White Shit - White Shi'ite

Label: Wantage USA
Year: 2010

Remember a few years back when dudes starting remembering a few years back and remembered their hardcore roots? You got a band like OFF! putting on an open casket funeral for Black Flag, and you got a band like White Shit ripping through blasted shards of broken glass.
Not that the guys in White Shit (or OFF! for that matter) ever denied their hardcore roots, or even necessarily left them behind, but this band was a blatant homage to the joy that comes with stripping down and wailing away. It never goes out of style.

The band is (was?) Coady Willis of Murder City Devils, Big Business, Melvins, and Dead Low Tide. Andy Coronado of Monorchid, Wrangler Brutes, Skull Kontrol, and Nazti Skinz (the riffs here sound a lot like a continuation of Wrangler Brutes if that helps), Jared Warren of Karp, Big Business, The Whip, Tight Bros From Way Back When, and Melvins, and Julian Peeke from Bipolar Bear and The Pope. Heavy hitters. Highly offensive graphics to give it a true "80's hardcore" steez, and one GISM cover thrown in to solidify their bona fides.

*originally posted 01.30.15, reposted 10.31.20

DL

Crust - Sacred Heart Of Crust

 

Label: Trance Syndicate
Year: 1990

Set the oven to "Fucked" and bake up another chilaquile layered with blues damage, warped honky tonk noise, industrial throb, and general raucous-n-roll. Sprinkle with mescaline prior to serving.

This is the record that started Trance Syndicate down a long and illustrious...and pockmarked, and dusty, and by all accounts unsafe...road. 

Crust would earn money by passing a collection tray at shows. Shows that praised the Sacred Heart of Crust, a debauched and  grotesque idol to noise. Beats the ole, "we have shirts for sale in the back" shtick. You'll hear the martial preaching theme run through this release, albeit preaching for that which is unholy and obscene. Church should be this fun.

If you've gotten this far in life without knowing what Crust sounds like, and find yourself on the fence as to whether or not this is a record you're prepared for, my best assessment would be: (old) Cop Shoot Cop mixed with Ed Hall mixed with a little bit of Feederz and a little bit of (old) Butthole Surfers. Unsanitary at best.

*originally posted 11.02.15, reposted 10.22.20

DL

The VSS - Nervous Circuits

 Label: Honey Bear

Year: 1997

For my money (currently under $70 at press time), The VSS were the only band to really pull off this particular strain of sub-sub-genre music. Or, at least the only one to do it and manage to create memorable songs, that is. 

They managed to take the spastic punk skitter of a band like Antioch Arrow (who had taken it from Circus Lupus), and marry it up with the icey industrial synth-damage of a band like Front 242 (or maybe it's more like the pre-punk dystopian synth-damage of Throbbing Gristle....or possibly it's more like the "Electronic Body Music" synth-damage of Kraftwerk...or maybe music is just a linear continuum of...synth-damage?), and come out the other end with an other-worldly mix that could agitate as easily as it could hypnotize.

This is their first full length, and a more grating record than their second album, but a good place to start in case you're looking to reacquaint yourself.

DL

Ultracoit - Sex Church

 

Label: Rejuvenation / Gabu / Day Off / Ocinatas Industries / Bruisson / A Tant Rever Du Roi

Year: 2014

As much as I wanted this to be some Spinal Tap styled cock rock homage to the pleasures of flesh, I imagine there is more staying power in it instead being an extremely ugly slab of Parisian noise rock filth. Everything straining to outdo everything else, the bass is continuous subsurface detonation, the drums are a din of bluster, the guitars are create rolling cascades of distorted roar, only to wedge themselves apart and restart again. The vocals appear to be multi-headed with two, maybe three(?), voices all competing to say something the loudest. 

I can only assume that what they are yelling about it perverse and obscene. 

I mean, they are wearing leather masks and skimpy under-draws whilst doing it, so...what else am I supposed to think?

Even as a prude, I very much enjoy this. Gets me feeling a certain way in my "bikini parts" (it gives me a boner...my penis achieves an erect state...that's what I mean).

I'm pretty sure there are still copied available if you want to gross out your kids with the cover art (they gotta learn some day)

DL 

Drugs Of Faith - Architectural Failures

 

Label: Malokul

Year: 2013

If the unrelenting punishment of grindcore leaves you feeling a bit...ground up. May we humbly suggest the "grind-n-roll" stylings of Drugs Of Faith? They can drop the hammer and go 1000mph, but they are just as comfortable easing off the blasts and settling into mid-tempo contemporary hardcore speed. Which, I suppose, could be considered the "roll" in their descriptor.

Personally, I appreciate that they fuck around with different speeds and styles in order to make things more interesting. It's more interesting. If you're interested.

This is a four song 12" that I think runs a pretty perfect fourteen minutes or so. 

It will come as little surprise that Drugs Of Faith co-main member Richard "Grindfather" Johnson was in Agoraphobic Nosebleed for a time (as well as Enemy Soil), because you can hear some of that band's massive whallop here (and this record was mastered by Scott Hull, so there's that too). It's burly and loud, and that's sorta "what we do" here. Which is why it's here, and we are here talking about it. 

Physical copies are still available here

DL 

Barkmarket - Peacekeeper

 

Label: Man's Ruin

Year: 1995

Look, the thing is, Barkmarket were an incredible band. I'm not going to fight with you about how and why that is the case, but it is. I think you know it, but either way, I just said it, and by saying it, then it is as much a fact as anything. And honestly, I have neither the time nor inclination to explain why the preceding is true, but at this point in our relationship it's sorta like, "what right do you have to question me?". You know?

But here's the more important thing; the song "Peacekeeper" is the best song Barkmarket ever recorded, and here it is. They recorded a lot of great songs...album's worth, and the other 2.5 songs on this 12"ep are also fantastic (I say 2.5 instead of 3, because even though there are 4 tracks on the record, the second track is a brief reworking [remix!] of the third track. 'The Brass Ring', so I only count it as a half song), but 'Peacekeeper' is pretty much everything you're gonna want in a good song. 

Don't believe me?

DL