LA FRACTION

My introduction to LA FRACTION was in 2002. We played with AMDI PETERSENS ARMÉ and TRAGEDY at Gilman and Billy was wearing a bright fukkn red LA FRACTION shirt and it just stuck out, you know? It wasn't black, it didn't look "punk" in the generic sense of the descriptor, and it just stuck out. I knew all those dudes, it's not like we were tight or anything, so I didn't ask about the shirt and just kinda filed it away mentally....to be addressed later. And then five years later their third LP La Vie Rêvée dropped and I was driving that French band on their US/Canadian tour, a tour that included a boat in Texas and threats of violence in San Francisco and and drugs and botched border crossings at Niagra Falls and a crazy ass frontman in Pittsburgh and a show with WOLFBRIGADE and PISSCHRIST in Milwaukee (epic evening, seriously) and it was fukkn magic. Really, it was. I have toured with a lot of bands...good bands, and good people...and I have had a really good time with most of them. But the bands I have really connected with? I can count them on one hand. LA FRACTION lives on that hand. I could talk about the 450+ mile drive east from Missoula (no stops...my longest stretch to date) with Magali sitting shotgun. I could talk about Dédé showing up in Leipzig and making John and me snort soap (that happened). I could tell a lot of stories that are now a fucking decade old, but my point is that this band is special, and if you have yet to discover them...then today is going to be a very special day for you. Similar to the day I looked up at the Gilman stage and saw that bright red shirt and wondered what band would make a red shirt with an (even/already in 2002) outdated Photoshop 101 image plastered on the front. What band? LA FRACTION. They are from Paris.....and they are (still) fucking beautiful.  

LA FRACTION

This tape was released by Nikt Nic Nie Wie, and contains LA FRACTION's debut LP from 1998 and their EP from 1996. Twenty years cannot dull the power of these songs....

WOLF MEETING: PRÊCHEUR LOOP // SKEPTICS

You know those times when you just open your eyes and you are alive? It's a pretty good feeling, and a feeling that we all should have more often. That doesn't really have anything to do with either of the French bands on this tape, but it's a thing I was thinking while I was listening to it....so maybe they are related. Twee/pop from PRÊCHEUR LOOP, really really good shit. Subdued psych/no wave on the flip..."Spare No Time" is a lost Nugget. Get it...feel alive. 

WOLF MEETING

CONTAINER CRUSTIES FROM HELL

If you were around in the '00s then you likely heard about this French band. And if you weren't turned off by the art then you surely dismissed them because of the name. I mean, you have a lot of stuff to choose from, a lot of things to enjoy, so it makes sense that you would want to focus on the things you think you might like. It's cool...I did the same thing. Thankfully, the folks at Dratsab Records in Malaysia are here to help us to get right with this one, and they've made these tracks available to a new audience - even if that audience is made of people who should have paid attention the first time around. Absolutely relentless crust/grind with searing female leads and harsh male backups. The guitars are like rusty knives, and there's a vibe that touches the killer German shits of the era that we all fukkn loved for a season (AKEPHAL, ACME, etc.)....but mostly this tape just rrrriiiiipppppssss. No reliance on downtuning or crushing riffs, instead CONTAINER CRUSTIES FROM HELL just drop a monster in your earholes and leave. Because after a half hour like this? There simply ain't nothing left.

CONTAINER CRUSTIES FROM HELL

SEASON

What would you do if I said "mid '90s metallic French emotional hardcore"? What would you do? Time to decide...

...because I just said it.

SEASON

PEUR PANIQUE

I shared the 2011 demo a while back, but I think that France's PEUR PANIQUE got better after I did. The 61 seconds of "Gachis Permanent" sets the stage (and kinda validates the existence of fast hardcore), and the remaining baker's dozen tracks just keep on settling the score. Ferocious, blistering fastcore/PV with slow riffs that will bring you to your knees (or incite you to mosh the shit out of your bedroom). That 2011 demo takes up eight tracks, and the remaining six bangers (and they are basically all bangers) seem to come from two separate sessions...shit man, I don't care when they recorded them, I'm just happy that they did. It's worth noting that "A Quois Tu Penses?" has a sick Tragicore vibe absent from the rest of the tape...but mostly I just want More French Fastcore!

DEMOS: 2011 - 2013

JEAN-PIERRE RAMPAL // CLAUDE BOLLING

If you are anywhere near my age and had parents who gave a shit about music in a casual normal person way while you were growing up, then chances are good that there was a copy of this 1975 release in your house. Described as a "crossover" composition (just not the kind of crossover frequently covered in these annals), jazz pianist/composer Claude Bolling wrote this piece for a jazz trio and flute because...well, because no one had done that before. His approach to jazz is relatively standard - no freakouts here, no incomprehensible time signatures, the kind of jazz your vanilla ass parents could totally get down with. He kinda shreds the piano in "Sentimentale" though, and he was pals with Oscar Peterson, so respect. Jean Pierre Rampal, for his part, was a square ass French flautist (that's a person who plays the flute, you imbecile) who played a solid fukkn gold flute (true story). Bolling wrote the shit, Rampal joined his trio, and BOOM they sold millions of records to people like my parents. I picture this record in the living rooms of adults who owned 20 LPs, and this was the beginning and end of their "cultured" genre, proving that they didn't just listen to Bob Seger or (in my parents' case) THE CARPENTERS. That said, it's actually a pretty pleasant listen, even today. It doesn't slay or anything like that...but it's pretty easy on the ears, and I guess it kinda sounds like spring....whatever that means. Also, I not only still have my folks' vinyl copy, but this cassette that I have kept hauling around with me for twenty plus years for some unknown reason...so I guess that makes me a square grown up now.

SUITE FOR FLUTE AND JAZZ PIANO

LITOVSK

While I feel like the formidable '80s goth/new wave rehashed by punks might soon be cast aside for the next regurgitation du jour, releases like this one give me pause. France's LITOVSK just fukkn nail it on their 2014 demo, and I have every hope that the upcoming vinyl release will be even better. It's as close to perfect as any brooding punk could ask for - driving, forceful, catchy, engaging...all of the right adjectives apply. Five tracks that have been passed around the internet for some time already, but I like to be thorough and make sure your needs are met.

LITOVSK

TRAITRE

I know that all of you punks have scooped the RIXE single by now (and if you haven't, then you should), but there's another French Oi! band, slightly more under-the-radar, that you need to get hip to. You can thank me after you listen to this shit.

TRAITRE

GHOST TRAP

This came in a package with a few killer hardcore tapes, and kinda passed me by at first listen. A lot of the melodic bands that people love are like that - even though sometimes I go back later and find out that I really like them, like J CHURCH (who I played with in Colorado in '94 and left the room before they played because I had heard they were a cool pop punk band...I told Lance about that night a decade later in my living room and we both laughed). Sometimes those bands get me right away, usually when they have a little grit, like NEON PISS (first song here is on par with the first track on the NEON PISS demo, by the way), and on a second visit that's exactly how French band GHOST TRAP strikes me. Whatever I wanted to hear when I first played this banger, it wasn't infectious and earnest punk played by a band with teeth (and, apparently, braces) that tear through the raspy melodies and guitars front and center dishing out Midwest HC hooks. Whatever I wanted to hear on that day was not this...I must have been in a weird mood that day. 

GHOST TRAP

AMER

It seems that this Parisian outfit is no more, but if a band's legacy is seven minutes of brutality than a band would find it difficult to leave the stage on more impressive fashion than AMER. Blasting hardcore of the highest order, these eight tracks are a fukkn bulldozer (and live footage indicates that it was not mere studio trickery) - take the knuckledragging pace of the intro to "Patriarchal Psychopath" and listen to it ease casually into a surge of powerfully violent hardcore with machine gun drums and then descend back into a hateful mosh. Shit is just ugly. Amanda's vocals are next level, especially for the style, and they suit the music perfectly....start/stop hardcore mania delivered with passion and maximum intensity - really wish this band had more tracks to offer, because these are going to get a lot of listens at TEHQ.

AMER

PEUR PANIQUE

Perks of the trade, my friends: sometimes shit like this just shows up on my doorstep. Well, I don't really have a doorstep, but the mailperson puts it in my mailslot. But sometimes it doesn't fit and they just leave me a note and I bike to the post office annex on Bryant street on my lunch break to pick it up. But the point is that sometimes those trips are really worthwhile because those packages too big for my mailslot have tapes like this one inside. Ugly, menacing French hardcore/pv inside. A filthy, distorted, fist clenching killer with screaming and shouting and breakdowns and blastbeats - you know, exactly what you want (if you know what's good for you). The 20 second "Populace" is that jammer, though the breakdown in the following track ("Veine Cave") is about twelve steps beyond complete crush. Eight songs in just over six minutes - and one of those minutes is the fukkn intro (the last 50 seconds in the outro). Complete crush, total kill.

PEUR PANIQUE

POLLUTION CAPITALE

I'm a big fan of "time and place" comps that take an aural picture of what's going on in a certain city and/or scene, even if every song isn't your jam (it's a comp, what are the odds of liking everything?) there is probably something you dig, something you've never heard before, or something outside your comfort zone that gets your juices flowing. Pollution Capitale fills all three of those categories and then some - 

Things I Dig: 

PEUR PANIQUE, LOBSTER KILLED ME, YOUTH AVOIDERS

Things I've Never Heard Before: 

BIÉRE SOCIALE, SHAWN KEMP, BESOIN DEAD

Things Outside My Comfort Zone: 

ABJECT OBJECT, BIT PART, BLACK SHABBATH, JESSICA 93 (who dish out perhaps the best track on the tape, a methodical goth/post punk jam that should be mandatory listening for supposed fans of the genre/s)

There are also tracks that could be filed as Shit I Like A Lot: 

KRIGSKÅDE, AMER, TRASHLEY

Essentially no duds on this comp as long as you are open to new things. There's hardcore, synth punk, post-emo (yeah, that's a thing - I should know since I just made it up), raw punk, some tasteful blast beats and lots of riffs that you will wish you had written but were written by people who probably live really far from you. Seriously, a lot of riffs. This is what comps should be; welcome to Paris circa 2012.

POLLUTION CAPITALE

BÖKANÖVSKY

Someone want to talk to me intelligently about French emo? It's a subgenre I'm far less familiar with than most so I can't speak with anything approaching authority. This release sat essentially dormant on my shelf for years after I bought it (probably because I thought it was a weird metal thing, but also probably because I had four too many dollars that day) until I unearthed it recently and was throttled the same way I was when I first heard Nihiliste(s) in 2009 - the same year BÖKANÖVSKY released this opus. Each side is a complete journey, but you have to be willing to travel if you want to reach the destination - impossible song construction makes you forget that the first track clocks in at more than a quarter hour, but the final minutes are more than worth the wait. The second movement acts as a cool down from the first, more relaxing/resigned and less determined...until the final 70 seconds suck the air out of you. Calculated and gratuitous, I'm not sure why I like it (or how many points it will cost me), but sometimes it's best to not ask why.

WE STUMBLE

CREAM OF THE CROP

Snagged this crucial comp in Portland a short while ago - it looked like it would be pretty cool and a brief glance at the included bands reinforced that initial impression, so I plunked down my $5 and got ready to party. As usual, I made an excellent decision. Apparently this is the product of a Portland by-way-of Boston resident, and the comp features mostly PDX and Boston bands as a result (a coupla jammers from France as well, though that fact confuses things in a geographical sense), but city/country of origin be damned because this tape is a total rager. MONGOLOID, BLOODKROW BOUTCHER, LA MISMA, SAVAGEHEADS, HAUTE COUTURE, SUNSHINE WARD, NO SIR I WON'T, LONG KNIFE, LUMPY AND THE DUMPERS...this thing is essentially a who's who of what's hot. Fave tracks, are THE HIT SENSATIONS' and the BLOODKROW electro cover by DIGITAL OCTOPUS (which is one of the best things I've heard all year). I can keep rambling if you like, or you can just listen for yourself.

CREAM OF THE CROP

Best Before '84 put this poster in my tape. It's too big to scan, so I took a picture of it. For you. Because I want you to have everything that you want. You're welcome.

"BACK TO THE 80's!"

You've heard me espouse the virtues of the tape trading days many times on these pages (or are they screens), and this banger is yet another prime example of how much mix tapes rule and how much my buddy Devon benefits from decades of relentless networking. Screaming '80s heavy metal, strutting through Pigalle in search of the next sleazy strip club, tight leather and frills galore - every track on this tape would have owned a Sunset Strip Battle Of The Bands any time before 1985. DEMON EYES mix classic Vince Neil vocals with a touch of NWOBHM, while SORTILEGE flirt with dark power metal a la MAIDEN and MORSÜRE dish out blistering double bass driven speed metal (their eponymous track is a face melting burner).  Classic driving heavy metal from SPEED QUEEN, ANYWAY and STOCKS flows nicely into a slightly more amped up version of the same animal from KILLERS and mid-era SCORPS meets Vengeance-era PRIEST from H-BOMB. "Rock Suicide" from ATTENTAT ROCK is sometimes my favorite jammer, but then there are times when the raw power of S.M.F. has me hitting rewind. This is for fans of the bygone genre, fans of the bygone culture of mix tapes (I know they are "cool," but I'm talking about a time when they were a lifeline), and fans of sleazy French heavy metal....wherever you are.

A CRAPPY FRENCH METAL COMPILATION TO SING ALONG IN FRENCH

BÉRURIER NOIR

My knowledge of this French outfit is extremely limited (nonexistent, in fact), though I have seen their name for years. Unfortunately, these tracks come from a homemade mix tape, so my already limited background information would be subject to the factual inaccuracies of the (presumably...hopefully) blitzed punk rocker who lovingly put this 90 minute mix together many years ago. While I always assumed that BÉRURIER NOIR were a two fingers in the air chaos punk act, this tape starts with midpaced gruff drum machine/guitar tunes that lumber more than rock, and while perhaps something is lost in translation and the lyrics are the draw (mon français est tout à fait insuffisant), I find them rather boring. The pace picks up with tracks from the Nada 12", but it's essentially an improvement on the same formula. There are a pile of songs that are attributed to a live record (Concerto Pour Detraques) and then a few legitimately catchy swingers that close the whole thing out (admittedly, these are the only songs I will ever listen to). Always wanted to know what they sounded like, and now I do...peut-être un FOTE français peut éclairer le reste et entre nous et de fournir un contexte historique?

BÉRURIER NOIR

KRIGSKADE

When I posted the NO REFLEXION LEFT demo a couple of months back, I mentioned that Mike was sending tapes from a couple of his newer projects my way and that I was looking forward to hearing them. But I gotta be honest: I didn't think the shit was going to be THIS good. KRIGSKADE play forceful and lurching hardcore punk with (excellent and poignant) lyrics in Danish and tortured guitars that use '80s US hardcore as a starting point instead and proceed forward in the direction of total damage. The breakdowns sound like they are included out of sheer exhaustion rather than a desire to start any circular (or wall to wall) motion, and the English explanations give a purpose to the intensity in the vocals. This is everything I want.

KRIGSKADE

¡KØD ER MORD!

SOLO SE OYE PUNK vol. 2

A fukkn perfect starter kit for the uninitiated, or simply mandatory listening for even seasoned vets. Silenzio Statico put together this mix tape as a follow up to their Latin American punk primer, and I dare say this one jams even harder. Do Punx Dance? They damn sure better when this is the soundtrack.

DO PUNX DANCE?

NO REFLEXION LEFT

The guitarist from NO REFLEXION LEFT dropped me a line out of the blue a couple of weeks back, and the email made me dig out the NO REFLEXION LEFT demo I snagged when WHAT HAPPENS NEXT? played with them in Paris in 2003. I kinda miss the fastcore explosion of the early '00s - the energy was positive, and so many of the bands were as serious about the bigger picture as they were about thrashing hard, wilding out in the pit or looking the part (don't get me wrong, thrashing, wilding and wearing the uniform were very important aspects of the aforementioned explosion). When NO REFLEXION LEFT screams "No Rules // I Am Free!!" it sounds like they are celebrating something bigger than mindless blast beats or the discovery of an obscure band their friends haven't heard of...this shit really is about punk and hardcore and fastcore and thrash and friends without borders and without boundaries. NxRxL crank out seven of their own tunes and the 7 SECONDS cover that is ubiquitous to this scene as "Sonic Reducer" is to boring bar punk, but the energy is through the roof, the backing vocals are on point and every moment of this demo makes me stoked - even a decade later. I look forward to Mike's new sounds currently headed my way, and rest assured that you will see them here when they arrive.

NxRxL DEMO 2003

DAILY OD // EGOHINE

DAILY OD dish out high tension multi vocal fastcore with hooks likes the ones that made Scandinavia kings of the early '00s. EGOHINE are reminiscent of chaotic screamotional hardcore from the late '90s, fast, furious and intense. Both bands come from France and this cassette comes from 2008. That is all for today.

DAILY OD // EGOHINE