MOONSCAPE // SMUT

 

It was almost ten years ago when I last posted MOONSCAPE, and I focused on their dark energy. That energy is arguably even more present on this SMUT split. Any if you want to talk about energy.....SMUT is everything you want in a punk. You've had them before but (if you're like me) it's been a minute and this split is a good reminder. "Thirst Trap" is the best punk song you'll hear today.

MOONSCAPE • SMUT

Worth noting that this tape sounds murky as shit in the best and punkest way imaginable.

FORM RANK

 

You've heard sounds like this before, but the beauty of punk is this: You've never heard these sounds. Addictive and anthemic Los Angeles street punk, doing to kids today what CRIMINAL DAMAGE did to us twenty years ago. We had heard sounds like that before too...you see what I mean?

FORM RANK

XAMPLES

 

What is this.....? This is early '10s LA raw ponx unrealized. This is MANIA and DRAPETOMANIA. This is ADOLESCENTS and SADICOS and also UK82 and Group Sex and all of that shit, because what is this shit really....? It's punk. Shit is fukkn punk. PERIOD. Like seriously, what else do you need. Seems like XAMPLES were ever so slightly on the back end of the SoCal wave that stopped all of the (us) old(er) punks dead in their (our) tracks....but that's just context. Today is really just seems like this tape fukkn rules and the title track will blow your mind.

END OF THE LIE

WARTZ

 

I frequently say that I'm at a loss for words and then say a lot of words and I fear I am about to do the same thing again but.....I mean, how else can you approach WARTZ? Manic and maniacal madness that owes equal dents to F.U.S and early 2010s NWI punk and primitive UK82 hardcore....six songs in seven minutes. and every second is perfect. 

WARTZ

LAMICTAL

 

I swear the tapes do this band no justice. There are a few tapes, and they are all killers - top notch inadvertent CCTV/SNOOPERS worship. Raw and determined no-fi treble rebel quirk-punk of the highest order; fast, furious and relentless. Will LAMICTAL ride a wave to super stardom like they should? Saw SNOOPERS on the Warfield marquee on my way to work this past week, but somehow I feel like these LA punks are gonna stay punk. 

••••••

Alternate write-up: "Four minutes of magic."

DOCTOR'S ORDERS

ZOLOA

 

Remember the early '10s when the punk underworld was buzzing with every new Silenzio Statico release and the closet metal freaks were salivating any time a new Crepusculo Negro tape dropped? And then there was ZOLOA....the were both worlds. All of the worlds. Raw OSDM and DISRUPT  and ScandiCrust and black metal destruction and MISERY all at the same time (likely on different turntables at different speeds). Tell me "Sicario" doesn't waste your ass and I'll tell you we aren't friends - simple as that. It's the mid '20s now, and I still buzz when I blast this shit. 

PLATA O PLOMO

LAMICTAL

 

Three minutes. Four songs. Northwest Indiana rebirthed in Southern California....When I think about Los Angeles, I want to think about seeing LAMICTAL be total freaks in the Sunset a couple of months ago. I don't want to think about what I think about now. But that's what I think about. Fuck this shit. Fuck ICE and all the acronyms. It's fucking scary....hopefully it's also steeling. 

VIOLENT CONVULSIONS

NEONATES

 

Categorization rendered impossible, and I am grateful to Los Angeles' NEONATES for the challenge. My reference points include SISTER FUCKER, girlSperm, THE SLITS, some shit like BLURT that was on Rough Trade 40 years ago...but these are just reference points, you know? NEONATES doesn't sound like any of the above, but their plodding meanders and the shrill yelps take me to the same place. Or to a similar place. I like it there. It's not my place and it's not a place for me....but I'm happy to be able to visit from a distance because it seems really cool there. They were done a decade ago, so whatever (or wherever) that place is, it's in the past like a lot of other cool stuff. 

NEONATES

ANGRY SAMOANS

 

You already know this one, right? If you're a North American, then you've flipped by Live At Rhino Records in at least a dozen cut-out bins over the years. Maybe you snagged a copy for $3.99 in a mall somewhere when you were a teenager because you recognized the name of the band? Maybe you figured if it was that readily available then maybe that meant no one wanted it because it sucked and you bought a copy of Panorama instead (*cough cough* *that was me*). Anyway, shit jams, and it's cool to hear ANGRY SAMOANS in their infancy as an early SoCal punk band before being a "hardcore" punk band was even really a thing. VOM and RAMONES covers and a version of "My Old Man's A Fatso" that's so much rougher (and better) than the Back From Samoa version that I almost don't even want to crank that LP to check and see if I'm crazy or not. Essential jams....? Nah. But goddamn the things that might have been different if I had skipped that CARS tape when I was a junior in high school. "Gimme Some Slack" still jams, but "You Stupid Asshole" would have made a serious impact then. Still does now, but really would have then, you know?

LIVE AT RHINO RECORDS

FOLLETO

 

Feels like you're walking past the entrance to an alley that's just a little too dark for comfort, and you hear something pulsing at the end of the block coming out of the shadows. It sounds dangerous, and you want more....but you aren't comfortable enough in your own skin to investigate so you keep walking, head down, punks walking the other direction side eyeing you as you pretend you didn't see or hear anything. Steal a glance over your shoulder and you see those punks lumbering down the alley towards a different kind of night and you're gonna think about this decision for the rest of your life. 

FOLLETO

US//THEM

 

Not sure when and/or how this one slipped by, but it's here now and I'm gonna hold onto it for a while. Massive, discordant, uncompromising modern hardcore from Los Angeles. US//THEM make me think about the later '00s in a very good and enthusiastically nostalgic way. What does they make you think about?

DEMONSTRATION 2021

THE MUSICAL TRACING ENSEMBLE

 

I think the best way to describe (or sell?) the release is to describe the project (and the process). THE MUSICAL TRACING ENSEMBLE is a rotating group of musicians who perform live. A rotating group of musicians who don't know what they're going to play...and then they play it. They set up and they each put on headphones. A song is played for them, and they play along. They cannot hear the other musicians, just the song that are meant to play along with. The audience cannot hear the source material, only the sound/s the musicians are making. As a concept....it's kinda genius. As a product....it's irresistible. Hear twelve songs that you know, as you never imagined hearing them. 

THEY DIDN'T KNOW WHAT THEY WERE GOING TO PLAY...AND THEN THEY PLAYED IT

Alternate Description: Elevator Music On Acid. 

FISSURE

 

Quite literally every time I listen to FISSURE I get floored all over again. This was the tape that started the train, a self titled juggernaut released in 2013 that features nine mines of bulldozer PV-tinged '90s hardcore tonnage. Even on a poorly duplicated DIY cassette the weight is unavoidable and the impact is instant - tracks like "Gary Busey For President Of The Moon" and "I Used To Cut Myself To Dashboard Confessional" will stop you dead in your tracks. So indescribably heavy, sarcasm and irreverence pegged in the red....and so fukkn brutal

FISSURE

EXCESS EXPRESS

 

A few weeks ago I took my lady friend to see Toronto's BAD WAITRESS at Permanent Records Roadhouse in LA - extremely good night at a very chill spot with a courtyard so we could avoid the testosterone and hang out with our Canadian pals before they played. They were (predictably) fantastic loud as fukk, but.....the bar doubled as a record store, and there was a wall rack of cassettes right in front of the stage. Now, a lot of things have changed in my life over the last couple of years, but if you put a wall of cassettes in front of me, then I'm still gonna be distracted. No way I covered everything (it was dark there was a band playing) but I snagged this one because scrawled across the case in black marker I saw "STEAL THE, LOVE EE. IT'S FREE." So look, either the band gave them away (good move) or it sucks so bad that the store can't sell it or it just got lost in the wall rack and someone realkized that the tape has been sitting for years and no one is buying. Either way, I'm here to help and I felt like a winner when I walked out that night to rest up for a trial board the following morning (where I was also a winner). After daylight observation, my hopes were not exactly sky high - borderline MINOR THREAT-sitting-on-a-porch-in-Virginia cover vibes, but the cast here all present as mustachioed Los Angeles cool guys (this is not a diss - I'm a bald bearded middle aged man living in San Francisco, after all - it's just how the band presents on the cover). Judgement aside, I was not at all prepared for the sounds that were waiting for me....absolutely straight dusty barn floor singer/songwriter country without a shred of irony or pretense. The hits roll off their fingers and you can practically feel your boots kick up when the guitar hits the pick up notes that lead into the solos - it's a thing, and EXCESS EXPRESS nail it. Opening bars of "Side Hustle" are a straight rip of "Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way" so my critical ears were on alert for frauds and posers but by the time I got to "Devil's In The Details" I was straining to make out every word so I could follow the story lines and figure out the hidden themes that simply must be lurking underneath the twang. The vocals take a couple of track to settle in, but ultimately they are what seals the deal for me because they play it straight instead of searching for something that they are not (even though at times the music kinda begs for it). Authenticity is a motherfucker, and it's a real hard thing to fake - fortunately it doesn't sound like these young gents are trying to be anything at all, they're just playing some damn good country/rock songs. Headed back to LA in a couple of weeks...might stop by the Roadhouse for one of those delicious NA spicy margaritas and watch Kelsey smile and roll her eyes at me while I try to find the other nuggets hiding on that wall rack of cassettes....even if I have to pay for them.

A-FRAME SESSIONS

DETH CRUX

 

A few years before the full length on Sentient Ruin came this untouchable (albeit brief) death rock opus from DETH CRUX. There's something about Los Angeles goth punks that hits different - just as punks often play goth better than goths play goth, Los Angeles goths play goth punk like only Los Angeles punks can play goth punk. The CHRISTIAN DEATH to CIRIL pipeline birthed these dreary souls and in this world for which so many have so little for which to be grateful....? Listen to "Swallowed" and then listen to it again. DETH CRUX was just different.

PEARS OF ANGUISH

ZEROS

 What is there to say? I don't really fuck with ZEROS too hard but this three song session from 1979 makes me seriously question that decision - punk is super cool, and I look forward to continuing to discover the new things and the things that I missed until I fucking die. 

ZEROS 1979

HOT LOAD

When Trejo first told me about HOT LOAD, I wondered to myself how the crew of punks he was describing were going to be able to pull off being in a hard rock 'n roll band, how they were going to rein it in enough to make it work. These brutes are hardwired for chaos punk, so much so that MOTÖRHEAD is subdued and casual by comparison, so how on earth were they going to make this work. Answer? They don't emulate the art form - that annihilate the art form. Hyper charged motörpunk played punk by punks for punks, captured live in Sendai, Japan last year.To hear Trejo Trejo announce "this song's called 'Hot Load' by HOT LOAD" is to know that you're about to get your ass blown off. 

TO LIVE & DIE IN SENDAI 

ROTTERS

The nerds are gonna know "Sit On My Face Stevie Nicks" (the nerds-in-training should get to know it) and there's a solid retrospective LP that came out in the '00s that captures a lot of the brilliant madness of THE ROTTERS. But tape traders....man, those fools had our backs before we were even paying attention. This discretely (read: poorly) labeled cassette has two brilliant bare bones ROTTERS sessions, one labeled Moor Punk College Session (1979) and one label Mystic Session (1984) and I swear if the fools who collected material for the aforementioned LP had had access to this tape then it would have been a double album. "Thank God I'm Damned" sounds demonic, "Autolobotomy" hits like a lost KBD burner, "Delousing Shower" is like DWARVES with roughshod GERMS energy. These songs are absolutely in your face and the recordings are about as perfect as you can ask for. So if you're tryna get a little dirty this Wednesday morning...then look no further. 

THE ROTTERS - MYSTIC & MOOR(E)

THE ROTTERS - MYSTIC & MOOR(E)

THE WASTED

If the punx aren't doing it for the punx, then why are the punx even punx?

PUNX FOR PUNX

 

SADO-BABIES

 

Pretty sure the first song isn't even SADO-BABIES, and the three songs listed on the cover don't appear to indicate the tape's contents. There are eight songs here, and five of them appear twice. My goal has always been to present the sounds as presented, not as intended, so here is a collection of growling dupa-dupa that may or may not be the product of some miscreants from Boyle Heights called SADO-BABIES. Hopefully someone drops a comment here, because this shit is actual lo-fi fire and I would like to hear more. 

THE BROOD SESSIONS