SPECIAL ISSUE ALERT: Maximum Rocknroll #396 is here, the May 2016 issue, the zines special edition! We’ve got over a dozen features on zines from all over planet Earth, each of them revealing a living print culture that is truly killer, absolutely vital and undeniably punk. Emmy Ramone talks about their zines Cretins of Distortion and the Mental Whiff, digging at the roots of human expression through punk in the Midwest and beyond; Alex Ratcharge conducts an interview with NUTS! fanzine: learn all about the long journey from Olympia to New York City and all the ink stains in between; Golnar Nikpour interviews the world’s number one fan of noisy and psychotic hardcore, Tom Mayhugh of General Speech. Getting personal: Fluke fanzine celebrates its 25th anniversary and Burn Collector’s Al Burian talks about his music and his move from New York to Berlin. From the Bay Area we have As You Were, a comic zine anthology based out of San Francisco from label/publisher Silver Sprocket; Not Shit, a skate fanzine dedicated to the punk/DIY approach, and the Enthusiast, a brilliant and ASCII art-laden email newsletter. The folks behind No Shame, a distro that highlights work by people of color, write about eight of their favorite zines. Across the water there’s Another Subculture, an annual audio mag released on cassette in the UK: editor Ben Perkins expounds on the nature of capturing the moment and keeping the thrill of zinemaking alive in audio. Down in Barcelona, Mierda editor Dani Frutos goes head to head with interviewer Paco Mus on everything from Barcelona punk’s tenuous relationship with Europe and the world to anarchism and Catalonian independence. There’s also an interview highlighting the Finnish Fanzine Archive, a project digitizing over 300 Finnish fanzines dating from 1977 to 1982. Rounding it out is a feature collecting almost half a dozen current video zines, your favorite columnists, all the reviews you can possibly bear to read, and a photo spread from Everything Is Not OK Vol. 2. Don’t miss it.
You can also order this issue by mail by sending $4.99 in the US, $7 Canada, $9 Mexico, or $11 worldwide to: MRR • PO Box 460760 • San Francisco, CA 94146 • USA …or just SUBSCRIBE!
Still available: MRR #395 • April 2015 issue…
Fest Mania special edition: Oakland’s Manic Relapse, Washington’s Damaged City, and Oklahoma City’s Everything Is Not OK. Also: NEGATIVE SCANNER from Chicago, Brazil’s the PESSIMISTS, SOUL GLO from Philadelphia, Temecula hardcore from the COLTRANES, Bogotá Punk documentary series, HeartFirst Records interview, and a photo spread by Martin Sorrondeguy.
Last Saturday, universally beloved Philly power pop band SHEER MAG played a sold-out show here in San Francisco and afterwards went directly to the MRR compound to select the tracks you are about to hear in this episode of Maximum Rocknroll Radio.
Ian starts and ends things in Philly
LEATHER – Inanna Alter
CRASS – Big A Little A
BENT OUTTA SHAPE – Villain
CHOKING VICTIM – Infested
DC SNIPERS – All Humans Are Garbage
CONGENITAL DEATH – Disapproval
The Seely bros part one: Hart
CCCP – Militanz
SORE THROAT – A Bow to Capital
ANGELIC UPSTARTS – Everyday
Turnin up with Tina
EDDIE & THE HOT RODS – Do Anything You Wanna Do
THE BOBBYTEENS – Hey Roxy
DIRTY FENCES – Heartbeater
DICKS – Rich Daddy
PUSSY DOGS – Ain’t Nothin But a Pussy Dog
The Seely bros part two: Kyle
RUDI – Big Time
FLEETWOOD MAC – Oh Well pt. 1
THE SHAKES – No One Likes My Baby
Matt’s Punk Mix
NUMBER ONES – Sixteen
FORGOTTEN REBELS – Tell Me You Love Me
DEFORMITY – Shards
PRIME TIME – Tied Down
Outro song:
GAI – Hate in the Memories
Maximum Rocknroll Radio is a weekly radio show and podcast featuring DIY punk, garage rock, hardcore, and more from around the world. Our rotating cast of DJs picks the best of the best from MRR magazine’s astounding, ever-growing vinyl archive. You can find MRR Radio archives, specials, and more at radio.maximumrocknroll.com. Thanks for listening!
“New Blood” is our weekly feature spotlighting new bands from around the world! See below for info on how to submit. Now, check out some killer new shit…
Band name:
ANTIFACES (not anti-faces. It means eye masks and its pronounced An-tee-fah-says)
Date & location formed:
September 2014 in Miami, Fl.
Reason for forming
Having other bands in the past that sang in Spanish, we wanted to keep the Latino punk scene in Miami going and make it strong
What are your lyrics about?
Love, hate, friends, adaptation, politics.
How would you describe your sound?
There’s some hardcore, there’s some pop, it varies a lot.
What’s in the future for this band?
Playing Latino Punk Fest in NY in August, a 7″ coming out on IFB Records later this year. Then a South American tour next year.
Date & location formed:
We started this band around late 2013 as a side project of our other bands RAW JUSTICE and REGARDE LES HOMMES TOMBER. We are located in Nantes, western France.
Reason for forming:
During our 2013 summer tour with RAW JUSTICE, a Belgian friend of ours introduced us to the SEX PRISONER debut 7″. We all had a blast. On a random night a few months later we listened to this record again with RJ the bass player and decided that it would be great to start a band like that. We were also getting a lot into Nails or Soul Search at that time so we felt the need to play something harder, faster and rawer than what we were already doing with our other bands. We made a phone call or two to get a line up and a week later we were doing our first practice, with no clue about where we were really going.
What are your lyrics about?
Mostly about the complexity of human relationships, whether it’s with friends, relatives you don’t give a shit about, partnerships, dead family members etc. I write introspective and personal lyrics about very specific events of my life more so than generic, broader topics. We also have a few songs about animal rights, police brutality and authority, excessive proselytism, feminism, love, the difficulties of dealing with your own demons. I’d say this band, or at least our lyrics, are driven by frustration and disappointments.
How would you describe your sound?
I’ve read many different descriptions of our sound including such terms as Hardcore / Grindcore / Powerviolence / Death Metal / Punk or even Sludge. In my opinion, and considering every member of the original line up who wrote every HD songs were from different scenes from Punk Rock to Death Metal or Youth Crew, I’d say we are a mix of heavy powerviolence / Hardcore ( NAILS or SEX PRISONER), metallic hardcore (SOUL SEARCH), grindcore ( NAPALM DEATH), Death Metal (MORBID ANGEL) and Boston Hardcore’s SSD. What I really like with this band and our sound is that our drummer handled (almost) every aspect of each of our records, from recording to mixing and mastering. Maybe it’s not perfect but at least it gave us the opportunity to really shape our sound the way we wanted: raw, dirty, loud and abrasive.
What’s in the future for this band?
We are now touring a lot to defend the new LP we put out a few months ago. We’ve already done 2 Euro tours in March and April and are about to go for 2 others in May and June. It’s not officially announced yet but we are also doing a 10 day tour in Japan in November 2016. Then I don’t have a clue. We might try to tour USA in 2017 and probably work on a new EP. We’ve had a brand new line up (our original drummer and bass player had to leave) for a few months and we only practiced to get ready for all these tours but never tried to write new Harm Done material with them. Let’s see if we can make it work and have some new songs sooner or later.
Date & location formed:
February 2016 in Vancouver BC.
Reason for forming:
The need to play ugly music.
What are your lyrics about?
Violence against women, vivisection, anxiety, the misery of being trapped inside your own head.
How would you describe your sound?
Rorschach playing Jesus Lizard covers.
Black Pills (photo by Ricky Castanedo)
What’s in the future for this band?
Short term, our demo tape is out in a few weeks. Long term, a 7″, a split and tours in Brazil and Cuba in the next 12 months.
Do you have or know of an awesome new band*? It’s easy to submit to be in MRR’s New Blood feature — just email us the following info, and keep keeping’ it real…
1) Band name:
2) Date & location formed:
3) Reason for forming:
4) What are your lyrics about?
5) How would you describe your sound?
6) What’s in the future for this band?
7) Links and contact info:
Along with the answers please send a band photo at least 600px on the longest side (with photo credits), and a logo if you have one, to:
*By “new band” we mean a band that formed within the past year or year and a half.
Intro song:
DENISE AND CO – Boy, What’ll You Do Then?
Stuff I picked up part 1
IRON CAGES – Your Time Will Come
COLLUSION – Don’t Care
OUTSKIRTS – VT
DAME – On The Line
FLASHER – Throw It Away
TRIAGE – Dystopic Scene
Stuff I picked up part 2
JJ DOLL – Spit
CCTV – Song About Gossip and Inclusivity
BLEEDING GUMS – Chewed Up
RADIATION RISKS – A Man About Town
THE CRINGE – Bad Wind
S.L.I.P. – Stick It
Old bands and one new
VKTMS – Roma Rocket
HONEY BANE – Boring Conversations
WATERY LOVE – I’m a Skull
THE BRAT – The Wolf
BOBBY SOXX – Scavenger of Death
A brief perusal of the new bin
PRIVATE ROOM – Life Com
MOMMY – I Remember Them
MACE – Sinner
We miss you, Erica
TENDER BUTTONS – Look
SORRY NOT SORRY – Take It Back
Outro song:
VIVIAN GIRLS – Survival
Maximum Rocknroll Radio is a weekly radio show and podcast featuring DIY punk, garage rock, hardcore, and more from around the world. Our rotating cast of DJs picks the best of the best from MRR magazine’s astounding, ever-growing vinyl archive. You can find MRR Radio archives, specials, and more at radio.maximumrocknroll.com. Thanks for listening!
“New Blood” is our weekly feature spotlighting new bands from around the world! See below for info on how to submit. Now, check out some killer new shit…
Band name:
TECHIE BLOOD
Date & location formed:
I formed it in the East Bay as a recording project. It was gonna be a split with the legendary JUNKYARD DOG of Alamo, california, but I decided to turn it into a full band. It was originally called Leather Informant, but I knew I could have a stupider band name.
Reason for forming:
I thought the recordings were gonna be lame but they weren’t so it became a band.
What are your lyrics about?
The songs are about aggression and anxiety, just a way to vent and stuff.
Techie Blood (photo by Mikey 47)
How would you describe your sound?
Sonically speaking, I want it to have that same cyberpunk-future sound that Napalm Death’s “Scum” has. How it sounds like it was recorded in a giant metal cube or something dystopian and bizarre like that, if that makes any sense. Listen to Scum with that mindset and you’ll totally feel me. It should sound like the book “Neuromancer” or something. but musically speaking, all I really listen to is Steely Dan and Christopher Cross so I don’t know why it sounds like it does.
What’s in the future for this band?
We have a new tape, it’s re-recordings of old songs and three new songs, and it’s pretty good. I’m also in the works of making a little video documentary about punk bands I like in California, most notably Slobber from the East Bay, Chain Hex from Santa Rosa and the Torpedoes from Merced. So that’s been a lot of my efforts in punk music which has slowed Techie Blood down a bit, but we’re all hoping to keep putting out music and play around more. We wanna go to Texas or Vancouver or really anywhere that isn’t the Bay Area right now.
Links and contact info:
I’m in the process of uploading all california punk music of note to a youtube page I run, called Guy Fieri Official. I am however not Guy Fieri, sorry. So you can find it there.
I also uploaded the tape to a bandcamp account called ledzeppelinofficial.bandcamp.com (also not Led Zeppelin because that band is awful). I didn’t intend on anyone to find it but people did so I guess I will also put stuff up there so you can download it.
Band name: MORROW
Date & location formed: We formed about two years ago
in London, England.
Reason for forming:
I have an obsession with melodic crust and cellos and wanted to revisit a style of music I missed playing a great deal. I spent
about two years trying to find people to make this project possible, formed other bands in the meantime, but Dave was enthusiastic about the idea and decided to take on writing the music and playing all of the instruments whilst i handled
vocals, lyrics and artwork. We
were joined by our friend Nicole on Cello who recorded her parts
in California, and guest vocals from friends all over the world.
What are your lyrics about?
It has a story, its kind of a post civilisation observation of human cultures living in a world reclaimed by nature, in the skeletons of formers cities, and dense forests. Its about language, the ideas of religion and belief. Earthy visceral stuff!
How would you describe your sound?
Emo crust? Epic crust? Something like that. We’re definitely influenced by stuff like Remains of the day and Madame Germen, and my former band Fall of Efrafa.
What’s in the future for this band?
We have an LP coming out on Halo of flies/Chaos Rural/ Alerta Antifascista. We have a full band now so we hope to be playing shows in the near future!
Date & location formed:
December 31st 2014 in the basement of The Rocketship (RIP) in Washington, DC.
Reason for forming:
Josh: I wanted to combine my love for shock drag and my disgust with the conservative gay scene in DC. Things needed to be shaken up a bit, so I made a FB post about starting a band (goal: Toiletboys crossed with Limp Wrist) and KC and Kit almost immediately responded. We recruited Anderson shortly thereafter, and everything fell into place pretty quickly. Everyone was on the same page from the beginning.
What are your lyrics about?
Queer identity, dysphoria, hypocrisy, addiction, & 90s mall culture.
Homosuperior (photo by Farrah Skeiky)
How would you describe your sound?
Snotty & rough.
What’s in the future for this band?
We’re doing a Memorial Day weekend tour, visiting super queer-friendly places like North Carolina & West Virginia. Hoping to play some more shows & festivals. We applied to Fed Up Fest in Chicago. And eventually, we’ll finish a couple more songs and put out an album.
Reason for forming:
Our bassist is from Athens, landed a job here in a university, got in contact with some punks, hung out, went to shows, and we decided to form a band. None of us have played in a band together before this. Also, for the love of Hardcore and abrasive punk music.
What are your lyrics about?
Anxiety, subjugation, submission, depression, violence from the state and the higher power.
How would you describe your sound?
Hardcore, Anarchy, and Violence.
What’s in the future for this band?
Creating more hard tunes and a 2nd 7″ out soon. Hoping to tour more and play somewhere where there’s no future.
Date & location formed:
Winter of 2015 in Seattle, WA.
Reason for forming:
I recorded the demo while living in the bay area with intentions to make it happen as a full band when I moved to the northwest. After living in Seattle for eight months we finally had our first practices.
What are your lyrics about?
The lyrics are all over the place but the general theme is seeking freedom.
How would you describe your sound?
Our sound is like.. I don’t know.. I guess kind of an SST vibe, but I don’t think we do that justice. Mostly I just wanted to be in a band that had pop riffs and hardcore riffs and this is what came of it.
What’s in the future for this band?
Putting out a 7″ single with Painter Man Records. west coast tour with Angel Dust and Gag in June. Full length record on Pop Wig sometime next year, probably.
Do you have or know of an awesome new band*? It’s easy to submit to be in MRR’s New Blood feature — just email us the following info, and keep keeping’ it real…
1) Band name:
2) Date & location formed:
3) Reason for forming:
4) What are your lyrics about?
5) How would you describe your sound?
6) What’s in the future for this band?
7) Links and contact info:
Along with the answers please send a band photo at least 600px on the longest side (with photo credits), and a logo if you have one, to:
*By “new band” we mean a band that formed within the past year or year and a half.
Amelia has local punk Chris on her radio show to discuss Oakland’s fast approaching annual all-ages Manic Relapse Fest and play some Manic Relapse hits and some of his favorite punk bangers.
Manic Relapse Fest will be held April 29th through May 1st featuring worldwide headliners such as LOS MONJO (Mexico), NEWTOWN NEUROTICS (UK), SCUM RAID (Korea), CRUDE SS (Sweden), ICONOCLAST (Los Angeles), GASMASK TERROR (France), BORN/DEAD (Oakland) and KAFKA (Japan). If you didn’t know, now you know! More information can be found here at: Manic Relapse Facebook. Also, Jesse Cunningham sang in Koward and now sings in PMS 84. Their new line-up will be featured at this year’s Manic Relapse Fest.
RIISTETYT – Yön Painajainen
VAURIO – Jeesus On Herra
O13 – Takaisin Todellisuuteen
MAHO NEITSYT – Aku Ankka
APPENDIX – Sinä Ja Minä
LAMA – Sähköä Ilmassa
RATSIA – Ne Ei Haluu Kuunnella
YOUNGER LOVERS – Get Up, Get Up
ICONOCLAST (Japan) – After the Blood Shed
THE BONES – Insanity
ZOUO – Making Love with Devil
GISM – Death Exclamations
KAFKA – Kaaos
Bye Bye
LAUGHIN’ NOSE – Get the Glory
WRETCHED – Rifletti
Maximum Rocknroll Radio is a weekly radio show and podcast featuring DIY punk, garage rock, hardcore, and more from around the world. Our rotating cast of DJs picks the best of the best from MRR magazine’s astounding, ever-growing vinyl archive. You can find MRR Radio archives, specials, and more at radio.maximumrocknroll.com. Thanks for listening!
You can SUBSCRIBE to Maximum Rocknroll for as little as $26.00 and have over 120 pages of punk sent to you every month! Hundreds of record reviews, exclusive features and interviews, all your favorite columnists and much, much more. Get it all right here.
Out now! MRR #396 • May 2016
SPECIAL EDITION: The Zines Issue. Featuring: Ohio’s Cretins of Distortion, New York City’s NUTS! fanzine, comix anthology As You Were, Not Shit skate fanzine, Tom Mayhugh of noisy hardcore mag General Speech, Fluke fanzine (on their 25th anniversary!), No Shame Distro out of New Jersey, NYC/Berlin’s Burn Collector, email newsletter/zine the Enthusiast, London audio-mag Another Subculture, Barcelona punk and anarchist zine Mierda, Finnish Fanzine Archive,current Video Zine roundup, Everything is Not OK Vol. 2 photo spread.
Date & location formed:
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