Here it is: the September 2016 issue, Maximum Rocknroll #400. It’s hard to believe we’ve been at it for this long, so this time we’re turning back to reflect on the people that make it happen every month: our shitworkers. Every band featured in this issue features at least one volunteer or contributor to the mag. We’ve got the Welsh-Greek-Cypriot maelstrom that is London’s EFIALTIS, Oklahoma City’s AMERICAN HATE and Chicago’s the BUG scrambling the signals of Midwestern hardcore, the uncompromising melodic punk of the Bay Area’s own SYNDICATE and SILENT ERA (perhaps the only all-MRR-shitworker band?), and NORMSout of Budapest offering their perspective on punk life in an unforgiving modern landscape. On top of that, we have interviews with Evolution of a Race Riot zinester and scholar Mimi Thi Nguyen as well as former MRR coordinator Arwen Curry discussing her upcoming documentary Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin. We also have current shitworkers revealing their work inside and outside of the pages of MRR: San Francisco/Los Angeles based journalist Oscar Gutierrez, Washington’s Farrah Skeiky (official photographer of the NWODCHC?), and the Bay Area’s Scream Queens giving us the dirt on their eponymous radio show and their upcoming magazine. If that weren’t enough, we’ve also got a photo spreads and commentary from Copenhagen’s K-Town Hardcore Fest, hundreds of reviews, all of your favorite columnists, and—get this—a table of contents. That’s right, this issue debuts a fresh new look for MRR. It only took us 400 issues to get page numbers, who knows what the future may hold?
PLUS: Subscribers to Maximum Rocknroll get a free compilation tape of seventeen MRR shitworker bands with this issue! Check out a couple of tracks here:
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 #399 • August 2016 issue…
BLACK PANTIES from St. Louis, ABC No Rio photo essay, PSYCHO SQUATT and Maloka Records from France, Melbourne’s MASSES, Pacific Northwest skate collective Skate Witches/Skate Like a Girl/SKITCH, Richmond’s FRIED EGG, Berlin’s FRIEND CRUSH, BOILERMAN from Chicago, France’s SYNDROME 81, Virginia’s RHDP, Finnish photographer Jussi Janis, Singapore’s LUBRICANT presenting an Australian tour diary, photo spreads from Total Attack #6 and the Moscow Madness MRR gig, and a North Texas scene report.
Vox
WHITE PIGS – Victims
THE NEXT – Cheap Rewards
THE VICTIMS – I Understand
GG ALLIN + THE JABBERS – Cheri Love Affair
THE TIGHTS – Cracked
Low End
ZIPPER – Scars
THE ROTTERS – Amputee
MC5 – Black to Comm
FILTH – Don’t Hide Your Hate
CHOSEN FEW – (Do the Manic) To Kill or Maim
Skins
CRUDE SS – Who’ll Survive
TAMPERE SS – Kuollut & Kuppattu
CRUCIFIX – Prejudice
ABSURD – Blodigstad
DILS – I Hate the Rich
Roadie
THE MAGGOTS – Rough Dub
THE STALIN – Tama Negi Hatake
YEASTIE GIRLS – Talkin Shit
TEDDY & THE FRAT GIRLS – I Owe it to the Girls
Outro:
IVY – Arch-Foe
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:
MINORITY THREAT
Date & location formed:
March 2015 in Columbus, OH.
Reason for forming:
Our current social and political climate.
What are your lyrics about?
Our current social and political climate. Police, racism, sexism, scene politics.
How would you describe your sound?
Fast, pissed punk/hardcore in 90 second bursts.
What’s in the future for this band?
Writing and playing shows! We’re currently writing our first LP, with plans to tour after it drops on Head2Wall. We want to reach as many people outside of Ohio as possible, while writing the best music we can to spread our message.
Date & location formed:
Formed in Reykjavík earlier this year.
Reason for forming:
The two of us play/have played in other bands together, we wanted to play in a hardcore band.
What are your lyrics about?
Anti-authoritarianism, mental health problems, feeling out of step with the world. Trying to balance out your nihilistic side with the side that wants things to be better.
How would you describe your sound?
Hardcore punk with a heavy mix of noise/industrial music. We like the classics but we also listen to and get a lot of influence from current hardcore punk from all over the world.
What’s in the future for this band?
A 7″ in the fall and some more shows. Hopefully some touring in the not too distant future.
Band name:
CÃOS (I guess you could pronounce it something like “cuh-oos”).
Date & location formed:
Around march 2016, in Curitiba (ghost town), Brazil.
Reason for forming:
Boredom, the name of the band sounded good, also finally finding someone to play the drums (Thx Mika!).
What are your lyrics about?
Late capitalism and surveillance/punitive paranoia getting into people’s heads. Cruelty and misunderstanding inherent to human speech. Anxiety. And of course cinism. Someday i’ll translate the lyrics into English.
How would you describe your sound?
Noise rock / post-punk but sometimes I think it has something to do with black metal.
Cãos (photo by Andrey Michaelzechen)
What’s in the future for this band?
Some touring inside Brazil and new songs, dunno if we’re gonna release it as 7”, cass singles or if we’ll record a LP, hope we have new material until the end of this year.
PS: Labels from anywhere, if you want to release future stuff from Cãos please contact!
PPS: the last copies of our debut cassette are still available for sale at Meia-Vida’s bandcamp
Date & location formed:
August 2015, New Orleans, LA.
Reason for forming:
The usual hanging around, talking about music, making dumb jokes and deciding, hey, this is actually a really unintimidating nice combination of folks to play music with. We all had a similar aesthetic in the kind of music we wanted to play and I think a lot of the focus on forming the band was just general summer malaise and wanting to have fun.
Casual Burn (photo by Xandra Wong)
What are your lyrics about?
I feel like a lot of the lyrics we have come from a place of frustration with expectations of femininity, and the impulse to chew that up and spit it back out. A lot of the lyrics seem to kind of glamorize being a waste case and getting around, but really all just come back to being angry if you want to be, being a mess if you want to be, and generally owning whoever you are. There’s a lot to be mad about, and I think everyone has a part of them that just wants to laugh, and break things, and pee on the rug.
How would you describe your sound?
Other people have definitely done a better job than we’ve been able to. We used to describe ourselves as sleazy good time driveway music, which I think latches on to certain aspects of good ol’ fashioned rock and roll. We’ve also been described as “surf sunniness meets no wave gloom.” There’s definitely a nice base coat of punk in there.
What’s in the future for this band?
We’re drawing straws for who gets to really lose it, full on deep end. Or maybe we’ll just settle down and find a little house at the quiet end of a street and get a couple of dogs. In the meantime, we’re about to go on our second tour, this time out west. I think it’s really cool that we’re all very excited about getting to travel with this band, and hopefully there’s a lot more of that down the road. Oh, and hopefully a sugar daddy, we’re taking applications.
Here are the tour dates:
8/25 – Houston, TX
8/26 – Austin, TX
8/27 – San Antonio, TX
8/29 – Tucson, AZ
8/30 – Flagstaff, AZ
8/31 – Los Angeles, CA
9/1 – Santa Cruz, CA
9/2 – Oakland, CA
9/3 – Oakland, CA
9/4 – Santa Rosa, CA
9/6 – Eugene, OR
9/7 – Portland, OR
9/8 – Seattle, WA
9/9 – Seattle, WA
9/10 – Bellingham, WA
9/11 – Tacoma, WA
9/12 – Missoula, MT
9/14 – Denver, CO
9/16 – Albuquerque, NM
9/17 – Sante Fe, NM
9/18 – Oklahoma City, OK
9/19 – Denton, TX
9/20 – Fort Worth, TX
Band name:
BLOTCHOUTS (credit to Anna Kavan)
Dylan- drums, Kiana- guitar, Nick- bass, Yacob- vocals, guitar, recordings
Date & location formed:
As a recording entity- Richmond CA late 2015. As a functional- live band Summer 2016, San Francisco.
Reason for forming:
Brief bursts of spontaneous automatic song creation throughout the depths of a lengthy debilitating depression as singularly experienced by Yacob Glowniss. Once Discontinuous Innovation Inc. agreed to release the tape, the collective realized we had to form a performative iteration to move the product. All members thus far are D.I. interns.
What are your lyrics about?
Rich idiots. Anxiety. Fatigue. Poverty. The slog of life thru the fly-encircled landfill of late capitalism. Mental and physical illness. Malaise at the black hole center of our galaxy. Watching a complacency rock band and wishing I’d brought a book. My bunny’s bout with pneumonia. The end of the world.
It’s political, but in the same way as shouting into the void, or tossing bouquets of flowers into its gaping maw.
Blotchouts (photo by Oliver O’Haver)
How would you describe your sound?
Careening off the rails no wave / bummerpunk 2.0 / sluggy bludgeoning drugdgery / a little bit of go-go.
What’s in the future for this band?
A constantly permutating chaotic live iteration. More slogging through literal garbage. More sweltered heat death janky closet-recorded missives.
I hope that as more people join and learn the songs and perform with the band it subdivides into infinitude, that there will be endless varieties of new bandspores with blotchouted mitochondria.
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.
It’s solitary, so it’s not part of one.
MOSS ICON – I’m Back Sleeping or Fucking or Something
We hope you’re bummed.
Altogether these are kind of short, so it’s hard to call this a real block. Some of them kinda rock though.
GOD IS MY CO-PILOT – Anatomically Correct
BUZZOVEN – Splinter My Eye
HACESJA – No title
BLACK DICE – untitled
WRANGLER BRUTES – Erase The Faces
See, now this is the genuine article.
DEEP HEAT – It Remains
NATIONS ON FIRE – On and On
[PERU] – Jestem Dziekiem
GREYHOUSE – Value Story
BUZZ RODEO – Hot Spot
HUMAN HANDS – Hiding Place
LA BELLA – Germinal
And this is just a cheap imitation.
GUNK – And…I Won’t Stop
ZONA – Boule Quies
NOLLS – Young
SUPERCHUNK – Tower
WHITNEY HOUSTON’S CRYPT – Twosome’s Threesomes
Our submission for the Space Jam 2 soundtrack.
BASTARD NOISE – The Honesty Shop (excerpt)
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:
SERVICE
Date & location formed:
August 2015 in Santa Rosa, CA.
Reason for forming:
The band started as an idea Sergio (drums) and Justin (vocals) had years ago before playing in any bands. We wanted to incorporate synths and power electronics type of sounds into a punk band.
What are your lyrics about?
The lyrics deal heavily with self and society, the role of the person, and their place within the world. A lot of the songs have a theme of disappointment, defeat, and acknowledging the everyday trials we experience in our surroundings.
How would you describe your sound?
The aftermath of a night of cold gin and gambling away your wages.
Service (photo by Kevin Parnow)
What’s in the future for this band?
We’re looking to record a new EP soon, and then moving on to do an LP hopefully after. We’re going to tour, play shows, and record until we degrade into shadows of our former selves. We’re hoping to play more outside of our home in Santa Rosa.
Date & location formed:
Honestly we’ve lost all track of time at this point. We formed in Brooklyn and our first show was late 2014.
Reason for forming:
It’s hard to say. Originally I started Pawns as a solo project with the intention of making really heavy, straight forward post-punk and it kinda just blossomed from there.
What are your lyrics about?
Most of our lyrics deal with my personal tribulations (depression, poverty, health etc.) and relating them to broader political and social issues in the world today. I’m highly influenced by anarchist ideology which definitely plays a roll in our lyrical content as well as our over all sound and direction.
How would you describe your sound?
Anarcho-deathrock. Our sound has changed drastically over the past few months and our earlier recordings may not be totally indicative of our newer direction, but our latest release (a split cassette with Cemetery) is definitely the best example of the sound we’re going for.
What’s in the future for this band?
Well, we are on tour right now playing with some of our favorite contemporary bands (Masses, Maudlin, Belgrado, etc.) and once we’re back we plan on getting our shit together and putting out a full-length.
Date & location formed:
London, UK in summer 2015.
Reason for forming:
We were just all friends who couldn’t play instruments and thought it would be fun/funny.
What are your lyrics about?
Mostly they are just sad/angry – struggling to exist in gross patriarchy & whitewashed lad culture, chronic illnesses, feeling alienated and sad and far from ‘home’, losing your phone all the time, generally being taken for a mug, but some are also about friends being supportive & hilarious through all those things.
How would you describe your sound?
Messy?
What’s in the future for this band?
We are hoping to record some more things in the next couple of months. And then tour forever (especially in Brazil because our guitarist Adri has just moved back home there :()
Date & location formed:
Our first show was on February fourth of this year, so we started writing sometime in mid January.
Reason for forming:
I had already been playing bass with Chain Hex for about a year, and I began to feel an urge to start something new.
What are your lyrics about?
The realities of my place within the punk community. Anxiety, problems with my self image, marginalization or feeling unaccepted.
How would you describe your sound?
I think we fit well within the confines of contemporary hardcore (whatever that entails), but Ben, who also plays with Acrylics, has brought some of those wiggly, near uncomfortable, guitar parts with with him. I think his style has really diversified our overall sound in a huge way.
What’s in the future for this band?
We have a lot of local shows lined up through September with Rixe, Government Flu, Chain of Flowers, and a bunch of other great bands. We’re also about to record again and hopefully book a short tour in support of our next release.
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.
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 #400 • Sept 2016
SPECIAL EDITION: The Shitworker Issue. London’s EFIALTIS, AMERICAN HATE from Oklahoma City, the BUG from Chicago, SYNDICATE and SILENT ERA from the Bay Area, Budapest’s NORMS, zinester/scholar Mimi Thi Nguyen, Arwen Curry on her documentary Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin, punk journalist Oscar Gutierrez, DC hardcore photographer Farrah Skeiky, Scream Queens radio/magazine, and a K-Town Hardcore fest photo spread and interview.
Recent Comments