Two tracks, Destroy Life and Clever, released at the start of this year. Clever is a good song. Unsteady thick bass stumblings leading into noisepunk caterwaul, blender spin sonics, smatterings of recognisable guitar parts, the hellspawn vocals snapping sharp but battling with the shot-to-shit guitar whip, ugly punx shit. Destroy Life is a fucking great song. That same thick bass tone that underpins the chaos whip of Clever, but here steady, rolling forward like an earth mover seen through heavy rain, distorted so that each bass shudder feels like the horizon bounce an advancing army. It builds, it approaches, it noises up, then it drops back down into these little repetitive guitar slivers. It faces up and leers at you, backs off to gather itself, this shit is a masterwork of noise dynamics, every listen an ugly journey, a perfectly constructed path through broken glass, sometimes the guitar feeling like it's being tugged down by the lethal factory buzz, hiding, sleeping ready to crash out in wild destruction, sometimes feeling like a self-mutilating rotating structure of noise, sometimes just feeling punk as fuck. Sludgey then raging, onwards rolling. Good fucking shit.
Tuesday, 10 September 2013
Saturday, 7 September 2013
Strong Boys - s/t EP
"'Children who need to be taught traditional moral values are being taught they have an inalienable right to be gay.' -- Margaret Thatcher, 9th October, 1987.
At the age of fifteen, two weeks from my sixteenth birthday, I was one of those children.
Let me tell you what it was like... or try to, at least.
I don't think it's possible for me to conjure the darkness of that period, the bleak fatalism of mass unemployment, the miners' strikes, Mutual Assured Destruction, HIV. It was ten years since Johnny Rotten sang "no future," and by then even that defiant punk rage against the dying of the light was snuffed out. That fierce and glorious nihilism which had stared into the abyss of meaning, which had grinned madly as it lit its passions like molotov cocktails and hurled them into the void, shouting, "Why the fuck not?" rather than, "Why even bother?"... by then even that aggressive stance in the face of hopelessness had been warped, teen rebellion recuperated by the mechanisms of corporate media, co-opted into the cosy pseudo-darkness of Goth (about as subversive as a Hammer horror movie) or worse, into the neo-nazi fascism of Skrewdriver and their ilk. I had a friend whose big brother played guitar, used to listen to The Clash, Billy Bragg; I still remember listening to his scratchy vinyl copy of the Stiff Little Fingers "78 Revolutions Per Minute"--or "Going Underground" by The Jam. I was too young to quite get the former, but the latter I loved. But that friend's brother was gone by 87, stolen away in skinhead seduction to fucking National Front bullshit." - Hal Duncan, A Tribute to Thatcher, fucking essential reading
Whenever I take the train up from Croydon to London Bridge I go past a piece of graffiti on the top of a building that reads "THE WITCH IS DEAD BUT THE SPELL REMAINS" which gives me weird feelings. I mean, I obviously agree with the sentiment that Thatcher's toxic effluence emanates from her corpse like a particularly noxious gas to form a choking cloud of callousness and self-righteous moralistic damnation that sits over this country like an Independence Day alien ship ready to beam down its mighty laser of hate and wipe away what little progress this dead fucking island has had wrung out of its old hateful bones, but I could do without the inherent misogyny of casting her as a witch, but then she's so strongly identified with that imagery now that just mentioning 'THE WITCH' would stick blue power suits and starving miners into most heads, something more neutral like "THE PIECE OF SHIT IS FLUSHED BUT THE STINK LINGERS" could be talking about any piece of shit person, not just this particular piece of shit who attempted to drag the country back into the ignorant vindictivestone age of of her grey grey dreams throughout the 1980s, a person so loathed that I got a text from my buddy when it happened and immediately assumed it was some cruel prank to raise my hopes, and then on finding out it was true spent the whole day listening to Crass and The goddamn Exploited in order to gets my excitable thoughts right (although the first song I posted on facebook was Tag Team's Whoomp (There It Is)), and THATCHER'S TOXIC EFFLUENCE EMANATES FROM HER CORPSE LIKE A PARTICULARLY NOXIOUS GAS TO FORM A CHOKING CLOUD OF CALLOUSNESS AND SELF-RIGHTEOUS MORALISTIC DAMNATION THAT SITS OVER THIS COUNTRY LIKE AN INDEPENDENCE DAY ALIEN SHIP READY TO BEAM DOWN ITS MIGHTY LASTER OF HATE AND WIPE AWAY WHAT LITTLE PROGRESS THIS DEAD FUCKING ISLAND HAS HAD WRUNG FROM ITS OLD HATEFUL BONES is way too unwieldy for the purposes of graffiti, you would totally get arrested writing that, and get thrown in jail for about a million years by Thatcher's ugly mewling shitsuited spawn and you wouldn't even get to become a cause celebre cos you're not an inane Banksian 'provocateuuuurgh'. (Sorry, had to bail on that word in that context, even when sticking it in inverted commas.) There was no magic to Thatcher's evil, she was just a nasty person who did not like people, and pandered to the basest instincts of mean frightened backwards little people (basest instincts which they fucking chose, you get to cultivate the roots of yourself, xenophobia and homophobia and all their cowardly brethren don't make up my basest instincts, or that of my friends, pretty sure my basest instincts are to climb trees and sing Dear Landlord songs from the top of them, my friend Tommy's are to watch old wrestling matches and weird people out within 5 seconds of meeting them, my fiancee's are to pet cats and buy cute dresses and get in fights at metal shows, my friend Alex's are to... well, I won't say that, I don't wanna be a snitch).
So back on the train, thankfully on the other side of the tracks a couple minutes later there's a big fuck-off ACAB slapped sloppily up on an office building in ten foot high letters so you can cleanse all that complex intersectional worries with a perfectly reasonable and well-articulated thought that no one could ever disagree with. After all, everyone knows that All Charles Are Bronsons.
Anyway, Thatcher's TOXIC INDEPENDENCE DAY SHIP CLOUD of hate that lingers over us all in this country, and something like it, though springing from another similar source probably hangs over most the countries and people in the world, including Strong Boys who are not from the UK at all so really that was kind of a dumbass anglo-centric way to start writing this shit. Well whatever. The vile homophobia that streamed from her downstairs was not, and is not, confined to this country. That corrosive hate lives everywhere, and Ireland has had it as bad as anywhere, being a country where homosexuality was only decriminalised in fucking 1993, and Ireland is where Strong Boys come from, a raging queercore band ready to stare down the divisive malevolence of priests and politicians, ready to beat it to death with a sweet fucking hardcore riff.
That crushing oppressive atmosphere that Hal Duncan describes so terrifyingly is the place they blast their way out of on Can't Take It Back, the opener of this seven inch, starting with a squeal and a guitar twinge over thudding drums, before properly stomping on down with arrival of the vocals. "WE'RE STILL HERE AND WE'RE STILL QUEER!" is the opening line and while that iconic pride chant might bring to mind images of solidarity and mutual support, here's it's not framed that way though, not delivered in sunny chorus, but barked sharp and guard dog fierce, here's it's less a communal affirmation, more a robust threat, a kind of FEE-FI-FUM incantation, ready to grind the bones of every "RELIGIOUS FUCK AFRAID OF BEING GAY" who ever dared to shit on a dream. "WE'RE STILL HERE AND WE'RE STILL QUEER! AND WE WON'T LET YOU SPREAD THE FEAR!" A line drawn in the sand with anger and crunching guitars, that in 40 seconds metamorphises twice, from that mellower opening into the pounding hardcore throb and then from that into a burly Articles of Faith velocity killer, no mollifying Same Love platitudes frontloaded with no-homo verses here.
In the tradition of awesome queercore bands like Pansy Division and Limp Wrist, Strong Boys are capable of mixing the fury at an unjust shitstain of a world, with goofier sillier songs about gay life delivered with the same intensity. Cocktheft is about catfish penises, Grindr liars faking their trouser attributes. No Choice is packed with the unrepentant lusting glee of something like Brooke Candy's I Wanna Fuck Right Now as it thunders "COCKS ARE IN MY GENES/I'LL TELL YOU WHAT IT MEANS/WAS BORN THIS WAY/I'LL ALWAYS BE GAY/AND I'LL ALWAYS WANT BEARS IN JEANS" (hairy naked dudes are all over this seven inch and its liner notes). Though here again it's framed as much as an attack on those that condemn as much as it is a joyous celebration of self "YOU'VE GOT SOME FUCKING NERVE/WITH YOUR NEEDLESS 'WHAT IF' PITY!" Noise thick and muddy, degraded SS Decontrol hauntings.
Rainbow Recall is a straight up-and-down number, hardcore punk tear at people who appropriate the iconography of gay rights without having led the life that spawned that fight, led the life that Hal Duncan talks of, "NOT GONNA! NOT GONNA! GIVE IT BACK!". Big Man is about fucking cunts who talk shit and has an awesome manic guitar solo that eats itself in skittering panic.
The final song World Goin' Sour is the biggest song on the album, pulling together all the anger of the rest of the EP into a final assault on the whole world climate which seems constructed in order to force people into these narrow little sexuality and gender categories and leave anyone outside of those norms to struggle and often die. Like Can't Take It Back, it starts slow, but quickly steams into a choppy hardcore torrent, "WORLD GONE SOUR WORLD GONE SOUR/GOTTA STAND GOTTA FIGHT!" before falling back into a fuzzing plugging pace, with guitar licks digging and twisting in the grainy scene, like something like The Dicks Rich Daddy but fuller and dirtier. that throaty snarl of the vocals getting higher, more frantic and desperate as it screams "GOTTA STAND GOTTA FIGHT/DON'T BACK DOWN MAKE IT RIGHT/LIVING IN A WORLD WHERE MORONS HAVE THE POWER" at those mean frightened backwards little people whose arrogance and blindness is not innocent, whose unthinking hatred will kill until it is killed. GOTTA FIGHT. Got to. It's not a choice, just as who you love ain't a choice. You can't fall into the trick of believing that the shittiness is how it's supposed to be, of just living with it. You can't fall to the awful deadening depressive narcotic of that shithead spell. The spell, of religion, of bigots, of fear, remains until you click the heels of your boots, strap on your guitar and thrash it into a smear.
At the age of fifteen, two weeks from my sixteenth birthday, I was one of those children.
Let me tell you what it was like... or try to, at least.
I don't think it's possible for me to conjure the darkness of that period, the bleak fatalism of mass unemployment, the miners' strikes, Mutual Assured Destruction, HIV. It was ten years since Johnny Rotten sang "no future," and by then even that defiant punk rage against the dying of the light was snuffed out. That fierce and glorious nihilism which had stared into the abyss of meaning, which had grinned madly as it lit its passions like molotov cocktails and hurled them into the void, shouting, "Why the fuck not?" rather than, "Why even bother?"... by then even that aggressive stance in the face of hopelessness had been warped, teen rebellion recuperated by the mechanisms of corporate media, co-opted into the cosy pseudo-darkness of Goth (about as subversive as a Hammer horror movie) or worse, into the neo-nazi fascism of Skrewdriver and their ilk. I had a friend whose big brother played guitar, used to listen to The Clash, Billy Bragg; I still remember listening to his scratchy vinyl copy of the Stiff Little Fingers "78 Revolutions Per Minute"--or "Going Underground" by The Jam. I was too young to quite get the former, but the latter I loved. But that friend's brother was gone by 87, stolen away in skinhead seduction to fucking National Front bullshit." - Hal Duncan, A Tribute to Thatcher, fucking essential reading
Whenever I take the train up from Croydon to London Bridge I go past a piece of graffiti on the top of a building that reads "THE WITCH IS DEAD BUT THE SPELL REMAINS" which gives me weird feelings. I mean, I obviously agree with the sentiment that Thatcher's toxic effluence emanates from her corpse like a particularly noxious gas to form a choking cloud of callousness and self-righteous moralistic damnation that sits over this country like an Independence Day alien ship ready to beam down its mighty laser of hate and wipe away what little progress this dead fucking island has had wrung out of its old hateful bones, but I could do without the inherent misogyny of casting her as a witch, but then she's so strongly identified with that imagery now that just mentioning 'THE WITCH' would stick blue power suits and starving miners into most heads, something more neutral like "THE PIECE OF SHIT IS FLUSHED BUT THE STINK LINGERS" could be talking about any piece of shit person, not just this particular piece of shit who attempted to drag the country back into the ignorant vindictivestone age of of her grey grey dreams throughout the 1980s, a person so loathed that I got a text from my buddy when it happened and immediately assumed it was some cruel prank to raise my hopes, and then on finding out it was true spent the whole day listening to Crass and The goddamn Exploited in order to gets my excitable thoughts right (although the first song I posted on facebook was Tag Team's Whoomp (There It Is)), and THATCHER'S TOXIC EFFLUENCE EMANATES FROM HER CORPSE LIKE A PARTICULARLY NOXIOUS GAS TO FORM A CHOKING CLOUD OF CALLOUSNESS AND SELF-RIGHTEOUS MORALISTIC DAMNATION THAT SITS OVER THIS COUNTRY LIKE AN INDEPENDENCE DAY ALIEN SHIP READY TO BEAM DOWN ITS MIGHTY LASTER OF HATE AND WIPE AWAY WHAT LITTLE PROGRESS THIS DEAD FUCKING ISLAND HAS HAD WRUNG FROM ITS OLD HATEFUL BONES is way too unwieldy for the purposes of graffiti, you would totally get arrested writing that, and get thrown in jail for about a million years by Thatcher's ugly mewling shitsuited spawn and you wouldn't even get to become a cause celebre cos you're not an inane Banksian 'provocateuuuurgh'. (Sorry, had to bail on that word in that context, even when sticking it in inverted commas.) There was no magic to Thatcher's evil, she was just a nasty person who did not like people, and pandered to the basest instincts of mean frightened backwards little people (basest instincts which they fucking chose, you get to cultivate the roots of yourself, xenophobia and homophobia and all their cowardly brethren don't make up my basest instincts, or that of my friends, pretty sure my basest instincts are to climb trees and sing Dear Landlord songs from the top of them, my friend Tommy's are to watch old wrestling matches and weird people out within 5 seconds of meeting them, my fiancee's are to pet cats and buy cute dresses and get in fights at metal shows, my friend Alex's are to... well, I won't say that, I don't wanna be a snitch).
So back on the train, thankfully on the other side of the tracks a couple minutes later there's a big fuck-off ACAB slapped sloppily up on an office building in ten foot high letters so you can cleanse all that complex intersectional worries with a perfectly reasonable and well-articulated thought that no one could ever disagree with. After all, everyone knows that All Charles Are Bronsons.
Anyway, Thatcher's TOXIC INDEPENDENCE DAY SHIP CLOUD of hate that lingers over us all in this country, and something like it, though springing from another similar source probably hangs over most the countries and people in the world, including Strong Boys who are not from the UK at all so really that was kind of a dumbass anglo-centric way to start writing this shit. Well whatever. The vile homophobia that streamed from her downstairs was not, and is not, confined to this country. That corrosive hate lives everywhere, and Ireland has had it as bad as anywhere, being a country where homosexuality was only decriminalised in fucking 1993, and Ireland is where Strong Boys come from, a raging queercore band ready to stare down the divisive malevolence of priests and politicians, ready to beat it to death with a sweet fucking hardcore riff.
That crushing oppressive atmosphere that Hal Duncan describes so terrifyingly is the place they blast their way out of on Can't Take It Back, the opener of this seven inch, starting with a squeal and a guitar twinge over thudding drums, before properly stomping on down with arrival of the vocals. "WE'RE STILL HERE AND WE'RE STILL QUEER!" is the opening line and while that iconic pride chant might bring to mind images of solidarity and mutual support, here's it's not framed that way though, not delivered in sunny chorus, but barked sharp and guard dog fierce, here's it's less a communal affirmation, more a robust threat, a kind of FEE-FI-FUM incantation, ready to grind the bones of every "RELIGIOUS FUCK AFRAID OF BEING GAY" who ever dared to shit on a dream. "WE'RE STILL HERE AND WE'RE STILL QUEER! AND WE WON'T LET YOU SPREAD THE FEAR!" A line drawn in the sand with anger and crunching guitars, that in 40 seconds metamorphises twice, from that mellower opening into the pounding hardcore throb and then from that into a burly Articles of Faith velocity killer, no mollifying Same Love platitudes frontloaded with no-homo verses here.
In the tradition of awesome queercore bands like Pansy Division and Limp Wrist, Strong Boys are capable of mixing the fury at an unjust shitstain of a world, with goofier sillier songs about gay life delivered with the same intensity. Cocktheft is about catfish penises, Grindr liars faking their trouser attributes. No Choice is packed with the unrepentant lusting glee of something like Brooke Candy's I Wanna Fuck Right Now as it thunders "COCKS ARE IN MY GENES/I'LL TELL YOU WHAT IT MEANS/WAS BORN THIS WAY/I'LL ALWAYS BE GAY/AND I'LL ALWAYS WANT BEARS IN JEANS" (hairy naked dudes are all over this seven inch and its liner notes). Though here again it's framed as much as an attack on those that condemn as much as it is a joyous celebration of self "YOU'VE GOT SOME FUCKING NERVE/WITH YOUR NEEDLESS 'WHAT IF' PITY!" Noise thick and muddy, degraded SS Decontrol hauntings.
Rainbow Recall is a straight up-and-down number, hardcore punk tear at people who appropriate the iconography of gay rights without having led the life that spawned that fight, led the life that Hal Duncan talks of, "NOT GONNA! NOT GONNA! GIVE IT BACK!". Big Man is about fucking cunts who talk shit and has an awesome manic guitar solo that eats itself in skittering panic.
The final song World Goin' Sour is the biggest song on the album, pulling together all the anger of the rest of the EP into a final assault on the whole world climate which seems constructed in order to force people into these narrow little sexuality and gender categories and leave anyone outside of those norms to struggle and often die. Like Can't Take It Back, it starts slow, but quickly steams into a choppy hardcore torrent, "WORLD GONE SOUR WORLD GONE SOUR/GOTTA STAND GOTTA FIGHT!" before falling back into a fuzzing plugging pace, with guitar licks digging and twisting in the grainy scene, like something like The Dicks Rich Daddy but fuller and dirtier. that throaty snarl of the vocals getting higher, more frantic and desperate as it screams "GOTTA STAND GOTTA FIGHT/DON'T BACK DOWN MAKE IT RIGHT/LIVING IN A WORLD WHERE MORONS HAVE THE POWER" at those mean frightened backwards little people whose arrogance and blindness is not innocent, whose unthinking hatred will kill until it is killed. GOTTA FIGHT. Got to. It's not a choice, just as who you love ain't a choice. You can't fall into the trick of believing that the shittiness is how it's supposed to be, of just living with it. You can't fall to the awful deadening depressive narcotic of that shithead spell. The spell, of religion, of bigots, of fear, remains until you click the heels of your boots, strap on your guitar and thrash it into a smear.
Wednesday, 4 September 2013
V/A - Welcome to 2013
"For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice." - T.S. Eliot
"Punks not dead" - Wattie Buchan
From Not Normal Tapes, a fucking excellent ranging piece of punk curation, pulling together bands from across this shithole rock spinning through a good-as-endless void in an effort to make you believe that 1) you are not a useless insignificant speck on a shithole rock spinning through that yadayadayada 2) PUNX NOT DEAD. Of course me and you and all the other cool kids know punx is not dead because 1) Guitar Wolf are still a band and 2) palpably abstract cultural concepts are not beholden to mortality dummies, but it's nice to have such a convenient collection of some of today's finest punk ragers to throw in the face of people who have, in the old boring way, accidentally conflated their own lifespan and interests with the entire span of human existence. FUCK NOSTALGIA FOREVER.
Like all great comps, Welcome to 2013 is a bunch of bands that I love/like and as well as a bunch of bands I've never checked out that will shortly be bands that I love/like. There are a lot of sweet bands here. Which I review mostly out of order because I'm an arsehole.
Basque country Hondartzako Hondakinak open with the song Nihilismo, a nice catchy punk bit that burns out with a scream and crashes into faster thrashier bloodier punk speed, a sweet fucking fakeout in the best way. This comp represents a bunch of styles, but it skews fairly heavily hardcore. Most bands contribute two songs (a few just one and Adjustment to Society three PV length explosions).
Adjustment to Society, who have, in the finest tradition of great punk bands, already broken up, contribute three brief blasts, brawny female vocals buried in the murk of hardcore-punk. The third song, Hipster, seems to come from a different recording session, as it sounds less shitty. Negative Degree and Bored Straight both come in with a brace apiece of similarly brief direct rants.
Brown Sugar's Another Perfect Song is as short as Negative Degree's shit, but isn't just a straight thrasher like that band's offerings, starting fast, throwing some carnival swirl into the punk, twisting about behind the vocals, dropping into a more mid-tempo kick with a catchy lead guitar line intoning "I KNOW WHAT YOU SMELL LIKE AND I KNOW WHAT YOU TASTE LIKE" ending on some weird-ass caveman "OOH! AAH! OOH! AAH!" chant. Awesome shit.
Good Throb have more of their chill/thrash/chill with Toner Loner but on You Ain't Never they sound a little different, replacing that cutting splenetic with much less prominent bass that sort of squeaky Poly Styrene (or Honey Bane) haughty outrage "You ain't never gonna fuck me in my arse!" it reproaches, bass less prominent here than on the simpler grooves of Toner Loner and the Culture Vulture 7"
I'm not too into Big Crux's take on Nomeansno-style bassdriven punk-funk. That styles hard as shit to pull off without bringing to mind the awful spectre of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and while they mostly manage to avoid that it still goes on a little bit too long and doesn't have either Nomeansno's apoco-surreal adrenaline confidence (though you know that's probably a somewhat unfair criticism considering Nomeansno are TIER ONE UNTOUCHABLE PUNX GENYUSSES) or the shithead wit of a Dead Milkmen number. The song gets better when it gets more relaxed and less funky and more scratchily drawn out towards the end and has something of the oddball threat of Abi Yoyos in it but I'm still not to into it.
That song does collocate kinda nicely in the middle of the album though with Ooze's Da Big Toenail in Da Sky which gets stuck into an aggressively monotonous eejit blues walk for a minute or so before a flailing 1-2-3-4 bursts out of it and tosses the song into a short shot of furious snotty hardcore. That moment fifty-eight seconds into Da Big Toenail in Da Sky just feels like such a cathartic "FUCK IT!" squeal of "Ah shit that's enough slow bloody respite shit!" thrashing out back into the hardcore.
Culo show off two of their most bitten off tracks, in Radiation Mutation and I Don't Wanna Be A Big Shot, hardcore punk attack, less of their catchiness. You know the drill. Self-hate, smash and grab. Great songs.
I saw Mexico's Inservibles (in addition to a couple other of these bands) at Chaos in Tejas and while I like the band, they just seemed to hit at the wrong time of night, when everyone was too knackered from what came before and hadn't yet been invigorated by the prospect of the night's final sets from S.H.I.T. and Sad Boys so I didn't get to into them. Here they're great though, hardcore filtered through evil echoey noise, like a nastier Atoxxxico, snapping little demon vox that needle and pull and at the end of El Dano with the song speeding into its end reverberate out of existence like they're beaming down to some hellplanet. Viva La Muerte burps its way through some fairly chilled yet splatty hardcore, where everything has spiky edges.
NASA Space Universe's twangy hardcore botching is great, Dollar Bill with a rhythm sort of approaching a DK sort of gallop and bounce, but way messier, guitars like electric sparks, dangerous and flickering, unable of settling into any sort of groove, sometimes used for noise and feedback, sometimes squealing uncomfortably over the relentless speed of the bass, obliterated vocals screamed and shot headfirst into a wall.
Aspirina Infantil from Spain's first track Policia is just a spoken word track laid over ominous noise, drums and screams intercutting, kinda weird doing what is basically an intro track on a comp, but it does set up their solid-as hardcore song Ciudad II well and sets them apart from the straighter hardcore efforts which risk getting ignored.
Which is kinda what happens to Porkeria. They don't do too much amazingly musically, but I like their use of shittily strained backing vocals and a good hardcore punk bass part like the simple bit in Domesticados is always a sweet way to break-up a song. Not mindblowing though, and they (as well as Bored Straight and Haute Couture, though again the Haute song is pretty damn good, opening strong and brittle and punchy but not following through perfectly) kind of get lost in the mix on such a long album (forty minutes of barely broken hardcore punch can really fuck you up, speed and fury is hard to sustain over a over twice as long as Circle Jerks' Group Sex)
Standing out in style significantly, Tenement have a great pop-punk jam, a band that could fit in on a way poppier comp than this with the little country licks in the guitar and sweet background vox echoes, but move forward with enough reckles that something like the glistening fadeout that could read as cheesy if it wasn't engaged it such a constant uneasy struggle with its own degradation, Tenement always maintain just enough sonic fog to keep their in the realm of that shitty little curbgrazed region rock, seeping blood and pus from the infected cuts in their pop songs. This band always feel like they could be pop-rock millionaires if they wanted to, but are way too stubborn arseholes to tidy the dirt from the corner of the room.
Broken Prayer follow that great punk institution of putting what is probably the best Broken Prayer song I've heard thus far on a comp, a bomb amongst bombs. They know that when you come to this sort of game, so many good bands all thrown together, you gotta piss like there's no wall high enough to stop you, killing it like Nicki Minaj guest verse or James Gandolfini drunkenly ripping a movie out from Brad Pitt in Killing Me Softly with total scumbag insouciance. Shivering and stuttering with catchy synthlines and surging background fuzz, and the depressively choked vocals. "I DON'T LIKE ANY OF YOU/I DON'T HAVE TO!" I liked their s/t but this seems like a whole greater beast. Probably my favourite song on this this thing. The danger of such a great track on a comp is that if the song does what it is put together and pulled apart to do, to get you to check in on their other shit, then the other stuff runs the risk of disappointment. Many-a-time have I excitedly purchased an album based on a comp or sampler song only to find the album without the same level of charm and fury that that first song seemed to possess in its dark and needling spaces.
Thee Nodes end the comp. They rule. Listen to them. Fucking yelping weirdos to the core. Garage punk (the THEE should've tipped you off) in the vein of Archie and the Pukes more fuzzed out, simple songs squeezed out fast and seething. I'm tired of writing right now.
Welcome to 2013 could never be something comprehensive, stylistically or geographically, and it's not aiming to be. It's just a stained and water-damaged snapshot of some bands that are making noise at the same time. While it does extend its span across the globe, it'd be pretty cool with slightly less North American bands (I mean Culo fucking rule so hard but does anyone who would be into this shit not know them at this point, maybe their presence is as something of a 'big' name to draw in more people) and some more scenes represented, but the shit here is undeniably tight throughout. The thing of giving bands two songs worked great as it allowed for some odder moments like that Aspirina Infantil song or that Good Throb one which maybe wouldn't fit with their other sort of stuff on their own releases. Broken Prayer, Brown Sugar, Thee Nodes, Honda Honda, Ooze and NASA Space Universe all went in. Everything was angry and nothing sucked. Bands from all about, all raging to preserve a couple ideas, 1) John Peel's maxim about this year being the best year for music is as true as it ever was and 2) up the punx.
And next year's words await another voice." - T.S. Eliot
"Punks not dead" - Wattie Buchan
From Not Normal Tapes, a fucking excellent ranging piece of punk curation, pulling together bands from across this shithole rock spinning through a good-as-endless void in an effort to make you believe that 1) you are not a useless insignificant speck on a shithole rock spinning through that yadayadayada 2) PUNX NOT DEAD. Of course me and you and all the other cool kids know punx is not dead because 1) Guitar Wolf are still a band and 2) palpably abstract cultural concepts are not beholden to mortality dummies, but it's nice to have such a convenient collection of some of today's finest punk ragers to throw in the face of people who have, in the old boring way, accidentally conflated their own lifespan and interests with the entire span of human existence. FUCK NOSTALGIA FOREVER.
Like all great comps, Welcome to 2013 is a bunch of bands that I love/like and as well as a bunch of bands I've never checked out that will shortly be bands that I love/like. There are a lot of sweet bands here. Which I review mostly out of order because I'm an arsehole.
Basque country Hondartzako Hondakinak open with the song Nihilismo, a nice catchy punk bit that burns out with a scream and crashes into faster thrashier bloodier punk speed, a sweet fucking fakeout in the best way. This comp represents a bunch of styles, but it skews fairly heavily hardcore. Most bands contribute two songs (a few just one and Adjustment to Society three PV length explosions).
Adjustment to Society, who have, in the finest tradition of great punk bands, already broken up, contribute three brief blasts, brawny female vocals buried in the murk of hardcore-punk. The third song, Hipster, seems to come from a different recording session, as it sounds less shitty. Negative Degree and Bored Straight both come in with a brace apiece of similarly brief direct rants.
Brown Sugar's Another Perfect Song is as short as Negative Degree's shit, but isn't just a straight thrasher like that band's offerings, starting fast, throwing some carnival swirl into the punk, twisting about behind the vocals, dropping into a more mid-tempo kick with a catchy lead guitar line intoning "I KNOW WHAT YOU SMELL LIKE AND I KNOW WHAT YOU TASTE LIKE" ending on some weird-ass caveman "OOH! AAH! OOH! AAH!" chant. Awesome shit.
Good Throb have more of their chill/thrash/chill with Toner Loner but on You Ain't Never they sound a little different, replacing that cutting splenetic with much less prominent bass that sort of squeaky Poly Styrene (or Honey Bane) haughty outrage "You ain't never gonna fuck me in my arse!" it reproaches, bass less prominent here than on the simpler grooves of Toner Loner and the Culture Vulture 7"
I'm not too into Big Crux's take on Nomeansno-style bassdriven punk-funk. That styles hard as shit to pull off without bringing to mind the awful spectre of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and while they mostly manage to avoid that it still goes on a little bit too long and doesn't have either Nomeansno's apoco-surreal adrenaline confidence (though you know that's probably a somewhat unfair criticism considering Nomeansno are TIER ONE UNTOUCHABLE PUNX GENYUSSES) or the shithead wit of a Dead Milkmen number. The song gets better when it gets more relaxed and less funky and more scratchily drawn out towards the end and has something of the oddball threat of Abi Yoyos in it but I'm still not to into it.
That song does collocate kinda nicely in the middle of the album though with Ooze's Da Big Toenail in Da Sky which gets stuck into an aggressively monotonous eejit blues walk for a minute or so before a flailing 1-2-3-4 bursts out of it and tosses the song into a short shot of furious snotty hardcore. That moment fifty-eight seconds into Da Big Toenail in Da Sky just feels like such a cathartic "FUCK IT!" squeal of "Ah shit that's enough slow bloody respite shit!" thrashing out back into the hardcore.
Culo show off two of their most bitten off tracks, in Radiation Mutation and I Don't Wanna Be A Big Shot, hardcore punk attack, less of their catchiness. You know the drill. Self-hate, smash and grab. Great songs.
I saw Mexico's Inservibles (in addition to a couple other of these bands) at Chaos in Tejas and while I like the band, they just seemed to hit at the wrong time of night, when everyone was too knackered from what came before and hadn't yet been invigorated by the prospect of the night's final sets from S.H.I.T. and Sad Boys so I didn't get to into them. Here they're great though, hardcore filtered through evil echoey noise, like a nastier Atoxxxico, snapping little demon vox that needle and pull and at the end of El Dano with the song speeding into its end reverberate out of existence like they're beaming down to some hellplanet. Viva La Muerte burps its way through some fairly chilled yet splatty hardcore, where everything has spiky edges.
NASA Space Universe's twangy hardcore botching is great, Dollar Bill with a rhythm sort of approaching a DK sort of gallop and bounce, but way messier, guitars like electric sparks, dangerous and flickering, unable of settling into any sort of groove, sometimes used for noise and feedback, sometimes squealing uncomfortably over the relentless speed of the bass, obliterated vocals screamed and shot headfirst into a wall.
Aspirina Infantil from Spain's first track Policia is just a spoken word track laid over ominous noise, drums and screams intercutting, kinda weird doing what is basically an intro track on a comp, but it does set up their solid-as hardcore song Ciudad II well and sets them apart from the straighter hardcore efforts which risk getting ignored.
Which is kinda what happens to Porkeria. They don't do too much amazingly musically, but I like their use of shittily strained backing vocals and a good hardcore punk bass part like the simple bit in Domesticados is always a sweet way to break-up a song. Not mindblowing though, and they (as well as Bored Straight and Haute Couture, though again the Haute song is pretty damn good, opening strong and brittle and punchy but not following through perfectly) kind of get lost in the mix on such a long album (forty minutes of barely broken hardcore punch can really fuck you up, speed and fury is hard to sustain over a over twice as long as Circle Jerks' Group Sex)
Standing out in style significantly, Tenement have a great pop-punk jam, a band that could fit in on a way poppier comp than this with the little country licks in the guitar and sweet background vox echoes, but move forward with enough reckles that something like the glistening fadeout that could read as cheesy if it wasn't engaged it such a constant uneasy struggle with its own degradation, Tenement always maintain just enough sonic fog to keep their in the realm of that shitty little curbgrazed region rock, seeping blood and pus from the infected cuts in their pop songs. This band always feel like they could be pop-rock millionaires if they wanted to, but are way too stubborn arseholes to tidy the dirt from the corner of the room.
Broken Prayer follow that great punk institution of putting what is probably the best Broken Prayer song I've heard thus far on a comp, a bomb amongst bombs. They know that when you come to this sort of game, so many good bands all thrown together, you gotta piss like there's no wall high enough to stop you, killing it like Nicki Minaj guest verse or James Gandolfini drunkenly ripping a movie out from Brad Pitt in Killing Me Softly with total scumbag insouciance. Shivering and stuttering with catchy synthlines and surging background fuzz, and the depressively choked vocals. "I DON'T LIKE ANY OF YOU/I DON'T HAVE TO!" I liked their s/t but this seems like a whole greater beast. Probably my favourite song on this this thing. The danger of such a great track on a comp is that if the song does what it is put together and pulled apart to do, to get you to check in on their other shit, then the other stuff runs the risk of disappointment. Many-a-time have I excitedly purchased an album based on a comp or sampler song only to find the album without the same level of charm and fury that that first song seemed to possess in its dark and needling spaces.
Thee Nodes end the comp. They rule. Listen to them. Fucking yelping weirdos to the core. Garage punk (the THEE should've tipped you off) in the vein of Archie and the Pukes more fuzzed out, simple songs squeezed out fast and seething. I'm tired of writing right now.
Welcome to 2013 could never be something comprehensive, stylistically or geographically, and it's not aiming to be. It's just a stained and water-damaged snapshot of some bands that are making noise at the same time. While it does extend its span across the globe, it'd be pretty cool with slightly less North American bands (I mean Culo fucking rule so hard but does anyone who would be into this shit not know them at this point, maybe their presence is as something of a 'big' name to draw in more people) and some more scenes represented, but the shit here is undeniably tight throughout. The thing of giving bands two songs worked great as it allowed for some odder moments like that Aspirina Infantil song or that Good Throb one which maybe wouldn't fit with their other sort of stuff on their own releases. Broken Prayer, Brown Sugar, Thee Nodes, Honda Honda, Ooze and NASA Space Universe all went in. Everything was angry and nothing sucked. Bands from all about, all raging to preserve a couple ideas, 1) John Peel's maxim about this year being the best year for music is as true as it ever was and 2) up the punx.
Thursday, 29 August 2013
Gas Rag - Human Rights EP
Some Cülo/Acid Reflux freaks running speedpunk hustles. Sharp and jerky, guitars snapping back and forth with menace, but this shit, like Cülo is not uncatchy. Though it's strapping a garrotte guitar tone to a beat too fast to headnod to, when it hits lines like "THIS WORLD IS SUCH A DRAG/SO PUT SOME SHOE GOO IN A BAG!" on Pass Out or "THE WEIGHT OF LIFE KEEPS BEARING DOWN ON ME/2012 DISAPPOINTS WE'RE LEFT WAITING FOR THE END!" on The End, you're singin. Like Pusrad, but not as utterly monomaniacal in its brevity (6 songs in 6 minutes, not 31 in 10), and a little dirtier too. Its thin hardcore-punk is packed with little moments, like the brief basscut on Abort Them, the slow start to Final Peace accelerating almost immediately, the mid-tempo kick in The End and a little bass wobble like a starter motor burbling into action, that you can't get away from, and make you blast them one more time.
Nihilism born of rage, political impotence and despair screamed on Hebron ("THE LAND ALWAYS GOES TO THIEVES") twisting and flowering into caustic extinction desire, be it of the hated power bases (Abort Them), the the world itself (Final Peace offers hippies a true chance at peace in a wholly dead world, The End is self-explanatory) or just of brain (Pass Out). The most positive song on this thing is about running away from home to be a bankrobber, like The Dwarve's dumb-death-pop Runaway #2, done up all in frenetic ribbons and with the criminal's life painted as a weird endless soulsearching with stolen guns and sharpied anarchy symbols.) Out on Beach Impediments Records, this a tight fist of punk punch.
Nihilism born of rage, political impotence and despair screamed on Hebron ("THE LAND ALWAYS GOES TO THIEVES") twisting and flowering into caustic extinction desire, be it of the hated power bases (Abort Them), the the world itself (Final Peace offers hippies a true chance at peace in a wholly dead world, The End is self-explanatory) or just of brain (Pass Out). The most positive song on this thing is about running away from home to be a bankrobber, like The Dwarve's dumb-death-pop Runaway #2, done up all in frenetic ribbons and with the criminal's life painted as a weird endless soulsearching with stolen guns and sharpied anarchy symbols.) Out on Beach Impediments Records, this a tight fist of punk punch.
Friday, 23 August 2013
Good Throb - Culture Vulture
Second 7" from this band made up, as all bands are legally required to be nowadays, from members about 25 other bands. Abrasive punk songs jagged like compound fractures. On Muscle Horse records.
Culture Vulture takes a long time to get going, all slow stumbling build like it's coalescing
naturally out of a tune-up as the bass-twang and experimental drumchecks come from randomness in towards something. Then the guitar's properly kick-in and you get those vocals, snapping and accusatory, so piercing that they can turn the words 'literary supplement' into a killing screed. I love Good Throb's vocals, they are so unbeatably harsh. My favourite moment on this song is the shout of "THAT'LL LEARN YA!" over bare drums as the chorus drops away into a roll-call of cultural figures, from Judith Butler to John Sargent to Frida Kahlo, again building in intensity and wrath. This song is all about that rise and fall, hitting a riff and then diving out of it back into clattering incoherence before pulling you back in again. An attack on bourgeois pursuits (or possibly a knowing celebration) that is deliberately making itself hard to get a handle on, so as to prevent co-option, maybe. "THAT'LL LEARN YA!"
Headache, a chiller vibe, but still ready to stab, where it's got one of those insistent bass runarounds that just carries itself discretely, settling into a nice little groove, making you think of a Pixies song or Up to the Fells by King of the Slums, it's a fitting background for the deadpan tale of sleep-deprivation degrading from "I've got to stay awake. I've got to read some books" into "NOW I'M SPEWING! AND THERE'S NOTHING WORTH DOING!"
Torture Garden, stop-start, each thing stabbing each other in mechanistic click-clack like Stiff Little Finger's Closed Groove, weirder in its construction though, mucky like a Lumpy and the Dumpers song or a fleshy Steve Aylett digression, again making sounds that seem at odds and random push together into furious moments, speed and noise shifts to unsettle throughout, those flensing vocals, sometimes feeling almost incidental in its anger. Here are three pretty much perfect songs of an terrific furious aesthetic, arty but fuck-off, like some motherfucker nailing his hand to the wall of MOMA.
Culture Vulture takes a long time to get going, all slow stumbling build like it's coalescing
naturally out of a tune-up as the bass-twang and experimental drumchecks come from randomness in towards something. Then the guitar's properly kick-in and you get those vocals, snapping and accusatory, so piercing that they can turn the words 'literary supplement' into a killing screed. I love Good Throb's vocals, they are so unbeatably harsh. My favourite moment on this song is the shout of "THAT'LL LEARN YA!" over bare drums as the chorus drops away into a roll-call of cultural figures, from Judith Butler to John Sargent to Frida Kahlo, again building in intensity and wrath. This song is all about that rise and fall, hitting a riff and then diving out of it back into clattering incoherence before pulling you back in again. An attack on bourgeois pursuits (or possibly a knowing celebration) that is deliberately making itself hard to get a handle on, so as to prevent co-option, maybe. "THAT'LL LEARN YA!"
Headache, a chiller vibe, but still ready to stab, where it's got one of those insistent bass runarounds that just carries itself discretely, settling into a nice little groove, making you think of a Pixies song or Up to the Fells by King of the Slums, it's a fitting background for the deadpan tale of sleep-deprivation degrading from "I've got to stay awake. I've got to read some books" into "NOW I'M SPEWING! AND THERE'S NOTHING WORTH DOING!"
Torture Garden, stop-start, each thing stabbing each other in mechanistic click-clack like Stiff Little Finger's Closed Groove, weirder in its construction though, mucky like a Lumpy and the Dumpers song or a fleshy Steve Aylett digression, again making sounds that seem at odds and random push together into furious moments, speed and noise shifts to unsettle throughout, those flensing vocals, sometimes feeling almost incidental in its anger. Here are three pretty much perfect songs of an terrific furious aesthetic, arty but fuck-off, like some motherfucker nailing his hand to the wall of MOMA.
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