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I’ve broken my streak. Due to some internet difficulties, yesterday this post didn’t go up, and so it’s going up today instead. Roky Erikson and Motorhead in one day (yesterday). Also J Masics came to the Fucked Up, Sex/Vid, Iron Age show, and was accosted by every Deep Wound and Dinosaur fan in the room.

I’ve hit Cooch up for an entry, we do Painkiller Records together of course, but he does the most, and we’ve played in rock bands too, so without further delay…

CC asked me to do a scab entry or two for him while he’s on vacation, suggesting for this one that I talk about some of the pre-hardcore era Modern Method Records releases. Before making their mark in the hardcore world with the monumental “This Is Boston, Not LA” comp LP, Modern Method put out just under a dozen releases as the in-house
label for Boston’s famous Newbury Comics music retail chain. Just about all of the early releases are “punk” in some sense, ranging from the pop punk stylings of the Gremies and the Future Dads (both featuring legendary Unnatural Axe frontman Rich Parsons) to the power poppy Outlets to the Mission Of Burma-esque Native Tongue. One interesting release is their second compilation LP, “A Wicked Good Time Vol 2″, which features a track by Leper, who many consider to be the first hardcore band in Boston. Most of these early releases can be found cheap, though both Outlets singles, which are excellent, command good money on eBay.

On to the auctions… eBay’s top purveyor of punk vinyl and ephemera, Ryan Richardson, aka ryebread, currently has the Bound & Gagged 12″ for sale (Modern Method #5, from 1980). It’s a four song ep featuring a six piece all-female lineup, doing some quirky post punk weirdness. It’s produced by Cleveland expatriate Robin Amos of The Girls, a pretty cool Boston area post punk band that had the distinction of releasing the only non-Cleveland area record on Hearthan Records (run by Dave Thomas of Pere Ubu). Robin still works at a local record shop in Boston and is a pretty friendly guy based on my interactions with him. Anyways, back to Bound & Gagged - I had a couple copies stashed away thinking it would have taken off in price over the past few years with the recent explosion of crappy hipster noise and synth punk, but it still sells for relatively cheap (typically $20 and under). This record would really appeal to fans of bands like the Raincoats or Kleenex, I suppose a good reissue of the 12″ and their two tracks from “A Wicked Good Time Vol. 1″ might generate some interest in the original product.

For those of you with more refined hardcore tastes, Mr. Ryebread has some other tasty platters up for bid - classic releases by Black Flag, Crucifix, FEAR, Minor Threat, DOA, test pressings of the first Freeze and Meatmen LPs, and more. One interesting record of note on his current auction list is the Human Sufferage self titled lp - a rare and under the radar release from Ohio, ca. 1983 - great midwest HC style.

Been busy keeping Austin weird since yesterday, as such I don’t have anything exciting today. Saw Naked Raygun @ 1 AM last night. Jeff Pezatti has very small eyes in person.

Today’s guest blogger is Jon Westbrook from sunny (Southern) California. You may remember him from Knife Fight, or some bands he doesn’t want you to interview him about. In his words, “I don’t speak Spanish, so I don’t have anything interesting to tell you”. He’s also a purveyor of very fine vinyl platters.

I’m sure a lot of you saw this posted over at the livewire records message board, but cc’s on vacation this week and I’m working crazy hours these days (tax season….ok, I’m too lazy to scour ebay every hour in the hopes that some badass platters turn up, but honestly…tax season). Looks like we have the start of a whole collection being sold right now. Hopefully the seller didn’t blow his ebay load on this first batch though, because there’s some pretty good ones up there. Always better to build the hype if you want serious money for your goods. The most likely winner of the bunch will be the Antidote “Thou Shalt Not Kill” EP. I can’t imagine anyone not knowing this EP by now, but in case you’re a n00b, it’s a definite top 5 USHC ep, and in most cases top 2 (Negative Approach is better). Only 500 made, backups by JJ, feat members of M.O.I., yadda yadda yadda. Other gems include an original SSDecontrol “The Kids Will Have Their Say,” FU’s “Kill For Christ,” Rest In Pieces “My Rage,” and the ever popular XChorusX LP. The majority of this collection is in the straight edge vein (80’s and 90’s). And seeing that the seller is from Italy, maybe we’ll get lucky and get some Wretched, Underage, and Bloody Riot records next go around (here’s to hoping). But if there’s one thing to learn when it comes to record collecting for the person who’s serious about owning the best of the best, consider this anecdote: For many of my teenage years and into the early 20’s, I used to curse my parent’s names for waiting 8 years to have children. I thought paying $50 for a record was absurd, and thought “if only I was 5 years older, I could have paid “absurd” prices by 1989’s standards.” But a wise man once told me “if you have the money, just buy it because it’ll be worth more than that in a few years.” Just think about how dumb I’d feel now if I had passed on paying $75 for that Antidote EP in ‘97…

The slaughter continues… this week will be a weird one as I head for Texas to get infinitely bummed out on indie rocking douche bags all trying to get their stupid art band signed to Matador. “First world problems” as they say. I still plan to have content coming daily, but I’m not sure how it’s going to work out yet - so don’t freak.

Anyway… here’s a death metal standard - Autopsy “Severed Survival” lp on Peaceville. This copy has the original artwork on the sleeve, which of course means it’s not a repress. Autopsy stood out during the early 90’s death metal flood, in part because they worked a sound that had more of a connection to hardcore and punk, with a prominent and dirty bass sound, and a relatively (compare to Sunlight or Morrisound) raw recording. The vocals, while definitely in a death metal style growl, were also free of much processing or effects, which kind of puts this lp sounding more like a lot of band’s demo tapes, only without the shitty tape noise. When compared to peers like Entombed or Deicide, or even Carcass after their first lp, Autopsy sound downright rustic. You take a song like Service for a Vacant Coffin which has al the memorable qualities of the best of the aforementioned groups, but almost going back to a riff that you would have heard on To Megatherion, it just stands apart from something like Morbid Angel where everything is blurring together after the first 5 minutes. BTW: the crucial bass playing on this album is courtesy of Steve DiGiorgio, one of the few Death Metal bassists to play with his fingers instead of a pick, which partially accounts for the unique bass sound.

Some other things to think about:

1) Cooch’s (that’s Chris Minnicucci to you outsiders) brother used to be a serious Metal Maniac in the 80’s and 90’s, he says Autopsy is still the best. He’s mainly into baseball cards now.

2) Ray Santilli, the conman behind the Alien Autopsy hoax of the 90’s originally worked in the recording industry. I know it may come as a shock that someone working in music turned out to be a conman, but pick yourself up off the floor. The claim was that Santilli had recovered an original film reel documenting the autopsy of an alien recovered from the alleged Roswell crash site. The footage was broadcast on Fox, (maybe not the Peaceville of broadcast tv, but probably the Earache, or perhaps Relapse) but later revealed to be a hoax. Santilli claimed there had been an original film reel, but that it had been damaged after he viewed it, and only a few frames were salvageable, so he recreated the alleged footage in an empty apartment done up to look like a hospital. Interestingly, when Santilli worked in the music industry, one of his ventures was having artists rerecord their classic tracks for new releases, probably to be sold in rest stops and discount stores.

Back in the saddle again today. I had some formatting issues w/ the post yesterday so if it looked all effed up to you, give it another read as I think it’s well written (i.e. not by me), and go check out Shit-Fi.com, if nothing else read the article on Tax Scam records, and the Japanese Noise-Core primer. Hails to Stuart who does the site, and from whom I stole the content yesterday.

Found someone selling off their 90’s crusty and dirty stuff. Some real junkers (as always), but a few you definitely wanna grip. First off is a real bargain sleeper. I swear one day this record is going to be in demand. Mid-90’s Connecticut had a ton of these heavy crust punk type bands, all of them coming out of Torrington from what I understand. Hail Of Rage is one of the more forgotten entries in this lineage, they only issued this Fucking Pissed 7″, and a split much later that hardly sounds the same. I think they shared member with Deformed Conscience (who are more remembered), and musically they have some in common, but H.O.R. brought more speed to the table. To me they kind of work it half way between Infest/Citizen’s Arrest and Doom/ENT, in other words if the classic Britcore style got a little more frantic and Americanized. The vocals are way above average too, and for sure qualify the title Fucking Pissed. This is the repressing of the 7″and will probably sell for less than $5, if you’ve not heard it check it out for real.

Another good selection here is this Noothgrush 7″ on Slap-A-Ham, “Embraced By Anti Self”. If you’re not familiar with this band, basically, just imagine baby Eyehategod circa In The Name Of Suffering, but with socially conscious lyrics I guess. I think for the sludgy 90’s DIY stuff, this band trumped pretty much everyone that wasn’t Corrupted. Definitely go on record as taking them over Grief (might be controversial?), 16, whoever. I guess this is one of the more desirable common pressings of their stuff because it’s on Slap-A-Ham which has become something of a cult label, at least for the early part of their catalog.

The doctor is out today, so here’s some quoted text from shit-fi dot com. All credit to Stuart Schrader who wrote this, and clearly knows his stuff. Back tomorrow doggs…

Gai “Extermination” (Blue Jug / Violent Party EP 001)

If Confuse invented the Kyushu noise-core sound, Gai made it a genre. Even more obviously influenced by Chaos UK, Gai set the standard: trebly guitar, tin-pan drum rolls, incomprehensible vocals, and extremely simple songs, plus a sleeve with artwork in the doodling-with-the-free-hand-while-in-a-straight-jacket style invented by Disorder. More so than Confuse, Gai hemmed closely to the UK sound, with barmy streetpunk song structures. As the band evolved into Swankys, the streetpunk influence was itself taken over by a ‘77/fun-punk influence, and the band became an odd amalgam of noise-core guitars and bouncy, silly punk. To be honest, I think Gai’s flexi is the weakest record on this list, but it is important because it defines the genre. Dozens of bands, such as Dust Noise, Screaming Noise, Donkeys, Chaos Ch, ad noisiem, have directly copied Gai and Swankys, although Gai, far more than Confuse, strike me as themselves copyists. Swankys developed their own sound, but Gai’s flexi doesn’t have much of its own character, even down to not having a clear recording, just like Disorder’s “Perdition.” (The -ion endings endemic to Kyushu ’84 were certainly a tribute to that 12″.)

The “Damaging Noise” demo is noisier and perhaps more Discharge-influenced than the flexi, aided by its neanderthal-rolling-around-in-the-cave-gutter vocals and a few killer d-beat raw punk tunes. “Break” mixes Kyushu noise-core with straight Discharge riff rip, whereas “Fallen Angel’s Balls”(I don’t think that means what they think it means) is probably the closest Gai get to the bizarre noisy guitar-work of Confuse (avec le d-beat), and, finally,“Know” is a speedy shot of Stockholm-like mangel. Definitely a prime example of parallel evolution.

The two-sided, black, blank-label flexi has two highlights to my mind: the artwork and “Blood Spit Night (for ever 76).” Looking at the sleeve, one can’t help but wonder if Gai thought Blue Jug was going to lay out for a full eight inches of noise because, obviously, part of the artwork wasn’t within the crop marks. But more likely, that’s how they wanted it. If they could fit all four band members on a scooter, they could fit the word “extermination” on the sleeve. Note the retouching, consisting of Chaos UK and Violent Party tatts. As for the back, well, it’s even more clear something was cut off, but we get the point. On to “Blood Spit Night: uncoincidentally, like Confuse’s song “Spending Loud Night,” this song has a totally different sound from the rest of the band’s oeuvre—well, until they made a career out of it as Swankys. But prior to that, “Blood Spit Night” was one of the only examples of UK snotpunk cross-pollinated with “Driller Killer”-style dental surgery. It’s a slow singalong tune that bears no resemblance to the sound of the Portland band that would take the song’s name as its own. It’s a song that’ll make for a good to pogo to dislodge some of the dirt that accumulated in your ears after rolling around on the ground during the first five tracks on the flexi.

In conclusion, the incestuous relationship between the members of Gai and other Kyushu noise-core bands remains unclear to me, and I’d love to read a well-written translation of a retelling of the history. Based on the somewhat confusing (ugh) liner notes of the Sieg Heil LP on Overthrow, Confuse taught Gai and Sieg Heil, who shared members, how to produce the classic fuzz/noise guitar sound (and showed them how to dress in proper UK LBS&A style). It seems that Gai, led by Swanky on vocals, started as Swankys and then reverted back to that name later. They received their influence from Confuse at the same time both bands, along with Sieg Heil, and presumably others like Gess and No Cut (who both went on to employ melody—The horror! The horror!), were tearing up the live houses of Fukuoka and Hakata. Confuse’s “Indignation” demo, though not the first recording (recorded in April 1984), was the shot across the bow for Japanese noise-core, as a fully realized, cohesive release of 13 songs defining a new style of music. Confuse’s “Nuclear Addicts” flexi and Gai’s flexi were recorded within a few days of each other in August and September 1984. Both flexis were preceded by Gai’s “Damaging Noise” demo, Sieg Heil’s “Nazism” demo, and the “Indignation” demo, all on Violent Party. As far as I can tell, Violent Party used two concomitant numbering schemes for their flexi and cassette releases (“Nazism” and “Nuclear Addicts” are both #2). CD and LP re-releases of both of Gai’s demos have been intermittently available in Japan. There is also a CD called “1981–1985 Violent Party,” said to include otherwise unreleased studio tracks from those years. Finally, there is the internet rumor, originating with Wedge of 9 Shocks Terror, that Gai covered Electric Eels, which, if true, could cause a rethinking of the genesis of the entire noise-core genre, but I need to hear this cover myself first. This sort of minutiae isn’t particularly interesting to most people, I assume, but many blogs and fanzines out there talk a big game when it comes to obsessing over this music, with very little new or useful information (or even writing!) available. I blame filesharing to a degree, because hopelessly obscure music is now much more widely available, but it is decontextualized and stripped of the original packaging, which tends to help situate it, with dates, thanks lists, line-ups, etc.—though shoddy bootlegs and unavailable legitimate reissues are to blame too. Anyway, all that aside, Gai’s flexi is an essential piece of any museum-quality noise-core collection, but listen to those three tracks from “Damaging Noise” first if you’ve never heard these maniacs.

Alright here’s a nice looking Underdog 7″for sale, noted as being first press. Presumably it is because if it were 2nd press it would be blue vinyl. Underdog still stands alone as such a weird band of their time. The riffs are really groovy and heavy for something recorded in ‘85 and even though they always point to the Bad Brains as an influence, there’s something way different about them. The soulful vocals threw me off as a kid, I thought they sounded like 80’s metal. I regretted thinking that later (now). Underdog is really right on the line where Hardcore crossed over from the first to the second generation of participants, and started to have much less to do with “Punk”. From around this point onward there seemed to be a lot more emphasis on precision in the music, speed seemed less important, production became more modern, there was a sound and aesthetic that became more self contained, and nowhere was this was more noticeable than New York City and its surrounding areas. Some could say it was the influence of Heavy Metal’s rising popularity, and in part it was, but I think, even if in a more subtle way, that street culture and early rap music played a part too, especially in New York. Look no further than Underdog’s classic Say It To My Face for a pseudo-rapped vocal delivery, and a musical groove, that I can’t describe any other way than “bouncy”. In some way or other it just sounds like the New York you’d picture from the mid-80s set to a song. My memories of that place are as dim as could be, I only visited once, and I was a child so maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think so. For these reasons and probably some others, the Underdog 7″ strikes me as one of the earliest examples of a record you just can’t explain to punk “purists”. They hear Say It To My Face, or True Blue, and it just doesn’t resonate to them like Urban Waste or early AF. It’s too far removed, maybe too clean or not “crazy” enough. For me it’s just a different kind of power and anger, more focused, maybe less out of control, but not any less meaningful. Btw - check this seller’s other stuff for plenty of other great NYHC picks.

More auctions from a seller I posted last week, and there’s plenty to go around, so be sure to check his whole list. Here’s a couple quickies from that list…

How about this
Chain Of Strength - True Til Death on green vinyl (that’s first pressing dude). Superior in every way to the Chain auction I posted last week, this is also much better than that modernized sounding remix Rev circulates now. I love the way the vocals are buried in the mix giving the music a more powerful feel, and the songs are much more aggressive and angry than the E.P. they did after this. The simplicity in the riffs really brings the anger to the forefront too, the main riffs in the first 2 songs only use 2 notes each. One more thing that some might say is out of the ordinary for the time, is how little focus there is on mosh parts, a couple songs don’t have them at all, and the ones that do can’t be called mosh-heavy by any stretch.

If you want mosh-heavy though, there’s always this
Release - The Pain Inside 7″, which to me sounds something like a combo of the Turning Point 7″ and the Raw Deal demo, but without guitar amps. What I mean is that the guitars have the thin, fuzzy sound that you can easily get by plugging your instrument directly into the mixing board/recording device, instead of plugging into an amplifier, and having a microphone record the sounds that come from that. Questionable production choices aside though, this record is one of the few to have the distinction of the letter A on the cover being replaced by the head of a man in a hooded sweatshirt. Some people would call him a Phantom-Edgeman. What I wanna know is why does that Phantom-Edgeman have red eyes? Was it a bad photograph, or is he some kind of vampire? Similarly the last E in the band name is replaced by a weird dude with a flat-top and big teeth. Bizarre.

Metal Monday Vol.11today, and I have another selection for the Thrash Metal Sleeper category, and maybe something to gnaw on for the hardcore purist too. Observe Whiplash - “Power and Pain”. Their first and most remembered lp, and also, one of the best NY/NJ thrash records to ever exist. First thing you might notice is that our old pal, Sean Taggert is responsible for that cover art, which looks like a Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robot crushing a skinhead’s head. The music on here sounds kind of like Exodus - Bonded By Blood at double speed, maybe with a little Slayer tossed in. In fact drummer Tony Scaglion is one of only 2 drummers to have ever subbed for Slayer’s Dave Lombardo, and on the Reign in Blood US tour no less. He’s also laid it down in Sheer Terror, Cause For Alarm, and Ludichrist. While I’m at it bassist Tony Bono (R.I.P.) did some time in Into Another in the 90’s. This brings me to another important point: the guitarist/vocalist on this record is also named Tony (Portaro), in other words, the entire band is named Tony. This is a very fine distinction, later to be stolen by pop group Tony, Toni Tone. By my calculation, this is one of the greatest American thrash lps by a band that didn’t strike it big.

Also in the “kind of hardcore related thrash metal sleepers” post: Necrophagia - “Season of The Dead”. This is a record I actually have a promotional copy of including a press sheet where the bands influences are listed which are: “Celtic Frost, Bathory, Sodom, Slaughter, and all hard-core“. Yes the entire genre folks. Nonetheless this record doesn’t have a trace of any hardcore on it, opting for kind of just a mix of the metal bands they listed, and definitely leaning towards the earlier portions of those band’s catalogs. In other words this is shockingly primitive for an lp issued in the USA in 1987. This is on one of my favorite cult labels, New Renaissance Records who issued dozens of no-name metal bands through the 80’s. If following cult-level thrash metal releases is comparable to being a horror movie fanatic, then this is definitely one of those infamous, z-grade, plotless gore flicks. Enjoy.