VIAL - Demo - Tape - 2014

   There's a bar/venue in San Francisco on Polk Street called The Hemlock. Polk Street has a long history of being a cruising spot for hustlers, drag queens (and kings), entertainers of all kinds and much more. A friend of mine who grew up here said he used to drink at Kimo's Bar when he was underage, and he was funded by older men who were trying to fuck him. Years later, I would hang out with him when he worked the door there during bad metal shows and we both drank for free. These days, most of that era of Polk is long gone. Kimo's was sold. My friend moved away. You can probably still find some old men who want to fuck teenagers (easily), but I'm not sure which bar they frequent. What was my point? Oh yeah, the Hemlock.
  They're a few blocks down from where Kimo's used to be. They've gone through this phenomena that many businesses in the city have gone through: When they opened in 2001, they were considered to be kind of fancy,  evil gentrifiers. Now that Polk Street is even more of a hot spot for white partiers and fuck heads, the neighborhood has built up around the Hemlock, making them look, honestly, a little dumpy. I'm not meaning to cast a sympathetic eye on the place because, even though I know almost every single person who works there (and consider most of them a friend), I don't care much for it. And even though I've seen many, many good bands there (from RADIOACTIVITY to YI to BLACK PUS to FLESH WORLD to THE GIZMOS to everything in between), I never actually expect to see good bands who I've never heard of. Much less DIY bands who sell tapes for $2-3.
    So, yeah, I was surprised and excited to see VIAL when they came up from Los Angeles. I was in the back of the room when they started, but I knew within the first song that I needed to be in the front of the room watching them....but I remained in the back of the room because it was fuckin' packed and I'm not one of those dudes who pushes himself up to the front of the room because their experience is more important than anyone else's trip. I mean, if everyone was throbbing and foaming to the music in that fun way where everyone gravitates toward the stage at some point, sure, go for it....but let's be real...it was a bar show in SF and everyone was standing there bobbing their heads and hoping no one would bump into their $5 micro-brew. More simply, VIAL was ruling. They play fierce, direct punk that is equal parts Dangerhouse Records and everything you already love about DIY punk in 2014 with no hint of professionalism or ego. I could have left as soon as their near-20 minute set ended....but I was actually there to see FLESH WORLD, so I figured I should stay. They were really good too.

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Ask VIAL if they have any tapes left. 

SPOKENEST - ""Destroy, Gone, Listen, Lose" - Tape - 2013

    I live in the same state as SPOKENEST, but I couldn't feel further away from them. When I was out of the country and told people that I lived in California, many people wanted to talk to me about Los Angeles...about Hollywood Boulevard and the sunny, warm beaches. I can't tell you a thing about them. I can talk to you about Mission-style burritos or the redwood forests or foggy towns by the ocean, but once we get south of Santa Cruz, I'm clueless and lost. Increasingly, more of my friends in the Bay Area have positive things to say about Southern California and I believe them, but my experiences there have led me into strip malls, endless traffic (I once watched the entirety of Top Gun in LA traffic), bands with homophobic lyrics,racist drug dealers, playing shows to almost no one in record stores, losing myself on pills in Mexico and watching people do heroin in a shitty Hollywood apartment. I want to go to Tom Of Finland's house, see the Tarpits, play a show in that boxing ring and see the other things that make Southern California so great.
   I don't think Southern California is bad though. Connecticut and Omaha are bad. Southern California is not. SPOKENEST comes from the Los Angeles area and will prove to you that there's good things happening there. They put out a great self-released 12" last year and followed it up with this tape from this past December. The band is a two-piece with a man and woman splitting the duties of vocals, guitar and drums. They recall the essence of scrappy DIY punk, like THE BANANAS (but waayy less drunk), post-punk and whatever style of punk one would call STREET EATERS, but SPOKENEST doesn't fully subscribe to any of those sub-genres....which is one of my favorite styles of punk. Enjoy their four song tape and go order one for yourself because you can't actually get a screen-printed cover and the physical lyric sheet in a download, fool.

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GENERACION SUICIDA - Tape - 2011

    The folks over at MRR have been raving about the Raw Ponx crew since they first graced the Bay Area's presence a few years ago. For those of you who don't know about these punx, they are a loose crew of Latino punk kids from the East L.A. area who put on shows (just about anywhere from a backyard to under bridges) and play in a slew of great bands like RAYOS X, TUBERCULOSIS, and DRAPETOMANIA to name a few. I've always thought "yeah, those bands are pretty fucking good", but none of them ever blew me away until just recently. I went to see RAYOS X, LA VOZ and GENERACION SUICIDA at El Rio in SF a few weeks ago and it was a fucking great show. RAYOS X took forever to set up, but once they started I forgave them. Totally blazing, driving punk. You can find more praises of them (as well as their demos) here. LA VOZ didn't really do it for me, but GENERACION SUICIDA made me jump up and down and made this fucking Gringo wish that he knew Spanish. They are playing some total LOST KIDS/MASSHYSTERI/GORILLA ANGREB style of punk and they do it well. I wish that the tape was as good as their live performance though.
                   Download tape here