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Today’s posting comes from the induplicable M. Colin Tappe of Life’s A Rape fanzine/label, and the rock band Crime Desire (who have a new lp you should check out). Read below:In an age when all the top shelf late 80’s UK crust monsters (Sacrilege, Amebix, Axegrinder, Hellbastard, etc.) teeter around $60, I’ve been really prompted to dig deeper and check out some of the oft ignored 2nd tier bands you don’t really hear too much about as a casual OG crust enthusiast. And I stress the “casual” angle, as I’ve only really cared about this stuff for a few years now, an important point to clarify when I’m in league with such guest posters and experts in their field as Stuart Schrader, Cooch, Rettman and Westbrook. But if you’re like me and are a bit new to the UK crust game, the two auctions I’ve plucked today might be the gateway drugs which motivate you to go beyond the most notorious groups (with the hardest to find records) in that scene.

First up is the Cerebral Fix “Life Sucks and Then You Die” LP. The Accused style cover art and the board shorts might have you believe this is some wankin’ crossover, and uh, maybe it is to some extent, but if you ever wanted a way less heavy Bolt Thrower without double bass and deathmetal vox, then this here LP’s your ticket. The band gets into that just-about-to-fall-apart-but-in-a-good-way area when they go into the quasi-blastbeat fast parts, which is pretty typical of bands who played this fast at the time (1987), and the mosh parts are as solid as they are plentiful. There’s definitely some great riffs lurking on this one if you give it the chance. Of course with most of this stuff at some point you have to ask if it should really be talked about as a crust record, or if the band has more to do with crossover or thrash, and since this is more a question of aesthetics than anything, I should note that the band had political lyrics and a thanks list filled with UK crust staples like Doom, Deviated Instinct, etc. but I think it’s that arbitrary distinction between genres that makes the records from that time so interesting. Bands like Hellbastard and Sheer Terror, who we now have categorized into two distinct and ideologically opposed sub-genres, at the time were basically just taking blind stabs at incorporating metal with the hopes of just turning out some intense and hard shit, and thankfully our record collections are a lot more interesting because they succeeded in the ways they did. Which isn’t to say there’s anything as interesting on this Cerebral Fix record as you’ll find on any of the aforementioned bands’ records, but that’s kind of the point, that if you take the time to dig deeper you’ll find that the main bands who we credit as the masters of pushing hardcore into more intense territories through the use of metal weren’t alone, and some of the peripheral bands whose records go for under $20 and you never see on a patch or shirt can still hit the spot in a pinch. I lagged on this write up, so the auction will probably be over by the time this gets posted, but add it to your saved searches, it shows up about once every two months or so.

I’ll admit that the Cerebral Fix record isn’t really my favorite style of crust, and I tend to go more for the melodramatic Killing Joke infused chugging of Amebix and the like than the stenchy blur of Bolt Thrower/ENT/etc. If you share my sentiment, then this Deformed EPis a must own for sure. Really the only reason I’m mentioning this in the context of late 80’s crust (this ep did come out in 1983, after all) is due to the fact that Deformed share the approach Amebix took on their early eps, which is to say borrowing the repetitive, tom-heavy rhythms of Batcave/Killing Joke records and adding the chugging distortion of the anarcho punk music they were perhaps more familiar with. It’s a deadly combination, as any Amebix fan can tell you, and I think Deformed might even have their shit a bit more together than Amebix had on the “Whose The Enemy?” Ep (but not quite as cohesive as “Winter”). Of course what I LOVE about this record is all the overt Satanic imagery, which was kind of a bold move for the time. There’s a pretty short list of punk bands in the early 80’s who were really pushing the Satanic/horror imagery (Screaming Dead, Criminal Justice, 45 Grave, and to a lesser extent Uproar and Void), outside of the Misfits and their fold, and thankfully Deformed hold nothing back, just littering their 6 panel foldout poster sleeve with drawings of skeletons, pentagrams, upside down crosses, goats, etc. Plus peep the song titles: “Ritual,” “Crypt,” and “From the Grave.” That has to rival the first Bathory record in terms of most straight forward collection of evil sounding song titles ever. One of the worst things you can do in hardcore is hold back, and thankfully Deformed didn’t hesitate for a second and think that maybe taking a group photo in front of an altar of candles and a plastic skull might be “cheesy,” or that putting a pentagram on the center label might be a bit much. They went all the way, and it’s that conviction, both sonically and aesthetically, that makes this record so convincing. The group has a myspace page with a fairly comprehensive bio, and a 2xCD on Poland’s Trujaca Fala label (they only had one other 7” and a song on one of the Bullshit Detector comps as far as vinyl goes) if you need more info.