Optimum Wound Profile - Lowest Common Dominator (1992)

UK industrial metal/hardcore. Thrash-y punk riffs, gated drums, distorted vocals, sample-heavy industrial atmosphere.

Track listing:

1. Drain

2. Tranqhead

3. Ego Crotch

4. Downmouth

5. You're Weak

6. Blindfold

7. Incision

8. Responsibility

9. Skin

10. Melt

11. Damage

12. Crave

13. Core Melt

I said: I'm not gonna hurt you. I'm just gonna bash your brains in. I'm gonna bash 'em right the fuck in.

You should also listen to:

Counterblast - Balance of Pain (1996)

Lard - Pure Chewing Satisfaction (1997)

Flux of Pink Indians - Strive to Survive & Neu Smell (1989)

Unsurprisingly, I've been tripping down musical memory lane. This comp is a real formative punk classic for me that I've somehow managed to miss posting all these years. Strive to Survive... is easily a top 5 anarchopunk album, and Neu Smell is arguably the best Crass Records 7" that isn't by Crass. From an era in which it probably felt, for a second, like punk might actually amount to something resembling a political movement.

(I haven't actually listened to this rip, I'm listening to my physical copies, let me know if the rip sucks.)

Track listing:

Strive to Survive Causing the Least Suffering Possible

1. Song for Them

2. Charity Hilarity

3. Some of Us Scream Some of Us Shout

4. Take Heed

5. T.V. Dinners

6. Tapioca Sunrise

7. Progress

8. They Lie We Die

9. Blinded by Science

10. Myxomatosis

11. Is There Anybody There

12. The Fun Is Over

Neu Smell

13. Sick Butchers

14. Background of Malfunction

15. Poem

16. Tube Disasters

17. Poem End

Build up some speed, don't shut your eyes

Make sure that everyone in the train dies

You don't get no prize, no time to say goodbyes

Just smile everyone, you'll be on TV tonight

That's right

More peace punk that we would listen to in our cars driving around suburban Maryland:

Lost Cherrees - All Part of Growing Up (1984)

Toxic Waste - Belfast (1987)

Disclose - The Aspects of War (1997)

A chaotic, careening 4-track practice space recording from the great Disclose. As noise-fucked and raw as they ever sounded.

Track listing:

1. Volkssturm (National Storming Party)

2. Courage

3. The Cause of War

4. The Aspects of War

5. Why Isn't There War?

6. Heartless

7. In Fact

8. The Grief

9. Smell of the Rotten Corpse

10. After an Air-Attack

Futility and lawlessness

More like this:

Gloom - 撲殺精神破綻者 (2003)

D-Clone - Creation and Destroy (2013)

Disfear - Everyday Slaughter (1997)

"But DEAR SPIRIT," I hear you say, "if you're so busy, surely your pushup regimen must be suffering!" Not to worry, my caring, inquisitive reader, it's not. I'm still shupping like a madman. I've even taken to shutting my camera off and busting out a quick 50 when a classmate in a Zoom lecture asks a question about something I already understand. Today, I did pushups #200-300 to Everyday Slaughter, arguably the greatest straight-up d-beat record ever recorded.

Track listing:

1. With Each Dawn I Die

2. Anthem of Agony

3. Crimescene: Worldwide

4. A Race for Power

5. Spectre of Genocide

6. Everyday Slaughter

7. Subsistance

8. Totalitarian Control

9. Frustration

10. Aftermath

11. 101 Overkill

12. Captured by Life

13. In Fear

It's all death

More d-beat:

Disgust - Brutality of War (1993)

Framtid - Under the Ashes (2002)

Discard - Four Minutes Past Midnight (1994)

By request, here's some old-school Swedish kång to smash your head against. Raging d-beat filled out by wild speed metal soloing.

Track listing:

1. Intro / Resist and Exist

2. Death Race

3. Sounds of War

4. I Won't Surrender

5. Never Ending Nightmare

6. Four Minutes Past Midnight

7. Nuclear War

8. Why Should They Die?

9. Nuclear Sunrise / The Final Dawn

10. One Day

11. Armed Revolution

12. Lights Out

13. Stand Up and Fight Back

14. Fear / Take a Look at Tomorrow

Ough!

More:

Disgust - Brutality of War (1993)

Totalitär - Sin Egen Motståndare (1994)

Wormwood - Starvation (2006)

Previously on OPIUM HUM:

Wormwood - Requiescat (2000)

Someone just requested that I re-up the link for Requiescat, and it made me want to revisit Wormwood's swan-song: Starvation. Here, they went more atmospheric, leaning into an epic, gothic horror-fueled sound that harkens both to Souls at Zero-era Neurosis and early death/doom bands like Paradise Lost and Anathema, while keeping that crusty base. The last time my old band Wake Up On Fire played with them, we had partied afterwards, and I woke up surrounded by my passed-out bandmates in their percussionist/vocalist's living room, where he had set up a digital scrolling marquee making fun of our guitarist for puking. RIP this band.

Track listing:

1. Passages of Lesser Light

2. Release from Expectation

3. Finite

4. As You Bind, So Are You Bound

5. The Towering Outdoors

6. Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me

7. No True Altruism

8. Starvation

9. Gluttony

A bridge between sun and form

More from Seattle:

Teen Cthulhu - Ride the Blade (2003)

Wilt - Wilt (2017)

Framtid - Under the Ashes (2002)

Red-lining Japanese d-beat. Total fuck. Probably the band that I tried to ape most when I was briefly in a generic d-beat band.

Track listing:

1. Intro

2. The Total Arse

3. Over Population

4. Scapes of Tragedy

5. Tomorrow

6. Consuming Shit and Mind Pollution

7. Centuries of War

8. Death Protest

9. Curse

10. No Installation

11. Life's Hard

12. We Must Impart

13. Bomb Blast

Pictures of starving children sell records

More like this:

Gloom - 撲殺精神破綻者 (2003)

Kriegshög - Hardcore Hell EP (2008)

Uncurbed - Peacelovepunklife... Andotherstories (1998)

Classic, fist-pumping Swedish d-beat/hardcore. As you can tell from the album cover and song titles, the band's presentation and vibe is very 'punks-is-hippies'; however, the delivery is a whole different story -- it's beefy, ripping, and tight. "A Taste of Tomorrow" and "Forget the Future - Live in the Past" were among the first mp3s I ever downloaded, in 1998, off of some random, extremely primitive punk website. So you can thank Uncurbed and whoever uploaded those files for kicking off my obsession with downloading every piece of music ever recorded.

Track listing:

1. Tomorrow Rebels

2. System Stinx

3. Welfare or Hellfare?

4. Anarchy and Peace (Brothers and Sisters)

5. If I Need I Make!!

6. A Taste of Tomorrow

7. Passed Away

8. Breakout

9. Realize

10. Living in a Squat (So What!!?)

11. Forget the Future - Live in the Past

12. Never Change

13. Celebration to the Losers

14. Liberation Hippies

15. Government Education

16. Party Punx

I send them so much shit

Hope they all choke

More like this:

Totalitär - Sin Egen Motståndare (1994)

Hiatus - El Sueño de la Razon Produce Monstruos (1995)

Jeniger - Jeniger (2002)

One of the first and best melodic d-beat/crust records; it's maybe worth noting that Jeniger was recorded before the first Tragedy LP came out. This record changed the way I thought about punk, and was one of my old band's biggest influences during our formative years.

Track listing:

1. Point of No Return

2. Wasted

3. Lethargie

4. Paradise

5. For This Time

6. For No-One

7. Go Off

Welcome to paradise

Welcome to hell

More melodic d-beat:

Ambulance - The End of Our Time (2004)

Schifosi - Absentium Existence (2006)

Facedowninshit - Shit Bloody Shit (2002)

Crusty sludge/sludgy crust. Riffs for days. Shit Bloody Shit collects everything that the band had recorded up to this point, and it was one of my absolute favorite records as a young weedhead.

Track listing:
1. Cinders
2. Doused Spirits
3. Bleeding in the Street
4. Rigid Limbs
5. Distant Cries
6. Spent Corpse
7. Broken Hands
8. Born in Fucking Chains
9. Left Behind
10. With Seeds
11. Stepping Away
12. Born in Fucking Chains
13. Rigid Limbs
14. Into the Woods
15. Broken Hands

Justice is every pig bleeding in the street

More shit I loved when I was young and stoned:

Grief - ... And Man Will
Become the Hunted (2000)

Brainoil -
Brainoil (2003)

Fukpig - Spewings from a Selfish Nation (2009)

Heavy-as-fucking-fuck d-beat with buzzsaw guitars and an impenetrably dense sound that, along with some melodic tendencies, dramatic choral keyboards, and general studio weirdness, suggests industrial black metal.

Track listing:
1. The Horror Is Here
2. Necropunk
3. Switchblade Romance
4. As the Bombs Fall
5. As Millions Suffer
6. Bombs of War
7. Cunt Hive
8. Mother Nature's Fears
9. Millions Dying
10. Thrash Armageddon
11. Their Cries
12. Negative Mental Attitude
13. Caught Out
14. Inertia

Delight in the dying of the light

Similar sonics:

Morgue - The Process to
Define the Shape of Self-Loathing (2002)

N.K.V.D. -
Hakmarrja (2014)

Conflict - Against All Odds (1989)

Easily the most musically adventurous record from these anarchopunk legends. Of the record's six tracks, only two -- "Slaughter of Innocence" and "A Message to Who" -- could be considered standard fare for the band, and they're arguably the two best songs they ever recorded. Elsewhere, there's the epic, multi-suite, 14-minute title track, something resembling a ballad ("Assured Mutual Destruction") and a skit-like track parodying the commercialization of punk ("The Greatest Show on Earth") that never quite takes off. And then there's "A State of Mind", an experimental, electronic dance track that features a pitch-shifted voice moaning "Ecstasy!" over and over again, and is unlike anything else they ever recorded.

Track listing:
1. Against All Odds
2. Slaughter of Innocence
3. Assured Mutual Destruction
4. The Greatest Show on Earth
5. A Message to Who
6. A State of Mind

Eyes glare, beast and master, animals both, crazed and weary
There can only be one real winner here, the results are now seen clearly
Teeth marks bare where fur once protected, flesh hangs dangling in shreds
Their faces grimace, rejected strips of meat exposed, selected
Bloodstains and saliva splatter the fuel of precious life
Master and servant segregate the ritual sacrifice
Driven mad and into frenzy, limbs torn, skin is shorn
Like sex perverts at a peep show, this is the ultimate in porn

More like this:

Lost Cherrees -
All Part of Growing Up (1984)

Toxic Waste -
Belfast (1987)

Nausea - Extinction (1990)

One of the best crust albums ever made. Deserves a better writeup but probably doesn't need one. Get drunk and thrash to mark the inevitable end of life on earth.

Track listing:
1. Tech-No-Logic-Kill
2. Inherit the Wasteland
3. Johnny Got His Gun
4. Self Destruct
5. Butchers
6. Sacrifice
7. Godless
8. Clutches
9. Extinction
10. Battened
11. Blackened Dove
12. Void

Praise the cybergod for the pound of flesh you ate
Praise the cybergod for the gift of hate

More like this:

Misery -
Next Time (1995)

Decrepit - Tired of
Licking Blood from a Spoon (1999)

Disgust - Brutality of War (1993)

The world is a fat turd. How 'bout some d-beat while you wait to die?

Track listing:
1. Intro
2. Mother Earth
3. As Millions Suffer
4. An Horrific End
5. Thrown into Oblivion
6. Civilization Decays
7. Relentless Slaughter
8. And Still...
9. The Light of Death
10. What Kind of Mind
11. You Have No Right
12. Sea of Tears
13. The Anguished Cry
14. Life Erased
15. Outro

The visions of the destruction
Of slaughter and violence

More like this:

The Shitlickers -
The Shitlickers (1982)

Hiatus - El Sueño de la
Razon Produce Monstruos (1995)

Catharsis - Passion (1999)

Previously on OPIUM HUM:
Catharsis - Samsara (1997)

Second and final LP by the great Catharsis. An absolute masterpiece of fiery, dramatic, psych-tinged metallic hardcore. Hearing the one-two punch of "Into the Eyeless Sockets of the Night" into "The Witch's Heart" for the first time as a very, very stoned 17-year old remains one of the greatest music-listening experiences of my life.

As great as Passion is, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the penultimate track, "Deserts Without Mirages", an ambitious but probably misguided attempt stab at reggae that's been the subject of many a debate around the DEAR SPIRIT household over the years. I will say, I'm closer now to liking it than I've ever been. Regardless, it does set the listener up for "Sabbat (Dervish Dance)", the album's awe-inspiring climax and one of my absolute favorite pieces of heavy music.

Track listing:
1. Passion...
2. ...Obsession
3. Panoptikon
4. Into the Eyeless Sockets of the Night
5. The Witch's Heart (Live's Lost Too Soon - Or Too Late)
6. Threshold (To Enter, the Heart Must Break)
7. Duende (The Soil Is Closer Than the Sky)
8. Deserts Without Mirages
9. Sabbat (Dervish Dance)

This weapon will replace my tongue.
I will learn to speak through it.
And my poetry will now be written with blood.

Also of interest:

Damad -
Burning Cold (2000)

Majority Rule -
Interviews with David Frost (2001)

Wormwood - Requiescat (2000)

Sludge-y gothic crust. Funereal organ/synth, two basses, two percussionists, hella vocalists, and no guitars. Wormwood and my old band Wake Up on Fire played a bunch of shows together in various US cities throughout the mid-2000s, and given the many things we had in common -- multiple drummers, too many vocalists, generally being a nightmarish ordeal for any given sound-person, plus a fair amount of dreadlocks -- ended up being pretty good band-homies. Feels like a goddamn lifetime ago.

Track listing:
1. Screwtape
2. Resurrect
3. Nothing
4. Descendant
5. The Endless Search for Food
6. Requiescat
7. Circus
8. Seven
9. Out Cold
10. Soundtrack

A passing sense of intuition doubted for the dark
For the worst and for the grey
A passing memory: secure, serene, sublime

You might also like:

Damad -
Burning Cold (2000)

Moonshine -
Moonshine (2005)

Crass - Christ the Album (1982)

Arguably the greatest peace-punk record ever made. The proper album is a total game-changer, and finds Crass dialing in their already established sound, then firing it off into the great unknown. Chaotic, static-y sheets of guitar stabilized by a tight, muscular rhythm section, masses of news-sourced dialogue clips, and a sneering, pissed-off cockney poking holes in everything he sees -- politicians, the family unit, television, gender roles, other punks, Christians, skinheads, warmongers, meat eaters and more all find themselves in the crosshairs. The second disc is a collage of raw live stuff, interviews, spoken word, 'behind-the-scenes' recordings, and the like.

I seem to have been on a bit of a nostalgia trip of late (see also: this, this, this, this, and this) and I'm just gonna go with it. Sure, maybe this stuff is not all that obscure, but enough people read this blog that, statistically speaking, I'm practically guaranteed that at least like a hundred of you have never heard this.

Track listing:
   Christ the Album
1. Have a Nice Day
2. Mother Love
3. Nineteen Eighty Bore
4. I Know There Is Love
5. Beg Your Bardon
6. Birth Control 'n' Rock 'n' Roll
7. Reality Whitewash
8. It's the Greatest Working Class Rip-Off
9. Deadhead
10. You Can Be Who?
11. Buy Now Pay as You Go
12. Rival Tribal Revel Rebel, Pt. 2
13. Bumhooler
14. Sentiment (White Feathers)
15. Major General Despair
   Well-Forked - But Not Dead
1. Banned from the Roxy
2. The Sound of One Hand Clapping
3. Punk Is Dead
4. Nagasaki Nightmare
5. Darling
6. Bata Motel Blues
7. Berkertrex Bribe
8. Fold It in Half
9. Big Hands
10. Bumhooler
11. Big A Little A
12. First Woman
13. Arlington 73
14. Bomb Plus Bomb Tape
15. Contaminational Power
16. I Ain't Thick
17. G's Song
18. Securicor
19. I Can't Stand It
20. Shaved Women
21. A Part of Life
22. Do They Owe Us a Living
23. So What
24. Salt 'n' Pepper

Patriots' progress is a backstep
A cruel noose around a young neck
They teach our children in the classroom
To respect a madman on a rostrum
To praise the the dirty works of battle
Bring out the ribbon, balloon and rattle
To dig their own graves in the cold earth
So sad and pointless now to give birth

You should also listen to:

Chaos U.K. -
Chaos U.K. (1983)

Omega Tribe -
No Love Lost (1983)

Aus-Rotten - The System Works... for Them (1996)

A bunch of white nationalists just invaded my city, and with the aid of local cops, paraded around downtown, wearing "Pinochet Did Nothing Wrong" shirts and peddling fear and hatred to anyone who'd listen. What a fucking waste. Here's a stone classic of heavy, raw anarcho-crust that sounds as relevant now as it ever has.

Track listing:
1. Intro
2. The System Works for Them
3. The Battlefield's Still Red
4. When You Support These Fucking Bastards
5. American Ethic
6. No Justice, No Peace
7. Too Little, Too Late
8. Poison Corporations
9. Tedium
10. B.A.T.F.
11. The Crucifix and the Flag
12. The Flags Will Cover Coffins

Take your fucking race war and shove it up your ass

Also listen to:

Toxic Waste -
Belfast (1987)

Decrepit - Tired of Licking
Blood from a Spoon (1999)

Wilt - Wilt (2017)

Crusty, Bolt Thrower-worshipping Seattle death metal. Impenetrably thick and punishingly heavy. Played a show with Wilt and Swordwielder a few years back, and my band at the time's vocalist disappeared right when we were supposed to go on, fucking up the order of the whole show and pissing off everyone, Wilt included. Good times. Free/name your price via bandcamp.

Not to be confused with the dark ambient project.

Track listing:
1. Cold Road of Despair
2. Sermon for the Bootlickers
3. Punisher of Faith
4. Fertile
5. Territory
6. Initiations Rites
7. Sterile
8. Scarecrow
9. Salt Mine
10. Isolation

We all suffer

More crusty metal:

Asschapel -
Fire and Destruction (2003)

Stormcrow -
Enslaved in Darkness (2005)

Dystopia - The Aftermath (1999)

Related:
Asunder / Like Flies on Flesh - Asunder / Like Flies on Flesh [Split] (2000)

For better or worse, The Aftermath changed my life. Sample-packed, aggressively miserable tracks -- culled from various EPs, splits, and comps -- from the darkest, heaviest, and probably overall best crust band of all time. A melting pot of sludge, hardcore, grind, and warped psychedelia that still sounds unlike anything else. Also, the riffs. The fucking riffs.

Track listing:
1. Population Birth Control
2. Father's Gun
3. Self Defeating Prophecy
4. Sleep
5. Socialized Death Sentence
6. Backstabber
7. They Live
8. Anger Brought by Disease
9. Jarhead Fertilizer
10. Taste Your Own Medicine
11. Instrumental
12. Diary of a Battered Child
13. Cosmetic Plague [Rudimentary Peni cover, hidden track]

Gun in my mouth
I pull the trigger and my brains come out
The same story
A dead child
A father's gun

Also listen to:

Grief -
Torso (1998)

Damad -
Burning Cold (2000)