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One of the most claustrophobic, suffocating records I’ve ever heard is Rorschach’s “Protestant” lp. This is the one they really left the biggest mark with. It influenced a whole slew of post-metal hardcore and post hardcore bands in the 90’s. Most were bad that missed the point I think. It’s a feel bad kind of record, you don’t really throw it on when you’re going for a Saturday drive to the beach or in the morning when you’re cooking breakfast. The music here takes cues from Black Flag circa my war but filters them through 10 subsequent years of thrash and death metal leading to tremolo-picked progressions and staccato breaks that follow the same kind of putrid atonal patterns as Swingin’ Man or Forever Time. Other times find them getting slower and more contemplative. Various write-ups of the band try to liken these moments to being influenced by The Swans, I find it to be a bit of a stretch. I think maybe the more out there moments on some Melvins recordings might be a better point of reference, although the overall atmosphere of the Swans might not be a bad point of reference. This atmosphere is one of anomie and alienation in the shadow of early 90’s NYC. A feeling of overall aloneness and aimlessness. The feeling of being a small piece of an immeasurably large machine. Like I said before, Protestant is a feel bad record, and if your spirits are not already sunk, this album can do the job.

One of the most effective tools used in conveying the oppressive mood here are the screams of vocalist Charles Maggio. The tale goes that he was having serious voice problems (I assume as a result of singing in this band) at the time of the recording, and thus his voice changed drastically from the way it was on previous Rorschach releases. Here it sounds higher, less intelligible, at times even screechy. In fact if not for it being such a perfect fit to the music I can’t picture myself really liking it much at all, but I think in context it’s a perfect fit. It sounds like someone who is isolated, someone who’s sick and suffocated. The grey smog and garbage smell of New York, New York looms over this whole recording in some way that I can’t quite put my finger on. Mabye I’m projecting my own ideas onto it, but I feel like the vocal delivery is a product of that environment. It’s like hearing someone choke on the exhaust fume air and cigarette butt ground.

Protestant is dense and affecting. For such an isolated and isolating record, it also was taken to heart by a great many people in the 90’s. Pretty much the entire subsequent output of the country of Germany in that decade owes itself to this album. And of course there’s Converge, Metallica to Rorschach’s Diamondhead (save your protests, it’s an analogy). Mr. Bannon’s primary vocal attack owes as much as their guitar attack to the blueprints found in the grooves of this vinyl, and they’ve at least repaid insofar as name-checking interview moments are concerned. Still, Protestant is one of the rarest of records where the bands it influences never can have the same feel, it’s isolated even from would-be peers.

The last song on the album is Ornaments. One of the all-time best closers on any record. It creeps along with a slow picked clean guitar playing like the background music to the moment of realization in a movie. Maggio’s screams are pushed deep down into the mix so that they’re barely audible, more isolated and claustrophobic than before. The song builds to a lumbering mournful crunch, slow and deliberate, and then abruptly the tape slows down, playing at half speed for the last unsettling 20 seconds. It’s the perfect ending. Like you’re hearing the record die.

VOID LIVE @ THE 930 CLUB BOOT
So anyways, if you’ve hung around hardcore for even a minute you’ve probably heard someone expound on the virtues of Void. Void are on of the first true originals of the hardcore era. Unlike say, Black Flag or the Bad Brains, they didn’t originate via the aftershocks of 70’s punk/wave/whatever. They were influenced by the bands that came from those aftershocks, and as much by the aforementioned punk bands, as by more rock/metal acts like the ever popular Motorhead and Venom (how often do I ref these 2 on here…). They began sometime in 1981, as this is when their first demo (basically a 20+ song live in studio slop-fest), is dated, but they didn’t rise to prominence until arguably the height of the HC era, 1982/83. This prominence came via a handful of appearances on comps like Flex Your Head and Charred Remains, and of course their split LP with fellow DC area band The Faith. But part of their infamy back in their day was the result of their now legendary live performances, which are sadly in this day and age, very under represented on tape and video trade lists.

I wouldn’t argue that Void’s studio material is irrelevant. On the contrary their split with The Faith is one of the most important documents of its time. With so many bands in DC and surrounding areas content to mimic the Minor Threat formula, and mining the same few records for inspiration, Void were obviously one of the few to find their own way. Singer John Weifenbach growls, screams, and grunts his way through esoteric adolescent gore fantasies and LSD-magnified rage-outs. The rhythm section of Chris Stover and Sean Finnigan (R.I.P.) wobbles and swerves its way in and out of the tempos that anyone else would play with pedestrian indifference. Guitar player Bubba Dupree mangles his chorus tinged metal influenced playing with violent abandon. His amp bleeds high squealing feedback, strings bend disgustingly out of tune, and the sounds bash and crash together in and out of time to produce a sound that never had an equal then or now. Everyone knows this though. All that’s been written of Void has said as much, and now more than ever they get their due from people outside the punk scene as well as in it. But what frequently is hard to account for is the live shows discussed in various hardcore oral histories, which are said to be the very same qualities amplified a hundred times over. More chaos. More feedback. More hard-core.

There’s only one live Void live bootleg that I know of: this is it. I have a tape and video of 2 other late period live sets, but this one seems to be from their peak. After the 12″ had come out, but when they had just started testing out new songs for their misunderstood “Potion For Bad Dreams” lp. While there are no Potion songs on this bootleg, I happen to own a tape of the complete show that night, and they did play a couple. That aside though, if you’ve ever read about Void shows and wondered if it’s really as good as everyone says it was, well this answers the question. It’s obviously, a resounding yes.

Opening with the classic Who Are You it becomes obvious what the audience was in store for that night. Dupree’s guitar sounds cavernous and gigantic. Thick, saturated… like there’s an actual physical weight to the sound waves. The opening crashes of cymbal and bass accents against the guitar hit recklessly before the group hurtles into the verse. Already they’re dogging in and out of time, frantic and out of control. Feedback from the mics and instruments washes in and out, the vocals fight against any natural rhythm, and the guitar still bears down on everything fighting for total supremacy. There’s something about the live performances of some bands that just can’t be caught in the studio. It’s a different frame of mind, a different experience,  a completely different kind of energy, and for a band like Void, it’s a world of difference. When they play Ask Them Why in this set the beginning collapses into an almost formless mix of sounds before emerging back into focus at the start of the verse. Part of the mess is the sound of the music’s sound, being displaced by the movement of the band members and the audience (no doubt they’re crowding the stage). Strums and hits and squeaks move out of phase for a quarter of a second and it conveys to the listener a sense of movement and kinetic energy that I don’t think could be accurately duplicated in a recording studio, outside of essentially filling the room with a rabid audience.

Everything that makes Void a special band is amplified in these songs. I think it could actually be the definitive Void document in its unabridged form. I understand the gravity of that statement, and it’s not meant to diminish their other work in any way, but rather to emphasize how insane and out of control this performance actually sounds.

Been surrounded by high school volunteers all day and let me tell you - they suck. I mean when I was 16, I might have been a git, but I didn’t exist only to impose upon everyone. I might have anyway though…

Will return tomorrow with legit posting - til then:

You’d better ask to see a better photo and check the vinyl matrix on this if you’re planning to buy. Looks suspect to me…

Thanks to Tony Brummel reissuing it in the 90’s, one of the first reference points I ever had for “hardcore” was a compact disc of the Cause For Alarm s/t 7″. In fact probably the first hardcore band I owned multiple releases by (not counting a Minor Threat discography) was Cause For Alarm, who disappeared for about 12 years after issuing this first 7″, and then reemerged in the 90’s issuing a bunch of shit that still sounded pretty 80’s style other than having modern production. A lot of it still sucks though. Okay but back to ‘83…

Let me just take this moment to note, this has some of the all time greatest Hardcore cover art ever. The riot cops dragging the protester, it’s brutal. Anyway this opens up with the 45 second blast of Parasite, one cruddy sounding guitar leads the charge and shouted vocals that sound vintage and snotty pick it up about the same time as a decently approximated d-beat comes in. One thing I really loved about this record when I got it was that I could perfectly replicate the guitar sound with my Yamaha guitar and Crate practice amp. Actually I really wanted to do a band of this style then, and even tried once or twice on my 4-track. We won’t discuss the disastrous results here.

Second Chance makes it obvious that the band is recording the 7″ basically live as vocalist Keith Burkhardt calls out the title and then the band starts it off with a feel good mosh riff that lasts about 3 seconds before the fast part starts up. Something that made this one really palatable in my young days was how tuneful most of the riffs were and this one is no exception. It basically sounds like any classic NY punk band from the 70s sped up about 2 or 3 times, which is after all, pretty much what early NYHC is founded on. My exposure to CFA early in my hardcore career also ensured that it was the main reference point for other records from NY produced during the same time. United Blood sounded like Cause For Alarm with shorter songs to me. Antidote sounded like Cause For Alarm with the singer from Youth Of Today.

The centerpiece of this E.P. may be United Races which has a long mosh section in the middle, an easy to remember message, and the most catchy verse and chorus. Definitely the hit. Pretty much every track dishes out good no frills , start-stop 82/83 HC. There’s no weak links or wasted space. In Search Of, Poison In The Machine, Stand As One — all of these songs deliver the payload with as much directness and simplicity as possible.

After this Cause For Alarm was gigging for at least a year longer, and even recorded a second E.P. which remains unreleased other than the song Time Will Tell on the P.E.A.C.E. comp. Most of it isn’t as good as this one, though a nice CD with both E.P. sessions and a live set would be pretty awesome. Not that I expect anyone at Victory to bother or care. Some of the songs from the second E.P. did get recycled into the 90’s version of Cause For Alarm at least. Eventually tensions in the band pulled them apart, mostly because Burkhardt was becoming a Krishna devotee and was inserting too many of his beliefs into the band. Of course now he’s over it. Figures. Eventually Alex Kinon and Rob Kabula joined Agnostic Front and made an album called Cause For Alarm which unfortunatly sounds nothing like their former band.

BTW, before the reissue on victory (which is easy to differentiate because it has a yellow cover) there was also a boot of this record. You can tell the boot from the original because it’s on a cheap stock of paper (as opposed to the original card stock) and doesn’t have the tri-fold style sleeve the original has.

Going to steal an idea from Colin Tappe here and play the “My month in Records” game. Here’s all the “metal” (used loosely) that I bought during July (give or take a day or two). With links to applicable current auctions. Of course most was bought in stores.

Got a fresh looking copy of Poison Idea’s “Record Collectors Are Pretentious Assholes”here. Original edition on Fatal Erection. For whatever reason I find this to be an unfairly disparaged P.I. release, often cited as being only “so-so” or something like that, and while I do agree that the Fatal Erection pressing is mixed TERRIBLY and sounds like garbage, the songs are still pretty crucial. I mean if A.A. isn’t a classic Poison Idea tune than what is? Or how about Cold Comfort or Thorn In My Side? That’s just the A-Side folks. On the flip you can find jams like Rich Get Richer, or maybe Time To Go will catch your fancy. All in all it’s just a little more rock/metal than Pick Your King, and not quite as tight as Kings Of Punk, but it’s still hot stuff. There’s a reissue with 4 other comp tracks from this session added to it (on Taang), here’s a shocker: they’re all good too. Poison Idea’s success rate in music is unprecedented, the only band comparable is Motorhead.

And now… a list of the records on the cover of this 12″ (via Westbrook & Cooch):

Adverts - One Chord Wonders 7″
Agent Orange - Your Mother Sucks Cocks In Hell 7″
Angelic Upstarts - Who Killed Liddle Towers 7″
Antidote - Thou Shalt Not Kill 7″Anti-Nowhere League - Streets Of London 7″
Avengers - We Are the Ones 7″
B.G.K. - White Male Dumbinance 7″
Bad Religion - S/T 7″
Bags - Survive 7″
Battalion Of Saints - Fighting Boys 12″
Big Boys/Dicks - Live At Raul’s 12″
Black Flag - Nervous Breakdown 7″
Charles Manson - Lie 12″
Child Molesters - Wir Lieben Die Jugendlich Madchen 12″
Cockney Rejects - Greatest Hits Vol. 1 12″
Crime - Hotwire My Heart 7″
Damned - Black Album 12″
Dead Boys - Sonic Reducer 7″
Dickies - Banana Splits 7″
Dickies - Dawn Of the Dickies 12″
E.A.T.E.R. - Doomsday Troops 7″
Elvis Presley - several 45s
Fartz - Because This World Fuckin Stinks 7″
Fix - Vengeance 7″
Germs - Lexicon Devil 7″
Germs - GI 12″
Johnny Moped - Cycledelic 12″
Kangrena - Terorismo Sonoro 7″
Legionaire’s Disease Band - Rather See You Dead 7″
Meatmen - We’re The Meatmen 12″
Menace - Screwed Up 12″
Misfits - Beware 12″
Misfits - Cough Cool 7″
Misfits - Horror Business 7″
Motorhead - S/T 12″
Necros - IQ32 7″
Nikoteens - Aloah-Oehh LP
Noncens - s/t 7″
Out Of Our Heads - Riot EP 7″
Poison Idea - Pick Your King 7″ (crumpled up cover)
Quick And The Dead - Another Violent Night 7″
Rough - S/T 7″
S.O.A. - No Policy EP 7″
Saints - I’m Stranded 12″
Shitlickers - Cracked Cop Skulls 7″
Skrewdriver - All Skrewed Up 12″
Skrewdriver - Voice Of Britain 7″
Subhumans - s/t 12″
Teen Idles - Minor Disturbance 7″
Tesco Vee - Dutch Hurcules 12″
Ultimo Resorte 7″
United Mutations - Fugitive Family 7″
V/A - Tooth and Nail 12″
V/A - Yes L.A. 12″
V/A - Oi! The Album 12″
V/A - What Records comp 7″
Wretched / Indigesti - split 7″
Youth Brigade - Sound and Fury 12″
Touch & Go Fanzine - Issue 21
Skinhead book, Manson book, Elvis book

For my money Floorpunch’s “Fast Times At The Jersey Shore”is everything I ask for in an lp by a pure straight edge hardcore band. Over the years (I know people say this all the time but - I can’t believe its been 10 years!) I’ve heard some people kind of dismiss this lp as being maybe too long (it’s only 20 minutes!), or that it’s too after the fact. But from my point of view, and maybe it’s a little rose colored, this has all the good aspects of the band’s demo and 7″, as well as bringing just enough new things to the table.

Right off the bat, the first track, Washed Up At 18, comes with a riff faster than almost anything they’d done before, and I think a lot of people remember this album as the fast Floorpunch record. Maybe that’s part of what I like about it, that they incorporate more Straight Ahead and Youth of Today style speed into the mix. I think FP sounds pretty great playing songs designed to drop their payloads in the quickest way possible, leaner than some of the tracks they’d done in the past. About a third of them clock in at under a minute. The rest are a little longer, usually around a minute and a half, all of them are stacked with maximum mosh-part potential. Playing this thing back now, some of the tracks are a tad more tuneful and anthemic than maybe their other stuff had too, and maybe some people are put off by that, but I say - what’s not to like about songs like Shotsie or What’s Right.  

A lot of straight edge bands at the time started trying to incorporate more complex and melodic parts into their songs. Actually I feel like the first In My Eyes lp (no diss on them; still a fav.) made a big wave of imitators, all far inferior, that tried to use similar arrangements, but with usually tepid results. Looking back to the time period (which was when I was first taking an interest in these type of bands) it seems like by the time the Floorpunch lp was released, no one else was content to play meat and potatoes type Straight Edge HC like the Judge 7″,  SOIA 7″, early War Zone,  et. al. It’s kind of a bummer because who the hell wants to listen to like some bargain bin band copying Fastbreak. At any rate it leaves FP kind of standing alone as the only band from the ‘96 explosion besides Ten Yard Fight that stuck it out to the end without trying to be anything other than a straight forward hardcore band. They’re also, (along with the aforementioned In My Eyes) probably the only band of the style and era who had a drummer who really ripped. Nothing worse than a weak drummer, and I love the chops on this lp. Makes cool use of the double kick pedal in fills too.

There’s like… 100 copies of this LP on white I think? Most went out to friends if I have my info right. Start to finish, this one’s all aces for the 90’s, or any era.

Got a pretty good cult Japan-core item that doesn’t come up too often today: Blaze “But Nothing Ever Change” 7″.  This was issued in a run of 500 copies on SAKURAGI RECORD in the mid-90s, I presume this is a band label, maybe someone could confirm. Anyway it tends to be on the scarce side which is a shame because its got the same kind of sizzle the the first couple of D.S.B. and Warhead 7″s bring to the table and gives either a run for their money.

Right out of the box you get a blast of screeching feedback, a quick cymbal wash, and then full tilt “Burning Spirit” style hardcore. Plenty of call-response vocals between the singer and I would guess the other members, and of course a quick little solo to add a little extra spice, as well as some crazy sounding vocal punches that sound sung through a distortion pedal. No slowing down in this one, just pure driving hardcore.

The other 4 songs on here pretty much take the same approach, tearing through each track at similar high speeds with solos, little tuneful hooks, and crazy back-up shouts giving each its flavor. It’s kind of a bummer Blaze doesn’t have much else to their name. I know of 3 different comp appearances and I’ve heard of a demo, but since I’m not from Japan, I have to get most of my info on this stuff 5th hand. The value on Nothing Ever Change has been climbing into the triple digits for a little while now and I haven’t seen a copy for auction in a while so this might be one to watch.

The Bags - Survive b/w Babylonian Gorgon is another classic Dangerhouse slab of proto-hardcore. Continuing the pattern of most of the best singles on the label being female-fronted, the Bags were led by one, Alice Bag who was better than most at both screaming, as well as melodic singing. The band take a similar approach, able to make a noisy racket, or a tight tuneful sound.

Survive opens with kind of faux-pulp detective music before the main verse, which moves along at a swift nearly-hardcore clip and is led by Alice’s sneering shouts and Terry Bag’s muscular 16th beat. The guitars jangle just enough to be clear, but have a good vintage fuzz and the bass rumbles as well as any melodic punk song from ‘78. After the first chorus is the guitar solo, and lead guitar player Craig Lee (R.I.P.) isn’t afraid to let loose and make some noise filling out a couple runs of random notes, before letting the solo congeal into a rocked out variation on the main riff. When the second chorus wraps up with an ear-splitting scream by Alice, it leaves you wondering how hardcore became such a male-dominated sub-genre. Here’s someone outperforming most of her peers, male and female from the time. You think more girls would have wanted to pick up the mic and shout. I’m no sociologist though, and so onto the b-side…

Babylonian Gorgon starts off with a more mournful sounding guitar line, but once the lead guitar and drum beat get going it has plenty of energy. Alice delivers the vocal in the verse with a little more restraint and control on this side, but still sounds authoritative  tough, and good. The chorus is the most poppy moment on the single, the vocals are a tad bit crooned, and the riff is a melodic one. The song repeats each part a few times, but keeps the structure pretty standard and just lets the attitude of the band carry it, which of course they’re more than able to do.

The Bags never really managed another proper release. They had a third song from this session on the Dangerhouse compilation Yes L.A. as well as another outtake comped on one of the posthumous Dangerhouse anthologies. In-fighting and member departures led to Alice and Craig forming the Alice Bag Band who were featured prominently in the Decline Of Western Civilization documentary, performing two newer songs, one of which is found on the soundtrack album for the film, neither of which quite matches the greatness of the two on this single. After a few years of semi-legit bootlegs, a few lost songs turning up on the Live at the Masque anthologies, and other odds and ends, Artifix records finally took up the noble task of collecting most of the Bags music to an anthology lp last year - All Bagged Up. That album contains most of their known/surviving material, including the session for the Survive 7″, as well as a few other studio demos, and some decent quality live material. The overall song quality does vary, but it’s encouraging that this stuff has been preserved. Alice still pops up for interviews and retrospectives on the early punk scene and seems to have aged gracefully, so thank god for that.

One pressing on this one, some copies have the labels on the wrong sides with stickers or writing added to correct the misinfo. Something like 1200-1500 pressed in all. Actually I believe I have an extra with a damaged cover if anyone’s looking to trade.

Saint Vitus - s/t lp  -  Saint Vitus - Hallow’s Victim lp  -  Saint Vitus - Walking Dead E.P.

Metal monday vol. 29:   Phase one of Saint Vitus’ career (1979-1985) will probably always be overshadowed by their second phase, the Scott “Wino” Weinrich lps (1986-1990) as he’s become something like the godfather of doom-metal and stoner-rock in his aged state. But for me the band’s original lineup has something all their own, and is worth spending just as much time and money on.

Saint Vitus began originally under the name Tyrant with the following lineup: Scott Reagers - Vocals, Dave Chandler - Guitar, Mark Adams - Bass, Armando Acosta - Drums. It’s somewhat significant that they were (I assume) named after a 70’s era Judas Priest song because I think at this point in their career Saint Vitus/Tyrant owe as much of their sound to them as they do to Black Sabbath. The only known recording under the Tyrant name is a rehearsal tape from 1979 and after that the group was silent release-wise until 1984, well after the Saint Vitus name change. Saint Vitus’ s/t lp is actually kind of weird because it’s a metal/rock album released on, at the time, one of the world’s biggest punk/hardcore labels: Greg Ginn’s SST. Of course it was released in 1984, the same year that Black Flag started stretching out their songs, and Husker Du and the Minutemen released 2XLP concept albums, so maybe it wasn’t that weird. Either way this record set up the template that their Walking Dead 12″ E.P. and Hallows Victim lp would basically follow to a T the next year.

Scott Reager’s vocals immediately stand out from the rush of thick and hazy riffing. He has a soulful, clear, mid-range delivery that instantly brings to mind the vocals of Sean Harris the vocalist on Diamond Head’s classic Lightning to the Nations lp. It’s also not far off say, Zeeb Parkes of Witchfinder General. In other words it’s a clean singing style, but you’re not going to hear Halford or Dickenson style high-notes. Some people are bothered by this unabashedly classic metal style of singing, but I think it makes a great contrast for the rough and raw music it accompanies.

Where Saint Vitus is probably most known for their later period of lumbering, slow motion tracks like Born Too Late, I Bleed Black, and their insanely down-tempo take on Black Flag’s Thirsty and Miserable, Reagers era Vitus actually plays at a pretty fast clip, again betraying their Judas Priest influence. What makes them unique is that they’re obviously influenced by the fledgling punk movement of the time, and that they’re obviously a self taught band. They break as many classic rock rules as they follow. On the song Saint Vitus, they pile on hardcore type back-up shouts for the chorus. On the title track of Hallow’s Victim, Armando Acosta utilizes a mix of straight ahead punk drumming, and the kind of choppy, broken up beats that Fear drummer Spit Stix was known to employ.

The level of wah-wah abuse realized on these recordings by guitarist Dave Chandler is completely over the top, unhinged, and psychotic. When he goes into one of these fits it’s a total deconstruction of the typical “metal solo” where precision and masturbatory skill tend to be the order of the day. Instead you get sheets of phase shifting noise and washes of fuzz as his fingers grate against the frets and strings. It sounds like a man at war with his instrument. I might even go so far as to argue that Chandler could give Greg Ginn a run for his money, at least as far as sheer brutality goes.

On the whole then, these Reagers era Vitus records play like punked out classic rock, but as played by a band that were rockers first, and let punk sounds seep into their delivery, as opposed to the other way around (which I would say is more common).

Be sure to watch out for bootlegs of all of this stuff as unscrupulous jerks from Europe continue to exploit the Saint Vitus back catalog. Easy to tell an original press of their first lp because it has embossed letters. Beyond that look for blurry and dull looking sleeves, and be wary of sealed copies.

PS. I got a bunch of good auctions ending tonight, please check them out.