FMDESTRUCTION

Who releases a tour tape with twenty two fucking songs? These Memphis freeks, that's who. By 1997, Memphis was already on the map - COP OUT and HIS HERO IS GONE will do that to a town. We saw little evidence of this scene when FUCKFACE passed through in '96 (for reasons obvious to most, including us at the time), and by the time WHN? played there in '01 the cream had been scraped off the top of the city and the dregs were left (the show was good, but you know what I mean). But this....this tape sounds like The Sweet Spot. Ferocious, blown out, crushingly heavy, frighteningly fast, and indescribably '90s hardcore. Clocking in at just under a half hour, these tracks have been played into the ground since I unearthed I Kill Cities! a couple of weeks ago. I miss this hardcore so damn bad - there was no pretense, they weren't trying to impress anyone because they were more focused on exorcising demons...and it shows.  

I KILL CITIES!

THE FLOOR ABOVE

I mean, it just sounds SO fukkd, you know? Those guitars are.....well sometimes I don't know what they are doing, but this bedroom-by-way-of-basement-or-vice-versa outfit from Tennessee spends just five short minutes reminding you that modern hardcore punk is weird, is interesting, is engaging, is alive....and is very very good. Noisy, chaotic, and infectious as hell, everything I said about the first two demos still applies. The guitar at the 0:13 mark of "Trespass," are you kidding me?!? Do this. 

THE FLOOR ABOVE

This one was gifted to the world by your friends at Not Normal Tapes...

BOOBYHATCH

Please, punk. Please do not let the cover of this '90s Tennessee hardcore demo allow The Doubt to sink in and lead you to the wrong decision. I urge you, punk. I urge you to make the right decision and download these creamers. Keep them with you, punk. I don't want you to be without, punk...I want you to have all of the metallic hardcore that you want. What were these mutants doing in 1997? File alongside OTTAWA, URANUS, MOHINDER...the kind of fukkd, discordant, chaotic 'core that would make your jaw drop when you witnessed a delivery by a van full of unpretentious and unassuming youngsters. That was BOOBYHATCH. Check the Grinding Asscore At Its Worst EP on Denied A Custom (dude - that guy used to send SO many stickers and weird shit with his mailorder packages...but I digress) and the slab with the same title as this demo (slightly different track list though) on House 'O Pain. Post REDNECKS IN PAIN and pre ASSCHAPEL, in case anyone is paying attention. Under appreciated hardcore is the fukkn shit.

HIP-SHAKING ASSCORE

HIS HERO IS GONE

I don't really need to say anything about this one, do I? There are two kinds of punks, the ones who already have this and the ones who need it.

MEDICINE

FADED

This is way too mature to be accurately considered hardcore, but too intense to consider it anything else. There's an undeniable Tennessee comparison (you know what I mean...I shouldn't have to say it), but FADED takes their crushing sound light years beyond the basements...though I imagine those basements are exactly where they call home. Only four songs on this demo, but I admit I was sold long before the first was finished. Smart, honest and heavy, this is exactly what I want when I press play on a cassette. 

SUBCONSCIOUS INFILTRATION

...another fine release from Failed Recordings, who are anything but failures...

YAUTJA

Filthy modern hardcore from Nashville, Tennessee. These tracks are technical and sinister, but there is more than enough primal blasting insanity to reel in those scared of things like complex song construction and...well, something different. Chaotic and spastic sounds delivered with amps set to death metal makes for an initially confusing listen, but YAUTJA pull it off handily, and breath much needed life into a FLAG track to wrap up nine minutes of madness.

YAUTJA

Tapes Of A Neon God

THE FLOOR ABOVE

I was drawn instantly to these insane sounds. Raw and hollow hardcore from Tennessee played with absolute fury and determination - clean guitars that are tortured more than played, and vocals that are more in line with the by product of a backwoods exorcism. There are two demos in today's download, the most recent features 18 songs and clocks in at well under 16 minutes, while the 2011 slab blazes through 14 tracks in less than 9. There are hooks buried in that chaos and it's hard to tell if the distortion is by design or necessity, but the result is so gloriously twisted that I don't care. There's another demo available here, and I suspect that after jamming these songs into your holes you will be clamoring for more.

THE FLOOR ABOVE

ROUGH ROPE

Yeah, I suppose I could go off on some tangent about that Amphetamine Reptile label and how the stuff from that sub/sub-genre still eclipses half of the music that I hear today. And yeah, I could say that at their best, ROUGH ROPE remind me of TORCHE's hooks, every bit as infectious, put through a righteously aware noise rock via raw punk filter - this shit is ugly as sin and catchy as all hell. Tennessee weirdness gone totally awesome, brought to you from members of Escape veterans GRAVEBOUND. If "Blues Hammer (Detroit)" doesn't connect with you in some manner, then it's possible that we cannot be friends. This will change you.

DEMOS + WIZARDS

EXTREME HARDCORE

Leaning more towards the DIY metal that was floating around the underground tape trading world and concentrating on bands from the South, Extreme Hardcore is a 90 minute excursion guided by cult hessians and determined small town thrashers. Texans DEAD HORSE start the party with three tracks - this band was just a whisper to us Oklahomans at the time, but their tracks hold up brilliantly. BLUCK, crossover maniacs TRANSGRESSION, and downtuned churning primitive death metal from Alabama's RANDOM CONFLICT continue the battle while raw noisy hardcore from RADIATION SICKNESS and SKELETAL EARTH wrap up the first round. After a 6 minute death metal opus from NOCTURNUS, Tennessee's FOREVER UNGRATICAL CORINARIC TECHNIKILATION (F.U.C.T. - whose Dimensional Depth Perception full length completely melted my high school mind some 20 years ago) blaze two bombastic burners that are worth the whole download and are followed up by ripping old school HC from fellow Tennessee denizens REDNECKS IN PAIN. CONFRONTATION dish out three tracks (one from their 1989 EP), and we take a trip to the Northeast for legendary weed thrashers EXIT 13 and PHLEGM, who offer three more each to close out the party. This comes from a time when snail mail was just simply mail and underground legends were born...and before the word Extreme had anything to to with sports.

EXTREME HARDCORE COMPILATION 1990

GRAVEBOUND

Brutally sinister downtuned and downtrodden hardcore from Tennessee. The bass sounds like OTTAWA (it is not often that I hear that destroyed and distorted bass tone replicated), but the approach is total CROSSED OUT melded into moments of southern sludge/doom. These songs will make you want to hurt the people that hurt people, fucking awesome. DROP DEAD cover? Oh yeah, they nail it.

STABBING CONTEST

There's too much chaos and shitsystem to accurately divide this up, so here are the ten tracks that will crush you over the next 10 minutes and 23 seconds:

01. Wages

02. Self Destruct

03. Eucharist

04. Red Smile

05. Snuffed Out

06. Crawling

07. Bridgeburner

08. Submit

09. Drug Mule

10. Washed Away (DROP DEAD)

GRAVEBOUND have hard copies of this cassette for sale, and for cheap. Hit them up, cause tapes are way fukkn cooler than 01s and 00s posing as music: gravebound(at)gmail(com)

LIFE TRAP

Five songs in six minutes, this is my kind of hardcore! I could drop loads of early '80s references and claim them as influences on LIFE TRAP, but this is just killer hardcore punk with a guitarist who was clearly weaned on all the classics.  This makes my want to punch holes in the wall like I did the first time I heard BAD BRAINS (this doesn't sound anything like BAD BRAINS, I'm just saying that when I was 14 living in Oklahoma and I heard I Against I, I wanted to punch holes in my wall).  This shit rules, enjoy.

LIFE TRAP