SHORTLINE

 

Late '10s ramshackle punk lurches from suburban Portland - start with THE DEAD MILKMEN, go visit GR'UPS, get invested in CONDENADA....I know all of the ingredients already but somehow I can't quite put my finger on the taste. What I can do is keep listening. 

FROWN TOWN DEMO

SPETSNAZ // FLEXIBLE AMMUNITION BELT

 

• Two doses of ramshackle noise punk annihilation from SPETSNAZ.
• Three minutes of raw anarcho/noise from FLEXIBLE AMMUNITION BELT. 

• Enjoy your week... 

SPETSNAZ // FLEXIBLE AMMUNITION BELT

VIVID SEKT

 

Maybe it's odd to wax nostalgic about a 'current' era, but then I realize that 2009 was two or three punk generations ago - shit, Jan's Room was not even a decade old when I learned about hardcore so I'm really talking about the before times when I blab about bands that were playing fifteen years ago. And fifteen years ago it felt like a damn rebirth. There were the Silenzio Statico ponx in LA, SF and Oakland felt like the same scene (even though SF really only had Thrillhouse to compete with the energy of East Bay warehouse gigs) and you could get wild at HOTDR in San Jose or roll up to Sac....and there was Portland. Not like that place wasn't already on the map, but the punks were doing something different there MORAL HEX, ARCTIC FLOWERS, BOG PEOPLE...and VIVID SEKT. I posted this demo when The Escape was only a couple of months old and when I came across a double copy a few weeks back I felt like I was catching up with an old friend. This particular brand of forceful, straight forward punk tempered with UK anarcho sounded like nothing else at the time, and when you listen to day it's almost as if VIVID SEKT are (still) standing determinedly mid stream just letting decades of sonic trends flow past them. They're awkward in the most juvenile way, a presentation that requires concentration results in tracks like "Horde" that are absolutely timeless. 

VIVID SEKT

PUNGENCE

 

Woooooof, this tape is fukkn disgusting. Damaged and derivative downtuned PDX crust with guitars that sound like they were recorded onto magnetic tape scored out of the 7-11 dumpster while the drummer was shoplifting some .40s so the band could all get shithoused before they hit the 4-track. Dive bombs drop in from nowhere, guttural low end vocals are punctuated by high aaaaaaaahhhhh screams that hit like DISCLONE on Dilaudid. PUNGENCE are a raw crust pisstake, a band intentionally punching way below their weight in the most gloriously neaderthal-ic manner - you either have to try really hard to sound like this, or you sound like this because you don't know anything else. And the fact that the lkistener can't tell the difference....? Is beautiful.

PUNGENCE

MIXED COMBAT

 

I hadn't pulled this tape out in fucking years before I ripped it earlier this week and....well, this is the part of the blog where I feel compelled to tell stories. To reminisce and remember by click clacking away at a solitary keyboard with the tinny sounds of forgotten years reduced to digital files screaming at me from a pair of desktop speakers. These are the tapes that transport me - it's not that the sounds are good (they are), it's the place in time that these particular sounds represent. It's the space they hold. It's knowing that in today's punk there is another scene holding a similar space for a different punk. And if I'm just click clacking away just hear my own memories come out of my fingers....then so be it. Because they are really good memories. 

MIXED COMBAT VOL.1

LEBENDEN TOTEN // SKITKIDS

 

This tape was released twenty years ago. 

Let that sit there for a minute. 

This tape was released twenty years ago. 

•••

When I first started posting on Terminal Escape in 2009, I was sharing seminal UK crust demos that were just barely twenty years old. And now...I'm posting a split between two bands who are my contemporaries, and the tape is twenty years old. 

Weird things happen when you don't die, I suppose. 

DISTORT THRASH DISTORT HOPE

NERVESKADE

 

Do you remember when this happened? The noisy, chaotic shit was already a thing and other bands had started pushing the envelope to be sure but NERVESKADE was different. And after NERVESKADE...? Everything was different. 

NERVESKADE

WRETCHED OF THE EARTH

I can't tell you how hard this tape hit when I listened to it earlier this week. This tape (fukk - this band) is precisely why formulaic mid-'00s political DBeat crust is timeless and essential - the power is real, and this shit will take you back (if you were there). There are riffs, to be sure....but you can hear the desperation and the determination. You can hear the hope, misguided and disillusioned as it may be (or may have been), and you can hear the honesty. You aren't listening for the riffs, even though there are riff for days...you're listening for the hope. 

FIRE TO THEIR HOUSES

IN THE RED

 

A tape that sounds like a damn time machine is a tape that going to get repeated listens in and around TEHQ, and Portland's IN THE RED embody the now-dated sounds of the burgeoning millennium. Chaotic screamo-adjacent hardcore, rough, metallic and intense. Midwest basement sweat clashing with MOHINDER and '90s San Diego - I swear I hear ANIMAL FARM in some of these songs, but that reference will mean little to most readers aren't named Daniel and/or John. The replication is rough and filled with tape hiss, but I kinda feel like that's how IN THE RED are supposed to sound....especially 24 years later. 

IN THE RED

COFFIN APARTMENT

 

To (try to) describe Portland's COFFIN APARTMENT would be to do them a disservice. I can say "psychedelic death/doom" and you might think of a sound, but you wouldn't think of this. Ferocious technical death and metallic hardcore clashing with early KYLESA and CAVE IN and even inexplicable tastes of Revolution Summer vocals through a '90s WCBM filter. Even if you know the sound/s (and you likely do), you can't know COFFIN APARTMENT until you hear the sound. 

COFFIN APARTMENT

TUSKS OF BLOOD

 

This one comes from deep in the Satan's Pimp archive - a dreary stoner violence slog from turn of the century Portland that sounds like it was ripped from the clutches of hell herself. It's easy to imagine these sounds coming from those lost decades....but think about them now. That's the point. The now. 

TUSKS OF BLOOD

LIFE DURING WARTIME

 

In a world before podcasts, there was radio. And the thing is...there still is radio, but The Generation doesn't care about that and even though it might make me (kinda) sad (sometimes), it's reality and that's okay. So here's an hour of radio: Life During Wartime. Here's a story about pigs and a dance party. Here's a story about The State from a time that seems like a(nother) lifetime ago. Here's some people, sharing stories.

LIFE DURING WARTIME #6: THE TROUBLES 

CHOW LINE

 

What does it say on the cover? Can you fukkn read? No shame if you can't, modern industrialized educational constructs are an absolute motherfucker so it's probably not your fault. Let me help you out: SIX TRAX RIPPER. Can you read that? Because that's what it says, and that's what it fukkn is. A ripper with six trax. You're welcome. Fuck school. Listen to punk tapes all day. 

SIX TRAX RIPPER

MONGOLOID

 

Portland miscreants channeling damaged early-SST results in a gloriously raucous dose of sonic nihilism. The Deranged 12" that came later in the decade is sorely overlooked (based on how often I see it cheap and used, at least), but why not start at the beginning, you know?

MONGOLOID

 

THY INFERNAL

 

In a very real sense, THY INFERNAL is everything that yesterday's ARGUMENT? post is not. Released in 1997 at the very front end of the first real wave of USBM, Satan's Wrath is a fully realized searing black metal assault, absolutely massive and bleak in every way. Guitar melodies drive the title track, a minor solo driven by punishing double bass before the return of the verse and a chorus of demonic screams. The ungodly crunch during the first half of "Our Past Victories" defies all sonic logic, because sound is simply not meant to be this fukkn sketchy and/or evil. But THY INFERNAL are both. There are only four songs here, all of which were rerecorded for their full length released in 1999 (also titled Satan's Wrath)...brace yourself.

SATAN'S WRATH

For the dedicated few, I will note that the band includes members of VITAL REMAINS, IOMMI STUBBS and IMMOLATION in their thanks list. If you're one of those dedicated few, then you'll understand why I mention it...

FATAL STATE

 

Hard charging, relentless Portland hardcore. For reference points - think something between DETESTATION and SPAZM 151 with fierce vocals that remind me of Mariam from CONDENADA. The delivery is flawless, and "Terrorist Pigs" makes me wish hell would rain down from the sky and purify humanity. Their previous recording is good, but Pura Rabia is something else - you want to talk about a band firing on all cylinders, then let's talk about FATAL STATE.  

PURA RABIA

RESIST

 

Listen to "Hypnotized" a few times. It's so plainly....simple. Formulaic. Typical. Even the guitar break that comes out of nowhere is completely predictable. And it goes so fukkn hard - the power is undeniable and it hits me even harder as a middle aged man than it did when I was in my twenties. RESIST were ubiquitous in the '90s DIY world, so much so that you were never surprised when you came across a new record in a distro (or dollar bin) but maybe you were never excited either, because you knew exactly what was in the grooves. And if you were one of those people (full disclosure: I was) then I urge you to revisit one of the sturdiest examples of USDIY political hardcore. Maybe you know what's coming...but you keep listening because you want what's coming. You want the melodic sixty seconds that closes "Refuge." You want the brutally simple off the rails repetition of "It's A Beautiful Day." You want determined idealism housed in clenched fist black clad alcohol fueled punk. And that's exactly what you get. Draw a line between POISON IDEA and SPAZM 151 and you're going to bisect RESIST. 

THE ROAD TO FREEDOM

OLD CITY

It's fine to be a um of your parts when you're made up of the best things, and that describes Portland's OLD CITY in a nutshell. Members of ADELIT@S, ASS END OFFEND, DEAD CULT, SQUALORA cranking out gruff, addictive dark punk that conjures COMPLICATIONS, LEATHERFACE and Greg Sage while sounding like nothing except OLD CITY. I confess that I came to the band late (this tape is from 2016), but it gave me an excellent opportunity to ingest everything at once...which was a definite positive. Choice cut: "Peaceful Atom"

A SUBSTANCE NEVER SEEN BEFORE 

WARCRY

 

Sometime in the mid-2000s I was at an afternoon show in Austin talking to the first guitarist from WARCRY (maybe on the patio of a bar-b-q joint because....well, because Texas). While we were generally chipping it up about whatever and waiting for the first band to start, a raging DBeat song started blasting over the PA and we both took note (perhaps because it was loud enough that casual conversation was rendered temporarily impossible). After a moment, he commented that the then-relentless wave of DBeat clone bands had gone too far and that he was tired of hearing DBeat everywhere and more or less dismissed whatever new DBeat clone band had wormed its way onto the too-loud afternoon bar-b-q show playlist. We both laughed, since he was kinda right, and black clad two riff wonders did seem to be coming out of every dark alley around that time. And then the pick slide for "Without Warning" dropped over the PA and we were both struck momentarily silent, realizing that the band the WARCRY guitarist was dismissing was, in fact, WARCRY. Then we laughed more.

10 TRACKS NOISE

PUBLIC EYE

 

This is the shit that I reach for when I need an addiction (unrelated, the opening verse of "My Michelle" has been stuck in my head for days), and PUBLIC EYE have been delivering nothing but the finest earworms for years. This tape came first - dark and addictive Portland punk born from of the remnants of AUTISTIC YOUTH and educated by WIPERS, COMPLICATIONS, OBLIVIANS and the like. I want it to go faster, I want them to go harder ("Soft Strain" in particular sounds like a lost STOOGES demo that's missing its teeth), but PUBLIC EYE are so good because they don't do what I want them to do. They're on a mission. 

PUBLIC EYE