Raw Radar War - Double Equals

Label: Shifty / Traktor 7
Year: 2006

Hey, look who's still alive...me. Sort of. Technically.

When life has you down, my prescription is 10cc of Kentucky bourbon, 75cc of obnoxiously loud hate music (please see the attached Raw Radar War album for your convenience), and 5cc fart jokes. Administer internally three times daily and get plenty of rest.

This particular brand of medicinal grade throat punching noise, is brought to you by Jonah Jenkins, the voice of Only Living Witness, Milligram, Milltown, Blind Surgeon, and 5ive (on rare occasion), along with his buddies from heavy hitters Toetag, Kozik, and OHM. Which basically means you're getting a that good time d-beat crusty hardcore that Cursed reanimated from His Hero Is Gone who reanimated it from Amebix, but given a thorough "sludging up", courtesy of the Milligram school of everything thicker than everything else.
It's bound to get that cold, dead heart of yours up and running again, and in the mood for romance. Look out ladies!

DL

Street Sects - The Morning After The Night We Raped Death

Label: self released
Year: 2014

A member of this band was generous enough to send along an actual hardcopy of this 7", which is the first in a five part series that will eventually be compiled into "Gentrification: A Serial Album", which has a running conceptual them of...wait for it...gentrification. But probably not the way you may think. It's not about double-income-no-kids gay couples moving into downtrodden neighborhoods that boast a backbone of well built 1920's Craftsmen homes and an underutilized commercial node that would be just perfect for a coffee shop, and possibly an artisanal personal trainer's studio (of course), eventually pricing out the current (if not original, but probably not) residents who are now cashing out (or at least their landlords are cashing out) and being forced further out of the city center to even more downtrodden neighborhoods with less of a backbone of anything.
No, not what this record is about.
This is about a swarming mechanical headfuck of unrelenting attack. It's very much an alien music, if in fact you accept that it's music in the first place. There's some of the chaotic almost-hardcore of Phantomsmasher (who's James Plotkin mastered this very record), some of the debris sifting industrial of Haters, and some of the confrontational bombast of Boyd Rice, all performed from within the cold dark house that Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV built. Unsettled for the unrestrained. File under: The Opposite Of Easy Listening and listen proudly.

DL

Frodus - F-Letter

Label: Magic Bullet
Year: 2003

Point of clarification: this is a reissue of an album originally released in 1996 by Art Monk Construction and Lovitt Records, but Magic Bullet was kind enough to add four tracks to the end that are exclusive to this release. Further point of clarification: two of those four exclusive tracks are jokey 13 and 33 second long..."songs". Final point of clarification: both versions are currently out of print.
This, earlier, Frodus doesn't get as much "love" (as the kids once said, or still do say..don't keep up) as their last two albums did, as the band started morphing into weirder and more "post" post hardcore, but I tend to listen more to this era of the band. It's more straight forward, less of the pomp and circumstance of the later stuff, which, while fun at that time, the whole "branding" and back stories, and philosophies and whatnot...well, they seem quaint now (the music never suffered mind you).
But this album gets straight to the heart of their beloved District Of Columbia and all her quirky post hardcore scree. I respect that.

DL