EXTRACTION

A few months ago there was a fast, heavy hardcore band coming through town and I was talking to my buddy Will about locals to team them up with. We quickly reached an unfortunate conclusion: our geographical region suffers from a severe lack of crust. It's too easy to take crust for granted, perhaps because poor-to-average crust bands are a dime a dozen, but there's never a bad time for a dirty downtuned DBeat churn with metallic guitars and fist in the air breakdowns...that's what we wanted. But fear not, "lack" does not mean "absence," and EXTRACTION are holding things down until proper equilibrium returns. Clenched fists, lots of hair, screaming (but short) leads, and tracks that get in make their presence known with force, then get out. Just seven tracks, Dead And Buried clocks in under eleven minutes and ends with a perfect chug in "Hidden." When Will and I were talking a few months ago, EXTRACTION exactly what we wanted...and wanted more of. 

EXTRACTION

CONDITIONS

Legitimate freak sounds from Oakland, CONDITIONS drag bedroom synth oddity to new depths on Fight Nothingness. From the drab and almost predictable (but no less killer) sounds of tracks like "Crushed" to dark and trippy primitive missives like "Into Mountains," there is an air of OTHER that is omnipresent on this tape that makes even the amateurish "I Get The Msg" seem important. Mutant space synth interludes break up the tape but increase the tension instead of providing a respite...the whole thing is overwhelmingly compelling and extremely listenable, even (especially) through the difficult parts. Sometimes "good" is hard to put your finger on, you know?

FIGHT NOTHINGNESS

LATENT IMAGE

The unearthed gems from the would-have-been commercial success stories that never were...the stories are mysteries, and the cassette bins at your local charity shop are likely hiding a few of the gems. Late 1980s suburban Bay Area glam/punk/schlock, LATENT IMAGE harness elements of THE CULT, (then) contemporary IGGY POP, Sunset Strip leads, and Eldridge pomp. Some of the songs are too long (especially the 6+ minute opener "You're Still The One"), but there's something that just clicks about this one....maybe it's because they are clearly so deadly serious. The solo in "Working Girls" is brat pack montage gold, and there's not a hint of irony. I picture some dudes in a garage with flowing locks, who would have their dreams crushed just a few years later when the dirty and underproduced sounds of Seattle took over the airwaves...struggling to add the grit they had spent a would-have-been career sweeping off. Keep digging, my friends.

THROUGH THE KEYHOLE

NOTHING BAND

The liberation of solitude and the fruits of home recording join forces on this 32 minute offering from Bay Area project NOTHING BAND.  Filling the shoes of local-esque names like RESIDENTS, FATRIX, and NEGATIVLAND quite nicely, I feel like these are sounds that will be noticed and/or appreciated more in future times, but that is only because "our" vision is too narrow, my friends. And for a very weird and (I swear) completely accidental addition to today's post, I offered you (dear visitors) the 3: Aloner cassette from NOTHING BAND on 12 February 2016. Sometimes things just work out. 

CLOSE THE THE PAST

LOS PUNK ROCKERS

Think back, if you will, to a time when Noise Punk Mondays were a guarantee. Not a "sometimes, maybe, who knows?" kind of thing, but an "every fukkn Monday" kind of thing here at TE. Distortion reigned. Ineptitude, both deliberate and unintentional, was celebrated. And your work week started with chaos and, hopefully, bombastic bursts of frantic mayhem. Do you miss those days, even as the scene du jour has turned broody and dark and drum machines have replaced pedal boards and chaos punks now listen to the shit I jammed in my bedroom before I knew what punk even was? If you find yourself lost, then I invite you to visit a different place. A place where chaos is made of determination. A place where distortion just happens....it's not planned, but it's not avoided either. It just becomes....and it is allowed. A place where skill and desire clash with a fury that cannot be translated from the ears. A place where LOS PUNK ROCKERS still reign, no matter what is in fashion, because punk rules. OK? OK.

BUTT SWEAT AND TEARS

PRICK

The joys of having friends who got into the game before you....and dropped out before you. Those are the friends who give you their shit because they are sick of dragging around that shoebox of tapes that they just aren't ever gonna listen to, and damned if those friends don't have a friend in ME who is happy to help them solve that problem. Craig was probably like 14 when he was seeing PRICK somewhere in the East Bay. Me? I was 1 16 year old new waver with a couple of DEAD KENNEDYS records lurking in a milk crate in northern Oklahoma. I wouldn't have known how to find DIY punk even if I had known it existed (I didn't), so I relive those teenage punk years that I never had through the cast off remnants of adolescence....and I'm grateful. Four songs here from 1988....LES THUGS coming out of the guitars (and the songs too), GITS from the vocals, and hook filled Bay Area punk oozing out of the whole damn thing. The first two tracks are solid fukkn gold, while the second two show a band who was probably planning to continue in a "different" direction that could either have meant alternative rock or whatever you call the subgenre that JAWBREAKER accidentally invented. But, to my knowledge, they didn't go in either direction....they faded away (if I'm wrong here, I would like to be corrected), like most bands do.

PRICK

VIOLENCE

This Oakland outfit only played a few shows before things fell apart...and I sadly didn't even see them once. One time I was in a line outside the show, waiting to get frisked, stubbornly refusing to even attempt to pull some weird "scene card" that I probably didn't even (don't even) have to jump the line so I could see the first band....and so I listened to aural strains of VIOLENCE outside the venue instead of seeing them in the flesh. They sounded like a complete mess. And I wish I had tried to pull that card. And these eight minutes is all that is left. Four women. No guitars. Weird and uncomfortable post punk presented as noise punk....yeah, I really wish I had tried to jump the line that night. "We Want Anarchy" is fukkn primal, there's just no other way to describe it. It's not "good" buy any classical definition, but it's more "real" than most of the bullshit that passes as punk in these modern days. Keep it weird, y'all. Keep not giving a fukk. 

VIOLENCE

Also - try searching the internet for a band called VIOLENCE. Seriously. It's fun. 

SUBURBAN BITCH

Sometime in '04/05 we got a call that there were some friends in distress. Buzz (SHOTWELL) and Janelle (PANTY RAID, TOURETTES, Tales Of Blarg) had started a summer band so they could help their friend move across country. The plan: make a demo, book some shows, drop friend off, leisurely vacation their way back to the west coast. Pretty chill plan...until the van dies in Wisconsin Dells and the hotel says you're scumbags and you can't stay there anymore and sleeping in a ditch starts getting old., Their bandmate/s and taggers along had already gotten rides to Milwaukee, and I drove to The Dells to collect Buzz, Janelle and their belongings from a van in a gas station parking lot at 3am...we left the van there (sans license plates) and brought them to our pad to work on a new plan. They only stayed with us for a couple of nights, their road crew was soon reunited and everyone started trickling home on their own. That was the summer I met the brilliant and (still) inspiring Melissa Shakes, and my second encounter with Brontez (who re-introduced himself by mentioning how excited he was to turn 18 in a few months so he could start his career as a porn star), but I never saw SUBURBAN BITCH play a show. 

SUBURBAN BITCH

The sound? Classic '90s East Bay with plenty of Mission District for good measure. Sloppy. Raw. Punk.

GLOCHIDS

Beautiful and peaceful collection reinterpreting nine different GLOCHIDS tracks. Remixes by JOCK CLUB, SØREN, J.S. AURELIUS, DEEP PILL, SANDOVAL and others. Perfect listening today, for a myriad of reasons. 

REmI-X

CELL ROT

Dear Americans: Hope you had a pleasant weekend, and that your "holiday" was satisfactory. Dear Everyone Else: This holiday weekend thing is bullshit, it's mostly just gluttony and fake appreciation. You know what is not bullshit? The drums during the breakdown to "Punishment." That shit is real as fukk. CELL ROT are from Oakland, and were born out of the ashes of EXHAAUST (basically same band with a different vocalist). Three songs here....and holy fukkn shit are we in for a treat if these fools stick around for a while. Looking forward to seeing them in the flesh on Friday....I guess sometimes living in this cesspool nation isn't entirely shitty. So yeah....it's Monday. Have a nice week.

CELL ROT

HONEYBATH

Someone want to tell me how I completely missed this shit? It's like that late '80s college rock rehash stuff that's popular these days, but force fed meth and HICKEY. This Bay Area band fukkn cooks, and they sound legitimately unhinged...maybe there's more than this demo. Maybe I could use the internet to find out. I probably won't, because I've got more tapes to rip. Thanks $1 bin, for this little jewel. 

NEXT

RUT

They've got it. The thing. That something that grabs you right out of the gate and spins you around until you don't want to do anything except go harder. The singer....her eyes when she rages, fukkn full. Fukkn fierce. Even when you see the breakdowns coming they still shake you to the core and the hardcore (mind you, "the hardcore" sums up the entire release) is on fire from start to finish. Check the subtle and flawless downstrokes on "contempt" - shit goes from killer to DESTROY! in the blink of an eye. I'm sure there's more to come from these kids, and I wait eagerly....in the meantime I'm gonna keep watching them play and feel good about the future of punk. 

RUT

MEATHEAD

Thick and meaty hardcore, blown to shit and extra ugly. Do not expect nuance or subtlety. Expect to be leveled. Expect six minutes of brutality. 

WORLDWIDE

BURL

1994 suited us pretty well yesterday, so why not another visit....shall we? San Jose's BURL are a perfect example of mid decade USDIY scenes and styles colliding - emotional hardcore, melodic punk, weird mathy discordance, and an earnestness that cannot be faked (or, seemingly, replicated). I would be lying if I said that I liked everything on the demo, but I am a huge fan of the demo as a whole, and I hope the distinction is logical to you, dear reader. I hear DAMITOL. I hear early Lookout. I hear BORN AGAINST. I hear basements. I hear memories. 

BURL

THE VARICAPS

A criminally short lived SF band, THE VARICAPS only played a handful of shows before calling it quits. The one I saw was great, even though fuck having to go to the Hemlock to see shows, and this demo is a way under the radar banger. Hopelessly catchy driving punk, Kat's vocals harness THE GITS and drip with soul while Kevin's buzzsaw guitar cuts through the melodies and gives the band just enough tension. Rhythm section is pure LES THUGS/LA FRACTION four on the floor power and never lets up. It would have been good to have more, for sure, but if nine minutes of killer punk is the whole of your legacy and nary a clunker in the mix....? Then you're doing pretty damned well, young punk.

THE VARICAPS

IRON LUNG

For the discerning random cassette connoisseur, I present you with n accidental cacophony. Recorded at Mission Records sometime in the early 2000s, presumably over what seems to have been a pretty cool mix tape, this IRON LUNG set is preceded and interrupted by several layers occasionally recognizable sound - a few DANIELLE DAX tracks, some oldies, and tortured electro pop bangers from distant lands. The beauty of this organic manipulation is that it is still incredibly listenable, and when the sound gives way to the final few IRON LUNG tracks unhindered they sound extra deadly. It's a complete accident, to be sure, but a compelling one to say the least.  Been sitting on this one for a while...and today seemed like the day. Don't snooze.

IRON LUNG *plus

HICKEY

It just says Lost HICKEY Shits, and it's in my handwriting. That's all I can tell you, because that's all I know. Sometimes you live with people and they influence you and they move you and years later they are dead and you think about them. October 5th is one of those days....every year. 

LOST HICKEY SHITS

DIGMA

 

I missed these fools at Aklasan Fest 3 a few months back, which bums me out every time I crank this tape. Politically fueled DBeat with shameless nods towards heavy east coast hardcore and '90s crust. Relentless vocals, persistent attack, and when they decide to break it down....? DIGMA is deadly. Nothing but this banger from 2013 to show, but I'll fukkn take it - and cheers to Aklasan Records for making sure these tracks appeared in physical form. Filipino-American hardcore is alive and thriving - keep 'em coming, punks.

MMXIII

LEATHER GLOVE

The internet has (justly) covered this one at length, so I'll spare excess adulations. LEATHER GLOVE was born from the mind of Greg Wilkinson (Earhammer Studios, BRAINOIL), and it's a monolith of death metal sludge processed through a filter that I can only describe as his own. Aural oppression at it's finest, shown the light of day by the fine people at Sentient Ruin. 

LEATHER GLOVE

SCALPED

Oh, you snoozed? Sorry for you, punk. Terminal Escape faves YADOKAI disintegrated into SCALPED a couple of years ago (only change in membership was one guitarist) and then as soon as your knuckles hit the floor they were gone and PRIMAL RITE appeared (change in membership this time was the vocalist). SCALPED took YADOKAI's erratic lurches and yanked out enough of the Japanese hardcore to make it real confusing - a start/stop/breakdown riff-o-rama from the first burst of sound. There are only six minutes of mayhem on this demo, and it runs essentially as one track, one collection of riffs, one continuous bash to the face. I honestly prefer this practice space demo to any of the band's "studio" recordings - rawer, more teeth, more chaos....uglier. And this is a band that was, from its inception, decidedly ugly. 

DEMO: 2014