Fork - Product 7"

Label: Bovine
Year: 1996

Back to the Bovine Records stable today, for a 3 song jaunt with the warped and wonderful Fork.
Those dank, dark, musty, grotesque stables that housed equally hideous steeds Thug, Pachinko, Mama Tick, Festering Rinyanons, Plainfield, Double Boar, Tomsk 7, Designer, and Gob. Riotous and bearing calamity with each drop of their sharpened hooves. To be tramped under foot would be to succumb to an overwhelming throb of volume and ire. Decimation to all in their path.
File under: Eat Shit And Die.

DL

A Place To Bury Strangers - Transfixiation

Label: Dead Oceans
Year: 2015

I just KEEP finding records released in 2015 that I missed, that should very well have made our illustrious Year End List.
And this one is especially egregious because I've always really liked A Place To Bury Strangers, and I had no idea they had a new record out last year. Apologies all around. I feel like a fool.
Don't be a fool like me. Go and get this record immediately. Bask in the warm blast of its gutter-psych-sleaze-gaze (patent pending on that description by the way). Melt with its The Jesus And Mary Chain as cranked through Royal Trux's amps destruction. Super loud and crazed, but with a droning undercurrent that keeps you enthralled. I can't get enough. It's fucking perfect right now. Black bliss.

DL

Engine Kid - Heater Sweats Nails 7"

Label: Troubleman
Year: 1995

Side A: Engine Kid rips your face off, shits in your child's crib, and drinks your last cold beer before running out the back door and into the woods not to be heard from again for some time. Oppressively heavy, brutal, and mean, this is what they sounded like live, the guitars were turned to "annihilate", and that they do.
Side B: Engine Kid returns to your home to apologize, clean up they mess they made, and restock your fridge with a sixer of smooth, crisp, barley pops. An instrumental that could have been a long lost Slint slow jam.

* originally posted 07-10-11, reposted 01-07-16

DL

Fugazi - Noize Bleed! 7"

Label: bootleg
Year: 1991

Two Fugazi songs recorded live in August, 1991. Nothing more need be said.

But, since we have this time together, and it's related, has everyone else seen the Salad Days documentary? I just got around to it last week, and while I was very excited going in, I felt pretty underwhelmed on the backside. Somehow a subject matter that I am far too excited by was treated flat and without personality, which is a pretty miraculous feat in and of itself since the Washington D.C. punk/hardcore/post hardcore scene has been populated with some of the most entertaining and provocative people of any other music scene ever. And speaking of, where was Ian Svenonius in all this?! That guy can't seem to get enough of hearing himself talk, yet he's conspicuously absent from the movie, which might be better for my sanity to not have to hear his pseudo-revolutionary culture jamming speak, but it did seem like a big hole to leave out. For however you think Nation Of Ulysses has aged, they had a big impact and were certainly important to the evolution of this particular style of music. And nobody could wrangle Guy? Is he that averse to looking back in time that he could not be lured in front of the camera to give his take? Also, what exactly do you think Ian Mackaye does between retrospective interviews? Or, is that his current full time occupation? Not to discount his perspective, or diminish his role in the whole shebang (one could argue he's the lynchpin in the whole D.C. scene [I mean, if you don't count Ken Olden of course]), but he must be the most well quoted figure in all of hardcore history. There was an under representation of not only Swiz, but Jason Farrell as well, would have liked to have heard more from him and his projects.
I don't exactly know how the movie could have been "better", and I understand that they were trying to avoid retreading the same ground that was in American Hardcore, or even the Fugazi documentary, but something about the organization and presentation of Salad Days left me unsatisfied. I was sorta bummed. At least they talked (however briefly) about how radical Void was. That part was awesome.

DL

Iceburn - Moon b/w Brew #9 7"

Label: Art Monk Construction
Year: 1994

Question: Why do I have three copies of this 7" in my possession? Seriously.
Probably doesn't matter though, it's not as if they will be paying my children's future college tuition or anything (assuming my wild ass kids can get into any sort of college, that is). I'm pretty sure the $2.00 price tag on one of those three editions is about as much as I can get for it on the open market. Which is weird though, because Iceburn slays super hard...even when they get all jazzy and proggy and all that shit. They still slay super hard.
Only two songs here; one is part of the "Joseph Smith Sessions" (if you don't know what they were...well, I'm not going to tell you), the other is a live piece from a 1993 hometown Salt Lake City show. Both tracks start abruptly, and you may think I fucked up the transfer from record to digital, but I promise, that's just how they start.
Put it this way, in the insert they thank "Miles Davis and Justin Broadrick for various reasons". That sums Iceburn up at this point in their lifespan. Before they added The Collective into the mix, but after they tempered some of the overwhelming post hardcore whallop of the 'Firon' lp. It fits.
Also worth noting that there is a member of Insight on this record, a piece of trivia that I love.

DL

Motherfucker - Confetti

Label: Sick Room
Year: 2015

Another "maybe should have been on that 2015 year end list" record, but, really, who has the time to worry about it?
I'm pretty sure Motherfucker don't care. I mean, they called their band Motherfucker after all, so I'm pretty sure they don't care about too terribly much. Least of all, my mother's feelings.
Chances are they will also be nonplussed by this attempt to characterize their music as well, but it's why I get paid the big bucks and am therefore obligated to do so. And it means a lot to my family and friends.
Take a pretty liberal noise rock / grunge rock 1992 hybrid, and massage in some stoner haze, and a sprinkling of hardcore grit, and there you have it. Easy. Of course, the one difference between this and 90% of everything else are the female vocals. I like them, I think they compliment the music well. Reminds me of the way the vocals in Babes In Toyland worked, not trying to emulate a dude's growl, and not trying to float above the noise, just a nice confident "umph". It works.
This band is from Athens, Georgia, and Athens, Georgia has had a long history of churning out these under-dwellers. Bands that just want to put their heads down to plow through some heavy rock n roll music. For all the stupid shit that goes along with Athens, Georgia, I'm always happy to hear whatever the new version of this head-down-plowing is going to be. Motherfucker be it now.

DL

Green Magnet School - Sub Pop Singles Club 7"

Label: Sub Pop
Year: 1991

This is sort of a test entry, as I am working out the kinks on a new turntable-to-computer digitizing system, and this particular record gets to be the guinea pig. It's short, only two songs, it's got the cache of being a Sub Pop Singles Club entry (the December 1991 edition to be exact) and a pretty good 7" to boot. So give it a whirl and let me know how it sounds/works.

Musically, it sounds a good deal like Fluid, a rock n roll take on grunge with a few of the edges smoothed out, but still nothing your square college roommate was listening to in 1991. It's slightly less abrasive than their 'Blood Music' lp, but still real real good.
Sidebar: trying now to figure out if the Tim Shea in this band is the same Timothy Shea from Westminster, MA who now lives in Atlanta who I know. He plays guitar, and has good taste in music, and he's the right age from the right part of the world....but he's never mentioned Green Magnet School to me before...the plot thickens!

DL

Slughog - Ungodly Amounts Of Meat

Label: Wonderdrug
Year:1998

It's the end of the year and holiday type season (Merry Whatever Doesn't Offend You), so I'm kinda busy. Not too busy that I don't love y'all and shit, but busy in that I can't get a post up here every day for a minute. Sorry about that, but I'm sure you understand.
That being said, I can't end the year without posting an all time favorite record of mine, that somehow doesn't get the accolades that other bands of this vintage and burliness do. I've oft said the Boston noise rock scene of the mid-90's was untouchable. Super loud. Super pissed. Super fucked. I super love it.
Slughog embodied all that was good about that little scene, and this record encapsulates their sound and fury perfectly. It is big and dirty and heavy and loud. It will make you feel good about feeling bad. It's a record that should darken the shelf of every music lover's collection. If your significant other doesn't own it, then you owe it to him/her/it to track this down and make it right.

Might manage another post or so before the end of the year, but I'm going on vacation for awhile, so regularly scheduled posting will resume in January. I think first up will be my epic, previously threatened Top 50 NYHC 7"s Of All Time series of posts. I finally tracked down the last record in digital format that I needed....soooo....get ready.

DL

Kinghorse - Unreleased Demos

Label: bootleg
Year: 1996

Not to be confused with the Slamdek Records release 'Too Far Gone: Unreleased Recordings 1988-1992', this is a DIFFERENT set of unreleased demo recordings. These songs were recorded with the second lineup of the band. See, after the first 7" and the self titled lp (hey, did you know that Glenn Danzig produced that one? It's ok, you'd have to have a real eagle eye to catch that bit of info on the record cover) the band broke up. Then, Slamdek pulled together the unreleased recordings for a compilation, so the band got back together to play some shows, minus founding member, bassist Mike Bucayu. During the course of the reformation, the band also wrote, demo'd and performed some of the twelve songs included here. Assuming they had plans for a follow-up lp, but this version of the band didn't last long, and before anything further could be developed they went their separate ways.
Unfortunately.
Self described as a "holy war freak parade" Kinghorse were a band that you had to fight your friends about. You had to explain that it's ok to like Crain and Endpoint and Danzig and that Kinghorse found a way to bring those all together into a weird quasi-mystic stomp rock boogie. This is what you had to do. And fuckin-A, you did it proudly. Singer Sean Garrison explained it thusly:"We thought Hardcore was finally dead and that maybe we could build on what Fading Out had started -- real American Rock music that was as much Black Flag as Black Oak Arkansas. Who would have known that so may people would deny their redneck roots? When we started there were three distinct camps -- Big Black fans, Youth of Today fans and Metallica fans. We fucking HATED all of these people. Of course, the world was crawling with these cretins. They wandered around like plague-stricken peasants. The first camp convinced of their urbaneness, world-weary rich brats who were turned on by the detachment of a drum machine. They had the short hair. The second, dressed in the strict SXE uniform of the hooded sweat shirt, thought of nothing but girls and skateboarding (a way to meet girls). They had no hair. The third batch of dumbasses were the until-recently-Ozzy-obsessed Thrash Metal fans. These people had the long hair. We hated these people the most because, on top of being without taste, they were generally just burned out losers.".
It's Kinghorse, and you're either in or out. I hope that for your sake that you're in, but if not...fuck it. Nothing I can do about it.

DL

Sweet Jesus - You Destroy Yourself

Label: Atomic Action
Year: 2015

Swiz / Sweetbelly Freakdown worship, and I'm ok with that. Swiz crafted a fairly un-fuckable-with template for that DC tinged hardcore roar you know immediately when you hear it.
To further bolster their Swiz bona fides they get Shawn Brown of the aforementioned Swiz to sing a little bit, and they recorded the whole thing with J. Robbins, so you know that this isn't merely "dudes who liked harDCore", but more "dudes who liked harDCore and have studied it in order to harness some if it's power".
So yes, you've heard things like this before, or at least you should have. But that's fine, not everything has to be breaking some imaginary mold, sometimes things can be pure celebration and fun. This record is a love letter to a very particular style of hardcore, and it's convincing, and it's fun, and that's all you fucking need sometimes. If you are liking the Red Hare records, then by all means, jump on this one too.
Members of Have Heart, Verse, Clear, Soul Control, Fucking Invincible, Drop Dead, and more.

DL