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WARNING: If you are my parents or future (or present) employer;  this posting is semi-gross for the first paragraph!

From Enslavement To Obliteration is sort of the gold standard for “shit-grind” (along with the first Carcass album). There’s literally thousands of horrible records modeled off the sound of this good one. It’s not that this is really truly shit grind, but taken out of context it’s really close. What is shit-grind? Unlike “Shit-Fi” which we apply affectionately around here, shit-grind is kind of like shit-punk in that it’s applied pejoratively.  Basically if the record sounds kind of like someone recorded an episode of Diarrhea over a backing track of drums, you are probably listening to shit-grind. So much grindcore falls into this trap, and has literally nothing redemptive or interesting about it, mainly because it’s a horribly executed copy of this record, and the aforementioned, “first Carcass lp (that being “The Reek Of Putrefaction”). While it’s true that part of the reason grindcore came to exist was to annoy and gross out squares, there’s also a reason why John Peel didn’t give a fuck about Agathocles, and why he did risk his rather sizable reputation as a DJ and music critic, championing bands like Napalm, Carcass, ENT, Unseen Terror, etc. The reason of course is that this stuff is ground breaking, and considering the way it sounds, actually really catchy.

FETO is Napalm Death, on their honeymoon basically. They’ve been spending, the last 20 years trying to recapture this last bit of actual magic.  Those last days of innocence and wonder, before Napalm Death became a life sentence. There’s actually a fair amount of stuff they’ve done since then that I think is good, but none came as naturally as this, and I doubt it ever will again. Their first lp, Scum is really just 2 demos, of almost 2 completely different lineups, comped together, and issued for what was presumed to maybe be “after the fact” in summer of 1987. But while some would argue it was “after the fact” as far as the band’s creative juices would extend, it turned out to be like the initial period of flirtation and infatuation, to my previously used marriage metaphor. The record got picked up by BBC radio, and by the already named John Peel (world famous DJ & record collector), who likened it to free-jazz in terms of intensity and ability to break music apart. He played the song You Suffer, which is something like 1.5 seconds 4 times in a row on the radio during that first encounter, and through persistent plugging, Scum became something of a novelty record in the UK. Though it turned a lot of people on to a new and extreme sound that had been cultivated in “the underground” it was also treated by a lot of people, like a William Hung cd. When FETO actually came out it was released to a flood of press and discussed as being the most extreme record ever, the logical end of “punk”, “hardcore” and “metal”, and all this other shit that I wasn’t really there to see, and few people remember now.

Napalm really didn’t change their attack much from Scum to FETO, but the recording process was refined, and Lee Dorrian’s voice became even more guttural and heavy. A good comparison to use would be “Ramones” to “Leave Home” (stole this from allmusic.com). There’s not really much that’s actually different about them, one is a tad cleaner, a tad more refined, but is basically just a crystalized streamlined version of the original statement. It was released to more initial fanfare, but it can never equal the kind of impact and landmark status of the original. In its’ time though the press ate it up, it was raw and bizarre and interesting after all the Morrisey and Sundays type music that was big in the indie press at that time in the UK. It’s been said that part of the appeal for music journalists of the time (aside from, or in addition to the Peel endorsement) was that Napalm Death were working class kids making a horrible ungodly racket, and it was a welcome change from all the brainy college rock that was commonly lavished with attention by the UK’s music press. Napalm were for the most part the happiest they would be for quite a while. They were cult celebrities, they were top of the heap for Earache records, and they were about to tour the world.

The next time they delivered a record (the Mentally Murdered E.P.) pretty much everything would have changed in the extreme music universe. Married life is never much like that magical honeymoon, and so they began their 20-year slog of being married to the name Napalm Death, and turning out more death metal influenced offerings every year or two, never really going back to the sound of their first 2 lps. Maybe this was something they felt had to be done. Earache was signing more pure Death Metal bands, Carcass was becoming increasingly technical, ex-member Justin Broderick’s new project Godflesh was getting ready to sludge everyone into oblivion, I assume it seemed like the natural thing for the band to do, in order to be taken seriously and stay relevant. I guess it’s a stretch to assume they should have known the only reason they were taken serious was because skill and structure were irrelevant to their music, and that as soon as those things got added they became just another metal band, although really, Utopia Banished has a lot going for it as a Death Metal/Grind hybrid album.

By 1990 the band had shed most of its members for the 3rd (or 4th depending on how you look at it) time, and had a new singer, and new guitarists, essentially becoming an entirely different band. Even with the relative triumphs of the 90’s & 00’s Napalm lineup (and really there are some), they can never escape Scum and FETO. These are the things their entire existence stands on, and these are the songs most people are waiting to hear at any of the half-full Napalm Death gigs you’ll find yourself at now. Well you probably won’t, but I do every year or two… they were really limp in Texas recently.  Sorry boys, I still love you anyway.

Here’s a first pressing copy of the album on ebay. Note that it includes the bonus 7″ which was only mailed out with first pressings. It’s kind of funny that they made this because they totally could have fit another 4 songs on the album, and it totally just sounds like 4 more songs from the same album, but I understand basic marketing principles, and this gave an incentive to purchase the album right away. By the way the bonus 7″ looks to be in above average condition as it was just issued with a thin cardstock foldover cover, and is often kind of weathered.

Just a quick one today, found someone selling a very respectable Japanese HC collection with all the big names past and present. What caught my eye was 3 big time genre compilations:

• Eye Of The Thrash Guerrilla
• Game Of Death
• Farewell To Arms

Lots of cool sampler 12″s came out of Japan in the 80’s and 90’s, and I really think all three of these are cool looking on top of that. Have a look –

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.

Still kind of rolling with the 90’s here, at least for a minute… A message board I post on ended up having a huge thread of “cool HC from the 90’s” kinda focusing on forgotten/hard to get releases and at some point it just degenerated into anything decent that doesn’t get a lot of face time nowadays. Eventually conversation turned to Devoid of Faith, which had me busting a bunch of their stuff out of my collection over the past couple days. Pretty much every DOF record is good, and with the exception of one split, they can all be had for like $2-$7. It’s actually kind of surprising how little interest in them there is right now, and I hope at some point the interest returns because revisiting has been a treat. I guess if you mixed up some classic New York stuff like Citizen’s Arrest, Agnostic Front (V.I.P. era), Life’s Blood, Born Against (1st 7″), Trip 6, and Nausea (demo era), you’d start to get an idea where they were coming from (although DOF was from Albany NY not NYC) — just pounding stuff with good tempo changes.

There are two particularly collectible records by Devoid of Faith, both issued on Pushead’s Bacteria Sour Label in the 90s. This is one of them, a 10″ album called Purpose: Lost, issued in a number of only 222 copies. It has since been repressed on a different label with alternate artwork but this version is still desirable to some collectors, and one of the best recordings by the band. If you’ve never heard them I suggest checking out their songs from the split with 9 Shocks Terror, the repress of this 10″, their earlier self titled lp issue as a 10″ and 12″, the Slow Motion Enslavement 7″, or the Denial By Machinery 7″. All of these are first rate and pressed in large quantities making them easy to find cheaply.

So besides a couple more less interesting 90’s releases, this seller also has a good smattering of 80’s classics, that are already canonized into the hall of fame. A clipped corner copy of This Is Boston Not L.A. which you might be able to obtain for cheap, a Pusmort pressing of Poison Idea’s Kings Of Punk (it’s missing the sticker and poster though FYI), Finnish standard: Rattus “WC Rajhtaa” 12″(with Pushead art on the sleeve, making this the most Pus-heavy post ever), basically everything here is worth your interest. The Crude SS - Who’ll Survive 7″is a serious jam right up in the upper echelon of Swedish classics, and also one of the first from there to get heavy exposure in the USA, and before you ask “how?”, just re-read this post again and look for a reoccurring name: Pushead. Well at least in part anyway, due to his inclusion of Crude SS on his Cleanse the Bacteria compilation.

Uh oh, more 90’s HC, this time from my buddy Mark Hurst. I feel confident this is quality stuff though. Mark has made roughly 1.5 billion dollars selling all his records off over the last few years when not playing drums for Wound Up & Punch In The Face, and he has spent every cent on live DVDs of Blur and Ride. SELLOUT!

1st: he’s got 4 Despise You E.P.’s up for sale.

• Their 7″ entitled PCP Scapegoat
• Their split 7″ w/ Crom
• Their split 7″ w/ Suppression
• Their split with Stapled Shut

The Crom split and PCP Scapegoat 7″ are both the same recording session and sound kind of shitty IMO (still good stuff though), the Suppression split is better, but their split with Stapled Shut is some of the best material by both bands. Despise You were all kind of more grind-core dudes doing a “secret” side project that was more HC/Power Violence, circa the mid-90’s. They used a lot of Hispanic gang type imagery associated with bad parts of L.A. and kind of tricked a lot of people into thinking they were a bunch of criminals. When they hit their stride musically it was on this record and the Left Back Let Down 4 way split, sounding like a battle between the Terrorizer demos & Crossed Out’s vinyl output. That’s a rather generic description, but if you’ve ever listened to Despise You, you’d know it’s pretty accurate. They tuned their instruments to A, which almost put them musically into Carcass territory, but the vocal delivery was pure violent American hard core, just spitting hoarse out of breath shouts. By the way the best Stapled Shut song is on this split as well, Resin Heaven. I think almost every Stapled Shut song has a pot smoking reference in it, which is weird because most of them are pretty fast. This one works a real groove for about 5 minutes though, and is surprisingly catchy. They also had this cool sound to their instruments that sounded like they turned all the tone and treble knobs to zero, and ran everything directly into the mixing board. It gives it this absolutely impenetrable Wall-Of-Fuzz sound that I really like. Totally killer band whose releases can all be had very cheap.

Now to the other side of the globe for every D.S.B. record produced through the 90’s and into the early 2000’s. Chronologically:

• No Fight No Get 7″ original press on Devour/Bloodclot
• Radical Sharpshot 7″, red vinyl, on Overthrow
• Wings Continue To Strive With Unchanged Mind lp on Bloodsucker
• split 7″ w/ Deathreat on Mangrove
• Pure Cultivation 7″ on Partners In Crime
• Battle Into The Invisible Zone on Kangaroo
• Wait Tremblingly on Partners In Crime

The last 3 are pretty easy to still find new, but the others are some of the best straight up hardcore to come from Japan in the last 10 years that I’ve heard. D.S.B. did a weekend of shows on the east coast, kind of at the height of the early 2000’s Japan-core craze, and I managed to take in two of the shows. They were absolutely the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever witnessed. These guys just 100% went for broke, jumping and thrashing off everything, playing a boatload of catchy jams, and just generally proving what all the fuss was about to anyone who was there. I think the general consensus is their best work is the first 2 E.P.s, and I’m inclined to agree that they’re as good as classic records by greats like Outo, Nightmare, etc.

Hail Sweden as they say… found 2 well known Käng-core treats. Mob 47’s eponymous 7″ e.p.has been recently released by Sweden friendly Havoc records in the USA (although this on is from an original pressing) and has generally remained through the years one of the better known Swedish hardcore releases in the United States. Having been featured on both Pushead’s Cleanse the Bacteria comp in 1985, and the P.E.A.C.E. compilation the year prior, as well as on a couple of BCT compilation cassettes (I think), they had fairly good exposure to the average U.S. based HC listener of the day. I think overall their sound is also maybe a little easier to identify with for people raised on your Minor Threats, your Negative Approaches, your Agnostic Fronts, as the songs keep a bit of a faster clip than your average “D-Beat” related release, and maintain brevity, similar to those bands (not that such a thing was unheard of with other groups of this style). Additionally, the riffs themselves are a tad more tuneful than your average Discharge worship, and I think that goes a long way in putting this E.P. in its rightful place, at classic status. Animal Liberation plays like a simplified take on Nothing by Negative Approach, at least to my ears, though the theme of the song is a much more straight forward political one that ought to be pretty obvious. Seems like an early instance of animal rights, at least as far as straight hardcore goes, and I wouldn’t doubt the members of Ripcord took note, among many others. One more thing I think is worth note in comparing it to U.S. releases from the same time period is the almost total lack of bass-guitar in the mix. I always associate extremely trebly, thrashy hardcore with the sound of early mid-west and east coast hardcore from the United States, and like this record, part of the reason for that is that the bass was nearly mixed off a lot of those records and demos. The record would not really change or sound very different if there was no bass player, which is a huge contrast to say Discharge (who are the obvious starting point for the sound of this E.P.), and while other bands from Sweden use the bass guitar to varying degrees of importance and prominence in their sound, I find it particularly neglected with Mob 47. If you’re not familiar with Mob 47 and have any interest at all in early hardcore from other countries, there are a few different comprehensive reissues out there which are cool but a little intimidating as they compile numerous demos and comp tracks. For that reason I think the best place to start would be the straight up reissue of this E.P. on Havoc. It’s affordable, very well distro’d, and nice looking too.

In some ways, the other side of the coin here is Anti-Cimex - Victims Of A Bomb Raid 7″also from 1984, and hardly relatable to USHC at all. Actually Victims, or Wictimsas pronounced in the title track, hardly even sounds like previous Anti-Cimex records and attempts to sheen a lot of the rough edges that those had. Where their previous record (and probably most legendary), Raped Ass (that’s Arse) has a sound centered around the overload of various distortion pedals and frequent cymbal crashes, this record seems like a pretty obvious attempt to refit the band to the sound of Discharge’s Hear Nothing, See Nothing, Say Nothing. Now I know that’s kind of a “duh” revelation, but it’s a pretty big leap to take for the band itself. While I’m sure they thought this sounded rather professional at the time, it reeks of cheap processing and studio effects of the era, despite still being quite a classic. The snare drum is heavily compressed and gated so that it nearly sounds sampled (if you don’t know what I mean tap your computer mouse with your index finger a few times - it’s that sound), the guitars are much clearer and dipped in chorus as was the style at the time, and most everything has some reverb to make it sound bigger. Discharge themselves, somewhere around Why? or Hear Nothing, started using a chorus pedal on their guitars (in the studio anyway) to give them a “fuller” sound, and a lot of early 80’s hardcore records attempt to use this same trick, often to hide the fact that they only have a single guitar track on them (see: every record recorded in Washington DC after 1982). In addition there seems to be a more conscious attempt to display some kind of guitar playing “chops” with numerous noodling/string bend moments, and other pointless stuff. Or, maybe they just really really wanted to sound like Hear Nothing, complete with a string-bend to punctuate the riff every few measures. Probably both. You know, despite all that though, this is a brutal release, and even though it’s not the best, it’s still the second best Anti-Cimex release. I also think that through their entire career (maybe barring the sub-par Anarkist Attack) Anti-Cimex had a superior grasp on actually putting together a catchy song, rather than just a couple of heavy parts and stringing them together as a song, and that’s worth at least a tip of the hat.

I like this seller’s listings. I’ve featured them before, but this set is kind of cooler because it’s several different things — a bunch of rap lps, a bunch of Japanese hardcore, some American grindcore, and a little bit of NYHC. I dunno, you could probably have a decent time hanging with this person.Here’s a tasty Japanese ripper… or something like that. LSD’s - Jast Last 7″. This is hardly the genre I’m most knowledgeable in, but this is one record that left an impression on me right from the get go. The vocals pour out in a mess of distortion and slurred growling, most likely double tracked (it could just me some kind of echo effect though?), but sounding pretty crazy. The music is kind of more controlled and somewhat metallic in the delivery, with fairly precise mid-paced type riffs. My favorite song is the 6 minute Karen Nash which begins with a clean guitar intro, and then builds up with a noodley riff, before kicking in full power with the most deranged vocal section on the entire record. The song pushes into hookier and more melodic territory, more-so than the other two on the record, or for that matter any other LSD song. By the time the maiden-esque solo kicks in 2 minutes deep it’s pretty obvious you’re hearing a masterwork. Finally at about the middle the sheets of distortion let up for a return to the same clean guitar work from the beginning. The buildup back into the song is cheesy and “of the time” as could be but it works because the band sell it, and to me it all sounds necessary, like there’s no fat to trim (which is absurd because in reality it’s a 6 minute song), they have me under the spell. When the speed really picks up again and the vocals come with tortured “whoas” echoing into 80’s reverb oblivion, it’s the payoff. I really have no idea what this song is actually about, but it just sounds moving. Maybe melodrama has a big effect on me. As a sequel to yesterday’s posting: a Crossed Out 7″. Of course if you know me at all, you know I’ve staked some of my creativity in this record’s legacy, much to the disappointment and annoyance of a person or three, but generally these are people that are old and/or Scottish. Seriously though, this one’s timeless. A template for a dozens and dozens of bands thereafter, none one tenth as good. Crossed Out said they were into Siege and the Skitslickers, it really can’t get much more straight forward than that. It’s that kind of simplicity that permeates the sound and style of the record. There’s nothing tricky or hard to grasp, it just sounds like a hammer beating against your skull really fast, and then really slow. There are a couple of 90’s bootlegs of this but the seller has taken care to list attributes that verify it as an original (matrix numbers being the give away). If you’re ever not sure about one of these, look at the between song gaps, the original pressing has long silences between each song, like 5-10 seconds, you should be able to see them just by looking at the vinyl.

Well maybe you’re out today voting for who you get to vote for later this year. Unfortunately my favorite UFO peeping, Larry Flynt allied, pacifist is already outta the running. Just kidding I could never vote for a candidate whose name I wouldn’t be able to spell until year 3 of his term. Really, Larry Flynt Dennis? Well it’s not like you can go any lower than zero anyway. Can you believe though, that I actually got a mass text message to vote for Obama? Like I trust a friend of Oprah any more than a lady with the same voice as my middle school social studies teacher. It’s more of the same with all of these jerks. . Oops sorry… let me go back to consoling the post Superbowl depression of my peers (”Ya know the Superball’s in Detroit this year…”). Personally I’m just thrilled that after 8 years, #81, ART MONK, has been inducted into the NFL Hall Of Fame. Wait this isn’t right either…

GREETINGS FELLOW  HARDCORE/PUNK ENTHUSIASTS! Today I’ve found a seller with a couple of tasty treats, and a bunch of indie-rock tripe, that shall get no further acknowledgement.  Firstly there’s Canadian Youth Youth Youth - “Sin” 12″e.p. We call them YYY for short. You can put them on the same itunes playlist as your Pig Children 12″ maybe. This one (like the Pig Children) has a tendency of showing up sealed kind frequently, and this one appears to be as well. So if what you’ve always wanted was, a pricey record you will be de-valuing by listening to it, well here it is! Nah this is an above average offering for sure.

Also available The Inmates - “Government Crimes”7″. This one comes with the Zouo themed sleeve on blue vinyl(it has a photo of Zouo on it), thus denoting it as a 2nd pressing, although it’s listed confusingly as a 3rd pressing. In addition, it’s listed as being from Japan, which must at least be flattering for these guys. The Inmates are my number-one favorite group of the Cleveland scum-core bands. It was truly an honor to be able to reissue their lp on Painkiller in that toxic-waste-green jacket. Seriously the fact that this came out of the United States in 94/95 is mind blowing. There was nothing this cool or catchy anywhere else. Maybe the next best thing was the Copout 7″, and frankly I’d rank that far below. Slap-a-Ham was already a spent force, Straight Edge Hardcore still sounded like a spoof of a Helmet record, most punk bands sounded like Aus Rotten at best. I dunno, maybe it wasn’t that bad. I mean I was 14, at best I had a couple people playing me garbage on Victory, and maybe 7 Seconds, but that’s at best, so what do I know right? I’m sure seeing Catharisis or some such 5th teir Rorschach ripoff whose name I can’t think of was really meaningful at the time, but let me go out on a limb and say, you probably don’t wanna wear that on your sleeve now anyway. The Inmates - this is the stuff from then that still matters. Blown out ear smashing, brain searing, 10 megaton destruction.  Oh and if you’re still in a Cleveland mood, there’s a repeat copy of The Mormons “On The Trail West”e.p. Looks like this is a $50 piece now, I guess the appearance of the Homostupids has cemented that.

Seller zvuk-art has all kinds of stuff up for auction, doing a pretty reasonable job of covering all the genre bases, as you can see. However this is bidhardcore, and that narrows things down pretty easily here. I’m not going to talk about the Beastie Boys “Polywog Stew” 12″, because it’s not actually a good record, just a bad punk 12″ made by some guys that got famous later. It says it’s a Ratcage OG, but it also says made in France, so I’m not sure. If you care, you’ll have to research that. A much better record, one of my Brit-core favs, and one that set a standard: Ripcord “Defiance Of Power” 12″ with bonus “The Damage Is Done” flexi (in fact this is my second favorite Ripcord release). I think one of the things about Ripcord that I like the most is that they were unabashedly influenced by American bands of the early 80’s (SS Decontrol, Siege, Youth Of Today, 7 seconds), but still maintained some Britishness in their sound. Even if they considered themselves mainly drawing from American influences, there are still shades of groups like the Varukers, GBH, Chaos UK, Discharge, etc., that I can’t escape in their sound, which for me is part of the Ripcord appeal. Not that I’m a huge British punk listener, but the cross pollination, it’s good… like a strawberry-kiwi beverage, or the ever popular chocolate and peanut butter snack. It’s also pretty cool they had a song like Drug-Shit, being that they were from an area of the world where that would put them distinctly in the minority. They took a hard line (no pun intended) on animal abuse too, I feel like probably half their songs were about vivisection/vegetarianism/other animal exploitations, which I guess was kind of new at the time. The sound is kind of a heavy blur, with thick, thick fuzz on the guitar and bass, and jackhammering, simple drum patterns. The lack of flashiness in the music actually serves it quite well I think making it heavier and more focused in some way or other. Recommended shredding here…

Today’s post is sort of a clearing house for the other most interesting tapes I spotted on ebay this week. As a result, none of the tapes have anything to do with eachother, they’re about as unrelated as could be.

Firstly is this Gai “Damnation” tape from Japan. It’s not really clear even after consulting a few heads, whether this was released before or after the group had already disbanded, but it is considered to be official, and judging by the fact that the seller is auctioning a legit copy of Stalin “Trash” (among other gems) I would expect it to be an authentic original. Gai are one of the template for so many noize-core groups there after, and sadly, so many embarrassing myspace only punk bands. If you want to know about fuzzed out, dumbed down, noized up Japanese punk, check out www.shit-fi.com. There’s a great series that walks you through the essentials, and has some good downloads.

Next on the list: a Half-Off “Who Writes Your Rules” demo. Billy Rubin was the original ex-straight edge agitator, except he was never smart enough to make the kind of name and career for himself that Sam Mcpheters did. In fact I’d say he was a bit of a dunce, and an average hard core vocalist at best. Half-off is a thoroughly so-so band, but this demo is not bad, maybe better than their lp (with such ugly cover art) on New Beginning. Maybe if the drumming had not been so terrible, and the guitars a little more in tune, I’d cut the album a little more slack. Eventually the guitarist took his own life, and the remaining members formed Haywire, which kind of mixed a muscular post-Flag Rollins Band/Bl’ast rock, with heady Dan O’ type pseudo philosophical lyrics. I always wanted it to be good, but like Half-Off, my feeling is that it never sparked and caught fire.

Continuing on the “has nothing to do with the one before it” line: a Merauder demo for you! Truthfully my interest in NYHC stops before Merauder came on the scene by a year or two. But for post-Madball, post-Vulgar Display of Power, post-Obituary, dusted, gang related NYHC groups, there really is no other. Wait, that’s wrong. The scene in NY was choked with others in the mid-90s, but Merauder are considered one of the lasting greats. For me, it’s too hard. It’s just too hard. But for my friend Rob Buschgans, it’s just right,  and when he says “Hardest Out”, he’s speaking the truth. This demo is infamous because it predates the line-up on their “classic” Master Killer lp, and instead has a very scary dude, by the name of Minus on vocals (not that Jorge, the singer on that album isn’t also extremely scary).

Last up, another “completely unrelated” item, by a band who would probably be bummed to know they were getting mentioned right after Merauder, (but, if I ever cared less…): Midnight (PDX) - demo. This is not to be confused with the superior Midnight from Ohio who have been making records for the past few years. No, this is from Portland OR’s fertile crusty HC scene of the early 00’s. Though it’s one of the lesser-known releases of the time period, I expect that it’s going to be more and more sought after as time goes on, and had this demo been followed by a record, it would have most likely been one that was well liked. Anyhow, I guess the hook on this is it features the guitarist/main vocalist of From Ashes Rise, and I think at least one member of Lebenden Toten as well. The sound is pretty much like From Ashes Rise/HHIG/Tragedy - that epic/arena Crust sound. Maybe it’s a little more metallic, but the biggest difference I guess is the female vocals (though you probably wouldn’t know if no one told you - they’re very burley).

So ends this week of tapes, with the seemingly solid (on Tuesday) concept, fraying into a scatter-shot mess by Friday. Nonetheless, I’ll be back after the weekend, and it shall be business as usual.