Q: Mankind? A: Dirt.

I won't get into all the reasons for this blog's dormancy; it's the usual case of taking on too much and having too little left to give by the end of the day. I'll slowly get the cogs moving again, and by the end of November, it should be back to clacking and clanking at its old pace. But what really matters is the music, so I'll continue on the therapeutic simplicity of the last post with a couple of splits by Connecticut's Mankind?. This short-lived peace punk/hardcore ensemble channeled all the best aspects of the 80's and 90's, albeit through only a handful of songs...

The first split represents arguably the best material from both bands present, the other being UK veterans, Dirt. Dirt's flickering presence throughout the 80's had exceptionally luminescent moments, but their brief return in the 90's was for me their most focused appearance. Maybe you'll enjoy their more raw material better, but the stylized direction of Deno's vocals just do it for me on this one.

While disappointing by comparison, Mankind?'s two offerings on their split with Final Warning are still solid efforts. The disappointment for me lies in the poor production and in the decision to not make Stacey the lead vocalist. Other than that, "Utopian Nightmare" is a more than passable contribution to American political hardcore, and their cover of "Electrodes" is a boiling, frothing brewpot of angst and loathing.

The original idea for this post was to gather a bunch of Final Warning tracks, including the Warning 7". Both Warning and Final Warning were New York-based bands featuring Neil, Nausea's original vocals-man. Mike of Twisted Tracks must have been eating the same thing this week or been tuned to the same frequency as me because he beat me to it. To complete your Final Warning collection, the track "Wasteland" on the split above is one of the finer examples of FW's post-Discharge bleakness, complete with Neil's burliest angry-sailor vocals. You can get FW's "Eyes of a Child" 7" here, some compilation tracks from both FW and Mankind? here, and FW's live LP here. In an interesting twist, on the LP Final Warning takes their stab at an "Electrodes" duet between Neil and Stacey (Mankind?).

Mankind?'s splits with Dirt and Final Warning

Deformed Excrement

The crust bonanza continues with a nineties classic: The Deformed Conscience/Excrement Of War split LP. This thing is so crusty I had to scrape barnacles off of it before I could rip it for you! I feel like this has been posted elsewhere, but the bustling blogotropolis can only benefit from more rip-choices. DC played kinetic crust that sometimes bordered on grindcore, and was backed by a hyper-active drummer who knew how to spice things up. They have/had a discography double LP available from Unrest Records, and members went on to form another raging band called Hail Of Rage (discography also available from Unrest). Now, as far as I know, EOW's material is not as easy to find. Their take on the Doom/Hiatus style of UK raw-punk/crust is pretty damned scathing, although I miss "Cathode Ray Coma" which I foolishly sold long ago. The tracks on this split are pretty straight forward and this time feature Mags doing the vocal work by herself. Don't forget to stop by 7 Inch Crust and Am I Mean? to pick up a couple of EOW splits.

The LP

"Kamikaze Attacked Amerika/Yankee Bombed Hiroshima, Nagasaki" CD Comp.

Commenter dxb requested more CFDL, but sadly I don't have much. I do, however, have this amazing comp. CD on which they appear. Since I'm on this whole compilation kick, it seemed right to post it. As the title suggests, this CD contains almost 50/50 American and Japanese bands. When Sound Pollution and MCR let this thing out of the pen in 1996, it found a cozy place in my CD player for upwards of 15 or so months straight! I can't express what a great listen this one is, and to entice the skeptics, I'll supply a band list below (note: several bands contribute two tracks) with special annotation when (I feel it's) needed.

Bands (Japan)
Insane Youth - Heavy-handed hardcore- Japan meets NYC
Anti Authorize - D-beat Cookie Monster-Core!
Senseless Apocalypse - noise/grind at its finest... their 2 best tracks!
Disclose - Hey, it's Disclose!
Balzac - Japan's unabashed punk "Misfits"
Addiction - simple and catchy- 80's style
CFDL
Violent Pain - appropriately named
Bleed for Freedom - Rocked-out anthemic punk!

Bands (America)
Ottawa - Pre-.NEMA Tolkien grind. 3 Tracks from their split LP with Jihad
Final Warning - D-beat boot-stomp featuring the original singer from Nausea!
Suppression
Mankind? - Dirt influenced peace-punk-hardcore with squealy female vocalist
Spazz
Monster X - The first and only straight-edge grind band (!?!?)
Quadiliacha - Melodic, political punk/hardcore (Great for those who like Strike Anywhere but are ashamed to admit it)
Masskontroll - Portland's answer to Sweden

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