the jubilant The Man Who Ran the Town, to Miki Berenyi's ire on You Still Here?, the runaway sting of Liela Moss's Police Car (Chasing You), 2013's second best song about a police car, Debbie Smith's bellow on the innuendo of Sausage Man, it's even better than On the Balls, feeling more chaotic (the cadence of the vocals, which were probably more hastily recorded than On The Balls occasionally slips and clatters up against the forward power of the songs) and more vital, rougher. While both albums are fucking great, I'm picking this one if given the choice every time.
Like Who Killed Spikey Jacket?, like Who's a Punk?, like Fuck You! Get Pumped!, it's a joke than runs deeper, hides truths in the smile behind its mugging and gurning, stiob vs slobs, the communal catharsis of screaming "TWO CHORDS! TWO FINGERS!" or "YOU STILL 'ERE? WE TOLD YOU WHERE TO GO!" is strong no matter how silly it is. I've seen Hard Skin live maybe half a dozen times over the past two years (one of the joys of seeing them in London is the chance that one of the vocalists from Why Do Birds... might pop up and sing a song) and every time I've felt better afterwards, running out into a city of council estates, police cars, two bob cunts; fulfilled, feeling deeper and more cognizant, feeling unbreakable, heartstrong and in possession of some hardy urban truths, at one with the bullshit. "SING LOUD! SING PROUD! LET'S GET AT 'EM! THIS IS ANOTHER TERRACE ANTHEM!"
Friday, 19 September 2014
A Giant Dog - Bone LP
Thick full-throated poppy-punk. Soaring Gateway District kinda vocals over chunky indie-punk riffs, cleaned-up garage tear. Galloping into the album with the drawl of All I Wanted: "All I ever wanted was you anywaaayy", chuntering on in songs like the anguished Cleveland Steven, "WOKE UP IN THE HOSPITAL THE PAIN WAS BLINDING WHITE!" , the shimmy of The Grand with its harmonica snatches, the soar of Another World "Toniiiight... is not your niiight!", the country bummer of Ghostcest that gets into the blues and then dances and shakes out of them, the rock chomp of Teasin' Ass Bitch. The sort of stuff that could get huge, smooth and slick as it is, with so many catchy lines, killer vocals, deadly choruses.
The Modern Pets - Sorry, Thanks LP
Punchy jumpy punk rock from Genrmany, kicking hard and rockin and rollin'. Snappy tunes of Exploding Hearts/Tranzmitors/Buzzcocks power-pop, new-wave warbles, those disaffected dry vocals. From the bleary scumbag snap of Pilsator ("AGAIN YOU WOKE UP IN THE DIRT/"FUCK OFF!" IS THE LAST THING YOU'VE HEARD/ALL YOUR GOALS AND TRIES ARE JUST FOR VAIN...") cutting between simple key lines, guitar scrambles, handclaps, to the corpsing joy of Funeral Fun ("YOUR EYES ARE FULL OF JOY/SEEING ME IS BETTER THAN TV/NOT MY FAULT THAT YOU WEAR BLACK/NOW THERE'S NOTHING THAT YOU CAN GET BACK") and the choppy up-and-down ah-fuck-it skitter of I'm Not a Brick, with its whirlwind bass dances, its spinning-dizzily chorus, its fastpop jab: "IT'S ALL PART OF THE COSMIC JOKE". Catchy kicks and stupid fucks. Fuck work (Clocked Assholes), fuck the media (News), fuck me and my dumb mouth (The Walking Contradiction), fuck internet popularity contests (No Access) and above all, fuck not dancing, fuck not shaking it. It's the sort of album where you think they're gonna throw in the word 'baby' at the end of every line, even when they don't.
Family Outing - demo CS
Demo from shortlived Good Throb punk fuckers. A dirty mess of slimy hardcore noise and punk. Psychic Leech has melodic swoops that sound like a Trip, Trance & Travelling Paintbox guitar line over its basement burble, the pull and rip of Party Animal has some fleeting Crazy Spirit shiver, as does the drive of Waste of Space. Songs of hatred and spite, ripping into buzzkill pricks on Psychic Leech, pervert shits on Sickos, boss cunts on Boss Cunt. Pure fucking vitriol. "BOSS CUNT. SHIT FOR BRAINS. INSIPID MAN TRYING TO FUCK WITH MY HEAD SINCE THE CONTRACT BEGAN. BOSS CUNT. PIECE OF SHIT ON 35 GRAND." The other songs take that nasty butterflyknife contempt and twist it inwards to self-excoriation on Thicko, Waste of Space, Party Animal. "PUKE UP YOUR GUTS/COUGH UP YOUR GUTS/ IGNORANCE AND SCREECHING/GOOD TIMES BAD FEELINGS/I'M A CUNT I'M UNAPPEALING/GOOD TIMES BAD FEELINGS/LETTING THE SIDE DOWN PIGGIES SQUEALING." Negative shit from bad emotional spaces, shit jobs, shit parties, shit days, shit dreams, we've all had days like that, years like that, an all-enveloping hate, inside and out, a bitter destruction, a sourpunk killing.
The Formby Channel - The Saucy Seaside EP
The latest EP of true British weirdness from Wankys side-project The Formby Channel, combining a hideous noisepunk hiss with the sunny allure of the British seaside. As the name suggests, it's George Formby meets Chaos Channel, a combination no one was really screaming out for, but the banjolele is integrated surprisingly well to the Wankys/Swankys sound, mirroring the bassline bounce with it's choppy charms, catchy, with the fizz like the chatter of overpriced arcades.
Fish Supper is a na-na-na-na-na ode to fish 'n' chips and, predictably, oral sex, done in weird scritchy noise. Last Year's Holiday like a nightmare version of Last Christmas. Kiss Me's banjolele breakdowns and pucker sound ends slipping beneath the breakers of buzz. Top Deck Shandy Lads a cunted carousing. The presence of kazoo and innuendo throughout recalling true British scum The Macc Lads, who lifted their sense of humour from British seaside postcards, which generally feature things like large-breasted women carrying suggestively shaped fruit captioned things like "How about these melons!?" which are giggled at by drunk middle-aged people and children aware that there's something vaguely forbidden about a woman saying something like "I thought the Blackpool tower would be bigger." as her husband blushes in bed beside her.
The British seaside is a fucking weird place, filled with that sort of ooh-er-nudge-nudge-wink-wink bullshit, only really attaining that carefree glow in the brief summer months, transforming the rest of the year into a kind of barren apocalyptic greyscape, take this as someone who spent Christmasses in Cleethorpes as a kid. The Formby Channel are clearly a pisstake, but there's something in this splattered shit-fi vomitof holiday cliches (Seaside Beat busting out of, falling into the classic tribute to the British beaches, I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside) that speaks of the shitty misery that underpins behind happy times, happy pictures. The dark economies that lurk in any tourist trap.
Fish Supper is a na-na-na-na-na ode to fish 'n' chips and, predictably, oral sex, done in weird scritchy noise. Last Year's Holiday like a nightmare version of Last Christmas. Kiss Me's banjolele breakdowns and pucker sound ends slipping beneath the breakers of buzz. Top Deck Shandy Lads a cunted carousing. The presence of kazoo and innuendo throughout recalling true British scum The Macc Lads, who lifted their sense of humour from British seaside postcards, which generally feature things like large-breasted women carrying suggestively shaped fruit captioned things like "How about these melons!?" which are giggled at by drunk middle-aged people and children aware that there's something vaguely forbidden about a woman saying something like "I thought the Blackpool tower would be bigger." as her husband blushes in bed beside her.The British seaside is a fucking weird place, filled with that sort of ooh-er-nudge-nudge-wink-wink bullshit, only really attaining that carefree glow in the brief summer months, transforming the rest of the year into a kind of barren apocalyptic greyscape, take this as someone who spent Christmasses in Cleethorpes as a kid. The Formby Channel are clearly a pisstake, but there's something in this splattered shit-fi vomitof holiday cliches (Seaside Beat busting out of, falling into the classic tribute to the British beaches, I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside) that speaks of the shitty misery that underpins behind happy times, happy pictures. The dark economies that lurk in any tourist trap.
The darkness hiding behind the clean clut Cliff Richard Young Ones summer stroll, the Brighton Rock menace. The Formby Channel sneer with the manic energy of Mr Punch, which if you're not familiar, is the lead character of Punch & Judy, a traditional children's seaside puppet show based around the themes of domestic violence and police brutality. This is a Viz cartoon made flesh, intentionally groanworthy lewd puns and obnoxion, silly drunken dances, putting the cunt in Scunthorpe.
Wednesday, 17 September 2014
Peeple Watchin' - Somethin' Ta Tell Ya
Ex-Credentials queerpunx pukin' raw-throated and desperate with that Cleveland Bound Death Sentence scratch and kick punk rock, songs of sloppy design, melodic bite leaking out of scrappy tangles. It retains the lyrical sharpness of The Credentials, piercing specifics illuminating larger desolations, like the wasted wasted night of James F. Collins Sq., beaten down but present, "I stare through the chainlink as the trains pass right by me". 1995 opens with a soft dirty guitar line that explodes into a twirling of teenpunk nostalgia "Infomercials about getting ripped, talking about boys we'd want to kiss and we prank called the whole yellow pages, it was kinda mean, kinda contagious." Perfectly skewering/shining on those nasty/naive adolescent giggles.
The personal and the political intermingling as they always do, the places you spend getting drunk and the times you spend getting hurt, Just Like Them railing against queer assimilation, stamping out country licks on the lyrically minimal rebel rocker Riff-Raff, Grow Slow illuminates the daily toll of living as a transwoman, twisting the pain and pressure into a pure steely determination bursting out of the most anthemic chorus on the album, "THE ONLY THING THAT'S PASSING IS MY YOUTH. FORTIFY MY STUBBORNNESS AND SUFFER THE ABUSE. IT'S A LONG ROAD WITH VIOLENCE ALL AROUND/IT'S A HEAVY LOAD BUT I WON'T LET IT DRAG ME DOWN"
"1995 was all sparkle and fade. You're wearin' a suit now but I never changed" goes 1995, enduring punk, in the same mode as Dishpit's Forever Punk, but older, more rueful, harder and scabbier, "Can we still fuck this morning up with sour breath and punk haircuts before leaving behind friendships forged in convenience store parking lots" on the drier VHS. The Ones That You Can't Take Back carrying you away on sweet guitar lines and chopping through
It's nothing so much as the heir to the beautiful sinewy scrambles of Bent Outta Shape's Stray Dog Town, the momentum and the mess, the sugary guitar workings and salty fuck-offs, teased out wirey toughkid punk rock, struggling as it ages, breathless and leathery and ultimately unbowed
The personal and the political intermingling as they always do, the places you spend getting drunk and the times you spend getting hurt, Just Like Them railing against queer assimilation, stamping out country licks on the lyrically minimal rebel rocker Riff-Raff, Grow Slow illuminates the daily toll of living as a transwoman, twisting the pain and pressure into a pure steely determination bursting out of the most anthemic chorus on the album, "THE ONLY THING THAT'S PASSING IS MY YOUTH. FORTIFY MY STUBBORNNESS AND SUFFER THE ABUSE. IT'S A LONG ROAD WITH VIOLENCE ALL AROUND/IT'S A HEAVY LOAD BUT I WON'T LET IT DRAG ME DOWN"
"1995 was all sparkle and fade. You're wearin' a suit now but I never changed" goes 1995, enduring punk, in the same mode as Dishpit's Forever Punk, but older, more rueful, harder and scabbier, "Can we still fuck this morning up with sour breath and punk haircuts before leaving behind friendships forged in convenience store parking lots" on the drier VHS. The Ones That You Can't Take Back carrying you away on sweet guitar lines and chopping through
It's nothing so much as the heir to the beautiful sinewy scrambles of Bent Outta Shape's Stray Dog Town, the momentum and the mess, the sugary guitar workings and salty fuck-offs, teased out wirey toughkid punk rock, struggling as it ages, breathless and leathery and ultimately unbowed
Monday, 15 September 2014
Proxy - Something We've All Seen Before
On their drop-everything smash-it-all best-punk-single-of-2013 Police Car, Proxy matched a relentless catchy streetpunk chug with lyrics at turns triumphant and wry, twisting bummers into smiles. On their full length Something We've All Seen Before they maintain those ripping streetpunk anthems, but the lyrics are darker, bleaker, more concerned with the pain, ugliness and battery of the world, rather than the uplifting joy of stealing a police car. Nurnburg Nightmare a World War 2 stomper, wide vistas of destruction painted clear, Insane wracked with bugs in the head, Johnny Got His Badge, a Riot Squad rumbler, dark whispers of violence exploding into killing choruses, "STICK EM UP/AGAINST THE WALL/GOTTA DRIVE A BULLET RIGHT THROUGH YOUR SKULL", Shackled to a Corpse digging into that Motorhead bounce as the guitars flail, Land of Guns stretching, drawing the punk out, drawing the pain out. The only relief here comes in the drive of the music, its onwards march maybe pointing to a way out, or at speaking of a strength to endure. A thick punk rock attack on the worst of the world, pushing through and kicking off.
The Friday - Our Body Made in Fukushima
Just as Chernobyl spawned punktakes from the likes of punk-pop J-rockers Blue Hearts' Blue Hearts Theme, Greek d-beat Chernobyl Attack, low-fi Russian rebels Grazhdanskaya Oborona folk He Saw the Sun to Slang's terrifying metalpunk Chernobyl Necklace on LIFE MADE ME HARDCORE, the pogonutters Chernobyl Babies, punk bands eddy and swirl in the aftermath of horrific events, twisting, riding the violence and pain in their darkworld/fuckedworld conceptions. The tragedy at Fukushima has already led to Irish mutants Rats Blood's No More Fukushima, New York cyberthugs L.O.T.I.O.N.'s Fukushima Fallout, Swedish crustcunts Anger Burning's Fukushima Fireworks, Spanish hardcore band Fukushima, real Fukushima rawpunx Strange Factory's Fukushima Nightmare, probably many more already and many more to come.
Straight outta Fukushima, an all-girl trio who produce an unnerving combination of this clean chunky bass with the sort of tinny fuzz found on early 80s Spanish shit-fi classics like Qloaqa Letal and Los Punk Rockers. The vocals a ratty snatch and call, screaming. All-girl teenpunk carries stereotypes and connotations of bubblegum, Unlovables sweetness, conceived in the shadow of nuclear oblivion, these songs have touches of the noisecore of Stagnation, ruthless breakings and beatings of Disorder/Chaos UK punx, those sounds taken apart and skin stretched between pikes, blood soaking the ground. The onwards tumble of Stupid Animal, drums clatter and pounding as if trying to find a way out, the stop-and-go graze of Chicken Feed, the stabbing noisespike and bassy tickle of Common Sense, the monotonous drive and thump of Sein Und Zeit, the basic solo whinnying off into the dirty churning ether. Nuclear threat is more than just a Discharge lyric. It's a hovering evil that kills, deforms, rearranges lives and landscapes. The Friday are all too aware of that as they scream and snarl over this weirdpunk all imbued with a real human rage at ungodly power, chaos and bonescrape, and on the title track it lumbers like revenant beast, full of pain and purpose, Our Body Made in Fukushima.
Straight outta Fukushima, an all-girl trio who produce an unnerving combination of this clean chunky bass with the sort of tinny fuzz found on early 80s Spanish shit-fi classics like Qloaqa Letal and Los Punk Rockers. The vocals a ratty snatch and call, screaming. All-girl teenpunk carries stereotypes and connotations of bubblegum, Unlovables sweetness, conceived in the shadow of nuclear oblivion, these songs have touches of the noisecore of Stagnation, ruthless breakings and beatings of Disorder/Chaos UK punx, those sounds taken apart and skin stretched between pikes, blood soaking the ground. The onwards tumble of Stupid Animal, drums clatter and pounding as if trying to find a way out, the stop-and-go graze of Chicken Feed, the stabbing noisespike and bassy tickle of Common Sense, the monotonous drive and thump of Sein Und Zeit, the basic solo whinnying off into the dirty churning ether. Nuclear threat is more than just a Discharge lyric. It's a hovering evil that kills, deforms, rearranges lives and landscapes. The Friday are all too aware of that as they scream and snarl over this weirdpunk all imbued with a real human rage at ungodly power, chaos and bonescrape, and on the title track it lumbers like revenant beast, full of pain and purpose, Our Body Made in Fukushima.
Friday, 5 September 2014
Black Panda - A La Caza Del U-666 LP
Hard kicking crust & roll from Spanish punx Black Panda, like a reverse-engineered Motorhead, building that speedpunk halfmetal rip not from pushing 60s rock as hard as it could go, but by taking the deep thick trenches of crust and imbuing them with rock and roll spin and spark. Swarming and tearing onwards, eating up the tarmac, cutting between demonic growls birthed of metal and darkness and desperate punk yelps, laid over unstoppable d-beat rhythms sweet dashes of guitar solos shoot past like bullet cracks, singalong chants on Ruedas de Fuego, music to drive fast to, music to crash and live to, rolling with that motorpunk realness.
Burial - Renegade
Like Texans Criaturas or Greeks Antimob, Germany's Burial offer a scorching modern international take on the Deathside formula of flailing solos over hardcore ferocity. Hulking metallic hardcore bombs, deep vocals wrenched out of the throat, mutilated words bitten apart and choked up like lumps of fleshy bile. The songs take on a bodily hue, exploding with the cracks and humours of skin and bone under pressure, the roiling mass of muscle and fevers, ugly interiors. Fire in the Head reels: "HOT JUICE TRICKLES SOON TO SPILL/POSSESSED BODY SUFFOCATING WILL/NOT ONLY THE VOICES SING ALONE/EVEN THE BODY DISAPPEARS/LIKE A FACE IN THE CROWD" punctuating this with bites of "SLASH/CRUSH/DESTROY". Out To Die slowly builds into a warstomp,"WORN OUT BODIES/FEAR TURNS INTO LUST". Boiling Blood tears at its skin prison "BOILING BLOOD HAMMERING UNDER MY FOREHEAD/BOILING BLOOD SEEKING FOR RELEASE." Swines digs further into this crawling animalism: "DISEASE OF THE SWINES/MAN IS THE ANIMAL/MAN IS BESTIAL/MAN IS THE ENEMY" Ripping you apart with the whipping Crude solos, hardcore punk searing with radioactive warmth, burning each of your spirits. "I DON'T GIVE A FUCK/RENEGADE/LIVE TO DIE."
Thursday, 4 September 2014
Las Otras - Devolver El Golpe LP
Deathly sharp Barcelona hardcore punk, nine tracks in nine minutes, expurgated of all needless waste. Puncturing power in curt anarcho-feminist attacks. Terseness and anger, snatches of Ultimo Resorte brief bounces, Indigesti fuzzy tears, wrongs righted in brief power, the choking bonds of the world snapped, Fronteras drawing the borders across itself, ("From my belly/My sharpened claws/My open eyes/My loaded veins"), Mujer Ficcion picking off the ties of representations, media impossibilities and fantasies held up as templates ("They are afraid/Of our potential/To stop being a fiction/To start being real"), every box broken out of, every wall scraped through, every mode of oppressive thought denounced and discarded. It'll cut you short as a song.
Wednesday, 3 September 2014
Nightmare Boyzzz - Bad Patterns
Hookmachine heartachers Nightmare Boyzzz crank out 11 tracks of sweet battered powerpop with bummer vibes, where the jump and yelp and "Whoa-ohs" and constantly seem like they're about to drift off and leave you stranded by the side of the road, ten miles from home with nothing but your thoughts and holey shoes to get you home. Each warm guitar lick feels like a goodbye, drawn in the milieu of bad decisions, empty bottles, hangovers and selfish self-destruction, Guitar Romantic echoes, the warm drunk buzz will leave you just as the songs in the rockin and rollin of You Have No Friends, the mellow wanderings of You're a Star, rapidscuttle garagepop of Baby It's Alright, the whiskey satisfaction fades and discomfort will grow in its place with tickling guitar solos and scratchy riffs, Say What You Mean might be an up-down dance reminiscent of a punked-up run of Supergrass's Alright but it also lives to cool and burn off the beer in the sobering ennui. This'll help you move your feet so you don't have to think about it though.
True Sons of Thunder - Stop and Smell Your Face
The second album of gritty garage sludge from punk alleystars True Sons of Thunder. Dirty rock excavated from long graves of noise, shaking off the mud and roar, stomping through simple rockers with a babble of disharmony pulled in its wake, Dead Moon by way of Flipper's deep junk racket. There's the hanging punch and tumble of Don't Make It Stop, the twitching horrorpunk of Death Walks Behind You crackling with tension and panic, the belting KBD snot of These Days, a perfect rudimentary desperate punk grunt. There's the slower detours into the noiserock grumble of Glass Foot, marching through battering storms of feedback, dying in the din, the plodding deathblues of Mother May I Now Spell Cup, which comes like the degraded radiosignals of two stations cutting in over one other, melding and splintering.
Friends of Mine starts sung-spoken over simple gutsy riff, blowing into a big openfield 80s rock chorus, "JOSIE KNOWS SHE'S GONNA COME AROUND/ALL THE BOYS ARE GONNA SCREAM AND SHOUT/I KNOW SHE WANTS A PIECE OF ME/I KNOW THAT'S HOW IT'S GONNA BE" before falling back into the shaking repetition of the riff, the fiery clang of the noise. Gettin Kind of Cocky loses it totally in the scream and this odd plinky-plonk solo that clinks over the top of the chaotic squeal and drive.
Each song has its own take on some aspect of the garagepunk artifact mentality, scrabbling around in the twentieth century's dirty cupboards for those little lost bits of bent human swing, trawling through record bins, soulseek files, mp3 blogs, for the obliterated 80s hardcore demos, the privatepress inept blues messes, the 60s beat abominations, all those stabs at musical expression living more with the distortion and degradation and . From the simplistic rock and roll of Get on the Bus, shimmying with blasé fuck-it sneer "GET ON THE BUS AND GO HOME/GET ON THE BUS AND LET'S SPLIT", Beluga's animal inanity amongst the crash and blare "BELUGA! IT'S A WHALE! A WHITE WHALE! DO THE BELUGA!", offering no clues to what this dance entails, but exhorting listeners to get down to it nonetheless, it sounds like a bedraggled forgotten novelty from a dead scene, dancehalls torn down, memories dimmed. Like the Oblivians album from last year it displays familiarity with all sorts of oddball shouts, but it's far nastier, far more crummied-up, it's garagepunk that got lost in the garage, amongst the enginefilth and oily rags and black stains.
Friends of Mine starts sung-spoken over simple gutsy riff, blowing into a big openfield 80s rock chorus, "JOSIE KNOWS SHE'S GONNA COME AROUND/ALL THE BOYS ARE GONNA SCREAM AND SHOUT/I KNOW SHE WANTS A PIECE OF ME/I KNOW THAT'S HOW IT'S GONNA BE" before falling back into the shaking repetition of the riff, the fiery clang of the noise. Gettin Kind of Cocky loses it totally in the scream and this odd plinky-plonk solo that clinks over the top of the chaotic squeal and drive.
Each song has its own take on some aspect of the garagepunk artifact mentality, scrabbling around in the twentieth century's dirty cupboards for those little lost bits of bent human swing, trawling through record bins, soulseek files, mp3 blogs, for the obliterated 80s hardcore demos, the privatepress inept blues messes, the 60s beat abominations, all those stabs at musical expression living more with the distortion and degradation and . From the simplistic rock and roll of Get on the Bus, shimmying with blasé fuck-it sneer "GET ON THE BUS AND GO HOME/GET ON THE BUS AND LET'S SPLIT", Beluga's animal inanity amongst the crash and blare "BELUGA! IT'S A WHALE! A WHITE WHALE! DO THE BELUGA!", offering no clues to what this dance entails, but exhorting listeners to get down to it nonetheless, it sounds like a bedraggled forgotten novelty from a dead scene, dancehalls torn down, memories dimmed. Like the Oblivians album from last year it displays familiarity with all sorts of oddball shouts, but it's far nastier, far more crummied-up, it's garagepunk that got lost in the garage, amongst the enginefilth and oily rags and black stains.
Monday, 1 September 2014
Räjäyttäjät - Awopbopaloopop Alopbam Räjä LP & Räjäyttäjät LP
Two 2013 LPs of wildman garage plunder from Finnish mentalists, every riff sounding familiar, warm and welcoming snatches of classic rock swagger, bluesy beatback, lowdown boogies, rock and roll rebellion, but then banged full of bursting fizzing nutpunk energy. Half-batty tossed-off impressions of Chuck BerryBeatles, Elvis, all the rock gods since canonised and sterile, thrown into a joyous chaotic blender, reaching back for that 1-2-3-4 stomp and rip, getting into the movement of it, balls of fire that actually burn again. Dancefloor garagepunk built in a din, writhing around amongst clips of conversations where wild whoops abound, waggling tongues, handclaps, a peal of jabbering and gibberish runs in it, each rock and roll move replicated and revivified, reconstituted and rode hard. Through the cultish intonations Räjä 'n' Roll All Night Long, horn runs of Mitä Tapahtuu, freakouts of Veen päällä savuu, caterwauls of Vuosihuoltoon, backmasked noise and snap of Gnol Th'gin Lla Llor'n'äjär, chattering keys of 15 Vuoden Päästä, shake yourself to the real free stuff. Music to make out sloppily on boomer's graves to.
No Statik - Unity and Fragmentation
Beginning with an ending, No Statik's 3rd LP Unity and Fragmentation opens with a heavy chug before fading out into keening feedback, from there it bursts, crunching hardcore rages. From this point on, No Statik shift and scrap with the hardcore, jerking it about, from unstoppable drives to slow drones to speedcrazed reelings. Never Be a Martyr opening fast swooping at machinegun metalspeeds, hitting a wall, slipping in murk and unsteady stumbles, then pushing forward wild. The ferocious vocals that lead the band sometimes doubled up, the harsh unity of Ruby's main vox meshing with the fierce but deeper back-ups, giving some songs and more singalong purpose, rather than just the cutting anger. "SOMETIMES THINGS HAVE A TENDENCY TO CONTAIN THEIR OPPOSITE/BORN OUT OF DEATH ALL WE CAN DO IS DIE."
Like on Everywhere You Aren't Looking, the back half of the album is taken up by a single track, Faithless, a fifteen minute long track of ambient filings, cityghost whisper and cold emptiness, small shufflings, from which a thick hardcore burn emerges and then retreats back into the warble and danceskitter of voidechoes, the vocals still screaming hard, but from a great distance. By messing with and fucking with the hardcore formula, No Statik create a sweetly disturbing work, The Remembrance of Things Dead and Past, weighed down by tension, slowing into sinister tongues, searing again, then sucked back into itself screaming about how "THE HORRORS LEECH OUT OF OUR MISTAKES, THE PRICE ONE PAYS FOR PROGRESS", then backing up that disgust and unsettling closeness with music that reflects that. Hardcore infused with discomfort with the world, and with equal discomfort at its place in that world. It will tear and soar, but it will open itself up to the quieter darker moments too, when a crushing riff and a hard word will not lift you out of yourself.
Like on Everywhere You Aren't Looking, the back half of the album is taken up by a single track, Faithless, a fifteen minute long track of ambient filings, cityghost whisper and cold emptiness, small shufflings, from which a thick hardcore burn emerges and then retreats back into the warble and danceskitter of voidechoes, the vocals still screaming hard, but from a great distance. By messing with and fucking with the hardcore formula, No Statik create a sweetly disturbing work, The Remembrance of Things Dead and Past, weighed down by tension, slowing into sinister tongues, searing again, then sucked back into itself screaming about how "THE HORRORS LEECH OUT OF OUR MISTAKES, THE PRICE ONE PAYS FOR PROGRESS", then backing up that disgust and unsettling closeness with music that reflects that. Hardcore infused with discomfort with the world, and with equal discomfort at its place in that world. It will tear and soar, but it will open itself up to the quieter darker moments too, when a crushing riff and a hard word will not lift you out of yourself.
Wednesday, 27 August 2014
Criaturas - Espiritu De Libertad
Second album of choppingblock fury from these hispanophone Texas hardcore punx. Criaturas were preceded by Deskonocidos, and Espiritu De Libertad has got a bit more of that Deskonocidos trembling that the first Criaturas LP Oscuridad Eterna couldn't give much of a fuck for, such as when the title track gives way a little before exploding in a meteoric guitar solo. Move and retreat, swerve and burn. The way it matches those mellower slippings with the sort of Japanese hardcore guitar wildouts of Crude or DSB reminds me of the first Paintbox album, where they had that real melodic drive cutting through the Deathside razing, but hadn't quite yet blasted off to the fucking moon.
Anti-Autoridad a crazed ripping, Libertad o Muerte a skippy punk scamper, tripping forward, Dru Molina's vocals terrifying, the guitar sweet, Opresion beginning with the vocals dry before they spin away and wail. Cuatros Anos settling into a determined chug as the back-up vocals bark and again that guitar just tears you to pieces. Built perfectly on the interplay between these two voices, Invierno Nuclear drawling dismissive over a d-beat pace. And all cut free from noise, clear and unhindered in their scything gleam.
The lyrics are direct enough that even me, with my almost nonexistent Spanish built of latinate roots, false cognates, Crudos singalongs and that time I got super messed up and watched El Topo with the subtitles off can grab the gist of what's being said, their blunt power of outrage and fire comes from the way they are delivered, voice sharp as each guitar flail, sharper even. As the guitar might carry you away but the vocals puncture more often than not. 16 minutes of tightly controlled, whetted and unsheathed hardcore punk incandescence.
Anti-Autoridad a crazed ripping, Libertad o Muerte a skippy punk scamper, tripping forward, Dru Molina's vocals terrifying, the guitar sweet, Opresion beginning with the vocals dry before they spin away and wail. Cuatros Anos settling into a determined chug as the back-up vocals bark and again that guitar just tears you to pieces. Built perfectly on the interplay between these two voices, Invierno Nuclear drawling dismissive over a d-beat pace. And all cut free from noise, clear and unhindered in their scything gleam.
The lyrics are direct enough that even me, with my almost nonexistent Spanish built of latinate roots, false cognates, Crudos singalongs and that time I got super messed up and watched El Topo with the subtitles off can grab the gist of what's being said, their blunt power of outrage and fire comes from the way they are delivered, voice sharp as each guitar flail, sharper even. As the guitar might carry you away but the vocals puncture more often than not. 16 minutes of tightly controlled, whetted and unsheathed hardcore punk incandescence.
Tuesday, 26 August 2014
HOAX - s/t LP
From the album's lyrics sheets on 6 24"x24" posters, each with a different punk artist, to its thanx sections which apparently acknowledges everyone who ever booked a show for them, played on the same bill, or just lent any kind of a hand, everything about HOAX speaks to hardcore as totality, no corners cut, full-on, all-encompassing and self-actualised. Their shows eruptions of violence, their stage presence baleful and bloody, 2013 Chaos in Tejas found their lead singer almost a fashion icon, filled as it was with skinny creepy bald dudes rocking dirtstaches and 1000 yard creepy glowers.When you saw guys like this together it looked like the world's most unappealing gang. HOAX came up with a killer live presence, their leadsinger smashing his head up every show, prowrestling theatricality, the crusher you turkeynecks, one show apparently someone turned up with a box full of bandaids to chuck at him when the blood started flowing. Fake anger/real anger/real blood. All that squirting mix of stuff, their full-on genre slams too full-on for some, pushed as hard as it could and too hard for those smiling and shrugging around what is and isn't legit. It's cool to kill it live, but if you're killin it every night does it ever become rote? At the root of it all though, is a thick ugly sonic muck beaten into shape that sustains itself, feeds with and into those basements and bars and warehouses and industrial plants filled with tearaways and torn parts.
Opening with the suck and gurgle of chesty groans and cacophonous burps, before a hulking guitar chomp thuds in. Hoax go down the line with powerful burly hardcore. First seeming clear in their intent, self-loathing as terror on Hide, atheism as alienation on No Spirit, Hoax struggle with the worst of the world, but it's not just a pity pit. Hide's as dismissive as it is self-pitying, No Spirit is as much about crashing onwards free and clear as it is about writhing in agoraphobic panic at the wideopen unhindered choices a godless world offers you. Diseased and damaged by the shitty facts of the world, HOAX capture that evil twist between hating injustice, hating the nastiness and disorder, and being an ugly product of it. Using that anger as momentum that eats away at you as it forces you to confront some real shit. Drive rolls with the motion of Theo Jansen's kinetic sculptures, Strandbeest unstoppable, until it crashes to a halt. Sick Punk gagging on mucus but reveling in its place as a "TRUE SICK PUNK. SCUMMY LITTLE FREAK". Anaesthetize bemoaning its own numbness, but then finding that numbness as an armour and shield. "HOW CAN I DIE? I CAN'T FEEL A FUCKING THING." HOAX may front as real terrors, but their songs, thumping dirty hardcore crunches, dynamic and packed with weird stiff reorderings, like the keening whispers among dronedumps on Blind, the thick cultish run down of Lost Control, are confused missives, brittle with despair, but improbably flowering out of the gloom.
Chunks of modern hardcore, but all the the fake anger/real anger/real blood discussion crackling back up, about whether HOAX (their name is HOAX) carry that shit heavy or whether they dance through it as some tossed off genre exercise, burning as they do each song with some other facet of the punx canon, to a cynic merely checking off a list, punk self-identification, struggles with mental anguish and gender pressures, urbansprawl dislocation, deathwish nothings, but they bite through, through the bandaids and the trends, whether it is reenactment, the blood remains real, the songs remain hard, the confusion is too present to ignore. But this shitworld syllabus is exactly the stuff that punk was built for, and through my own utterly punkshot troubles and turns I have winced with each twist of the knife that is untwisted here. If it can't be dealt with, or at least wrestled with, bitten at and spat out in these places then where can it be? HOAX got punk, sometimes blown-up in half-silly leering caricatures, bleeding, killing, every night, sometimes eased down into a painful settling, speaking to darker, more private places. Each are parts of the encompassing drive, the stalling fear, that is hardcore punk played with such rude purity.
Opening with the suck and gurgle of chesty groans and cacophonous burps, before a hulking guitar chomp thuds in. Hoax go down the line with powerful burly hardcore. First seeming clear in their intent, self-loathing as terror on Hide, atheism as alienation on No Spirit, Hoax struggle with the worst of the world, but it's not just a pity pit. Hide's as dismissive as it is self-pitying, No Spirit is as much about crashing onwards free and clear as it is about writhing in agoraphobic panic at the wideopen unhindered choices a godless world offers you. Diseased and damaged by the shitty facts of the world, HOAX capture that evil twist between hating injustice, hating the nastiness and disorder, and being an ugly product of it. Using that anger as momentum that eats away at you as it forces you to confront some real shit. Drive rolls with the motion of Theo Jansen's kinetic sculptures, Strandbeest unstoppable, until it crashes to a halt. Sick Punk gagging on mucus but reveling in its place as a "TRUE SICK PUNK. SCUMMY LITTLE FREAK". Anaesthetize bemoaning its own numbness, but then finding that numbness as an armour and shield. "HOW CAN I DIE? I CAN'T FEEL A FUCKING THING." HOAX may front as real terrors, but their songs, thumping dirty hardcore crunches, dynamic and packed with weird stiff reorderings, like the keening whispers among dronedumps on Blind, the thick cultish run down of Lost Control, are confused missives, brittle with despair, but improbably flowering out of the gloom.
Chunks of modern hardcore, but all the the fake anger/real anger/real blood discussion crackling back up, about whether HOAX (their name is HOAX) carry that shit heavy or whether they dance through it as some tossed off genre exercise, burning as they do each song with some other facet of the punx canon, to a cynic merely checking off a list, punk self-identification, struggles with mental anguish and gender pressures, urbansprawl dislocation, deathwish nothings, but they bite through, through the bandaids and the trends, whether it is reenactment, the blood remains real, the songs remain hard, the confusion is too present to ignore. But this shitworld syllabus is exactly the stuff that punk was built for, and through my own utterly punkshot troubles and turns I have winced with each twist of the knife that is untwisted here. If it can't be dealt with, or at least wrestled with, bitten at and spat out in these places then where can it be? HOAX got punk, sometimes blown-up in half-silly leering caricatures, bleeding, killing, every night, sometimes eased down into a painful settling, speaking to darker, more private places. Each are parts of the encompassing drive, the stalling fear, that is hardcore punk played with such rude purity.
Sunday, 24 August 2014
Black Boot - demo CS
More of that Toxic State New York nastiness, noisy and bloody, rubbed raw down to the bone, vocals like a tongueless bark. False Rune is an unhinged stamp, clattering down with an exposing glare: "YOU SHIT/YOUR SILK PANTS/THEY ARE/STILL SILK". Clawed a scrabble, Spitshine a blunt relentless drive, Grave a tear, slamming in concrete, squealing and rubbing with grabbing intensity, Mirage a thrust of paranoiac ooze. Labyrinth has more deep lost terror, flailing "CLAUSTROPHOBIC/SPIRALING CORNERS/BOTH THE SAME/BARREN JOURNEY". A punk struggle buried in a grief of turbulent black noise, clipping and crackling. A blastedwall haemorrhaging of rot and panic.
Saturday, 23 August 2014
Thee Nodes - All Day Every Day
Cracked up freakpunk fuzzjunk, run out/run in, twerpy feelin-it garage jams about being a real negative vandal prick. 30 second braindamage shatterclashes like Smashin' My Head. Pukepunk pushed fast and simple. Rock and roll bounces about breaking glass, repetitive joy, manic cackling, explosions, rock and roll getdowns and torrents of petty destruction. Loathing and lust in Ugly Bodies, hating on cool kids in Hate the Hip, dickshit insomniac anguish on Filthy Gaze. What makes these live large is the helter-skelter vocals bouncing over each other, the way the rock riffs fray around the edges under the assault of the weird bits, the echoes of darker deeper oddness, the hoots and yapping of minor monsters, a punk built amongst wreckage and ruin, devolving finally into the cold lost call ringing alarm bleeps. The sneering outcast energy a bunch of nogoodnik nerds, busting heads and biting faces off scrawled over shop-shaking party music.
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