November 2011 Reviews
By admin on Nov. 25, 2011.
Sick Fucking O
Demo
Members of Voorhees are back with a new band that sounds like…Voorhees. Obviously, not as classic as Spilling Blood Without Reason, but good angry 82 era hardcore that will be enjoyed by fans of Voorhees for sure. Cool Devo cover at the end.
Defile
Demo 2010
Fast, angry, hardcore somewhere between midwestern style and power violence. I bet live you can hear a bit of Rorschach in their sound too. I’d like to hear more.
Slowburn
Demo
Members of a variety of NJHC bands including Spirit, Vision, and Floorpunch playing melodic, Turning Point, style hardcore. This isn’t too bad, but it’s not something I would listen to that often. The members of this band have done much better before.
Beware
Demo
Members of Stick Together and a few other PA bands doing pretty bland Chain of Strength style hardcore that has all of the flaws most 1980′s “melodic,” nearing emo, hardcore bands have. The generic 88 styling of Stick Together are way better. I’m shocked by how many people are so into this.
Bloody Hammer
Demo 2010
Moderately generic Oi! trying to sound like all of the classics. This isn’t a bad effort at sounding like Four Skins, one of my favorites, but isn’t something I will listen to much. I don’t dabble too deeply in this genre during modern times, but check this one out if you love this stuff.
Good Times
Demo
This was handed to me on the way out of a show. I’m not sure if this is supposed to be serious, but the music moves between 88 style hardcore to chugga chugga idiot metal. Add in some pretty misogynistic lyrics and this is pretty shitty.
Hatred Surge
Deconstruct LP
Rescued From Life Records
Taking cues from bands like His Hero Is Gone, Neurosis, and Mind Eraser come this LP by Hatred Surge. Brutal hardcore with alternating male/female vocals. This is one of my favorites of the past few years.
Rorschach
Remain Sedate Reissue LP
Gern Blandsten Records
While I like Protestant a lot more than this one, the first Rorschach LP is an essential part of the evolution of post youth crew hardcore in the nineties. The influence of late eighties bands like Breakdown can still be heard from their very early sound, but so can the incoming influence of bands like Bl’ast!, Voi-void, and Die Kreuzen as well. As with Protestant, the resisue is greatly aided by remastered sound.
Miles Davis
Bitches Brew Live CD
I highly doubt this is a legit release, but worth checking out. The liner notes are hilarious though: the writer acts like NO ONE has ever heard live material of Davis from this era. Tape traders have avidly passed around shows from his electronic years from a damn long time. Ignoring that is comical. There are better shows out there.
Young Republicans
Sabatoge Your Cookout 7″
More Than A Witness Records
One of the great holy grails of the tape trading circuit when I was a teenager was the Young Republicans demo. As you probably know, members of, and songs, from this tape moved to New York City and did a slightly more well known band called Youth Of Today. This demo is pretty generic early eighties hardcore that isn’t bad, but doesn’t really stand out. Worth noting is the songs that did move over to Youth of Today and eventually Project X as well, which is an interesting historical note. Just for that, I strongly suggest picking this up.
Waste Management
Get Your Mind Right 7″
Painkiller Records
Wow!!!! Serious SSD worship from this Massachusetts band. The music is more in the vein of early NYHC bands like The Abused or Agnostic Front, but the pleading, sick, Springa style vocals are unbelievable. I hear a little bit of Crucifix too (SSD meets Crucifix? Fuck.). This would have fit in nicely alongside records on XClaim! or Rat Cage. Nice cover of “Fight,” out of nowhere, in the middle of the record too.
New Lows
Self Titled 7″
Lockin Out Records
Somewhere amongst Word As Law era Neurosis and Humanity Is The Devil era Integrity comes The New Lows’ debut single on Lockin Out. this is a style can be fall apart quick because of too much chugga chugga or experimental bullshit, but The New Lows keep it together. My only complaint is a few too many kickbox style mosh parts. That shit is so corny; however, the band can’t be punished for the idiotic way a crowd way react to them.
DropDead/Converge
Split 7″
DropDead did a split with…Converge? Okay. The DropDead side of this split is pretty good, up to their usual good standards. Converge are just not a band who have ever interested me. Post hardcores love that shit.
Wasted Time
Futility 12″
Grave Mistake Records
Wasted Time come back with an excellent followup to their debut 7″, this time heavily soaked in Kings of Punk era Poison Idea and Oi! bands like Blitz and 4-Skins. Wasted Time is able to tread between an authentic old style and more modern production and stylistic values. This is one of the best records of the decade.
Innumerable Forms
Dark Worship 7″
Hell Massacre Records
Justin Detore’s death metal project is exactly as awesome as it sounds. Serious old school death metal which really stands out in a genre I don’t dive too deeply into outside of most of the classics. A lot of the newer Mind Eraser (Justin’s day job) material in somewhat in this vein, or at least heavily influenced by it. Excellent and worth tracking down.
Gasmask Terror
Black Sun Fake Gold LP
Solar Funeral Records
Gasmask Terror are an interesting band whose sound falls somewhere between UK82 and D-Beat styles. I think this LP drags a little bit, but I think I have a general distaste for longer records in this style from most bands outside of the heavyweights like Discharge. This is definitely worth checking out.
Waste Management
Power Abuse 7″
Painkiller Records
Yes!!! Brutal SSD style hardcore from members of Mind Eraser. This record takes the best of early Boston and New York with some seriously raging lyrics (especially “Too Much Unity”). A definite contender for record of the year.
Signifying Nothing Episode Twenty Seven
By admin on Apr. 26, 2010.
Signifying Nothing Episode Twenty Seven
Playlist
Arms Reach-Sick Dogs (Get Put Down)
Vision-Falling Apart
Stains-Get Revenge
Monster X-Legalize
Naked Raygun-I Don’t Know
Cold Sweat-Abortion is Dinner
Circle Jerks-Beverly Hills
Snake Apartment-Florida
Vile Bodies-Face Without Hands
Kiss It Goodbye-Fire Drill
Youth Brigade-Pay No Attention
Germs-No God
Obliteration-No Escape
Black Flag-Police Story
Show Notes
- Jack Roy Records is doing the Our Gang reissue
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Floorpunch @ Manville 8-3-97
By admin on Sep. 29, 2008.
Destroy Babylon recently posted this video of Floorpunch playing at Manville 8-3-97. You can see me all over this! I don’t remember a ton from this show…Vision also played (really early for some reason…I think they had to leave???) and maybe The Purpose. Someone on the Livewire Board said Fastbreak too but I don’t think they did…they played Manville the next weekend with Hands Tied, In My Eyes, and some others and then the next year with Fit For Abuse (!).
A lot of familiar faces in the crowd. I can see Chris Oliver, Mickey, Matt Molnar, Matt Smith, Joe Oz and tons of others. John Piorkowski pops up at one point so I suppose I went to this show with him.
I definitely go off in this video. I had not seen Floorpunch in months so I was psyched. It’s great how I go flying back to the front at the beginning of It’s The Limit when I realize what song they are covering. There was a scuffle between Little Dave and the drummer of 25 Ta Life at the end of that song. 25 Ta Life headlined, but I remember a mass rush for the exits before they played.
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Absolution Reunion
By admin on Sep. 22, 2008.
For the first time in a very long time I drove up to this show with my friend John. We hit a ton of rain on the way up but, thankfully, by the time we got to New York City it was gone besides some lightning. John and I caught up on what each other was up to and laughed at the antics of the world around us.
On the way up we listened to Dave K’s 1988-1990 NYHC mix.
Upon arriving in Hoboken and trying to find a parking spot for probably around twenty to thirty minutes I quickly realized why I can’t stand that city. Yuppies and “norms” everywhere going to bars and other social gathering. On the way home we had to watch adults stumble out of bars bombed out of their minds. Pathetic. Thankfully, we went directly to the PATH train and got to 9th street pretty quickly where we met up with our friend Dave.
A cab ride later we were in front of the club. I have seen a variety of bands at The Knitting Factory, from 7 Seconds to Kristin Hersh’s solo act. These days I am not really a people person, even worse than before, so when we got in the club I tried to make my way inside as quick as possible to check out whoever was playing.
We ended up getting inside while Maximum Penalty was setting us, which was fine by me. I had not seen MP in many years (I think the last time was in 1996 with Hogan’s Heroes and Vision…) so I did not know what to expect from them. The records they released in the nineties weren’t too hot but I love their demo from 1989, which is one of the best attempts at combining Bad Brains style hardcore with Alleyway Crew style mosh parts.
Despite some new songs that were a bit on the long side, I thought MP played well enough. They busted out most of the demo plus the songs from the Blackout! compilation. A huge pile on for Acceptance ended their set in excellent fashion.
Now this a reunion I just did not think I would ever see. After that haphazardly put together discography CD in the late 90′s (98? 99?) I perceived bad blood between band members and the chance of a reunion being near zero. I made my way up front and slid off to the side where some friends stood so I would be out of the way of the kickboxing (take it back to the nineties, please) and other jerky bullshit. My original plans had been to dance and dive and generally have fun but after running earlier in the day my stomach never settled (at the time I was a little under the weather) so I decided to pass. Soon enough Gavin came out along with Sergio (Collapse, Quicksand), who was filling in on bass, and their fill in drummer Doug (formerly of Slapshot, Speak 714, and other bands).
After a few minutes of tuning Djinji came out to a rather loud round of applause. Quickly they were flying into As We Are (no intro?!?) and from there they proceeded to play a pretty good set. In the beginning they were a little sloppy but that changed after a few songs. For some reason Gavin’s guitar was really, really, low in the mix for a handful of songs as well. Djinji had great things to say between songs and the band went off hard.
I was hoping on the way out to find Djinji so I could mention how much I appreciate his father’s playing with John Coltrane on the Ascension album, but the band had disappeared into the backstage area. Ascension is one of my favorite Coltrane albums. There is an excellent reissue CD from a few years back which combines both versions (as the story goes, I guess, one version came out but was recalled and the second version was then released in subsequent pressings) onto one CD. I tend to like the second version (they are long suites) more, but you can’t go wrong with either one.
After getting the cold shoulder from a few long time “friends” I decided to go find Dave and John and start heading back to New Jersey. We ended up at the World Trade Center PATH station and from there parted ways and headed home. Absolution and Maximum Penalty are playing ABC No Rio in a few weeks. I don’t think I am going to be able to make it, but I would advise others to check them out while they can. There are rumors of a more organized discography CD in the works as well.
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Signifying Nothing Episode Nine
By admin on Jun. 12, 2006.
Signifying Nothing Episode Nine
Playlist
Discharge-State Violence State Control
Limp Wrist-What’s Gone Wrong
Calvary-Order No. 270
Calvary-Time To Die
The Dayglo Abortions-Proud To Be A Canadian
The FU’s-Trendy Nazi Hypocrites
Vision-Suspect Device
Born Against-Resist Control
Direct Control-Bucktown Hardcore
Tragedy-Life
I Object-Intro/Like A Billboard
Skitsystem-Vald
Raining Bricks-Brains On Vacation
Black SS-Terror Of The Northeast
The Geeks-Still I Stay The Same
Dead Kennedys-Cesspool In Eden
Jello Biafra & The Melvins-Those Dumb Punk Kids Will Buy Anything
Big Boys-TV
Knockdown-Get Away
Fastbreak-Don’t Stop Trying
Bound-Die Like Them
Don’t No-Underground
Spazz-Rat Pack
Devoid Of Faith-Science Is Their Religion
Reagan Youth-Reagan Youth
Cop Out-Cursed Birth
Black SS-I Want Out
Inmates-Pipe Bomb
Frank Castle Gonna Break Your Neck!-Destroy The Hippie Culture
Googol Plex-No Medicine Can Cure Folly
The Stains-Quit The Human Race
Inferno-Ronald Reagan
None Of The Above-Propaganda Control
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