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Black Flag’s Damaged lp on Unicorn/MCA (original pressing) is not really a rare record. 5,000 were produced and although a lot ended up in cut out bins, a large number are still in circulation. Still there are few records that are just cooler to own. Everything about this lp is a landmark, but the infamous “As A Parent I Found It An Anti Parent Record” sticker placed over the MCA logo just sends it over the top as far as coolness/collectibility. It’s perfect. Even though its been pointed out there are, musically, some problems with Damaged (the mix is extremely uneven, Rollins delivery being arguably flat, the song TV Party in general), it’s still a flawless record when taken as a whole. The questionable aspects do nothing to dull the full impact of it, and Greg Ginn’s ambitions are fully realized. It was dangerous, inspiring dozens of bands across the country and breaking the minds of every youth that was exposed to it. It’s scuzzy and thuggish and the logical conclusion of Black Flag phase I. It’s one of the most perfectly titled records ever made. It’s everything it ought to be, and everything it had to be to make hardcore matter.

In some ways Damaged is a little too much of an archetype now. It has become the Paranoid of the Black Flag catalog. It gets unfairly dismissed in favor of later releases that contain more experimental, or that are referenced less by outsiders. Do not make this mistake. There’s a reason it’s the Black Flag everyone knows.

In my view, Inepsy are the best French Canadian band to exist since the classic lineup of VoiVod. When I first saw them they had snuck into the USA because of some kind of problematic criminal records. They all wore black leather and had spikey hair, and sounded like a punked out Motorhead. Every song raged. When their 7″ single finally came out it confirmed the promise of that first gig I caught. This was first rate punk, but also exceptionally good as rock ‘n roll. The See You In Hell e.p. has a deceptively simple formula. Take Motorhead circa Overkill-Iron Fist, season liberally with GBH and Discharge (lots of D-beats),  tune to Venom (C I think), and toss in a  couple of Hellhammer’s breakdowns… basically you get the catchiest music imaginable.

 It all makes sense, and it’s not hard to play “rocked out punk”, but Inepsy just had a really good knack for it starting with this record - “See You In Hell”. Germ Warfare kicks off and it’s kind of perverse a song with such atrocious subject matter be so toe-tapping. I mean, it’s not a huge deal for me, I like music that sounds like tv static, so to my ears this is tuneful. There’s some Hellhammer flavor in this one where they hit the low notes and there’s a heavy Tom Warrior style mosh part too. A rea. It’s a Time Bomb comes second, and its been a live staple since the time of this record, straight up Motorhead style riffing distilled to fit with punk drumming, but without losing the tendency for great choruses, and driving power-riffs. Hammer Hearth moves along an almost identical structure but why fix what isn’t broken. Finishing things up is The Reaper Watches The Game, which gets back to a little more Hellhammer style approach but also echos some Clay-era GBH in the start and stop moments. Its a fine beginning to a band that has provided 3 exceptional lps of punked out grimy rock n roll (at least one of which is a perfect 10).

 This is an early release on the always high-quality, Feral Ward. Hey Yannick, if you’re reading this, this record has been OOP for long enough. How about a 12″ pressing with the 4 added songs from the tour CDR the band had a little before the 7″ had come out. Someone out there’s gotta be able to engineer this into happening…

Youth of Today - Can’t Close My Eyes 7″ with blank b-side label is one of those random anomalies no one is really sure about. I’ve heard a number like 40 or 50 thrown around as being the quantity existing but there’s no way to confirm that, and since I’ve seen 2 or 3 I feel like that might be low. Some copies have something written on the label, or a picture glued to it, some seem to be blank like this one. Seems like it happened during the 2nd pressing as they all come in sleeves with white lettering.

For a record so awesome, Can’t Close My Eyes sounds like absolute crap on the original 7″. Later on they “remixed” it, and rerecorded the guitar tracks so that it finally sounded listenable, but on this version the guitars sound like they were recorded through a cellphone inside a tin can. Absolutely the worst guitar sound I’ve ever heard on a hardcore record… except maybe that Full On Straight track on the Generation of Hope comp. Even sounding like total garbage though can’t stop a song like Expectations. Even you straight edge hating druggies can dig a song like this, it’s the ultimate teenage anger track, complaining about the overbearing expectations of parental units. In general YOT sound most like Antidote and DYS at this stage in their career. The vocals are the most throat-shredded and spastic, the riffs at their most thrashing and uncontrolled, the vibe in general is just youthful anger. This is also the only YOT record to have a kind of militant stance about straight edge, more in line with DYS/SS Decontrol/Negative FX, than the positive reputation they have today, and all the dull post Insted bands that cite them now.

I wish there was a straight edge band now with vocals this out of control and raging. Cappo is just letting it fly on here with absolutely no regard. No matter how many bad bands these guys have been in since the 90s (Shelter, Never Surrender, Last Of The Famous, other pop-punk bands I haven’t heard thankfully…) this will always be a sick release and my favorite Youth Of Today record. Bonus:  2 dudes from 76% Uncertain are on this one. Hi Bob.

I like this seller’s spread a lot. Basically it’s a bunch of British hardcore, but with the Septic Death lp and Age of Quarrel thrown in. All hot pieces. BTW the Cro- Mags lp is a GWR pressing which I see a little less. The ills of society painting on the inside is black and white and without a censor bar.

The Axegrinder lp, Rise Of the Serpent Men on Peaceville for sale is a cool chunk of OG Crust, or “Stench-Core” as they called themselves. I believe 3 of the 4 members have dreadlocks on the back cover. Axegrinder are a less subtle Amebix when you get it down to it. Remove the Killing Joke influence, add some doom metal, simplify your riffs a little bit, and you’re almost there. Axegrinder loved interludes and atmospherics and at times these parts sound almost black metal in tradition, delivered in minor keys sounding hopeless and sombre and occasionally embellished by cold synth lines. The songs themselves run on simple mid-paced chugging patterns, with ultra processed sounding drums (possibly a drum machine w/ overdubbed cymbals), and guitars, and though it’s maybe a bit to clean at times, the tunes manage to hold together fairly well.  It sounds like it should be the music during the future scenes in the Terminator movies.

One thing that sticks out a lot to me about Rise Of the Serpent Men though is the title and cover art, and their significance to the band. The cover depicts some kind of reptilian-human hybrid reeking havoc on various humans. This together with the title leads me to wonder whether the members of Axegrinder were turned onto conspiracy theories positing that there are a sect of the ruling class that are actually ruthless reptilian overlords disguised as human beings planning to enslave the human race. Even with hard core conspiracy theorists these views are considered to be laughable. Princess Diana was supposed to be one of them, and there’s a passing reference in one song to the belief that the Reptoids invented Christianity as a tool to enslave humanity. So where does that leave this album? I guess it just kind of makes for a semi-interesting angle for an overly dramatic, post-apocalyptic crust band. As this is their sole lp and vinyl release (other than their track on this comp from the same seller), Axegrinder never managed to flesh out their worldview beyond this album (although they did have a previous demo). I would have liked to see them go into more detail about the Serpent Men, if for no other reason than the sheer comic-book absurdity, though I wouldn’t mind more of their brand of sludgy crust metal either. You’d be better off with the first Sacrilege lp, Amebix “Monolith”, or some of the earlier Hellbastard or Deviated Instinct offerings, but Rise of the Serpent Men at least sits comfortably in the 2nd tier of Crust’s first wave.

Despite the bad description in the listing - i predict a bidding war here. Allegedly there’s 300 copies of Raped Ass with this cover, though there’s 2 variations of it, so that makes it 2 batches of 150.  Given the way things are going on ebay I can’t even predict what this could sell for. The sky is honestly the limit at this point.

As for the music, this is as good as it gets for Swedish hardcore and the “d-beat” sub-genre if you ask me. It’s an obvious choice but it also delivers on every level start to finish. The most harsh shouted vocals, crunchy trebled guitars, drums awash with cymbals (Bonzo style for your rockers), and a good bass tone to hold it all together. Every song is just so well written, with great melodies balancing the brutality, superb choruses, and scrappy little guitar solos to put emphasis on certain sections. Actually I think the guitar solos might be what I love most. They sound really tinny and have a chorus effect applied to them making use of the whole fretboard as opposed to the one-note solo method employed by Discharge. It renders the songs much more righteous sounding, and anthemic, which I think can be really important for this style of punk. If you’re smashing the system you need the songs to be like a speech at a rally that fires up the crowd. They gotta really preach that gospel. Really it’s pretty rare that you can beat out the originator of your chosen style in music, but here’s Anti-Cimex, lapping Discharge and raising the bar for all subsequent entries.

 you talk about the freedom
but we have no freedom
you talk about the rights
but we have no rights
this fucking system is liked a raped ass

Good luck bidders…

Well here’s a real collector favorite. Koro’s - 700 Club. This 7″ was legendary even in the pre Internet days, as one of the speediest and most catchy North American records from the initial Hardcore explosion. This thing clocks 8 songs in 6 minutes or so and has had its status well cemented as a cult classic since it finally saw an official reissue a few years ago. Somewhat reminiscent of early DRI with equally intense vocals, but a little less straight forward. The choruses stick to your ribs a little better and aren’t quite as samey, and there’s a more out of control edge almost approaching a Void kind of franticness. Unlike Void people have made a big deal over the years about how tightly Koro actually perform their songs on this.

But in recent years there’s been a bit of a snag in the mythology. A couple years ago, following the official release of the 7″ on Sorry State records, the world was abuzz when it was announced the long rumored to exist, shelved Koro lp, “Speed Kills” was going to be released. When it finally surfaced, aside from being obviously sourced from a crappy tape (which sometimes helps but in this case didn’t), there were two extremely glaring problems.

1) None of the songs were as good or intense as the 7″ EP. The writing was less inspired, the vocals were flatter, the songs were slower, and that leads to the bigger problem that effects the Koro “legacy” as a whole…

2) A few songs from the 7″ appeared in rerecorded versions, that were NOTICABLY SLOWER than the 7″. But it wasn’t just that they were slower, the vocal delivery was less manic… and there was something with the pitch that seemed wrong. Side by side comparison was the proof in the pudding - the 700 Club 7″ versions of the songs are all one note further up the scale on bass and guitar, which leads one to conclude that the record was artificially sped up to sound faster and more intense. Live sets of the band which began circulating from around the same time (and which have since been issued on a collection CD) served to confirm this.

I still love the Koro 7″, but I can’t really love it in the same way. I’ve been cheated. I’m sure there’s a really bad pun here where I can utilize the title “Speed Kills” (it seems ironically lack of speed killed my love of the band)… So I dunno, where does that leave this thing? Kind of just a $500 Milli Vanilli, but it’s still pretty sick. Note Dr. Cooch says that this clearly has the higher contrast back photo denoting that it’s from the 2nd batch of record sleeves made. The first has more grey in it.

Alright here’s a wacky Wednesday entry for you. I’m pretty amped on seeing the new Indiana Jones tonight, and I’ll be sure to post a complete list of spoilers here tomorrow. When I saw Star Wars: Episode I on opening night in 1999, I deemed it “pretty good”, so you can definitely trust my opinion. Also I applauded, as did the majority of the audience.

 Anyway, there’s a guy from Prema (ha!)selling his late 80’s/early 90’s recs on good ‘ol ebay. If you don’t know Prema is one of the funniest bands of all time associated with hardcore. When they were 13 they had some band that was like fast dumb hardcore… I forget the name but they obviously get compared to Crippled Youth all the time. I’m sure they didn’t sound like them. Then they became Hare Krishna (ah the early 90’s), and got more serious, playing melodic-Hardcore. When they produced their follow up lp it was something like 60 minutes long, 2xlp, and “grungy”. First of all: Fucked Up eat your heart out. Second of all, I think they were barely out of high school. I’ve been waiting for the day I can score a copy of this thing outta the dollar bin or someone’s trash pile.

So one thing you might want is a test pressing of the No Escape/Turning Point split. I’ve mentioned before how godawful the Turning Point stuff is on here, but let me just say it again - WORST! I think I’d rather listen to an hour of Jay Leno stand-up. The No Escape side is pretty tight, heavy early 90’s HC. Not too tough guy, not too introspective, just lays in the cut. Tim Singer is the vocalist… I like Boiling Point Fanzine better than No Escape but it’s still alright.

There’s a Chain Of Strength Confusion sleevealready pushing $300. One of about 10 variations of the less good Chain 7″. I think this is some of the rejected vinyl from the Foundation press with a different sleeve. It looks crappy that’s the main thing. Early 90’s color Xerox, but if you are a Chain completest you’ve gotta have this. Hope you didn’t spend that stimulus check.

 Another test press up: Ink and Dagger’s “Love Is Dead”. The number of times I heard this band compared to Swiz is obscene. It’s more just early 90’s “chaotic hc”, like Swing Kids lite, on a vampire gimmick. Can’t believe anyone would still want this, but from time to time I still hear this crap discussed. This is definitely the least bad entry in their catalog, I dug it for sure when I was 16/17 (”SOUNDS LIKE A CRAZY FUGAZI!”). WHOOPS! Later on these guys read an issue of, probably some British magazine they found at Tower Records, and started name-checking Square-Pusher and Aphex Twin, like electronic music had just landed from outer space and they were the first to discover it. How embarrassing.

Oh, a Child Abuse 7″ on Muthathat somehow slipped in here. That just seems weird to me because there’s no other records from a similar time period, although I guess it’s regionally from the same part of the USA.  To me it’s just funny to think this guy was, by all odds, hanging out at Flagman shows, probably in a sweater vest or some Stussy shirt, with a Child Abuse 7″ sitting in the same box of 7″s that probably had multiple Falling Forward and Metroshifter records in it. This would be the point where some overly sensitive type, whose “salad days” were in this time period, and went to 164 different Lifetime/Resurrection gigs at the Middlesex where everyone played drums poorly and there were no fast songs, or pants that fit anyone, is going to pipe up and complain that I don’t understand, AND I’m a dick, AND Outspoken is still good, AND if you weren’t there you can’t make a qualitative assessment of the music, AND they’re much older than me and that means I don’t know anything………. Same old complaints I’ve heard every time I bring these things up, but face it — all of those bands are no good. I blame grunge, alt-metal, and shoegaze. You will never convince me otherwise. With maybe 5 exceptions, there are no hardcore bands from the USA in ‘92-’94 I wanna listen to. Hey it’s fine… I sang in a band that had a 3″ CDR demo. That alone is goddamn laughable.

Ok full disclosure: I just can’t take anything seriously that has stuff like these stupid flame graphics that are in each auction. Why does ebay even still have this stuff? Am I making my homepage at geocities infocommons?

Stuart Schrader of SHIT-FI.COM returns today to give you a lesson on AK-47’s “The Badge Means You Suck” single. This is a tier one material for the KBD game, and though it may not be the most strictly hardcore release, it more than has a place here. Without further adieu:

I once made the pronouncement, as I have been wont to do, that the single best anti-cop punk song is “The Badge Means You Suck” by Mikhailt Kalashnikov’s AK-47, released in 1980. To the question, “What about Black Flag’s ‘Police Story’?” my response was simple: “AK-47=smart. Black Flag = dumb.” (The equation may have been more complicated if the response had been “What about The Dicks’ ‘Hate the Police’?”) “Police Story”—with Dez singing, natch—does conjure up memories of getting nailed in the head by a police truncheon outside the Starwood, mostly among those who hadn’t been born yet. What’s more, name me one city that is not run by pigs. But AK-47’s power was in its refusal to attempt to beat the cops at their own game. They wouldn’t fight the cops in the streets. They would brilliantly channel their rage into a 4-minute tirade and match their rage with intellectual acumen by writing caustic lyrics and a chorus that diverted a Houston Police Department slogan. No, the badge doesn’t mean you care. The badge means you suck.

What may be a bit embarrassing to the LBS&A crowd is that the best anti-cop punk song was penned by hippies. Check out the background on the front cover. Then check out the photo of the guitarist printed on the insert of the estimable compilation “Deep in the Throat of Texas.” Then listen to that guitar solo—almost a minute of wild guitar licks played with aggressive reckless abandon. By a hippie. So the best anti-cop song and the best punk guitar solo this side of “Death, Agonies, and Screams,” or perhaps “Warsystem.” It’s starting to sound like I think this record is essential.

So what is it about this song? Well, the bile, the seething hatred of cops, is off the charts. The riff and the hooks are beyond the pale. Great use of phaser too. Actually, the intensity of the song makes me want to call it proto-hardcore, but it’s also punk and hard rock at the same time. And the lyrics. Oh lawd, the lyrics. AK-47 named names—not of cops but of their victims. The front cover of the record lists nine people murdered by the Houston Police Department, a notoriously racist and trigger-happy institution in the 1970s. The song itself details the murder of Milton Glover, a Vietnam vet shot eight times. A bullet, the listener is reminded, pierced the Bible he constantly carried with him. It also mentions Carl Hampton, perhaps the most famous victim of the Houston PD in the 1970s, a black radical who was assassinated after a long stand-off. AK-47 sing, “The man who killed Joe Torres / Never went to jail / The sniper who picked off Carl Hampton / Never paid any bail / The killers of Milton Glover / They might be pulling you over tonight / And if you happen to get shot / Well I guess you started the fight.” Impunity is the essence of state power, and cops are its chief beneficiaries. Perhaps the best defense we (meaning the entire public) have against police excesses is memory. That’s why naming names matters.

Punk songs by definition should not take into account posterity, and AK-47 were clearly engaged in agit-prop for the immediate present, when the Houston PD’s slogan was fresh in the minds of the citizenry. That the band managed to create a historical artifact of unmatched power was actually incidental. Aiming to do so would obviously have resulted in abject failure. But the band did get the attention of the Houston Police Officers’ Association, who sued, to the tune of a million bucks. Problem was, John Law couldn’t figure out the identities of the band members, who used pseudonyms on the record’s insert. So the lawsuit was eventually dropped. The suit, however, did help give the record legendary status—probably not what the boys in blue had intended.

As Texas punk records go, this one is in the mid to low range of rarity and price. It’s no Vomit Pigs. But, yes, in my opinion, it is essential. No serious punk collection is complete without it. This record exemplifies original vinyl’s superiority to latter-day reissues, with its crystal-clear and loud mastering. There were apparently two pressings, but no one seems to know how to differentiate between them. Copies of the sleeve without the back side printed (ie, blank on one side) circulate. A second insert has been spotted in some copies; it must be posthumous because it includes some info about the lawsuit. I’ve seen inserts printed on a variety of paper colors, too. The copy for sale here includes the insert on yellow paper; like most copies I’ve seen, the fragile sleeve appears to be slightly rumpled. I should mention that this record’s sleeve, besides being a brilliant and somewhat bizarre piece of political art, leaves the band name off the front, which is something I love. In this case, the band was subordinating itself to the message, it wasn’t just because they huffed too much glue or something, like Chemotherapy.

I’ll leave you with a quote on the contradictory nature of police under capitalism from The Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove: An Analysis of the U.S. Police, published in 1975: “Although the police are . . . a repressive institution that operates to contain the poor and powerless, they are themselves exploited, not only by miserable working conditions and social isolation but also as instruments of laws and policies which they neither control nor benefit from. The police protect private property but do not own it; as guardians of the peace, they defend government policies of imperialism and racism but do not derive any significant benefit from them; and in their repression of popular movements, the police legitimize a political order which they did not create.”

Oh yeah, the record has a flipside too.

Thanks to Ryan Richardson for spiritual guidance.

Voivod was never your average thrash band, even when they were trying to be, they weren’t. They were always kind of weird and angular. Their first lp War and Pain is an anomaly for the time. It’s clearly based off early Venom, Metallica, and Slayer, but it strays so far from the paths laid out by those groups that it has relatively little in common with them. The recording is strange, with what seems to be only a single bulldozer guitar track laid down with a layer of chorus and reverb (there to thicken it up) by the incredible Denis D’Amour: AKA Piggy (R.I.P.) . Solos are played live on the main track (rather than punching in like most metal records of the day) leaving bassist Jean-Yves Thériault, AKA Blacky, to carry the rhythm with his thick and over-driven sound. Things never manage to sound too thin, in part due to the spaced out shimmering chorus effects on the guitar and crunchy bass, but also due to the thundering drumming Michel Langevin, AKA Away, who overcomes the rather mediocre drum production (sounds like big plastic buckets in a large concrete room).  The songs themselves kind of roll at a Venom clip, but with bizarre riffy twists and turns, weird chords, and a sci-fi atmosphere. 

Voivod’s imagery was steeped in post apocalyptic sci-fi and technological nightmares from the get-go, and the wild guitar sound cultivated on this album fits with that perfectly. Away was actually responsible for their logo design, and all their album art/layout which, much like their music, broke with the norms of the day for thrash bands. Instead of the Boris Vallejo inspired airbrush fantasies most metal bands were using, Away painted surreal, abstract, pictures of grotesque machines, covered in primitive looking weaponry, and grime. His approach could be described possibly as Cubist (props to metal-inquisition) in tradition on the cover of War and Pain, featuring a stylized rendition of some kind of foot soldier armed to the teeth for battle in some horrible future war like Mad Max meets Heavy Metal (the comic) and Blade Runner.

Since this is bid hardcore though, I’d like to bring forth a kind of interesting theory: that War and Pain was a huge influence on the guitar playing of Gavin Van Vlack (of Absolution, and later Burn). While I have never heard Gavin talk about Voivod (that I can remember) the similarities in his guitar playing, and that of Piggy, are striking, and there are several riffs on War and Pain that have direct parallels in Absolution and Burn songs. If Gavin was not listening to this record, then at the very least, it makes an interesting comparison. In fact his commonalities with Piggy’s guitar playing starts with the actual sound he uses, with the wet chorus sound being really similar to the s/t Burn 7″, which is only emphasized by the constant use of full chords and open strings (employed equally often by Gavin). Take the break down around 3:40 in Warriors On Ice. It works almost the exact same style churning riff that the famous “your ideas are WRONG…etc.” part of Burn’s “Shall Be Judged”. Similarly the ascending riff in “Suck Your Bone” (ha), has pretty noticeable similarity to the bridge in Absolution’s “A Drop Of Patience” as well as the main riff in “Fall Of A Nation”. 

I’m not bringing up this stuff to disrespect or diminish the songs of Burn in Absolution in anyway. Gavin and Piggy are two guitarists I heavily admire, and I just want to point out the similarity in their technique and that both of them do really cool unexpected shit, in genres that have a reputation for being rather uniform in their approach. Anyway, this is a total killer album and there’s never been anything else quite like it.

Original pressing on Metal Blade w/ rare insert…

A couple you missed:

• Burn on pink
• Invasion (USA) shirt - fun fact: Jesse has a closest of these that he just wears personally. 
• AN 7″ test press for $560 - which was about $100 more than this Crossed Out (see CC’s write up on this 7″ below or click here) 7″ test press went for… cc bid on this and lost. “wah”.

Chucky’s tour of Boston pizza - lol

Joey C at 1-25-03 - just a classic