GREENEARTH VOL.6

 

This was an impulse grab with an overseas purchase of an Acts Of Defiance comp, and I can't seem to put the motherfukkr away. Absolutely killer collection of turn of the decade punk and hardcore from Europe, US and Mexico - some you should already know (SVART SNÖ, VALSE TRISTE, AUTODESTRUCCIÓN) and plenty of new faces for your ears. Feast upon SHATTER, REAKTION, ROLANDS GOSSAR, and a track from 23 TILL that is the fukkn summer jam for the summer that I always wish I had lived. 

GREENEARTH VOL.6

SOUNDS OF DEFIANCE

 

I should just be able to list the bands and if you weren't already aware of this 1987 comp then you should be salivating. So....DARK AGE (Switzerland, ex-THE DECAY), BAD ATTITUDE (Germany), INSTIGATORS (UK), 16 BLSÂRE UTAN HJÄRNA (Sweden), KRULL (France), UNIFIED FIELD (USA), NO CONTROL (Australia), SCOUNDRELS (Holland), G-3 (Peru), PRESIDENT FETCH (Denmark), R.I.P. (Spain). Not too shabby for a comp put together by some kids from South Dakota, I suppose. More mix tapes, more comp tapes, more international collections. 

SOUNDS OF DEFIANCE

JASON KAHN

Posted without comment or context, simply because there are times when the reward for the search is in the search itself. I will say only that In Place occupies approximately 27 minutes, and that those minutes will be best if occupied by nothing else. 

IN PLACE: DAITOKU-JI // SHIBUYA CROSSING 

THEE IRMA & LOUISE

A pal loaned me this one before the time of Covid (which means I've been hanging onto it for a few months now, hehehe). It's like a high energy surf/garage/dark wave hybrid and i know that doesn't make any sense, but I hear Reatard just as much as AGENT ORANGE and I feel like if there were such a thing as goth-hardcore then "Peter Principle" would define the genre. Kill List came out late last year, but there releases dating back to the mid-'10s here, and listening to them hone their chops over the years is fukkn great.  I highly recommend occasional detours to Switzerland (literally, not metaphorically).

KILL LIST

SHINY BROWN

Seven minutes filled with whirling riffs and howling fastcore burners. These shits dominated the landscape in the early '00s....and these five cuts from 2013 makes it easy to see why. I like hardcore punk music. 

SHINY BROWN

CLULB HITS vol.1

This was made for parties. Made for punks and ragers who don't mind having a few beverages and/or substances and hanging their pretense on a coatrack near the door. One side is a collection of mostly shit-fi angular art freak sounds that fall in line with much of the Trim Tab catalog - heavy synth presence, lots of drums machines, a stripped down Neue Deutsche Welle vibe running through tracks by JPGRR, FUN FARE, PURPURSPYTT, THE STACHES (who steal the side with "Total Commitment"). MOSQUITO EGO...too any to run down the full list, but twenty tracks of pure freak musik filling almost 50 minutes with joy and intrigue. But it's arguably the flip side that really confirms the party is coming and YOU are fukkn invited. Shameless celebration of catchy commercial dance hits, some you know better than you'd like to admit and a few that were new to me on this mix...SUGABABES, DOJA CAT, PRINCESS fucking NOKIA just to touch on a few, then the side ends with the brilliant "Dye My Hair," which may or may not have been the first body blow in a fist fight with mainstream youth culture that ended with my mouse hovering over the *buy now* icon on ALMA's webstore, wondering if I could get away with wearing a neon yellow sweatshirt with printed tribal sleeves but knowing that "Chasing Highs" was going to be my winter jam.  You need to just submit and trust me on this...better yet, trust Riso Club in Leipzig. 

CLUB HITS vol.1: I AM A PEACE OF SHIT

TRASH MANTRA

This one too me by complete surprise. The artwork led me to believe I was either stepping into a pile of shit-fi noise or was about to be tortured with some awful "ironic" pop punk...artwork lies, my friends. TRASH MANTRA is gorgeous, hypnotic and advanced psychedelic electronic trance brilliance. Simple and raw, not calculated, the half hour of sound on this cassette grabbed me immediately and never let go....listen to the opening of the second track "we are the rats // feeding on your trash" and the careful drunken meander that follows. "Liquor Store" is the closest thing to a traditional "song," and could be reincarnated as a blissed out indie anthem were it not so fukkn weird (in a very very good way), and the tape ends with a driving ten minute synth drenched freakout...it's all here man. And it's all good....like, really good.

TRASH MANTRA

LET THEM EAT PASTAS! LET THEM EAT SHIT!

Mid-90's international comp from the folks at Spock Productions. A few acts you are likely familiar with (WAT TYLER and THE GR'UPS deliver live performances that justify their status, while CITIZEN FISH have never sounded more inebriated than on this recording), but the highlights on this comp are the unknown bands. ONE BY ONE sound like NAUSEA interpreted by a churning, metallic CONTROPOTERE, easily the best tracks on the tape. W.O.R.M. and THE SHREDS manage to make the melodic side of the '90s sounds raw and insistent (no mean feat for these ears), Germany's BOOT DOWN THE DOOR are solid and burly take-no-prisoners hardcore, and there's a bizarre electronic/dance song by Florida's SPHERE LAZA that is going to be getting a lot of spins around TEHQ. Germany, Switzerland, France, England, Italy and the US are all well represented here. You won't get any punk points for listening to it, but the reward for listening to killer jams tends to be rather personal, in my opinion.

LET THE EAT PASTAS! LET THEM EAT SHIT!

WORLD CLASS PUNK

Jakke handed this gem off to me when I was in New York a few weeks back, a brilliant picture of international early '80s hardcore and punk. Compiled by Mykel Board and released by ROIR in 1984, World Class Punk gave a peek into scenes in corners of the world often overlooked, especially in the pre-interweb infancy of punk. COPULATION (Switzerland) dish out a dark post punk dirge that might steal the whole tape for me,  POP GUNS (South Africa) sound like JOE JACKSON - just brilliant pop, WARRIORS OF THE LAST DAYS (Columbia) slog through a wholly inept number with a determination that cannot be faked - though France's NÉVROSE make a case for being even more brilliantly chaotic while CCM (Italy), BASTARDS (Finland), BGK (Holland), RATOS DE PORÃO (Brasil), PURRKUR PILLNIKK (Iceland), DEZERTER (Poland) dish out the kind of quality they are famous for. Sweden's DANSA SKIRKER blew me away and Spain's SLIPS Y SPERMA are raw hardcore brilliance. File this one in the mandatory column, and read Mykel's liner notes here or buy yourself a copy here.

WORLD CLASS PUNK

DEFLAGRATION

For the last two weeks I've posted compilation tapes that were really more like Best Of collections. Last week's Bad Entrails was a comprehensive trip through '80s US hardcore, while the Us Against Them  comp concentrated on some of the best the UK had to offer.  But this Friday's compilation is full of deep cuts, and doesn't really flirt with anything more well known than DEZERTER or NEON CHRIST. The tape centers mostly on European hardcore, with the aforementioned Southerners and Canada's F.O.A.D. and UNNATURAL SILENCE as the only off continent contributions, and is full of lesser known killers like BLOEDBAD (Holland), UNDERAGE (Italy), CERESIT '81 (West Germany) and UNDERDOGS (Belgium) as well as French TE alumnus RAPT and KROMOSOM 4. Most of this shit is fast and raw hardcore, and some of the recordings leave a bit to be desired in the sound quality department (in the bands' defense, the tape was distributed on a sub-par Salvy brand cassette, which might have affected the distortion levels in an adverse manner...it just depends how much you care about such things and, in turn, how punk you are), but when you hear crucial blasts from Finland's PROTESTI or classic shit from Germans INFERNO and SCAPEGOATS or SQUIRT from Switzerland, do you really care about a little tape hiss?

DEFLAGRATION Vol. 3 Side A

DEFLAGRATION Vol. 3 Side B