Ferret’s Review: Not Sorry-Our Choices
By admin on Mar. 28, 2011.
Not Sorry
Our Choices 7″
React! Records
First thing to mind- sick album art! Five songs of old school Straight Edge hardcore. Sounds a bit like Floorpunch meets XChorusX and a bit (yes, yes- a very tiny bit) of Absolution for good measure. Think gang style back-ups, lot’s of “Busts!”, and some hard mosh. I don’t hear the Youth of Today influence that people have thrown around with this band. Big points for them going with this style and not sounding overly generic. The lyrics are actually quite good- introspective and well planned out. They sound like a promising live band…hmmm…. east coast tour sounds nice.
On Parade-Demo
By admin on Mar. 19, 2011.
On Parade
Demo
Another band with a big spoiler alert in their band name. On Parade are definitely going for the energetic late 80′s style that bands like Straight Ahead,Youth of Today, and others really set the standard in. The raw recording really helps this a lot. I would be interested in hearing more from them.
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Citizens Arrest-Colossus: The Discography
By admin on Jan. 27, 2011.
Citizens Arrest
Colossus: The Discography Double LP
Nuclear War Now Records
Citizens Arrest are one of the most essential bands of the late 80′s to early 90′s period when hardcore was taking a turn towards uglier, noisier, and harsher sounds. Contemporary to bands like Rorschach, Burn, and No Comment, Citizens Arrest’s sound is equal parts influenced by bands like Napalm Death and Siege, and more youth crew oriented bands like Youth of Today or Infest. This discography contains pretty much everything it could possibly contain in a very organized manner. Their lukewarm demo (includes vocals by Ted Leo, that guy emos and post hardcores love so much) begins things, followed by one track from their legendary WNYU session. Their essential seven inch follows, which really shows the influence of early DC bands like Void and Youth Brigade, but also Siege and Infest. A variety of compilation songs comes next. Finally, their monstrous LP Colossus, finishes the discography. Heavily influenced by both Infest and Napalm Death (and other early Earache bands), their LP is the band’s finest hour. Daryl’s vocals are ugly, getting close to death metal styled sounds. I always wanted bands to cover the Utopia intro as a teenager. An absolutely essential and very influential set of recordings. It looks like this might be out of print already?
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Free Spirit-Demo
By admin on Sep. 20, 2010.
Free Spirit
Demo
Young band from New England playing straight edge hardcore in the vein of bands like Our Gang, Straight Ahead, and Youth of Today. Not entirely derivative, there is also a modern sensibility to the music that keeps it sounding fresh. During the famed 95-97 period, I bet this band would have blown up.
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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.
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