bidhardcore.com

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.

Check out this dude selling some original foriegn HC demos. For me the 2 coolest pics are the original Raw Power demo, and this Bastards tape on Propaganda (one side studio, one side live).  Far as I know these are original as could be, and if you’re lucky haven’t been overplayed.  There’s something about the tape aesthetic that is irreplacable. Even though tapes are harder to mass produce than CDs at this point, sound worse than vinyl, or CD, and are easiest to break, bands keep making them. Maybe it’s some kind of OCD thing with how everything fits so nicely into that little plastic case. It’s the ultimate in portability.

belated year end list for 2007:

12”/CD

1. Gauze – 5th cd (don’t have the translated title handy)
2. Black Sabbath w/ Ronnie James Dio – The Dio Years (new songs)
3. Skitkids – Besoket Vid Krubban
4. Iron Lung – Sexless//No Sex
5. Electric Wizard – Witch Cult Today
6. Rampage – Limit Of Destruction
7. California Love – Reaping Whirlwind
8. Invasion – 12”
9. Crow – Hametsu No Haoto
10. Double Negative – The Wonderful and Frightening World…

7”/EP :

1. Framtid/Seein’ Red - split 7”
2. Waste Management – Get Your Mind Right
3. Death Church – Unsilent Hate Anthem
4. Jay Reatard – I Know A Place
5. Iron Age – The Burden Of Empire
6. Wasted Time – No Shore
7. Total Noise Accord -
8. Sex/Vid - Tania
9. Threatener – Bending Of Throats
10. Kvoteringen/Pisschrist – split 7”

REISSUES:

1. Imperialist Pigs - Pork Corkscrew
2. The Stalin - Stop Jap Naked
3. Thergothon - Sog Yogoth demo 12″
4. Talk is Poison - Condensed Humanity
5. Diatribe - demo ‘85 7″
6. Siege - Drop Dead 3rd edition (new song, i gotta include it)
7. Mob 47 - s/t 7 “
8. Despise You - West Side Horizons vinyl
9. The Kids - s/t
10. Deathyell - Morbid Rites

Yo, I’m a little short on time today, but here’s some hott picks anyway.

 First off found a dude selling a Sean John jacket, a SOIA cd, and oh a little 12″ called Breakaway, by one of the finer HC bands ever, Straight Ahead. This is the first press w/ the white DJ jacket and sticker. One just sold for $150, which is effin crazy, but this dude (stupidly) refuses to ship international, meaning that only people with the weak US dollar will be bidding on it. It’s like he opened a cake shop where fat people can’t fit through the door.

Anyway, Straight Ahead made me think of Lärm and I found this store in austrailia with their “No One Can Be That Dumb” e.p. I wish there were more bands that played the kind of tuneless thrash that they played in their day, that were also straight edge, and I was disappointed to hear that the whole band no longer is, (although Seein Red is still pretty ripping in their relatively old age).

Anyhow, after checking the other records for sale by this seller I noticed an OG Hitler SS/Tampax split, which if you’re a real baller, might be of interest to you. Me, I gotta pay that rent check.

Seller blueninja99 has always been pretty well known for wheeling and dealing Japanese hardcore and punk. The listings he has right now are no exception, a stack of the most well known records in the style mixed with a bit of newer stuff and this lone
Anti-Cimex “Scandanavian Jawbreaker” lp. Tons of marquee names like Bastard, Deathside, Acid, Disclose, Poison Arts, Gai, Gauze, Cobra, G.I.S.M., Stalin, Laughing Noise… just to name a handful. It seems like, especially over the last 5 years or so, Bastard’s Wind Of Pain 12″, has been the entry point for a lot of people’s interest in this genre in the United States. Aside from having production that seems to be perfect, and a running time that’s too brief for sure, there’s something about the way the riffs cut that’s maybe just a tad more accessible, than some of their peers. Or maybe it’s just that the opening riff to Misery is one of the most devastating show stopping riffs in all of rock music. Like up there with Back In Black, For Whom The Bell Tolls, and Born In The USA. One of those things that should be admired from a distance to really take its scale. Or maybe it was the popular opinion (which I believe originated in New Jersey) that the songs mine a post-Motörhead, Dischargy territory similar to the Age Of Quarrel (which surely offended many USHC haters who saw this as a short sell… idiots). This is one of those records that’s probably never going to dip in value again, unless there’s like a catastrophic event like a serious nuclear holocaust where people stop caring about entertainment, but barring that, the price is only going up so get it now or get it later on.

Okay here’s a new little feature I may do now and again: cheap picks. I don’t have a catchy name for it like Metal Monday, maybe from now on I’ll do it on Friday, and call it Frugal. Anyway… here’s the
Madhouse 12″ on Fountain Of Youth recordings that I find to be very under rated. Female fronted, and punky, not too far off the Avengers, or maybe like a better & American Vice Squad, it also features one of the guys from Youth Brigade (DC). As I remember it keeps up a pretty good clip in terms of speed, and never lapses into ballads or overly new-wave type tracks. There’s maybe a bit of goth like early 45 Grave mixed in but it’s hardly overbearing. I think it’s from ‘84? I’m certain at least that no one cares about it, and it’s a pretty good album. Total sleeper.