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Metal Monday 24: 

In hindsight, knowing what we know now about Fenriz and Nocturno Culto, having seen the many you tube videos, or the bonus footage that came on the reissued Darkthrone CDs, explaining the making of albums in slurred voices spilling booze on themselves, Transylvania Hunger (this is the original RARE Peaceville pressing) could have all just been a big joke. I just imagine them laughing about all of the extremity and sloganeering in the black metal scene and being like “let’s make a record that’s all one tempo - fuck it”. From the outset though it’s one of the most hypnotic and majestic black metal releases ever. Recorded on an 8 track with lots of tape noise, buzzing mosquito guitars, and drums that sound about the same as cardboard boxes as they speed along in endless paddle beats - it’s a rigid set of limitations. But limiting themselves so much seemed to bring out more expressiveness in their sound than ever. The dark and sweeping melodies of the title track will stick in your head forever if you hear them once, and it’s an important statement because of that - these songs are addictive. Darkthrone and black metal in general often centered on consciously regressive themes, but by 1994 most of their peers were making records that were becoming increasingly complex and in some cases progressive. For better or worse they were able to prove that all of that was secondary to the feeling and spirit of the songs. Transylvanian Hunger is the ultimate “less is more” moment in metal because it so completely qualifies the sentiment. There are no keyboards, nothing was recorded in an airplane hanger, there isn’t a producer, it’s truly RAW. Maybe totally stripping away all the Celtic Frost parts from previous and subsequent albums allowed for a more soulful and honest delivery. Maybe this was all serious and just what the band was feeling at the time; that regression and primitiveness are the truest expression of “black metal”. Either way, directly or indirectly, this album has been responsible for hundreds of home recordings by alienated, evil obsessed youths, obviously though no matter how good these offspring are, they can never surpass this release in influence or inspiration.

Always good for a cloudy day, a cold night, or a bad week. I <3 Transylvania.

Darkthrone - Transylvania Hunger LP (Peaceville pressing)

A couple links: 

• CC’s post on Systems Overload generated 18 comments – worth a second visit.
• PBoy interviews DFJ on World Moves Fast blog.
• No Comment interview from German Zine Lack of Ideals on You Breed Like Rats blog.

Encouragements:

• Please leave comments (and include a link to your blog if you have one).
• Send us email with links to stuff that pertains to anything we (CC specifically) writes about.
• Check out the About page, because it changes occasionally with new information about this blog.

Well today is de facto the busiest day of the year at my job and as a result I haven’t had any time to prepare a real post. I went to see Mission Of Burma do their Signals Calls and Marchesshow last night. Here’s the setlist:

• playland
• peking spring
• new disco
• eyes of men (!!!)
• active in the yard (might have misidentified this?)
• academy fight song
• execution
• devotion
• max ernst
• revolver
• outlaw
• fame and fortune
• this is not a photograph
• red
• all world cowboy romance

came back for an encore that was:

• a cover of a song by the Girls (didn’t catch the title - i pose)
• the first 4 songs from Obliterati (2006 lp):
  • 2wice
  • spider’s web
  • let yourself go
  • donna sumeria

Seriously they were wonderful. Mission of Burma is probably my all time favorite Boston band. They’re not a hardcore band, but they were liked by the Boston Crew back in the day — the dvd of their final day show at the Bradford proves this with the whole Boston Crew in stage dive mode for the whole set. Of course that’s also the infamous last Negative FX show from which came the declaration “WE AINT GONNA STOP - FUCK YOU”. I’ve always loved the clash of high and low culture. The way Burma could mix up influences like Wire, Roxy Music, Pere Ubu etc. with skull bashing garage punk like The Stooges, The Dils, and so on. I’m often drawn to groups that are able to clash the high and the low. I find it compelling. I’m going to see them do their VS. lpstart to finish tonight, and I’m really giddy like a little girl. I’ll spare a long entry on the band since they’re technically not a hardcore band, but let me just say there was a moment in the band’s history (near the end of their initial run) when they were surely influenced and flirting with Hardcore sounds. Around 82/83 when the style had taken over the city of Boston they really started incorporating faster tempos into their work. OK/No Way, The Ballad Of Johnny Burma, That’s How I Escaped My Certain Fate, Active In The Yard, Dumbells, Go Fun Burn Man, Blackboard, House Flaming — all of these songs were sort of Burma-fied approximations of the Hardcore sound. Much more melodic and angular, but you can’t deny that some of the style had seeped into them. Next week though, back to some more traditional “Hardcore” talk.

Note - if you’re a little uptight about your hardcore, and don’t wanna get kinda touchy feely, DO NOT READ THIS POST. Instead, look at this: CLICK 

Some of the most intense and difficult conversations I’ve had about punk and hardcore and other signifiers like “post” and “emo” have stemmed from Moss Icon. They were a great band in their day. I know because they have one of the telling marks of great bands: that all of their imitators horribly SUCK. It’s not that you can never imitate great bands. The number of wonderful Discharge or Minor Threat imitations that the years have given us aer numerous, and plentiful. But sometimes there are bands that no matter how many people attempt to liberally borrow from them, are always done no justice by the gesture.

 Case In Point = Moss Icon. This is probably one of the first bands that you could classify as “emo-core”, they have a lot of sonic similarities to groups like Rites Of Spring & Ignition, later Articles Of Faith even. They grew up and entered the scene in Annapolis Maryland, near Washington DC, but removed far enough that at best you could call it a satellite. Annapolis is a weird town I visited a few times growing up. It’s home to the Naval Academy, and by my personal recollection, numerous antique shops. There’s something positively isolated about the approach to their music and delivery, and I think it coresponds in some way to the fact that they were an Annapolis band. I can’t explain it but I sense it there. Maybe I only feel this way because I know more about the band and their location. In interviews members talk about their lack of interest in many of the DC bands. They liked Void, and Beefeater, but felt indifferent towards Embrace and Marginal Man.

One reason Moss Icon has proven so inimitable for this might be that vocalist John Vance was a perma-stoned literature/poetry freak, and while his stream of consciousness yell/talk/shout style was earnest, and has been imitated by boatloads of horrible “emo” and “screamo” bands, he seemed to have some place in an actual literary and philosophical tradition. I feel kind of stupid bringing this up because:

1. Even though I write on this blog 5 days a week, I rarely read anything, and when I do, I prefer escapism.
2. This is a Blog about hardcore, punk, trading records, stage dives, leather jackets… not college term papers.

However, I think that this is important to understanding why Moss Icon worked, and above all they were a good hardcore band on this record. Whereas your average band imitating this style of vocal basically delivered a high school/coffee house level poetry reading riddled with disjointed imagery about ex girlfriends and distant parents, Vance was able to evoke imagery of solitude and nature. He is probably one of the only singers I’ve ever heard that could effectively empathize with, ahem, The Plight of the Native American. He could also relate, brilliantly, feelings of suburban anomie, and anxiety like no other. He quoted Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a distinguished philosopher and poet whom I know nothing about.

In some ways Vance is an American/Americanized answer to Ian Curtis. It’s filtering the same kind of sentiments of disconnection and melancholy through a different but similar cultural starting point. As a band Moss Icon has similarities to Joy Division too. While they don’t particularly sound alike, and are coming from different moments in history there’s a connection, especially as Moss Icon developed an approach of dirging, echoy repetition in their career. The first real example of that comes on this record, with the song “I’m Back Sleeping Or Fucking Or Something”. As the bass drones on one riff and the drums skitter and bang behind it, Vance rants a semi abstract tale of childhood, painful and agonizing in his delivery. Guitarist Tonie Joy squalls feedback between massive power chords and has a pretty good sense of when to play and when to hang back. You know that pretentious ol’ “he knows what NOT to play”. It’s a panic attack with a drum beat maybe.

Elsewhere the record finds the band less chaotic, but just as effective. The other 3 songs, all have a more typically hardcore tempos and composition, but with more intricate guitar playing, which is why they often get compared to the Rites Of Spring lp, although Joy is adamant that he had not really listened to them at the time. Some of the influence then, can at least be pinned on their peers The Hated, who in turn were sort of what would happen if Husker Du weren’t popular nationally, and got really into Simon and Garfunkel. Back to Moss Icon though, what sets this apart and makes it superior from Rites Of Spring to me, is that there’s still the anger and frustration of Hardcore’s past noticeable in the music (at least at this stage of the Moss Icon catalog). Rites Of Spring spent so much of themselves trying to escape the machismo that they felt was “ruining the scene”, that I believe they lost a lot of the anger too.

Moss Icon eventually took a more reserved approach, but never lost any of their emotional complexity. This 7″ though, often referred to as “Gretta Garbo” for the photo on the cover of the early movie star, or as Hate In Me for the first song on it, is still my favorite. It’s a clash of sloppy hardcore anger, and subtle melody, hoarse screaming, and thoughtful poetry…or something. Look I just think if you ever feel like listening to “emo-core”, this record beats them all. A scant few have been able to tread the line like Moss Icon did. There’s only 500 copies of this record pressed on the band’s own Vermin Scum label, and I suspect it may go for a lower price (under $40) because it has a high starting bid. Usually these top out at $60.

 Also I have to give some credit to Zac and Bobby Busch, as the observations in this post are at least partially inspired by a long Moss Icon thread we participated in on a message board.

I’ll try and post about something pertaining to skinheads tomorrow to make up for this.

While lesser bands of the day continue to increase in infamy, get bootlegged, and be sported on shitty looking tshirts by members of bands with names like Social Crisis, Negative Abuse, Ripping Group, Control Unit, etc., The Stains languish in semi-obscurity, known only to collectors and old men. Their s/t 12″ is one of the best examples of why SST is simultaneously the greatest and shittiest label of all time. While new Mojack and Zoogz Rift CDs are still appearing on a weekly basis, Mr. Ginn has records like this deleted from his catalog (to say nothing of The Dicks - Kill From the Heart, and the undoubtedly massive archive of unreleased Black Flag).

The Stains 12″ is one of the earliest recordings of meat and potatoes USHC, created in ‘81, although the band was started allegedly as early as 1976, the album didn’t actually see release until 1983. What a bummer for the band, (they broke up shortly after). You can still taste some of the heavy metal and rock influences that the members would have obviously drawn from, coming up in the original LA Hardcore scene. It’s not that far off a band like The Fix who were making similar sounds during this time, despite no close proximity to The Stains. I gotta mention that for an album recorded by Spot this one has a great sound. Crunchy thick guitar (much thicker than usual), solid drums, and vocals that are, for once, not 10x too loud in the mix. Maybe the fact that personalities like Greg Ginn or Bob Mould weren’t flexing their egos all over the process is the reason this record actually sounds good. I think these guys might have some connection to Overkill L.A. (another great lost SST band), but I’m not entirely certain.

The Stains - s/t 12″ (SST)

I’m not sure who the seller is on this stuff but they clearly are an older person. They have 2 items sold in their completed auctions: an original Black Flag flyer and a test press of Jealous Again. Currently for sale they have:

• Red Cross - posh boy 12″ test pressing (Red Kross…)
• UXA - Illusions of Grandeur test press
• Germs - What We Do is Secret 12″ Test press
• and an unused As A Parent, I Found It An Anti-Parent Record sticker

Some of this stuff says “given to me by the band”. The sticker says: “This is one of the last Unstuck stickers on the sheet. We put them on the Damaged records in 1981 at the pressing plant.”

Pretty killer. Hopefully even more cool stuff comes soon. Can anyone identify the model in the studded jacket for sale?

Metal Monday #23 

Okay, just for the front and back covers alone I have to put up this Bulldozer - The Day Of Wrath lp for Metal Monday.  The front features one of the members dressed as a vampire being repelled by a big crucifix making a ridiculous face, which is funny enough, but the back has a promo photo of the band that is so priceless. I mean… just look, all 3 of them look so next level with mustaches, cut off shirts, aviator shades… I don’t even know what to say. Maybe it all adds up when you account for the fact that they’re Italian, and the horror movie tradition there is beyond camp.

As for the music on here - a very fine entry in the Motorhead/Venom/Hellhammer camp. Driving distorted bass metal. They definitely have at least, a decent amount more skill than Venom had at their height, and this also helps the songwriting a bit. Even though Venom were great songwriters and did cool stuff with very little, Bulldozer are able to use their technically superior chops to distinguish themselves, and keep songs interesting. I’m a big fan of the song Whiskey Time which has a classic example of an on-the-record drum solo, although it’s not a particularly good one. I assume the other 2 members drank whiskey during this part live. The song itself rips like any great punk/metal hybrid should and would seem as at home in the GBH catalog as Venom. Another killer cut is Welcome Death which is a slower track and opens up with a riff that sounds like it was written by Trouble.

A few you let get past you:

• The first Jaguarz shirt.
• Government Issue - Make An Effort 7″ test press sold for $125.
• Absolution 7″ on red listed at $40 went unsold. Outrageous price.
• Albite (in a Lebron jersey) interviewed by Pboy. Cold World & sports content.

A round up of completed auctions that CC recently wrote about:

• Gorilla Biscuits 7″ w/ Todd Youth B-Side label - unsold, 10 offers declined
• COC - Animosity LP - $35
• Black Flag’s Damaged lp on Unicorn/MCA (original pressing) - $55
• Inepsy - See You In Hell EP - $20
• Youth of Today - Can’t Close My Eyes 7″ with blank b-side label - $230
• The Axegrinder lp, Rise Of the Serpent Men on Peaceville - $41 (+$20 shipping to US)
• Anti Cimex - Raped Ass - $56
• Koro - 700 Club - $1281
• Chain Of Strength Confusion sleeve - $405
• Ink and Dagger - Love Is Dead test press - $152

“Mixed Nuts Don’t Crack”, is a really cool, lesser known DCHC compilation dating from 82/83 on Outside records. I think that label was run by people from Nuclear Crayons who are on this compilation, and have 2 other records on Outside. I guess a lot of the bands on here went to one High School, Bethesda Chevy Chase High (or so say those who were around at the time).

The most important thing on this comp in my view, are the United Mutation tracks culled from an ‘82 demo session.  All 4 are just thrashing guttural insanity, maybe their most out of control offerings ever in terms of speed and rage. The vocals deliver totally unintelligible nihilism and anger, the music shreds along, occasionally falling apart into an echo’d mess. These tracks are as essential as the deconstructed genius of Void’s Flex Your Head tracks.

Following United Mutation (who are actually on side 2), are Nuclear Crayons, who are at their noisiest on this release, giving a decent approximation of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. I’m not sure how necessary this stuff is really, but it’s kind of cool someone was at least trying it in DC in the early 80’s, I’d imagine they pissed off a lot of punks.

Hate From Ignorance unremarkable closes out this half of the record. Sort of melodic and angular, honestly it’s hard to remember I skip their tracks most of the time. Also-ran status.

Side 1 takes off with the little known Media Disease who played competent, though not particularly distinguished thrashing hardcore. These guys were tight with United Mutation and some of them went on to play with Malefice. They totally should have had a single on DSI although they’re not as psychotic sounding as any of the other bands, they were a Fairfax band. “Redneck Asshole” is a classic 20 second blast of hate. Media Disease knock out 6 songs in probably 4 or 5 minutes on here. These songs and a demo tape were comped on a bootleg double 7″ on Lost and Found in the early 90’s that’s semi cool if you can pick it up for $10>.

Chalk Circle comes next. I’m pretty sure this was an all female band, they play sort of mellow post punk/wave tracks.  It’s not particularly interesting and I think my ears are less forgiving because it can’t even make up for that with out and out abrasiveness. What can you do?

Finishing out Side 1 is a cool band basically no one knows about: Social Suicide. I’m pretty sure the drummer from Youth Brigade DC (Danny Ingram) was in this band. I’ve been trying to find out if they have any recordings besides these songs, because they’re totally great, sounding like a junior Scream. The last song is kinda ska-vibed which is definitely a Scream move to pull, but the first 3 songs are just raging tuneful hardcore punk. First tier kind of stuff, not throw away junk. Really interested in hearing more by this band if anyone knows of anything.

The jacket on this record is extra nice, with a cool tip-on style (like old rock lps), and a black on silver color scheme. There’s 2 inserts, 1 is a lyric book, the other is collages/photos for each band, and contact info. If you ever see a sealed copy, it doesn’t have the inserts in it, the people at outside had to unseal them and put that stuff in.

Let me put it to you like this: I don’t care how uncool Victory records is (extremely), I don’t care about the controversy that has always surrounded the band (plenty), or the horrible tours with horrible bands they went on (Strife I think?). I don’t care about the crappy 90’s looking cover art (eww), I don’t care about the section of their fans that are basketball jersey wearing, plugs in the earlobe douchebags… I don’t care about any of that. The bottom line is Systems Overload will crush you. Every time. This is one of the most brilliant and inspired pieces of “extreme music” ever recorded. Think what you want. I know there’s people too uptight to really sit down with Integrity and give them an honest listen. I know there’s some who don’t go past their first album because it’s not on the worst label of all time, and because of the rule in HC that “first albums always the best”. I’m confident this is the best Integrity album though. It outshines all their previous efforts by leaps and bounds, it set the bar for their next 2 almost as perfect releases, and it should make the pale imitation of the band that has been around since 1998 (’99?) in various forms, downright ashamed.

Systems Overload blends a variety of hardcore, punk and metal sounds into a seamless whole. I know when I’m slipping into the banality of hyperbole, and I know it’s happening now, but there’s no other group that can borrow from the Cro-Mags, Discharge, Metallica, and Entombed (the “classic” releases only by those bands) and make it count like this. It’s a generic list of influences, but upon hearing the album it obviously makes sense. You take that driving British tempo and muscle, temper it through the “behind-the-beat” NYHC crunch, mix in sombre melodies and solos of Burton and Hetfield, and give it the dark horror vibe and deranged delivery of Left Hand Path. It’s amazing working off influences that cast shadows so big can work this well, but the 1-2-3  punch of Incarnate365/No One/Systems Overload ought to be all the proof you need. I don’t know how to explain the kind of power riff that opens Incarnate. It’s so basic and simple… almost triumphant sounding. When the song speeds up and the main verse takes over, guitarist Aaron Melnick lays down a wild run of Kirk Hammett inspired shredding that fights for supremacy with the growling screaming vocals. Everything is emphasized by the juicy drum sound, led by a saturated and booming bass drum (with double kicks used for maximum effectiveness), and a primal echoing “roomy” sound on the kit. No drum triggering in sight. Just “THUD CRACK BOOM”.

With the bombast and in your face metal licks that dominate Incarnate, it’s a bit of a surprise that the next song, No One, is the most no frills hardcore song on the album. At only 45 seconds or so, there’s no time for finger tapping or even a proper breakdown. These 2 songs are a template for the majority of the rest of the album. A handful of the songs work to expand on the kind of meat and potatoes hardcore approach that No One takes, while the others juxtapose guitar acrobatics with slower moody sections and pseudo death metal crunch. A couple of songs, like Armanien Persectution and Salvations Malevolence also find the instrumental sections stretched out, and see diversions into ambient noise which both help to heighten the dark atmosphere as well as break for a couple minutes from the otherwise constant bludgeoning.Systems Overload can never truly get the recognition I want it to have. It’s in every way superior to the plodding, dated sound and style of Integrity’s debut lp “Those Who Fear Tomorrow”, and recorded hundreds of times better. Unfortunately by 1995 Integrity had already eclipsed their achievements with their infamous reputation as trouble makers. They had problems touring because they couldn’t keep a steady lineup and were often getting in fights, and with the rising attitude of 80’s revivalism in hardcore, they were increasingly labeled as “just a metal band”/”not hardcore”/ too thuggish. The record was well recognized at the time, make no mistake, but even if it was superior, in hindsight it wasn’t the career maker that “Those Who Fear Tomorrow” was able to be, (due as much to time and place and attitudes about the band as the songs on it). But where Those Who Fear Tomorrow sounds so stuck in its time and place now, Systems could be a contemporary album, even though its roots are firmly in 80’s hc and metal. For me I think that’s why it endures.The edition I’ve linked is on clear vinyl, it says 100 pressed, but my pressing info says 500. It’s still pretty hard to track down, so grab it if you can.

Integrity - Systems Overload LP (clear)