Reviews For The Week Of July 25th
By admin on Jul. 25, 2011.
Mind Eraser at some Scion sponsored gig. I giggled at how DFJ bums out the bouncers.
Blessed Offal
Self Titled Tape
Death metal coming highly recommended by friends who dig this stuff. While a few songs go on forever, Blessed Offal keeps them interesting with enough changes of pace to not lose me. This is pretty good.
United Youth
Demo
Decent 88 style hardcore that goes by in the blink of an eye. I see a lot of potential for an ep. Keep going.
Vaccine
Crimes In Blood 5″
Painkiller Records
I am glad this is a 5″ because there is about three minutes of music here. I don’t think a single song goes over 30 seconds. Vaccine fit somewhere in between Infest and No Comment, playing blazing fast hardcore with some changes within those brief songs. This is excellent.
Black Flag
Live At The On Broadway CD
Huh, this is totally weird. I’ve had pieces of both of these sets (the debut of the “My War Demos” lineup) for about 13 years, but only parts put together to make one set. Even weirder: It was labeled “Los Angeles 1983,” not even the right city/year. This obvious bootleg (hello, poser alert, on the wrong song titles) puts out very nice soundboards of two Flag shows from 1982 at the On Broadway in San Francisco. My Rules and I’ve Got To Run are brand new songs, and some of the My War songs are played as well. Obviously, this is essential material from Black Flag, but I’m not sure if you want to support the bootleggers.
Bl’asting Concept
Self Titled LP
It’s Alive Records
Our old friend Fred Hammer put this one out on his long dormant It’s Alive label. Not surprisingly, because of their name, this band must be big fans of Bl’ast!, Fu Manchu, and Annihilation Time. Heading more towards the rockier sound of the latter two bands, I lost a bit of interest when listening to this one. I think there is a big audience for a band like this right now, so I’m sure you will check it out for yourself.
War Hungry
Self Titled LP
Six Feet Under Records
Somewhere between Iron Age and…Life Of Agony (? Seriously? People like that crap?) comes the new record from PA’s War Hungry. This is pretty metal and would have fit in with all the Roadrunner Records bands the kids in my high school who were into “hawd” bands dug. I’m glad I stuck to Floorpunch and Voorhees. This is definitely not for me.
Mauser
End Of The Line 7″
Vinyl Rites Records
Burly Discharge/Anti Cimex inspired hardcore from the cess pool of Florida. This is a genre filled with lots of garbage, but this stands out as an essential modern piece of d-beat hardcore.
Whirl
Distressor Tape
Bridgetown Records
As if D-Beat and youth crew hardcore being genres filled with garbage was annoying enough, shoegazer is another genre where the good is heavily outweighed by the bad and vastly overrated. A friend told me Whirl were very much in the vein of Slowdive, so I checked this out. “Sounds like Slowdive” indeed! This is beautiful, dream like, shoegazer ala Slowdive. After a soundbite from Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, Whirl slam into some fantastic music. Seven songs is a perfect length for this, leaving the tape at its ending before any hint of boredom, a big problem with this genre, ensues.
The Rival Mob
Raw Life 12″
Lockin’ Out Records
The Rival Mob are one of the best bands out there today. Somewhere between Madball, youth crew hardcore, and Ringworm, they sound fresh and interesting without anything silly or outside the realm of hardcore. Great stuff.
Pushead Top 100 Podcast Part One Version One
By admin on Jun. 6, 2011.
Here’s the idea: Instead of doing regular Signifying Nothing podcasts this summer, I thought a cool idea would be to do podcasts chronicling the famous Top 100 Records of the Eighties that Pushead did many years ago. If people like this, I’d love to try it with various specific record labels too.
The plan: I will publish two versions of each set. One will be a straight mix, like the ones we all discovered so much cool music from in days gone by. The local young rager in training could always use a few more. The second will be a normal podcast with my own commentary like a regular episode of Signifying Nothing.
Twenty songs for each. I think this will be cool.
- Discharge-War’s No Fairy Tale
- Society System DeControl-Get It Away
- Subhumans-Parasites
- Minor Threat-Bottled Violence
- Bad Brains-The Regulator
- True Sounds of Liberty-Abolish Government/Silent Majority
- Disorder-Violent Crime
- Rudimentary Peni-Black President
- Jerry’s Kids-Raise The Curtain
- Anti Sect-Channel Zero Reality
- Gism-Death, Agonies, & Screams
- Faith-You’re X’d
- DYS-More Than Fashion
- Cockney Rejects-Bad Man
- State of Alert-Disease
- Sick of it All-Pete’s Sake
- Necros-Youth Camp
- Adolescents-Democracy
- The FU’s-Peer Police
- Antidote-Zero Mentality
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Category: Uncategorized
1 Comment
Crow-Vertigo b/w Occupied Japan
By admin on Mar. 30, 2011.
Crow
Vertigo b/w Occupied Japan 7″
Sorry State Records
Unlike so many American bands that get poppier, trendy, or keep putting out the same record over and over, Crow continue to impress me as their sound evolves over the past twenty plus years. Always influenced by Discharge, their sound is now a heavy, metallic, assault. I am reminded of a rawer Best Wishes era Cro-Mags (minus love songs to Krishna). Hopefully Crow will continue to record records like this one.
Category: Uncategorized
No Comments
Green Beret-Demo
By admin on Mar. 17, 2011.
Green Beret
Demo
Not surprisingly, given their name, there is a heavy early Boston influence on this demo. A bit of a Discharge influence can also be heard here. Great lyrics combined with the excellent music makes for a memorable demo. I am looking forward to more.
Category: Uncategorized
No Comments
Show Review: The Rival Mob-Give-Stick Together-Mob Mentality @ Asbury Lanes Asbury Park NJ 2-18-11
By admin on Feb. 25, 2011.
Check out this ILL flyer. Even cooler when I thought the bat was some kind of large bondage collar.
My first show of 2011, and first since the summer, had me traveling up to Asbury Park at the last minute to see a few bands I’ve been meaning to check out. After a long afternoon in my office, (someone pays me to code wikis and listen to Discharge…what a world) and a quick trip to Walmart for earplugs, where I observed a near fight, I was off to Asbury Park. Parkway North is such a mess. Potholes everywhere, construction half completed, and a massive amount of shitty drivers on the road. Can I have my taxes back? Getting to Asbury Lanes is really easy (drive to Casino Skate Park. Make a left. Park.) so I made it up in time to only miss the opener Mob Mentality. Alex from Dissed & Dismissed Fanzine had tweeted me earlier in the day about them, so I apologize for missing them.
In 2011, in-between band time is weird. I huddled up in the corner and answered some email from students on my phone and read a few hours of tweets in Tweetdeck. I met up with a few friends who I had not seen in a long time, but otherwise kept to myself. I wish I’d had a smartphone in, say, 1998 to pass the time.
After some delay, Stick Together were up next. They are from Wilkes Barre PA, a place I used to know some people from. Musically, they reminded me a bit of Release or Four Walls Falling. Their singer also reminded me a bit of Rob Fish, speaking his mind between songs about a number of matters. I yawned my way through all the Straight Edge talk, mostly because I’ve been through too many generations of that to care, but was pleased they had something to say at least. I didn’t appreciate the lecture to women about not being “slutty,” which was based around, “you don’t have to be like that!” Wow, I’m sure the women in the audience really appreciated a Dude needing to let them know! Hey, it’s 2011, let’s stop policing people’s sexuality, please. With that being said, at least Stick Together have something to say to their audience more than goofy talk about their edges or how many shirts and records they have for sale. I am going to check out their record.
I was looking forward to seeing Give after really enjoying their recorded output. Give are from Washington DC and remind me a lot of Swiz or Ignition. They really impressed in a live setting and played some promising new material. The crowd seemed to be into them and the band really was into their performance. I will look forward to more. Maybe we could interview them?
After a little bit of time tweeting back and forth with a former student about how shitty the major political parties are in our country, it was time for The Rival Mob. After a quick hello to DFJ, I got a good spot on the side of the stage, deciding to stay out of the pit and just hang out. The Rival Mob played a nice mix of older and newer songs from all their records. The crowd was pretty into it, dancing and diving and having lots of fun. I like them a lot, which is fantastic considering how horrible that “style” has become over the years.
I bailed really quick after the show and headed home. I had a great audiobook to finish on my phone and honestly was pretty beat after being up since 5:30am. After a quick trip to Wawa (I’m now the mayor of FOUR Wawas) after getting back to Manahawkin I headed home and dropped into bed.
Category: Uncategorized
No Comments