Wastoids - EP

Thumping hardcore punk. Three quick hardcore mutations crammed between two big clumping hardcore trudges. Red Meat stomps in, all burly and graveltoned, the guitars surface, scraping and fading, like night sounds, before an animal grunt intercedes and throws the song down into a fierce knockdown dragout thump, gorging itself on violence, a song as graphic and as any vegan sXe hardcore screed, but without the bargainbasement moralising, just living in the gore and living with it. RED! MEAT! I'm a Prick, My Toronto and MCAB are the shittalk seethers, nasty and brief, shouts and thuds in the rumbles, shivering guitar flickers on MCAB cracking out of the mess. I'm a Prick opens "I'm a prick just like you", Minor Threat connotations, but screaming for the recognition of its own shittiness rather than personhood, tearing itself down. MCAB reiterates its self-loathing, cutting between sarcasm and flailing anger: "I hate this shit and I hate you/I hate myself and I hate punk too/I hate this city, I hate my dick/I hate this scene, it makes me sick". It can't commit to its own satire before it breaks apart with bare disgust and then it can't even keep that up before it curls back in on itself. It's the quickly descending stages of alienation. Brown Sugar/Brown Liquor's another slower one, angry bloody lead vocals trading off with brickhead Oi!-rocked roars. The music dropping down to a drumbeat, leaving that scream, shorn of the deeper uglier stomp it seems less angry, more anguished, breaking up not breaking out, drug numb not drug warm. While the whole thing hits with the simplistic violence of skinhead pulp, Dragon Skins and Knuckle Girls, it's darker, less communal than those shoutalong sections imply, it's the fragmentation of those little cliques and scenes and it stabs and cuts with the shards left over. Hardcore punk rock, hardnosed and brawling, infused with shifting levels and dynamics of violence, with the consequences as well as high, the bruises as well as the punches thrown.

Koszmar - Jeniec Wojenny

World-ripping d-beat from Canada, screamed in Polish, on Rust and Machine records.. Chopping, charging. Onwards motion, full of surges and blood, sparks of solos dying fast amongst the drum crashes, the vocals painful and spitedrenched. The shrill feedback wails squeezed and shaped into purposeful discordant weapons on Anioł Miłosierdzia, the carceral bite of Zdrazony's push/pull riffs. The eight minute torrent of Atomowa Groza, half-inches a riff from Fleetwood Mac's The Chain and tortures it with noise and thunder, settling into one of those rippling rhythms to close the album in a way similar to Disclose's nine minute relentless Wardead topping off Yesterday's Fairytale, Tomorrow's Nightmare. When you pull and prod a genre so used to self-destructive one/two-minute assaults, it no longer becomes a fresh gust of radioactivity air cutting your head up new ways, it stops being a winding gutpunch of fury, you fall in lockstep with its gets and gives, it becomes more a journeyed anger that sustains you, the once dissonant discomfort enshrouds you, sticks in the bone and warms the fingers, tight and close like a hood, which makes Atomowa Groza's slide into this ghoulcall wasteland echoes all the more jarring, and the straight bomber fury with which it bursts out of this all the sharper.

Murderer - Let My People Go cassette

Murderer. Another band from the fertile sewergardens of the current New York Ground Zero hardcore scene, on Toxic State records, featuring members of Hank Wood, Crazy Spirit, Dawn of Humans etc. Another crepuscular creep, in terms of its lineage it's not got that reckless whine and wheedle of some of these bands but it does have a bit of the Crazy Spirit gallop and a bunch of Hank Wood's urban ugliness, dilemmas restated again and again without growth or comprehension, in caveman shout, brainworn repetitive. "I try to be good at everything I do/But everything I do is dirty and bad/I'm a bad boy, baby." Lowdown and lowfi, shrugged acceptance and despair. Music for guileless hoods of a rundown Personal and Pizzas persuasion, all punches and failure, struggling with the limits of their perceptions of the world. A band with the rhythm and futility of Robert De Niro as Jake La Motta laying into the jail wall in Raging Bull. Murderer. In his essay The Simple Art of Murder Raymond Chandler railed against the elegantly contrived mysteries of the likes of Agatha Christie and wrote that Dashiell Hammett "gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse; and with the means at hand, not with hand-wrought duelling pistols, curare, and tropical fish." and this is the kind of crime that Murderer provide the soundtrack for, purposeful and unclean, Abuli-Bernet Torpedo cold. "Death, it comes for every man" warns the band's theme song. It comes with the slap of the drums and the music's grubby punk burble. It comes mucky and reeking and it won't let up, it's stuck in this pattern, this broken asphalt rut. Recidivist hardcore.

Get it here.

Rad - Loud & Fast

Deadly and gleeful, Rad drop-in with the skatethrash speedcuts of the likes of Jellyroll Rockheads or BBQ Chickens. Twenty songs in ten explosive minutes. On Sacramento records.

Despite proclaiming "I'm an adult/Do my laundry/Pay my taxes/I'm an adult" on I'm an Adult, and Banned in Circus Heights focusing on the trudge of everyday worklife, the album as a whole is an affirmation of adolescent energy, alternately goofing off and steaming about the blatant hypocrisy of it all. Even the song Banned in Circus Heights ends in this triumphant singalong of "I GOT UP FOR WORK TODAY!" that sounds like it's a personal mantra reaffirming to yourself that you are actually not fifteen anymore because sometimes you can't quite believe that shit. We all know that one, not sure anyone I know ever feels properly adult, always constantly surprised when you have to do some real life shit like write a cheque or talk to somebody who fixes things for a living.

That's the rail that Rad balance on, the place where you're trying to get by not slipping into the worst parts of teenage mopeyness and cynicism, but also trying to retain that teenage passion and clarity in the face of people your age rapidly transmogrifying into better-in-the-old-days caricatures. So it runs yes on that adolescent energy, but it's clearly consciously mining that and using it as fuel and guidance for these catchy 40 second punk smashes, rather than letting it run chaotic and wild. It's got the carve and punch of a Nunfuckers or Some Old Bullshit-era Beastie Boys, but it's focused and tight, not sloppy stupid and sticky nasty. It keeps things taut.

So it makes you feel like a part of a real cool teen crew who are constantly caught twixt outrage at society's many ills and dumb dumb jokes. Songs switch up between silly pursuits like S.I.M.P.L.E.'s ode to hotdogs, and more pressing matters like Corporate Drugs, and even within the songs like Corporate Drugs that it attacks those issues more with sophomoric taunts and facetious insults like "We're Clariton clear, you're full of shit!" than with cohesive well-argued (read: boring) points. "Moshing is our medicine!" it crows. You've gotta believe a line like that, sung with that conviction. Times when you're hanging out and feel like you can set the world to right with your puerile friends, but really you just wanna make those idiots laugh with a quick oneliner or an exaggerated impression of some dickbag you all know and loathe.

All the burns and choruses feel like inside jokes you've been let into, Legacy of Bro-tality just screaming "AQUALUNG!" as if that says everything you need to know about some shitty dude (and it totally does). In Never Turn Your Back (On a Mosh) it goes ""Strike the spike in the pit" my mother said, but she never moshed in a circle pit", reinforcing the message (such as it is) of the anti-porcupine-in-the-pit PSA Strike the Spike, in the This Is Rad 7" version of that same tune the line is ""Cover your tits in the pit" my mother said, but she never moshed in a circle pit" referencing that release's far more realistically helpful Cover Your Tits In the Pit. But really the point is that your friends constantly bitching sarcastically about some fantastical prevalence of porcupines at punk shows to the bemusement of those not in the tight little clique, or shouting "COVER YOUR TITS IN THE PIT!" at each other constantly is exactly the sort of semi-secret garagewit argot that develops when you roll with a group of teenage punx, prickling with insecurity and violence and frustration.

They construct this little rebel world of fallabout thrashskate moments, living in the pit and in empty pools they cruise around, celebrating hotdogs and D&D, the little shared joys that make existence real cool for an evening or so, offering takedowns of bros and creeps and Megadeth and people who call the cops on houseshows (Don't Call the Cops also includes a bit where they make a silly siren sound, thus confirming that Rad are a good punk band), the annoying tagnuts that drag you down and make you feel extra bummed on life. Fuck those things, pound them down with the sort of worn-in LL Cool J reference that begins Creep-Out Crew that all your friends will love, drown them out with the sound of 30 second balls of righteous hardcorepunk about how your town is totally rad, and for a moment it totally is.

Guitar Wolf - Beast Vibrator

This is a message I received.

I recently received a message from someone who was keen to tell me that while they enjoyed my blog, I would be a better writer if I attempted to write more objectively. I am always open to constructive criticism and I will therefore endeavour to stick to the facts as much as possible in this review. Objectivity is the watchword.

Guitar Wolf are a band. Guitar Wolf are a band from Japan. Guitar Wolf have three members. These three members are named Seiji, U.G. and Toru and are sometimes known as Guitar Wolf, Bass Wolf and Drum Wolf. That is a combination of the word 'wolf' (taken from the name of the band) and the musical instrument that these respective musicians play. Beast Vibrator is the name of Guitar Wolf's new album. This album is their 12th album, following on from Spacebattleship Love, Mars Twist, Dead Rock, Golden Black, Loverock, UFO Romantics, Rock and Roll Etiquette, Jet Generation, Planet of the Wolves, Missile Me! and Run Wolf Run. Guitar Wolf are a band that play very loud. Guitar Wolf are a rock and roll band. Guitar Wolf are a very loud rock and roll band. Their new album, which is entitled Beast Vibrator, contains eleven songs.

The first song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator is Beast Vibrator. The second song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator is Mesopotamian Lonely. The third song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator is Gasoline Lullaby. The fourth song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator is Ghostly You. The fifth song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator is Robot Maria. The sixth song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator is Batting Center. The seventh song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator is Saphire CITY. The eighth song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator is Magma Nobunaga. The nine song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator is Barf Night. The tenth song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator is EARTH vs. ALIEN. The eleventh song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator is Female Machine Gun.

The first song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator, Beast Vibrator, is a rock and roll song. It is loud. Beasts is a word used to describe undomesticated animals. Vibrator is an instrument used to provide sexual pleasure. This song is a wild animal that provides sexual stimulation and release.

The second song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator, Mesopotamian Lonely, is a rock and roll song. It is loud. Mesopotamian is an adjective pertaining to the inhabitants and culture of the area now known as Iraq. Lonely is the sensation when you are isolated from other people and have negative feelings due to this isolation. This song is painful desert solitude.

The third song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator, Gasoline Lullaby, is a rock and roll song. It is loud. Gasoline is the substance that is used to power many machines, including cars, motorcycles and chainsaws. Lullaby is a song that is sung to children to help them go to sleep. This song is powerful song that will ignite to make children sleep.

The fourth song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator, Ghostly You, is a rock and roll song. It is loud. Ghostly is a word that descibes things which resemble the spirits of dead people. You are a bastard. This song is a haunting bastard.

The fifth song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator, Robot Maria, is a rock and roll song. It is loud. Robot is a word, originating from the Czech playwright Karel Capek's book War With the Newts, that is used to describe an automaton capable of performing tasks. Maria is a popular name. It is often associated with Catholicism, or the van which takes prisoners to jail, which is known as a Black Maria. This song is machine built from wire and steel that will take your ass to jail.

The sixth song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator, Batting Center, is a rock and roll song. It is loud. Batting is the action of striking a ball with a bat. Center is a word for the middle of things. This song strikes at the core.

The seventh song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator, Saphire CITY, is a rock and roll song. It is loud. Saphire is a precious blue stone. CITY is a large built-up area in which many people live and work. This song is the blues in lives and works.

The eighth song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator, Magma Nobunaga, is a rock and roll song. It is loud. is the substance that consists of molten rock underneath the world. Nobunaga is the name of a man who unified Japan. This song is unifying burn. Out of context, the word Nobunaga may appear to some English readers to be a nonsense word such as flubtredderling, weeewoopapapapabipdaaaaaaarswuix, or gluttle. This song is hot squabaloo.

This is the album cover of the Guitar Wolf album Beast
Vibrator. This album cover depicts the members
of Guitar Wolf imprisoned and looking super cool.

The ninth song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator, Barf Night, is a rock and roll song. It is loud. Barf is a word for when you expell food and fluids from your mouth through a series of convulsions. Night is the period when the Earth is turned away from the sun. This song is a convulsion that will turn the world dark.

The tenth song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator, EARTH vs. ALIEN, is a rock and roll song. It is loud. EARTH is the planet on which humanity originates, vs. is a term used to denote a fight or contest, ALIEN is a word for sentient beings not originating on planet Earth, also used to describe anything which comes from outside our realms of experience. This song is a fight between all that we know and all that we do not know.

The eleventh song on the Guitar Wolf album Beast Vibrator, Female Machine Gun, is a rock and roll song. It is loud. Female is a word used to describe women. Examples of women include Alice Bag, Tabitha Tate, Khutulun, Laura Jane Grace, Kathy Acker, Trina, Pauline Kael, and, in fiction, Storm from the X-Men. Machine Gun is a type of weapon that fires a great many bullets in rapid succession and is designed to maim and kill. This song is a storm of grace designed to main and kill.

This is a Guitar Wolf album. This Guitar Wolf album is named Beast Vibrator. Guitar Wolf are the best band in the world. Guitar Wolf are literally the best band to ever exist. Guitar Wolf are the sun rising and the night falling. Guitar Wolf saved my soul.

This has been an entirely objective review of the new Guitar Wolf album named Beast Vibrator. I would like to extend my thanks to my original correspondent for suggesting this new writing style predicated on balanced factual information. My first draft for this review contained sections such as this: "Mashing together words with a sort of bloodied and beaten glinting glee, Beast Vibrator, Gasoline Lullaby, Barf Night, Female Machine Gun. The trainwreck joy of Beast Vibrator, "V-V-V-V-Vii-iibrator!", trashrock noise, flailin out, the flushing wildness of Robot Maria, the whispering fuzz and dancing guitar spikes on Barf Night, the insane thrashblues of Mesopotamian Lonely, rubbing along with those huge sweeping guitar strokes over the bassruns, the shiver and crash of Female Machine Gun." which I now see were gauche and overtly subjective. Guitar Wolf need no such musings. Guitar Wolf are Guitar Wolf. Guitar Wolf are a rock and roll band. This is a Guitar Wolf album. It is loud.