When I was a kid and worked in Discovery Rekkids, SuponA, the highlight de semaine was the arrival of the delivery van bearing the Rough Trade/Cartel box. When I was a bit older and worked at 9-Mile Distribution (The Cartel), Leamo Spa, the highlight de jour was the arrival of a box from Revolver, Backs, Rough Trade, Small Wonder, Fast, Factory, and a golden host of like-minded distros/labels. Some 30 years later, both those experiences return to me now as I sit here unpacking this week’s delivery from La Vida Es Un Mus
Stroll with us now, casual reader/cultural aficionado, as we saunter through this atrocity exhibition in vinyl. Absorb the striking stencilled murals. Squint at the dazzling silk-screened card. Shield your eyes from the strobe lights reflecting off of the coloured wax (where applicable). Inserts. Posters. Stickers. Round. Or. Skinny. Bottoms. Fidelity wavers, strides purposefully into the red. The speakers scream while my daddy prunes. Meanwhile, back in the anti-collektor-scum bunker: black remains the colour of purity. De stijl, my beat-poetic-heart:
Condominium – Warm Home (Condominium Records)
St. Paul, Minnesota: home to weirdcore fuck-ups, Condominium.
The word anticipation fails comprehensively to convey the expectations chez Encoule prior to this rekkid’s arrival on my deck. Having eBayed in vain to track down copies of ‘Barricades’, ‘Gag’ or any of their earlier demos/splits/EPs/whatever, hitting ‘repeat’ on You Tube was the closest these ears had come to the raw vinyl essence of Condominium . . . until, that is, ‘Warm Home’ landed.
In spite of my frankly limited familiarity with Condominium’s back catalogue, three listens in, I’ve now heard enough to boldly suggest that ‘Warm Room’ is the band’s most defined work to date. Despite possessing a mere seven ‘songs’, duly dispatched in around 22 minutes, the depth and breadth of this release stretches the evolved framework of hardcore above and beyond its atypical limitations.
Adeptly recorded, engineered, and produced to ensure maximum volume at needle level, ‘Warm Room’ is a panoramic aural vista in which to unwind after a hard day at the tills in Tesco, manning the phones at your local call centre, dispensing methadone, digging graves . . . or whatever it is y’all do for a living. Veering from hardcore to weirdcore like a drunk at the wheel of a school bus on a semi-frozen M42, all manner of unexpected sounds emanate from the grooves, like animals attempting to escape from a burning zoo. One minute Condominium deliver their trademark angular hardcore with maximum dexterity, impeccable fidelity, and convincing sincerity, the next we’re up to our necks in a skronking fug soup, with violins replacing the traditional atonal saxophones. These sections are significant. They expand exponentially beyond the confines of pastiche exhibited in similar circumstances by recent long players from The Men, Sex Church and Total Control. These boys are true freaks, make no mistake. Just one glance at the rekkid’s unnerving artwork will tell you all you need to know about that. It has the look, the feel and the grandeur of a Factory Records release, A Fast product, or something pretentious from the house of 4AD/Mute.
In conclusion, there are rekkids you need to know about, ones you can nonchalantly d/l from some soon-to-be-illegal interface, and rekkids you need to get up off your yr lazy arse and make a constructive effort to own. ‘Warm Room’ is one of the latter.
Sump – Demo 111 – (Dead Section Records)
Hails!!! From the frozen northern lands of England, the shires of York, the horde known simply as: Sump.
Admirably prolific in their own back yard, Sump have already issued a plethora of self-released cassettes, 7”/splits . . . and now this: their debut long player. Culled from rehearsal room demos thrown down in 2010, ‘Demo 111’ proffers 19-cuts of brutal blackened punk. In terms of the obsidian elements, this is no Bone Awl emperor’s new clothes bring-and-buy sale. You can trace the black metal in Sump’s palate all the way back to Venom; the d-beat all the way back to Motörhead; and the KBD punk rock all the way back to Raw Records.
As a two-piece (gtr/vox/drums), Sump make one fuck of a noise. Fidelity-wise, this release pisses all over the band’s earlier work. I’m pretty sure there’s a bass in their somewhere, too, but it’s not credited within the white on black gothic type that punctuates the artwork with such cryptic menace. Aesthetically, this is a wonderful artefact to own. You can still smell the ambience of the silk-screening process on both the insert and sleeve. I love the smell of napalm in the morning.
Kromosom – ‘8-Tracks’ (D-Takt & Rapunk Records)
Melbourne’s Kromosom take their d-beat lineage from the more metallic backwaters of Japanese noise punk, and, I guess, considering their geographical location, that’s demographically representative, if nothing else. Compared to a bunch of other hyped Australian bands breaking through right now (Total Control, Royal Headache, Dead Farmers), Kromosom stick resolutely to their d-beat jones.
All of this is perfectly acceptable from a heard-it-all-before-yawn perspective, however, and whether you actually need a bit of Kromosom in your life is a matter of some conjecture. I’ve heard plenty of better d-beat, and I’m slightly bugged by the nods to commercial mainstream metal that stick out like a sore plectrum finger. The artwork is kinda lame, too, in a faux-Vaaska raw ponx style. Consequently, everything Kromosom set out to prove in the first instance is duly rendered ineffective, in my opinion.
Crooked Cross – S/T EP (Video Disease Records)
Side-project from members of Cult Ritual and Grinning Death Head (amongst others) offers up five evil jams marinated in essence of black metallic punk rock. The vocals are at the sick end of mid-tone growl, the guitars were presumably bought during a skiing trip to Norway, and when they’ve finally smashed the drum kit to fuck, they could always sell the remains on as cardboard boxes. The artwork is sensational in its purple-tinted gothic splendour, lyric inset, gold vinyl, and ltd to frankly fucking silly numbers. Good luck finding a copy!
Stab – Stab Nation Rising (Quality Control HQ)
London straightedge hardcore mob, Stab, ease their collective political consciousness into the public domain with this six-track banger. Hot on the heels of the band’s highly regarded demo, ‘Stab Nation Rising’ is a stunning manifesto of malevolent intent. Stick these fuckers up against the massed hordes of the d-beat battalions, and that might finally get me into World Of Warcraft. In terms of intensity, velocity and pure fuck-you-ism, Stab smash you repeatedly in the face with the lump hammer of hardcore evolution. Shrapnel from every important era of the genre has been honed to perfection for what is, in my humble, the finest release thus far on one of the most exciting labels the UK has to offer circa now. Die-cut jacket, stickered poly bag, lyrics, green vinyl for the quick of the mark, these will be flying out on eBay before you can say ‘ideological oppression’.
Avfall – ‘Now’ EP (Hardcore Survives)
Quality d-beat aggression from Japan’s finest living rekkid label. This six-track EP suggests Mauser will be up against it when they visit Japan to tour with the Hardcore Survives roster later this year. Avfall don’t wander too far from the script, admittedly, but what they lack in originality, they more than make up for in quality of composition, delivery and volume.
Varix – S/T EP (Discos Basura)
Four-girl, seven-track, keeper, out of Minneapolis. Recycled thick card sleeve, fold out poster lyric sheet. Crazy Spirit-beat-fuelled, bass driven, hardcore that vocally trumps Cervix in the Ghosts Of Beki Bondages in Towers department. First release by Catalonian label, Discos Basura, officially distributed by Solo Para Punks, and anyone who’s au fait with the sheer unbridled vitality of the Spanish contemporary hardcore scene will instantly recognise that as the compliment it invariably is. Essential punking.
Bad Noids – S/T (no label)
The kids are revolting!
Cleveland, Ohio, a city steeped in punk rock history, has another export worthy of your attention, scuzz-lovers. Bad Noids are quite possibly certifiable, as anyone who attempts to weld sick Crazy Spirit vocals/beats to School Jerks/B-Lines shaped snot-rag-punk indubitably has to be, by definition. ‘My Country’ has to be heard to be believed: one minute we’re CS-stomping through a miasma of fuzzed fretting, the next Bob Dylan has dropped by with his harmonica for an impromptu solo. Everything in the manual says it should suck chunks, but deep in the future annals of a punk-yet-to-come, pop music somehow wins the war, and Bad Noids duly take their place in the total-fucking-punk-rock hall of infamy, Cleveland branch. One last thing . . . I’m pleased to tell you that the rear sleeve of my copy proudly displays the legend ‘2nd pressing’ . . . what a totally passé fucking double-loser I am, huh?
Long Pigs – S/T EP (SMRT)
Critics of the contemporary New York DIY hardcore scene regularly bemoan the implied nepotism of the milieu, claiming the bands all look the same, sound the same, and, this is possibly veering into the area of conspiracy theory: are actually all the same four dudes (have you noticed, you NEVER see them all together, maan)! Obviously, that’s utter bollocks, and I’d just like to refute that observation indefatigably before we begin this shit.
Long Pigs, like Crazy Spirit, Perdition, Hank Wood & the Hammerheads (to name but three), and a loose affiliation of bands from Boston, namely Brain Killer and Bloodkrow Butcher, do share one or two sonic aestheticisms, I’m not going to lie to you, but there are subtle differences. Viva la difference! Long Pigs are more traditional in influence than Crazy Spirit, less politically observant than Perdition, Bloodkrow Butcher or Brain Killer, and nowhere near as close to certification/sectioning as Hank Wood in the mental health arena. If you want me to dig up a sacred relic from the influence coffin in terms of reference for Long Pigs, I’d hark back to the days of Dangerhouse. Black Flag are in there too. I could play this game all day, but for your sake, I’ll stop there.
These guys are the dudes that run NYC’s Toxic State Records, and there is anecdotal evidence to support the value-based assumption that they hang on to life itself by the white bits at the ends of their fingernails . . . but fuck that, I go for quantitive over qualitative in that regard. In conclusion, if Long Pigs remind these ears of anything, it’s the punk-rock-on-the-edge-of-sanity of Dawn Of Humans, the one band I left out of my grouping of NY (and affiliated) raw punx earlier in this review to give it the feel of a smart-arsed ending. Contrived? I should coco.
Bloodkrow Butcher – S/T EP (Total Fucker)
Slimmed down to a 3-piece, featuring Brain Killer’s PJ on drums, Boston’s Bloodkrow Butcher just keep evolving, and this is their best work to date, 5-tracks of justified and ancient punk rock fury.
Politically motivated, and hell-bent on agitation, this is closer in DNA to UK82 (with a dash of KBD) than d-beat, yet Discharge is the beast Bloodkrow Butcher resemble closest. Not the Discharge of ‘Hear Nothing, See Nothing, Say Nothing’, but the Discharge of ‘Realities Of War’, a completely different kettle of fish, in many respects. As a benchmark for how much I value this release, I inadvertently bought two copies of it, and mailed one off to Cornovi, the land of Dickus Porteri, the very same day: that’s how much I wanted him to own this rekkid. Incidentally, the last piece of vinyl that elicited such a response was Brain Killer’s ‘Every Actual State Is Corrupt’. Co-incidence or grand design, you wear the wig, you be the judge!
Jean Encoule – Jan 2012 – www.trakMARX.com