bidhardcore.com

Seller zvuk-art has all kinds of stuff up for auction, doing a pretty reasonable job of covering all the genre bases, as you can see. However this is bidhardcore, and that narrows things down pretty easily here. I’m not going to talk about the Beastie Boys “Polywog Stew” 12″, because it’s not actually a good record, just a bad punk 12″ made by some guys that got famous later. It says it’s a Ratcage OG, but it also says made in France, so I’m not sure. If you care, you’ll have to research that. A much better record, one of my Brit-core favs, and one that set a standard: Ripcord “Defiance Of Power” 12″ with bonus “The Damage Is Done” flexi (in fact this is my second favorite Ripcord release). I think one of the things about Ripcord that I like the most is that they were unabashedly influenced by American bands of the early 80’s (SS Decontrol, Siege, Youth Of Today, 7 seconds), but still maintained some Britishness in their sound. Even if they considered themselves mainly drawing from American influences, there are still shades of groups like the Varukers, GBH, Chaos UK, Discharge, etc., that I can’t escape in their sound, which for me is part of the Ripcord appeal. Not that I’m a huge British punk listener, but the cross pollination, it’s good… like a strawberry-kiwi beverage, or the ever popular chocolate and peanut butter snack. It’s also pretty cool they had a song like Drug-Shit, being that they were from an area of the world where that would put them distinctly in the minority. They took a hard line (no pun intended) on animal abuse too, I feel like probably half their songs were about vivisection/vegetarianism/other animal exploitations, which I guess was kind of new at the time. The sound is kind of a heavy blur, with thick, thick fuzz on the guitar and bass, and jackhammering, simple drum patterns. The lack of flashiness in the music actually serves it quite well I think making it heavier and more focused in some way or other. Recommended shredding here…