Signifying Nothing

Obliteration-This Is Tomorrow

By admin on May. 25, 2011.

Obliteration
This Is Tomorrow 7″
Painkiller Records

Wow! Members of Knife Fight and Mind Eraser come together to play heavy crusty hardcore. Somewhere between Crucifix, Cro-Mags, Totalitar, and Nausea, this six song ep is one of the best records of the past few years. More please!

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Cervix-Tour Tape

By admin on May. 24, 2011.

Cervix
Tour Tape

Yet another great crust band. Recently, there seems to be a lot of them. Music in the vein of Nausea or Anti Cimex with distorted, political, lyrics. Well worth checking out. This band is from New York City, so hopefully I will get to see them sometime soon.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Obliteration-Self Titled

By admin on Jan. 6, 2011.

Obliteration
Self Titled 7”

Members of Knife Fight and Mind Eraser combine for fast D-Beat hardcore influenced by bands like Nausea, Misery, and Discharge. Noisy, ugly, hardcore which really stands out from most of the boring bands who play this style. Highly recommended.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Hatred Surge-Isolated Human

By admin on Oct. 11, 2010.

Hatred Surge
Isolated Human EP
Painkiller Records

Until about a year ago, I wasn’t too familiar with this band. I am, however, very impressed with what I am hearing from them. Hatred Surge have duel male-female vocals that trade off similarly to bands like Antischism and Nausea. Musically, I hear a very heavy influence from His Hero Is Gone, Cop Out, and other bands from that era alongside the above mentioned bands and others like Neurosis and Discharge. This is one of the best records I have heard in awhile.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

At The Cost Of An Animal

By admin on Feb. 18, 2009.

A few weeks back, someone asked for stories about how people came to become vegetarians. As many people might know, I stopped eating meat a few years before I got fully involved with hardcore. I often tell a story about refusing to eat for a week because no one believed me (it still seems so strange to me that people think it is WEIRD not to eat meat) and another one about standing up to my parents on one of the, mercifully, few vacations we ever went on.

The seeds of this came a little bit before that. If you’ll remember back to the first Iraq War for a moment in the early nineties. I was only a little sixth grade outcast, but I was already not really feeling the yellow ribbon fever that had taken over the nation. My middle school years were spent getting beat up, spit on, depantsed, and seriously fucked up with in some pretty disturbing ways that I don’t want to go into here. I dug my grave further during sixth grade when I began to vocally talk about not being too psyched on The War.

We would watch briefings every morning (I never figured out why) during first and second period. My biggest problem with the whole situation was that there seemed to be a lot of not only innocents being killed (“collateral damage,” a barbaric term) but holy sites were being destroyed. Now, by sixth grade the whole higher power thing wasn’t really my thing already, I wouldn’t officially refer to myself as an atheist until a year or two later, but it seemed pretty disturbing that the so-called good guys would bomb thousands of years old holy shrines.

I had a guidance counselor I used to talk to while we waited to go into school every morning. We both loved the New York Rangers and would discuss the previous night’s game. Once in awhile I would bring up my concerns about not only innocent humans but innocent landmarks being destroyed. He would listen, eager for a troubled child to open up, and try to walk me through why I would feel this way. Critically thinking about this led me to decide that not only was war the wrong but so was the death and destruction that came with it.

This led me to start thinking about what else was wrong. A television show I watched at the time had a teenage protagonist who became a vegetarian during the show’s run. I thought back to Operation Desert Storm. If bombing countries into oblivion for a non-sustainable (I was also OBSESSED with solar power at this time) energy source (I remember the six am news each morning where they would drearily announce that oil had reach thirty dollars a barrel. Doh.) was wrong, isn’t killing animals when you don’t really have to also wrong? Why do we eat meat? Why does our diet have to have so much collateral damage?

A year later, we moved to southern New Jersey to get away from the hellish nightmare my childhood was becoming. The first day of school, I sat down in period eight and introduced myself to the long haired kid who sat across from me. It turned out, he liked punk rock and was a vegetarian.

Ah ha!

We would talk in class about animal rights and what I would soon come to know as hardcore bands. I didn’t get serious about either until the next year, but all the pieces of the puzzle came together. If it weren’t for a lot of those early bands I heard like M.D.C., Youth Of Today, Gorilla Biscuits, Nausea, etc I wouldn’t have stuck with hardcore probably.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites