bidhardcore.com

Hey everyone, it’s time for another guest posting, this time by Tony Rettman who you might know from WFMU radio, http://200lbu.blogspot.com/, or hanging around New Jersey record stores for the last 20 years (I’m guessing). Check out the radio show, lame bands like Mind Eraser get to play on it sometimes.

TR:

I’ve vented my spleen more than a few times over the revisionist ways of youngsters regarding the infamous Mutha label. How and why and where this label got the reputation it now has I cannot pinpoint. What I do know is most of their releases were laughed at, spat on and most possibly shat on when they were originally released in the eighties. There’s no denying the label is an intriguing chunk of underground history, but the amount of actual worthwhile material released on the imprint is miniscule at best. One slab they released that I will throw my weight behind is this Cyanamid seven inch from 1984. Cyanamid is one of those rare bands that just seem to sound stranger as time goes on. When I was a wee nip, their live sets were nothing more than a confusing mess. On record, they could sound like anything from Flipper on 16 rpm’s to abuncha wind up monkeys on outdated cough syrup. At the time of this six song seven inches’ release, I chalked it up as a novelty and that was that.
 
Upon further listening in the past few years, Cyanamid’s frenzied sound has reminded me alot of the slash-and-burn improvisational style of stuff like Rudolph Grey’s Blue Humans or late eighties Lower East Side noiseniks Demo-Moe. It is at this time I will stop typing and imagine the entire bid hardcore audience staring at their computer screens in utter confusion at those band names while the sound of crickets can be heard from outside their window. Hey…what can I say? I’m just trying to broaden some horizons…to turn some people onto some outlandish sounds…I’m also trying to get rid of some extra Blue Humans records I got laying around this place. Hi-Ya! Napalm Death send props out to Cyanamid on the inner sleeve on ‘Scum’* but I’ve always thought of Cyanamid as way more gnarled and loose than Harris and company. Nonetheless, you probably should get this to complete your Mutha collection and further your standings as a Hardcore nerdboy. I mean…even if you don’t dig it, at least you’ll have something to talk about with your pals at the next Punk Rock show before you go home to spend another wonderful night cold and alone with your records.

*note from cc: I was advised to fact check that they do indeed get a shoot out in Scum, however I was not able to because I originally owned it on tape (thankyou list was removed from the layout), the booklet to my CD appears to be missing, and the only vinyl I own is a test pressing (ahem, dated june ‘87). So while I’m not able to actually look this up, I can own up to having Scum on 3 formats, and of course that little ol’ test press.

It might be forgivable if you’re not familiar with New Jersey’s Chronic Sick. They were unpopular in their day, panned by most reviewers as reactionary, and their records were pressed in minuscule quantities on the hard-to-come-by Mutha Records. That said they’re one of the most consistently beloved “Killed By Death” type hardcore bands, or as it’s now okay to term bands like this, “Killed By Hardcore”. A perfect example of a band no one cared about when they were around, but now considered to outclass many of the more popular bands of the day from anywhere in the world.

Chronic Sick eschew the typical expectations for a cult/unknown hardcore band as they’re as tuneful, well rehearsed, and professionally recorded, as most of the big acts of the early 80’s in the United States. The sound of the music owes a heavy debt to DC bands like Scream, Marginal Man, Double O, and at least in some ways predicts some of the chorus drenched guitar work Dag Nasty delivered a couple years later. Before anyone protests (and I know you will), this is hardly the self-conscious emotive, good-time core that all of those bands are, at least in part known for, (no disrespect to the godly Scream). Rather the lyrics and vocals come at you with plenty of snot and bile, hardly sticking to safe topics (as the middle finger on the picture sleeve should let you know), and keeping things firmly hardcore even in during fairly poppy guitar lines. On this record, which there’s probably 500 or less of, (probably way less when you account for 20-some years of record collections thrown in the trash by New Jersey moms), they take the time to attack “Reagan Bands”, lament the transmission of venereal diseases (Crotch Rot), and I’m not sure what the third song (Blood Type-X) is about, but as the MRR review of the time noted, it might be better that way.

Like yesterday’s Death Wish entry, Chronic Sick aren’t just good for a “rare record band”, they’re just good. They may have been reactionary townie losers, but they were a good hardcore band first. It’s really kind of a shock no one has been able to negotiate a legitimate reissue of their output, and maybe even more shocking that it hasn’t been bootlegged (although let’s face it, it’s only a matter of time til some eastern European schmuck takes care of that, unfortunately it will probably made off shit MP3’s and pixelated JPG’s).

Worth noting, there’s a Send Help 7″, also on Mutha Records, for sale by the same person. One of the better and more hardcore releases on the label after Chronic Sick & The Worst.