END RESULT

Killer UK82 influenced shits from Australia, but injected with thrash energy and CRASS ingenuity. Be careful, these songs will sink in before you even know what hit you. Happy new year.

END RESULT

With any luck, I will finish playing this show and go to a place where someone will be playing this tape at maximum volume. Pittsburgh, I look forward to spending an evening with you.

FUCKED UP MIXED TAPE II

Mix tapes are perfect for tour, this tour starts on a Friday, and Friday is (conveniently) the day that I post mix tapes. This tour will start with one hour presented by the cover models for SPIN magazine's 2011 year end round up (weird), Toronto's FUCKED UP. Perhaps just another spoke in the wheel of hype that has been this band's very existence, this is the second collection of blips, blurbs, rarities and guest appearances issued in criminally limited editions on cassette...URBAN BLIGHT, SEX VID, DANGER LOVES, SOCIAL CIRKLE, LOOK BACK AND LAUGH, COLD WORLD and BRUTAL KNIGHTS make appearances alongside demo versions of future FUCKED UP classics (though, as a crotchety fuck, I don't really consider much of this band's output past Baiting The Public to be classic), outtakes and outbursts. "Dangerous Fumes" and "David Comes To Life" are still killer, but our heros fronted by Manno on the SHOP ASSISTANTS tune is probably the single best minute on the whole damn tape...except for the DANGER LOVES jam, so I guess Manno is kinda the star here. This is what happens when a band has a great idea that is actually as good as they thought it was going to be when they were drunk.

FUCKED UP MIX TAPE II

NO STATIK east coast/midwest tour starts tonight in Alexandria, Virginia. Come visit us, or visit Prank and snag our new record...either way you will be a winner.

TROY SCHAFER

I got this tape in the mail almost two years ago, after I posted the brilliant KINIT HER cassette. The same parties are responsible for these sounds, and as much as I enjoy the KINIT HER release, I think that these minimal psychedelic drones are mesmerizing. Two tracks, both just over 15 minutes...odd and disconcerting at times (that's a good thing), taking recorded sounds to new places, but doing so with a confident subtlety. I am ashamed that it has taken me this long to share.

ANUBIS COME IN

This and other recordings are available from the artist here.

MOHORAM ATTA

Another Bay Area band that I missed while I lived elsewhere, MOHORAM ATTA bridge that metallic hardcore---emotive crust gap wonderfully. Got home from a week of pleasantness tonight, on a plane to experience some unpleasantness tomorrow. I will listen to this while I fly.

MOHORAM ATTA

ODZ MANOUK

Even more haunting black metal from the circle of Southern California madmen that call themselves Black Twilight. While I still leave discussions on the subtle nuances of the genre (and this crop of incestuous bands) to the experts, this is some of my favorite stuff from a very prolific group of outcasts. Once again on the Crepusculo Negro label, the sound wraps you like a shroud...tuck in.

ODZ MANOUK

USURPER

Sent in by a Friend Of The Escape, five tracks of pained distorted hardcore from Boston. You know the drill, and USURPER do not disappoint.

USURPER

QUIET RIOT

I am a shameless fan, have the tattoo to prove it, and these 1979 demos are QUIET RIOT's original lineup cranking through proto-Sunset Strip glam rock before they became radio friendly heavy metal. Randy Rhoads is still wielding the axe in these sessions, his stint with Ozzy would start later that year, and this is the same lineup that dished out two glam LPs in Japan before crumbling and then being resurrected by DuBrow to become the first of the LA sleaze rock bands to land a major label deal. Rhoads is prominent on this recording, laying down screaming leads and more swagger than on his later (and far more famous)

work. Several generations old, the tape shows some wear, especially on Rhoads' six plus minute live solo near the end, but you don't have to have a QUIET RIOT tattoo to get into the alcohol soaked party vibe...it does help though.

1979 DEMO + 1978 LIVE

PARLOR

This reminds me of an upbeat version of STARING PROBLEM. Similar guitars, similar vocal trade offs, just amped up and sassier. They are both from Carbondale, and they both fukkn rule, so I suppose it's possible they could be related. PARLOR are awesome, and make me feel like maybe I should learn how to write songs instead of just mastering the volume knob.

PARLOR

KILLED BY NOISE

Total mayhem in the form of ripping fastcore, grind and hardcore from 20 different Czech bands. While I'm sure that single sentence will scare some people off, Killed By Noise far surpassed expectations and is varied enough (within the confines of sheer distorted brutality) to easily keep my ears peeled for the entire hour. The first side is an all out assault with LYCANTHROPY, ANTOFAGASTA, INTERNAL HATE and others, while the flip mellows slightly and leans towards '90s hardcore. HEAD INJURY and THEMA ELEVEN are hardcore of the anguished and emotional variety...but never mind that whole "mellows slightly" crap, because LAHAR and CAD are about to excavate you a new shit shaft. This chaos came from Impregnate Noise Laboratories, released in 2004.

KILLED BY NOISE

THE WASTE

Kinda tough to track down much info on these UK82 circa 1985 Exeter punks, but their two demos made their way onto this band-made cassette and I am grateful that it would up in my hands. THE WASTE cruise through 13 songs with discordant guitars and vocals shouted with an honest urgency. They probably fall in line with a heap of other bands who got lost in the shuffle of the mid '80s - playing classic UK punk while the scenes were moving towards thrash and metal. Easy to imagine "Britain in '85" as a stone cold classic, but I'm afraid that is going to have to happen in an alternate universe while the rest of us raise our fists (and pints) to "Mindless Violence" and "Well Hard." Up the Punx.

DEMO 1+2

SURRENDER

As the title suggests, this tape compiles all of the recorded material for the Bay Area's SURRENDER up to their 2010 European tour. Modern anarcho punk with male/female vocals in an updated version of the umbrella that sheltered many different and unique bands in the world of '80s UK political punk, but with the added (and welcome) influences that come from members reared on '90s US emotional hardcore, with the focus turned inward both politically and musically. Awesome band live, and brilliant recorded, this tape culls both EPs, the split with ACTS OF SEDITION and the LP that was released by the record store down the hill.

DISCOGRAPHY 2010

HEIMAT-LOS

Sometimes life gives you lemonade, and you add too much sugar and wind up making it all gritty at the bottom of the glass. And sometimes life gives you a tape packed with killer '80s punk and hardcore demos and you share them with your friends one by one. Life is kinda funny that way. HEIMAT-LOS did a pretty killer discography CD with this dude that you should buy, but in the meantime, here is their five track creamer from 1984.

HEIMAT-LOS 1984 DEMO

THRÄSHERS

Raw and ferocious skate thrash from the same folks responsible for bands that Monday visitors should be well familiar with like ELECTRIC FUNERAL and DESPERAT. They've taken their magic DBeat dust and applied it to early '00s influenced thrashcore, and the result is predictably brilliant. That guitar sound? I would pay plenty of studio bucks for that - perfection. But when it comes from these fools, what the fukk did you expect?

10 TRACK DEMO

LAZARUS TAXA

The midwest seems to breed a certain strain of crust that has been unhindered by the scourge of third rate melodic crust, undaunted by countless regurgitated recycled riffs on to the crap heap of plastic and petroleum waste. These are bands who seem determined to make important sounds even though their very nature will ensure that to most casual listeners they will be crammed under the same umbrella that critics have placed over the glut of unimaginative heavy melodic music over the last few years. MASAKARI and PROTESTANT come to mind, and I hold Michigan's LAZARUS TAXA in the same regard. I feel the same way I did when I first heard this brand of throat searing hardcore so many years ago, the low end the punches you in the gut and the frank unapologetic nature of the lyrics is obvious not only from the singer, but the whole band. It's not giving a fukk in all the right ways, and their melody, while sporadic, seals the package with a turned head and a fist to the chest. Though I take exception to the lyrics in "Cold Feet," I probably wouldn't have when I was 20, and that means they are probably hitting the right nerve. A band that makes my inner teenager seethe while making my outer 40 year old think...that's what I'm looking for.

LAZARUS TAXA

Released in 2010 by Désordre Ordonné.

CIGARETTE

Painfully slow and agonizingly airy sounds from the DC area, CIGARETTE take an hour to shuffle through a dozen songs. Breathy and deliberately adorable, their songs are like CODEINE on 'ludes, with guitars floating through an evening sky thick with memories of lost love and a shroud of whispered promises. If Nick Cave were a well adjusted suburban adolescent with none of his malice but all of his vision, these are the the songs he would write for his girlfriend...or maybe it's the music Wayne Coyne will make when he is 80 years old, and CIGARETTE are just ahead of their time.

BLUSH!

NO STATIK plays in Reno tonight. It's in a house, the one where the punks are. Look for it, it's close to the casino where I'm going to win a lot of money tonight. Seriously, a LOT.

THE HERE AND NOW

Sixteen different bands from all over the DIY spectrum, ranging from CÜLO, BUNNY SKULLS and POSITIVE NOISE to legendary one man noise punk VILENTLY ILL and recent Escape visitors BURNT OFFERINGS. The potential for hardcore monotony is high on a comp full of ragers, and The Here And Now avoids this with plenty of ambient noise, and acts like DEATH BUDDHA and AUDIBLE XXY clock in some of the finest moments on this comp. A slice of sound from the North Coast...

THE HERE AND NOW

**NO STATIK plays Portland tonight at The Know. It's Grant's birthday, and he will very likely be intoxicated.**

DOTS

Snotty and irreverent KBD styled punk courtesy of one of the only dudes I have ever kicked out of my kitchen. I mention this not to talk shit, but because I think that would make him proud. Sounds of DETENTION and ANGRY SAMOANS collide with SHOCK and RIP OFFS covers, bringing DOTS' vision into clear focus. The reproduction is a bit spotty, and I want to read the lyrics about as much as I want to make the singer breakfast again, but I'm quite happy to blast his new bands from time to time.

6 SONGS

DEAD DOGS

Not sure how they pulled it off, but these Winnipeg rockers managed to inject keyboard driven juvenile punk into blistering hardcore. There are no keyboards, and these folks are surely not juveniles, but somehow this feels like a group of hopeless teenage bedroom punks in front of a laptop making the most excellent hardcore record you've never heard. For those not yet versed in the language of my cryptic accolades, these are all compliments. Driving and vaguely off putting hardcore punk from the Canadian plains, DEAD DOGS didn't go to the prom, they spent that night making music instead. It was the right decision. Don't know anything about this band except for this demo, but this demo rules, so it's enough.

DEAD DOGS

SCREAM

Most casual punks know SCREAM as the band that the dude from NIRVANA played drums for in the '80s, but those of us who know the Dischord LP from start to finish know different. But SCREAM is a tale of two bands, and both tales are told inside today's zip file. The four song banger from 1981 features two tracks from the aforementioned LP and two others, all urgent and ferocious in their pubescent intensity - a truly great tuneful (melodic before it was a dirty word?) hardcore band harvested from the same fields that brought us so many mandatory pieces of the USHC puzzle. So, the question is: "What the fukk happened?" Also included in today's post are three separate two song demos from 1985/6, showcasing SCREAM at their most shitty. Cock rock would be a generous descriptor, but the heyday of that coke stained genre had long since passed, and even L.A. GUNS might have shied away from a song about dreaming of a damsel while pulling on your pud. Two versions of "Walking By Myself," a musical jaunt down the highway of terrible ideas that seems to be yearning for sellout status, but is so much more awful than even the commercial radio rock was at the time. Worth it for the '81 demo (obviously), and as for the other six tracks? Well after you have a laugh and shake your head, bewildered that such a downhill slide can occur in such a short period of time, on most western keyboards the Delete key is located in the top right quadrant.

SCREAM - 1981 // 1985 //1986 DEMOS

SKULLKRUSHER

Raw as fukk, years before studs and shoelaces were en vogue. The tape cover shows nine tracks, but alas there are only four jams on my copy. Just a little taste from 2001, to let you know that this black clad raw punk shit is not the flavor of the month for some people, it's the flavor of life.

THE BOMB RAID

PSYCHIC BLOOD

Noisy shoegazing adult punk sounds dredged though guitar alt rock (SST-era SONIC YOUTH/DINOSAUR JR., HOUSE OF LOVE) come your way from Western Massachusetts with great success. After a feedback laden title tracks swirls in and out of focus, PSYCHIC BLOOD launch into "Annihilator," which makes me pine for Daydream Nation like few things that have crossed my ears since I first heard that slab. The recording is distant and hollow, straining to reach the top shelf, though the band seems completely content (and confident), an absolute necessity when making music often labeled as pretentious. More mandatory with subsequent listens, PSYCHIC BLOOD have moved on to the vinyl format with even greater success. This one's a sleeper, but don't snooze. 

LEAVES

CÜLO

Back to Chicago for a second time this week, here's the long overdue return of CÜLO to Terminal Escape. Their first demo made my head spin; 1000mph hardcore punk offered with pure abandon, just the way we like it. Equally killer vinyl slabs followed, and then this: the six minutes on the first side of this white shell make up some of the nastiest lightening speed hardcore that I've crammed into my earholes this year. A brief foray into DISCHARGE's "A Look At Tomorrow" is the only time I miss the presence of a four stringed assailant, and the track that follows more than makes up for any sense of loss I may have felt. One note keyboard solo? Yeah, we got that. Raw and fukkd in all the best ways...the flip side features the Nuke Abuse EP from Punks Before Profits, and this tape came from Frankenjew. Mandatory hardcore.

MUTANT MUSIC FOR MUTANT PEOPLE

CONSPIRACY OF GIANT NOIZE WOODPECKER MUTANT FROM OUTER SPACE (Vol. 1)

Averaging well under one minute per song, seven international bands blast through 27 fastcore gems on this comp. New York's I OBJECT start a truly international comp that includes bands from Sweden, Czech Republic, Indonesia and Belgium. KOBRA XI's raw grinding madness leads into '00s thrashcore from JACKSTONE, bringing to mind TOTAL FURY - a vibe that continues with the USHC stylings of Sweden's DICK CHENEY. POWERCORE might be the most ferocious band on the tape, fast and blown out hardcore perfection, but the whole comp rages. An hour that goes by without listening to hardcore is an hour that you could have spent listening to hardcore. Don't make a mistake you'll regret.

CONSPIRACY OF GIANT NOIZE WOODPECKER MUTANT FROM OUTER SPACE (Vol. 1)

JUNGE FRONT

Taking their name from the youth wing of a proto-Nazi political movement banned in 1982, Frankfurt's JUNGE FRONT (Young Front) managed only one vinyl release in their short lifespan. 1984's Politick is a quintessential Deutsch Punk slab, and this 1983 demo was a perfect warm up for that release. In classic D-Punk form, JUNGE FRONT flit between straightforward beats, rudimentary ska and jerky post punk, all tinged with gruff snarled vocals. The quality varies widely (both in terms of sound quality and technical proficiency) but even the no-fi ridiculousness of "Teddybär" is enticing, if only for the random appearance of group female backing vocals. The snare fights constantly through tape hiss, which serves only to add to the charm of these 12 songs. Borderline inept (and they often veer south of that border), JUNGE FRONT are nothing short of excellent to my ears - this is the kind of earnest determination that cannot be faked. My copy came on a tape with FUNERAL ORATION, END RESULT and DIE KREUZEN demos, but I nicked the cover from the brilliant Tape Attack blog, a must-visit source of '80s German punk, no wave and avant sounds.

EWINGER HASS

CEMETERY

Some folks are taking the current injection of '80s goth into DIY punk a little more seriously than others, and doing so with frightening success. Enter: CEMETERY. A Chicago quartet making music that begs for a dark corner, arms folded in silent frustration while vocals snarl out the very emotions that you've spent your entire adolescence suppressing. Driving, deliberate and decidedly punk, CEMETERY temper their attack with ambient numbers to close each side, giving a genuinely creepy vibe to the tape before you flip it over and get drawn in by distorted bass and guitars that scream in from 30 years ago and pick slide into your list of current favorites. Be careful, this one sneaks up on you, and just gets better the more you listen.

CEMETERY

HARSH VIBES

Nasty, mean hardcore filled with awkwardness and hatred. The vocals are stressed to the very breaking point and their US styled approach is like a ton of bricks on your soul. Eight songs in under 12 minutes.

HARSH VIBES

This comes from Knochentapes.

SECOND AUSCHWITZ

By the time these Dutch maniacs released 1985's Murderers, their seventh cassette offering in just two years, their musical skills had improved so much that many of these unnamed 15 tracks almost sound like songs. Like 1984's The Arse Of Mankind cassette, these are politically charged inept anthems assailing governments and animal abusers with equal ire, to the tuneless mess that can sometimes pass as music. Noise punk has rarely been so cacophonous, and SECOND AUSCHWITZ prove that practicing and good riffs are for jerks. Primal and raw anarcho chaos.

MURDERERS

THE GUILT

Every I see this tape staring at me from the Shelf Of Cassette To Share, I think something along the lines of "Shit, I still haven't put that up? It's so damn good," and then promptly let THE GUILT return to the back of my mind while I sink another evening into turning gloriously analog sounds from years past into an unrecognizable sea of 01s and 00s. Redemption is Worth Nothing, the 2010 demo from DC's THE GUILT, a half hour of smart and determined hardcore that is able to set its sights firmly forward while sneaking fleeting glances over the shoulder at the forefathers (and the generations that followed). I hear SWIZ, and then I hear early '00s positive hardcore disguised as heartfelt '90s DIY basement magic. "Talk Hard" sounds as much like something you might hear on the radio and actually like as "Just Fight" sounds like a lost OUTLAST track, but both sound urgent and anxious - as does the whole tape. I always hated THE REFUSED, but I find myself thinking about all of the reasons that everyone kept telling me they were great, and those are the same reasons I keep coming back to these eight songs. Maybe I wasn't ready for Umeå's heroes back then, but I am certainly ready for THE GUILT now. Well written and expertly crafted songs, offered up with honest sincerity...sorry I waited so long.

WORTH NOTHING

BURNT OFFERINGS

Sparse synthesizer driven sounds from this Michigan duo clearly worshipping at the wax covered altar of '80s Wax Trax Records fodder. Their debut is filled with eerie samples, minimal electronic beats and vocals that might be pretentious if not so successfully anonymous. A CHRISTIAN DEATH cover, lyrics lifted from ALIEN SEX FIEND and Al Jourgensen, surely you get the drill? Ghosts of early (pre-disco) MY LIFE WITH THE THRILL KILL KULT, CLOCK DVA join forces with solitude and adolescence on this tape, with great success. 77 Records, thank you.

SONGS ABOUT SEX

UNCONSCIOUSNESS

For about a year, John and I hosted a Mix Tape Exchange in Milwaukee. Interest began to wane after a few months, but on those first couple of exchanges people really pulled out some big guns and spent some serious time putting the tapes together. This is how mix tapes are supposed to be made. Dave was a transplant from Buffalo (he has since returned) and is one of the most seriously critical music listeners I have ever known, so it came as no surprise that his submissions were consistently excellent, but Unconsciousness might be his finest work. There are bursts of hardcore that break up the 90 minute journey (LORDS OF LIGHT, G.I.S.M., KRIGSHOT), but this tape is essentially a tortured evening in a dimly lit room full of confused inward stares and sweltering doubt. From beautifully innocent female songwriters to grizzled gravel voiced songwriters, from MAN IS THE BASTARD to THIS HEAT, from the only KISS song I ever really liked (but performed by MELVINS, so it's even better) to the equally crushing and far more musically intriguing TOADLIQUOR. Unconsciousness is bookended with two tracks acid drenched distorted psych jams with soaring (and endlessly soloing) guitars from PSYCHIC PARAMOUNT, a band that I first heard through Dave. He also introduced me to PHARAOH OVERLORD who have provided the soundtrack for countless late night drives since they came into my life, and THE GIGOLOS "This Generation," which has since become one of my choicest jams - an infectious KBD tune with an undeniable mod/powerpop energy. Fortunately for you, PHARAOH OVERLORD's "Test Flight/Blackout" from III closes the first side of this tape in brilliant fashion, and "This Generation" makes an appearance as well...so you win. There is an art to making a great mix tape....and Dave is an artist.

HOW DO YOU THINK MY FATHER FELT...RESORTING FINALLY TO THE BELT

In addition to making mix tapes, Dave does time in excellent bands. Seriously. They are all good, and if you have seen them then you know I am telling the truth. CAGES. RUNNING FOR COVER. GAS CHAMBER. DEAD LANGUAGE. THEY LIVE. There are more, but that should get you started. I guess today is Dave Day.

SK8NIKS

This demo will likely take longer to download than it will to listen to - SK8NIKS blast through two tunes and finish the program before you can even dust off your skateboard. Nerdy and irreverent Japanese hardcore in the vein of IDOL PUNCH or JELLY ROLL ROCKHEADS, except that this banger was dished out before either of those bands had achieved any notoriety. Consider SK8NIKS an under appreciated part of that same wave of early 00s Japanese hardcore: fast, thrashy madness. And seriously, who the fukk releases a two song demo tape? 

ESCAPE THE HUMAN LIMITS

VICOUS BRICKS

From the opening snarl, from the 45 seconds of unbridled disdain that starts "Decay," there can be no doubt that VICIOUS BRICKS are angry. The tracks that follow are measured but unhinged, crushing hardcore delivered with a HELLHAMMER ferocity. There's something in the water in Florida.

VICIOUS BRICKS

VIRUS

All of these songs save one ("Systematic Violence," arguably the best song on the tape) appear in different forms on the You Can't Ignore It Forever demo, also released in 1984, but Dorset's VIRUS are too fukkn good to let a tape slip by just because you have already heard the songs once before. Or twice. There's a MOB styled moodiness to their anarcho brilliance - the vocals have a mournful lilt even when shouting out the determined mantra of a 1980s UK peace punk band. Such a brutal shame that this band only managed to record a handful of songs before calling it a day, VIRUS were fukkn brilliant.

INFECTED?

The liner notes were typed on the back of the cover, not photocopied, and the cassette was done up by hand...both seemed worth including.

ZONE

Not a long lost demo from the superb Japanese ragers, but a new demo from a Connecticut trio aiming at the hearts of raw punk fans worldwide. Noisy as shit, disjointed and amateurish delivery, howling feedback competing with howling vocals...I'm guessing they are teenagers, and the fire in the lyrics only serves to reinforce this belief. They will prevail, indeed. 

RAW HELL