MASSES

 

I've said it a thousand times, but goth punk is better when it's punk. Enter MASSES. Melbourne (AU) maximum energy dark punk.....emphasis on punk. Jam "Intolerance" and tell me you need anything in this godforsaken world....I'll tell you that you're wrong. 

2017 SE ASIAN TOUR

CRYSTAL ANTIPATHIES

 

Sometimes things feel bad and you want to hear something that sounds destructive. You want to listen to something that feels bad. CRYSTAL ANTIPATHIES sound destructive....CRYSTAL ANTIPATHIES feel dangerous. This music makes me feel like I felt before I pressed play - that's not repetition, that's validation. MINISTRY, VENOM, BOTCH. It's all here and sounds like the embodiment of sonic nihilism. 

CRYSTAL ANTIPATHIES

A VISITATION

 

Misanthropic deconstructed bleak and/or avant black metal/punk adjacent sounds.. 

I don't know what this is or where it comes from....but I want more. 

RIGOR

THE STASI

 

Damn if this doesn't embody the misanthropic abrasive old school USHC of the 2010s.

Six minutes of honest hardcore. 
You're welcome.

THE STASI

 

PESTILENT ENDEAVORS

 

PESTILENT ENDEAVORS isn't for everyone. PESTILENT ENDEAVORS is for the real punk. Are you the real punk? The mutant? Alcoholism is the cure for depression. Depression is the cure for herpes. Herpes cures nasal congestion and congestion cures alcoholism. You've got the illness? We've got the cure. Anxiety is the cure for drug addiction. Death is the cure for life. 

ADULT ONSET DEATH

The a-side was blank, but the b-side should be enough to let you know that you also need the a-side.

This is what it's like when you get your music from blogs instead of the modern internet.

It's a mystery.  

DISLAW

 

I like the mysterious ones, the ones you have to listen to intently to really understand what they're doing and/or where they're coming from. I also like picking up a tape and thinking "fukk yes - I know exactly what this is and it's exactly what I want." DISLAW are, not surprisingly, in the second category. Bombastic, ramshackle DBeat street punk from Bandung - almost like they were trying to ape Underground Army-era CASUALTIES but they were just a little too fukkd and ended up closer to DISORDER. So yeah....the pummeling two chord repetition of "Aborsi" is exactly what I want to start my business week. 

NEVER DIE

LEMOTS

 

More raw blasts from the early waves of DIY hardcore / punk that spread through Indonesia and helped build the foundation for one of the strongest, most vibrant punk scenes in the world. We Don't Give A Fuck was recorded in 2002, and from the harsh shout that opens "Stupid System" to the discordant guitars making an utterly simple riff in " Kami Akan Tetap Bertaham" sound like a revolution, to the relentless rapid fire blasts in the closer "Confused" there can be no doubt that it holds up as a brilliant example of intense and honest punk mania. You can't fake this shit. 

WE DON'T GIVE A FUCK

============================================

TARDIVE DYSKENESIA

 

The last times a band hit me like TAR-D was when I saw PIG DNA at House Of The Rat. There's something about the people who aren't assimilating by choice and the people who aren't assimilating out of sheer determination - and there's a sonic bond that connects the two groups. "Agoraphobia" sounds agoraphobic."Death" feels desperate and real. The screams in "Numb Life" are yearning to feel. This is nine minutes of frenetic determination presented as hyper-speed pogo noise mania...and it's going to be another decade before I hear anything like it.

NEVER TRUST A DREAM   

BIG JAR OF MAYO

 

It was the turn of the decade and depending on where we were (geographically and/or spiritually) most of us were at some stage of managing a pandemic reality. Especially in retrospect, that period changed so many things about how we re/act and interact, how we exist, how we develop, how we create. It crushed some people (and some peoples) socially, but there were little rays of light that kept poking holes in the shrouds so many were living under. And it's in that spirit that I present the second cassingle from BIG JAR OF MAYO - this mysterious bunch of punks from (or probably not from) Nowhere, Wyoming started a ton of bands and a label called Deluxe Bias and started dropping outside freak punk tapes out of the sky and we ate them like candy. The energy that made NWI so appealing to so many seasoned '00s punks had been reborn in the Great North American Void while so many of us just wondered what was going to happen tomorrow instead of making something happen today. "Shit City" b/w "Another Ripoff" from 2021. Three minutes that were part of a larger (and greater) catalog that reminded us to live. 

SHIT CITY b/w ANOTHER RIPOFF

BLINDED HUMANITY

 

Blazing mid-00s Lion City street crust with just enough earnest energy to keep them honest. The way "Sensou Soochi" stomps, the way "Vanished" flies completely off the handle after the intro - they're a product of their influences and it rules. '90s US crust and classic Japanese hardcore all doing battle with ramshackle DBeat, using distorted guitars as weapons. 

ENDLESS MASSACRE

****************************************

UNDERGROUND FROM SPILS

Another great collection of lesser known Latvian punk from the early 1990s, picking up right where Naïve Years left off. Thirty tracks from ten different bands including SEPSIS, 33-Х ЛЕТНИЙ ПОДОНОК, ORGASM FAKERS (my personal favorites on the tape), ЭВОЛЮЦИЯ КАКТУСОВ, TERMOPSIS KAPITANA GRANTA among others. A solid hour of new (to me) punk is always a treat, and it's even more delicious when it's this tasty. Easy to imagine most (or all?) of these bands sharing bills with my hoard, and even easier to image ТОРЕЦ ТОТАЛИТАРРИЗМА absolutely laying waste to a drunken warehouse crowd in some desolate not-yet-rehabilitated corner of San Francisco thirty years ago with an indescribably brilliant blurrcore track called "Я Приду Поздно, Пьяный И Не Один" - what I would give for a time (and space) machine. 

UNDERGROUND FROM SPILS 2

ARMED HOGS

 

Drop everything and blast the fukk out of this demo. Jakarta's ARMED HOGS have just changed the game by following the damn rules - ripping USHC played with precision and passion. This hits like when Brandon handed me the DIRECT CONTROL demo 20+ years ago.... all of the sounds were familiar but somehow the shit just clicked differently. Though the sound is decidedly more unhinged, this feels like that felt; if I told you this was a new supergroup from North Carolina or Richmond you wouldn't flinch and you'd wonder which sonic archaeologists had carefully reconstructed a perfect hardcore recording - then there's "Bootlicker" and it's like street punk on Ritalin then the slide at the 0:24 mark of "Strangled" (it's the little things - it really is the little things) and then it's fucking over and you're scrambling to get back to the beginning so you can really listen this time instead of mind-moshing your way through your Thursday. 

ARMED HOGS

HUGE PRICK

 

Sorry about yesterday, my friends. I was having a moment and I was happy that Tom T. Hall cared about me when I was twelve. So nostalgia today, no context and no emotions....just six minutes of high voltage sonic damage from HUGE PRICK. I never saw this band, but I hope they were a gloriously hot mess. Damn this shit is good - this is not giving a fuck hardcore. 

PSYCHO CHAIR

MAXIMUM ROCKNROLL

 

Honestly, when we were doing key bumps in the Chameleon bathroom in 1996 and talking shit about the MRR elites, this is why. I'm not saying we were right, and there are some straight killers on here....but we simply didn't want catchy punk that felt safe. We didn't need ZEKE and BLINK 182 and even though ELECTRIC FRANKENSTEIN was good - who the fuck cared when you could get high as shit and see RUDIMENTS in a basement on Alabama Street? SMUGGLERS sounded like some Purple Onion shit and that was for the retired set (who were, in retrospect, probably in their 30s). The best thing about SCARED OF CHAKA was that they were on a record with WORD SALAD. Look, in retrospect a lot of this shit is fukkn great - hearing KITTY BAD ASS and DISCOUNT played on the same show makes sense, the SODS track is still a complete annihilator and LUNCHBOX hits the damn spot right now. There are couple of Italian killers (GUASTAFESTE, FUORI CONTROLLO).....but still, we weren't wrong. We wanted danger. Two years later I was a shitworker, of course. 

MAXIMUM ROCKNROLL #724

JOHNNY BE GOOD

 

You're encouraged to ask all the questions you like....I will have no answers. Questions like....."why?!" will be met with an absent shrug, because I don't know why you're listening to this today, I just know that you are. This is like Harajuku Strangers plus SEX PISTOLS with some '90s USDIY energy that makes no sense at all until....it does. A track called "Anarchy" from an Indonesian band named after a Chuck Berry tune?  Yeah...strap in. 

PANDAAN CITY PUNK ROCKERS

THE ERECTIONS

 

There's a special place for this brand of punk. TOM & BOOT BOYS were my introduction, I snagged the Punk s Are Alright EP on my first trip to Japan and couldn't tell if I was listening to some proto/retro spikey punk attack or the sound of the future. The answer, of course, is that I was listening to both at the same time. Japanese punks have flown this flag proudly for so long that a cottage industry of supporters and worshippers have taken punk clichés to heights that even those 1996 boot boys couldn't have imagined. This is pogo punk as life - not as a lifestyle, mind you....as life. Stand Up Fuckin' Punks started it for THE ERECTIONS - their first vinyl release after a couple of CDr demos. That was fifteen years ago, and here in 2026 we are talking about "Noise For The Boys" and feeling grateful for punk. 

STAND UP FUCKIN' PUNKS

GOODIES

 

Sometimes simple is best - there are formulas and clichés and there are "the way things are done" and sometimes the things are done a way for a reason.....because it works. You ever been playing with a heavy and/or crusty band and you jcome up with a riff that hits just right and you realize that it's a(nother) version of 0-3-5 and you chuckle and you play that shit even harder because you know you (once again) worked your way into perfection? GOODIES are like that, but in a power pop, indie/garage kind of way. I'm launched backwards two decades to BAYONETTES and DANGER LOVES and then another batch of years to FASTBACKS and VASELINES but with tinges of '80s college/alt and/or twee....and it's just fukkn right. Tomorrow I'll blast some crust or something, but today I'm gonna hang out with "Never About You" because it is perfect.

SO BITTER!

REALISTIC

 

This is a band I'm in called REALISTIC. Alex, B and I started doing this (very slowly) after the Conquest Fro Death LP came out and the band was finally done. Adult schedules and toilet life made progress and productivity virtually impossible, but we recorded a sub-seven minute demo at House Of Faith in 2023....then came nothing. That's until Lory (RAD, FALSE FLOWERS, SICK BURN) stepped in and gave us life. So we're a band now, and we have a demo. 

REALISTIC: DEMO 2025

===================================
Speaking of bands, I'm also in a band called VEXXYL who are releasing our first demo tonight.
You can get one in person.

In Pacifica, California.

HOLEHOG // B-SIDE

 

B-SIDE is an indescribably off-kilter side project from one of the A GLOBAL THREAT dudes. Aggressive introvert hardcore with elements of '90s basement DIY and (bizarrely) industrial-tinged alt. I'm not hear to make sense, just listen to "It's Complicated" because it is. On the flip side from B-SIDE, which some refer to as the A-Side, you'll find Sacramento's toughest recent street punk export HOLEHOG, born from the ashes of MONSTER SQUAD before those very ashes resurrected themselves. Snotty, clenched fist pogo punk of the highest fucking order. "Wasting Away" all day every day. 
You want to know a secret.....? I fukkn love punk.

TO HAVE AND TO HOLD

ASTRAL BUTCHER

 

ASTRAL BUTCHER were but a blip on the landscape, but listening to this hideous and demonic recording from 2020 makes me feel like I'm involved in something very dangerous. VENOM, MASTURBATION, MIDNIGHT, ZOUO....ASTRAL BUTCHER. 

ASTRAL //BUTCHER