The Stain Remains

While we're on the topic of dark, mysterious, post punk bands from yester-year (and with Tim Crow on bass too, no less), The Smartpils have been name-dropped on this blog a few too many times to not post some of their work.  Maybe they're not the intuitive choice for my first summer post, but I have to admit... I've been infected by the mutated gothy germ that's been going around.  The Smartpils (or Smart Pils if you prefer) could teach some of these new bands a thing or two. Unfortunately the Pils have taken measures to not tout their role as an influence, or even that they were once a band.  Like many, I thought their mighty "No Good, No Evil" 12" and their first demo comprised their only recorded material.  The digital age, however, has provided the proper implements to exhume some fine Smartpils treasures from their analog graves.  Cassettes seemed to have been the bands' favorite M.O., but I own none of them.  I had to grave-rob the cheap and unadventurous way via peer to peer download.  Considering this, some of the tape rips below are of varying quality (decent to piss-poor).  I'm just glad to have them, and if you happen to be one of the rippers whom I downloaded from, infinite thanks to you.  The rips of the aforementioned 12" are my own, as I was tired of the lackluster ones I had been clinging to for years due to some twisted sense of loyalty or just plain laziness.

Smartpils- "No Good, No Evil" 12" (Bluurg Records, 1987... ripped at 320)






As far as I can tell, Smartpils released three demos-- the one mentioned above, "Toxic State," and "Zen Punk." I tried to find the best quality rips, but the pickings were slim.  As always, if anyone can offer more info or point us in the direction of better rips, you are strongly encouraged to get in touch!

All three demos here.

And now for some compilation appearances.  For all I know, some of these recordings are not exclusive and may be redundant if you download all the links I'm putting up.  I just wanted to throw different rips out there. Seven of the tracks come from a cassette called "Wessex 1984," two come from "Open Mind Surgery," and two others come from two volumes of "Aquae Sulis Calling."  The last in the list is of particular interest if you enjoyed the previous post.  The two tracks in question do not have the usual vocalist on board, and could easily pass as Zygote songs (I would love to know the line-up on "Brothers of the Head").  Both comps are available for download or streaming from the label's bandcamp page.

Smartpils tracks from all three comps here.

Although the "All And Everything" tape has many of the songs from the demos, there are some interesting odds and ends, plus, even though the bit rate on these rips isn't great, the clarity of the songs is better than some of the rips in the demo link.  In addition, there's a 40 minute live side.

"All and Everything" 


Requested Re-ups:
Deformed Conscience/Excrement of War split LP
Harsh/Control Mechanism split 7"
400DayHeadache comp
Lana Dagales 7"
Grievance 7"
"Le Garage" Comp

From Our Red Halo's Hands

With the positively bubonic scourge of dark, gothy post-punk infesting the distros and venues these days, I decided a Zygote revisit would be in order.  For years I thought the "89-91" LP was the band's demo with a live set tacked on.  Turns out it's the "demo to their full length" (with live tracks), but there was another demo done earlier (which happens to follow the studio/live format).  I'd be a real bastard if the next thing I said wasn't that I have a copy and have ripped it for you.  I have, although this is one of those "elitist completist" posts in that if you have "89-91" and "A Wind of Knives" already, then you're pretty much set.  The cassette boasts only one truly exclusive track, which is a live recording of "Conspiracy."   Beyond that, there's additional demo and live versions of tracks you already know, but it should be mentioned that the title of "God is Dead" was changed to "Scarred" on later releases.

For those of you who have somehow avoided the acrid stench of the still-smoldering crater left by Zygote's short existence, they were a very polarizing band in that they had two members of Amebix, yet sounded little like them (and they started up shortly after "Monolith," which probably alienated some fans).  Less concerned was Zygote in the end of all; their obsession seemed to lie in the more subtle agony of living in the half-dead world of right now, and the desperate attempts we all make daily to rise above the filth.  The dark post-punk alluded to above is a starting point in describing their music, which is a swirling kaleidoscope of squealing reverb/flange and pulsing rhythm.  The full demo experience is a bit much to take all at once, but it really captures in full the nightmarish psychedelia that was the essence of the band.

Zygote- Demo Cassette (Bluurg, 1990).  This is a large file (about 160 MBs) and was ripped at 320 from an old tape... just a heads-up.

"A Wind of Knives" is the band's only proper full length, and is completely essential.  If you need it, here it is at 320 with scans of my copy's insert (damaged as it is after all these years).

Zygote- "A Wind of Knives" CD (Epistrophy, 1994)

All This Sunshine is Just Going to End

It's time for another piece of that candy of nostalgia, wrapped in a shoddy DIY wrapper and tainted with just enough poison and broken glass to give you a slightly "off" feeling for a while.  This backhanded, backward glance is dangled before us by Rights Reserved once again, a band resolute to drag you behind the house and shove your face in a steaming, shameful pile of memories best left alone.  As promised, I'm offering the band's split with Assfactor 4 as a starting point.  Rights Reserved are in what I consider their prime on these two tracks, holding back none of their prodigious angst in neither the music nor lyric department.  The only other song of theirs that matches these would be the one on the 400DayHeadache comp. While their LP is full of heartfelt and emotionally charged material, none quite compare to the power of these three songs.  On the other side, Assfactor 4 make one of their earliest vinyl appearance before going on to dominate the modern hardcore "scene" of the nineties.  The two tracks offered mark a transitional point between the members' time in Tonka and Unherd, and the solidification of the A-4 sound on their later 7" and LPs.  Essential for fans, plus the mood meshes well with the RR tracks.

I also mentioned that I would post Rights Reserved's other EPs, and while I am a lazy-ass, jaded, distracted son of a gun, I'm no liar.  Many bands have enjoyable early material that shows them working out their ideas; RR's early 7"s are fine examples of that.  The band mixes and alternates between indie rock, punk, and melodic hardcore, like, well, small town youths trying to find themselves and having fun doing it.  With no small measure of talent, I might add.

Rights Reserved 7"s

Everyone's Already Said Everything

Besides sludge, melodic punk, and the newest releases and reissues I've grabbed, vacations always send my musical choices in one final direction-- an often inebriated amble through the gleaming boardwalks of nostalgia.  As my musical coming of age was in the nineties, it's not surprising that I should reunite with some Rights Reserved records this summer, a band with whom I made an instant connection so many years ago (first exposure was the Assfactor 4 split).  The problem of genre is only a problem if one obsesses over it.  If you're one of those, I'd say for a brief moment RR may have been called hardcore, in the same way Kerosene 454 was.  Which is to say that in retrospect... they were not really that.  The band, in their closing statement of the liner notes, chooses the self-deprecating "crappy rock" tag, which if you take time to read the lyrics, they seem like the types that would say that.  I will gladly settle on indie rock/punk with a definite DC/Maryland feel.  What brought instant camaraderie between me and RR's rock was the honest, confrontational, and ultimately cathartic way they handled the often overlooked, but extremely frightening dilemma of young adulthood.  We come barreling out into the real world like a second birth, knowing everything and sneering at the masses who of course have it all wrong, ready to conquer the world, only to be repeatedly tripped up by the baggage of our past, and clothes-lined by our arrogance and ignorance.  The boys in Rights Reserved, jaded before their time, knew this I think.  Maybe they even understood how crucial those pitfalls would be in making us who we are.  I can't say for sure, as the LP posted below was their last testament as a band.  It's a bitter pill to swallow, but this band's tough love will get it down your gullet one way or another.

Rights Reserved LP (Assorted Porkchops Records, 1996)

A Rights Reserved EPs post should make it here before too long.

Dude, Yer Gonna Need a Bigger Beer

I guess every compilation post should start with a disclaimer: the story is I heard about a band that featured members of Filth, Dystopia, and Fields of Shit.  They were called Abandon, and their only output were the five tracks on the "Letters from the Landfill" comp.  Abandon made music for the early days of summer-- a desperate outpouring of pent-up angst to be heard while sitting under that blazing yellow disk in the sky, fighting hopelessly to get through the haze .  Don't expect the sludgiest, crustiest thing to ever come out of the Bay Area; in fact I recommend that you to recalibrate before taking a listen.   These guys were more about ambiance driven by fairly lightly distorted guitar and syncopated drums, navigated by the unmistakable vocals of Mr. Jake Sayles.   As a  first release, I would have been all excited to hear what Abandon would do next, but we all know what happened (or didn't).  The rest of the comp has its moments.  The big moment for me was discovering This Is My Fist.  I'm not sure how I've avoided them for this long, but their abrasive, yet melodic punk tunes had me checking their discog page but quick.  From track to track, I detect a little bit of all those things I like in bands like Lost World, Preying Hands, Burning Kitchen, Zeitgeist... difficult to nail, but completely rad.  The other two bands have to catch me when I'm in the mood.  Shotwell and Peels each play their own kind of indie/punk/progressive rock that is silly, smart, and serious depending on which track or movement you're hearing. Good stuff; just now always my thing.

"Letters from the Landfill" Compilation (Left Off the Dial Records, 2003)

Shit, where does the time go?!  I think I finally found the motivation (and some records) to get this thing going again.  Meantime, keep the requests coming.

Re-ups:
Seven Foot Spleen
Spine Wrench- also... if you want free Spine Wrench vinyl, check out Mid's comment on this post and get in touch with him.
Multi-Facet/Sheephead Split

Peace, Bastards

Finally, a post, and fittingly on this day of resurrection.  You'll get no Christ from me though.  This season so far hasn't encouraged me to want to get the blog back together much (hence the month-long delay in getting this one up) or doing anything involving staring at a monitor.  But I 'm hoping some of the spring giddiness has been expelled and things will change.  We'll see.  What we have today is a band I probably would have overlooked if it weren't for a keen-eared commenter.  All he (she?) really had to say was it's Elenor's new band (from To What End?) and I was in pursuit.  Peacebastard is a fairly new band based in Germany who just put out their third release (a split with Dishonorable Discharge).  For free today are the band's first two EPs, which stay with the theme of resurrection but without the rehash.  Brought back are the fury and idealism of the early days of Profane Existence and Flat Earth, drawing gracefully from so many bands of those two rosters that it's futile to list.  I will say that Elenor's vocals this time around are more guttural and abrasive in the manner early Ebola and Unhinged-- a 10 megaton warhead on an already deadly rocket.

Peacebastard 7"s 

Heart First Records
Truemmer Pogo

Recent Re-uploads:
Life... But How to Live It
Zero Hour (EP and Apeface split)

Half Japanese

I have neither sad story nor heroic epic to account for the lack of posts.  I've just been finding other things to do with my time.  To make up for said "lost" time, I offer a resurrected idea, the "grab bag o' splits."  Four splits had to be chosen from my teeming bins; the international theme was not enough to quell the chaos.  Japan would have to come to the rescue!  Each EP in the bag has one Japanese band featured-- beyond that, quality counts, style doesn't; obscurity is a plus.

This first split sees Norway's Angst wrestling with Idora for the last scrap of whale meat.  Figuratively speaking, I hope.  Both bands represent their respective countries as well as the time period (early '90's) smashingly-- Angst discharging an arctic blast of thrashed-out Norse-core with modern flourish, and Idora doing what their country has mastered for ages, but with an exceptionally scathing guitar sound.

If a bit of South American brutal primitivism is your thing, Venezuela's @patia No deliver it, Machetes in hand.  Their three tracks also appear on the collection LP they put out on Alerta Antifascista/Skuld, but here they are, in their original place of nativity, next to Japan's Jabara.  These guys are probably best known on this coast for the 12" they put out on Prank, and these two Death Side-esque rippers ended up on that one too.

It's Germany and Japan, reunited once again, this time not for world domination, but for intricately wrought ass-brutalization.  Deutschland's Atka provide the fractal grindcore geometry combined with repetitive autistic mind-melting guitar loops, while Swarrrm are up to their usual tricks, escaping the psych-ward long enough to smear their rambling manifesto in feces all over the infrastructure of our decaying civilization.  Ecocentric Records was having a hard time keeping their online store online, and I had a problem downloading my digital version, so my own rips are provided, and I hope you'll contact the label to get a real copy if you can.

  The last goody in the bag is a double creature feature of dirty, metallic sludge.  Hellchild's chugga-chunkiness has graced many a split, and here they are again, busting out Wesley Pipes with Tennessee's very own cannabis crematorium, Bongzilla.  H:G Fact never lets us down, even when the bands are not the label's usual fare.


Get all four splits in this bag.

Recently Re-upped: Mine "Tetanus" LP + Dawnbreed Split 7"

Coming Up: the fulfillment of a request!

Run with the Sheep, or Dance with the Banshee

If you weren't already a happy bastard today, the album art above should take care of that.  If that fails, give the music a shot.  Unless you're one who considers melody a ghastly scourge upon hardcore, these Eugene, Oregonians will surely free the closeted, illicitly-begotten child within all of you and stir your loins into such a tizzy you'll want to accost strangers, beget more and start the bastard baby boom!  But seriously, these bastards create a real threat in the way they coat pure subversion and defiance in a glorious subterfuge of sweet melody and driving rhythms, reinventing hardcore punk as something dangerous and new again.  We all now it's not actually new, but for a moment or two, while listening, I actually forget I'm a jaded fuck.  Fans of Burning Kitchen, Sado-Nation, Godless, and Harum Scarum should take special interest in Happy Bastards, and to spread the creed I'm offering two splits.

 The first is a 7" with the UK's Kismet HC, who bring together the best aspects of One By One, Ebola, and Disaffect, with a touch of Life...But How to Live it?  On this one, Kismet blast Happy Bastards away.  They're just way on top of their game, and HBs have hollow production and much less energy than they had on the next split (except for "Damn Nation" maybe).

This next split is an LP, and although both bands are from Eugene (not international, I know), the Happy Bastards tracks are just too incredibly good not to post.  These eight anthrax Jell-o shots go down so smooth and just rip you the hell apart.  I was an instant fan; no latency period required.  Side A is occupied by Human Certainty, a band who seemed young and full of ideas.  Like many bands of this nature, putting it all together yielded uneven results, although I do enjoy their music quite a bit (not so much their vocals).  Stylistically  HC could have come from Arizona, bringing to mind the metallic yet emotional fury of bands like  Absinthe or Jeremin.  

Happy Bastards splits with Kismet HC and Human Certainty

Recent Re-ups:

Def Master 7"

Sutek Conspiracy Discography

Seven Inches of Songs About...

In sorting through the mess of split EPs I've got lying around me right now, I once again felt the need to choose a theme to make sense of it all.  I've arrived at an international theme, as in the next few splits will have bands from two different countries.  Having stated that, both 7"s tonight are linked by German melodic hardcore workhorses, Inner Conflict.  When I first heard this band's second LP, I wanted to dislike them due to their "processed" vocal sound and the fact that they played with a drum machine.  But the driving riffs and melodies were too much for my sanctimonious knees, and an inevitable collapse took place, followed by a surrender.  The usual adjectives-- energetic, catchy-- associated with bands of this style are ever so appropriate here.  This first installment sees the band paired up with a Finnish band whom I liked a great deal; then they recruited vocalist, Arja, and it morphed into a love affair!  Juggling Jugulars has got to be one of the most explosive and distinctive bands in Europe today, and they only seem to get better with each release.  This time around they treat us to four tracks so charged and ornery, you'll never get a chance to nail them to any one genre within the punk (dis)order.  Each band also covers a track from the other's back catalog, thus solidly rounding out an already rock hard piece of wax.

 Inner Conflict's Spanish friends on this next split hopefully need no introduction.  For me, Sin Dios have been an intermittent crutch, anchor, and a slap in the face for many years and will continue to be even though they are long deceased (as a band).  "El Poder Mundial" is sadly only two short jabs, displaying the band's fighting spirit even as it was sinking to its knees.  If you've heard the other splits and the last CD the band put out, the tracks are along those lines.  While I regard "Ingobernables" as Sin Dios' pinnacle, the material just afterward was still better than most punk or hardcore out there.  As mentioned above, Inner Conflict take side B honors with two of their best tracks.  "Down" follows the band's usually style, mixing faster hardcore tempos with slower, more anthemic moments.  But it's "Scene" that has stuck with me since first hearing their side.  It's easily their most fist-pumping, gritty anthem, holstering their melodic weapons, and reaching for the switchblade instead.  Both sides go by way too fast, but hopefully the other 7" will offset this disappointment.

Both splits here

Contact Twisted Chords to get hard copies!

Swallow This

The end of our last century brought the hardcore world platitudes-a-plenty, from the personal to the sweepingly apocalyptic. But there was always an overpowering, undermining presence, seeping out now and again from the barrio cracks, and snapping us out of our self-righteous daze.  Spearheading this force was Martin and Lengua Armada Discos.  Both names have become inseparable from the names Crudos and Limp Wrist, but this post will focus on one of the less celebrated bastard children of the franchise, Tragatelo. I'd like to think it was celebrated less only because of its brief existence.  As Ricardo pointed out, the band was formed by Martin and Lina (of Subsistencia) among other hardworking musicians active in the late '90's.  Lina takes most of the vocal duties, and the band backs her bansheefied screams with the same raw and elemental drive that immortalized some of Crudos's finest work. New fangled designs will come, dazzle, and eventually succumb to obsolescence or else collapse under the weight of their own convolutions.  But the LA Discos workshop hammered out simple ones, made of the most solid stuff, and which aren't likely to wear out for some time yet.

 The twelve inch below comprises the band's tiny discography, collecting their side of the split demo (with Kontraattaque) and some unreleased tracks.

¡Tragatelo!

Recently Re-upped:

The "El Guapo Comp."

I Should've Been Kissing You

It has been entirely too long since the last emotive French band was posted.  This attempt at making things right is brought to you by Kiss The Bottle, a short-lived project comprised of members of Finger Print, Amanda Woodward, Daymare...the list goes on.  Amanda Woodward is the most recognizable reference point, but with only one guitar, KTB's sound is a bit more raw and bare, but the vocals are the identical outraged shouting AW fans have come to appreciate.  Beyond that, expect less of the quiet picking and more of the buoyant mid-paced, emotive rock-core these musicians mastered previously.  The rips of the 9" are my own (320) and the demo CD-R was provided by the band and Stonehenge Records.

Kiss The Bottle 9" and CD-R

Recent Re-ups Requests:

Hard To Swallow- "Protected By the Ejaculation of Serpents" LP (re-ripped!)
Enewetak "Deadbird" 7"
Axiom/Church of Nihil/Autonomia Split LP
Whipped- "Agitator" LP
The Shivering partial discography

I've once again got some time on my hands, and no money with which to skip town.  Keep up the re-up requests, and let me know if you're looking for anything else.

Nuestra Tierra Anahuac

Amid the abysmal mire of gloom, doom, and nihilism that marks our current era of crusty hardcore comes a light, once again not from the coming epoch, but from the previous one.  Among other things, nineties political bands still had some fight left in them, and no shortage of hope.  I love revisiting these bands, not just for nostalgia, but under the pretext that we might come full circle again in the near future, that the collapse we are anticipating will be a transformation, not a terminus.  All of this is encompassed beautifully in Subsistencia's only release, the "Nuestra Tierra Anahuac" CD.  Much like their Scottish contemporaries, Sedition, Subsistencia draw their vision from an atavistic connection to the land of their/our ancestors, in this case, to Meso-America (Aztecs, mainly).  Musically they're not far off from the last comparison, although their aggressive tracks remind me more of Disaffect (along with the spirit and occasional ska/reggae tendency of Sin Dios).  In between the pounding and thrashing there are softer passages with undistorted guitars and flute, which add an individual character to the band, and make for an epic listening experience.  I also appreciate how the dual vocals are shouted loudly and clearly, making it forgivable that no lyrics are provided in the insert.  Grounded in the past as they might seem, the band is very much about their present (mid/late nineties) and our future (present?), showing a strong concern for the place occupied by developing nations in the global era, and their ensuing struggle.  Passe as this all may seem to the cynics among us, I anticipate that bands like Subsistencia will one day again be considered visionary, a feeling I'm already inclined toward.

Subsistencia - "Nuestra Tierra Anahuac" (Xicano Records and Film, 1998)

Recently Re-uploaded:

"400 Day Headache" Comp
Ivich Records and comp appearances
Enewetak rarities
Hybride
Sea Shepherd 7"

Vicious Pleasures

Since I don't go to shows much anymore, grabbing random demos and getting pleasantly blown away has replaced the excitement of discovering bands the more preferred way (live).  Although places like bandcamp remove some of the mystique of the demo experience, at least the bands are getting more exposure (and bloggers get to spotlight certain bands to like-minded people... hey, maybe this blog isn't completely useless after all).  So on to the spotlight band, Vicious Pleasures, fired from that musical birth machine of Portland, Oregon.  By now we know that location doesn't necessarily mean much in this case, except for the higher potential for quality.  Therefore I'll describe VP as playing modern peace punk which reminds me of the slower-paced material from Signal Lost, minus the noodle-y guitar leads.  A formula like this leaves the vocalist exposed and vulnerable, and only one with charisma like Sara can hold things together.  Her pipes and style will appeal to fans of that gutsy, rock-crossover approach put on the map by bands like Icon Gallery, Godless, and, yes, Signal Lost.  The five-track demo is not only promising, it's a great listen and has excellent sound quality for a first outing.  So that you enjoy an almost authentic demo experience, I ripped my tape copy, but you can get a free digital download from the band.

Vicious Pleasures- demo tape

Bandcamp - Free download available

Alternate cover art:

Los Pobres, Ladrones, Y Muertos

This one's not a tape, but it was at some point.  Generacion Suicida's demo is the kind of punk that could be the soundtrack to my entire summer, evoking sweaty, beery garage practices, broken up by hours of blissful idleness under the smog-enshrouded Southern California sun.  The strategy here is to appear loose and untrained, but really I think these guys are quite calculated in their artful use of rawness and simplicity.  SG bring that post-1980's LA sound, mastered by Scandinavians like The Vicious and Gorilla Angreb, back to LA with an authenticity not only of place, but of style and emotion.  I've heard the band is great to see live as well, and you can listen to a live-on-the-radio set here. The demo tape was apparently released in two sets of 50, and the 7" version posted here in one pressing of 307.

Generacion Suicida demo 7"

No Hay Futuro

The posts this week(end) are the result of me finally locating my box of recently purchased demos and other cassettes, some of which I've been wanting to post, some I haven't really had a chance to absorb yet.  The Criaturas demo falls more into the former category, as the band's 7" and LP have been giving my turn table quite the workout of late.  While the band shares members and a visual style with Deskonocidos (another recent obsession), they don't come across as dark as their cousin band.  Criaturas perhaps share something in common with another Austin band, Sacred Shock, in that they draw from an array of impressive punk/hardcore influences, but what results is something better than merely the sum of these.  The standout quality on this outing is the sense of Cold War-era paranoia, conjured by the frantic pace of the drumming and fits of noise from the guitars, and given staying power by the way Dru sustains her shrill wails and cries.  Some exciting things have been happening in Austin, and although a lot of those "things" share members, I hope other musicians will be inspired and take up arms.

Criaturas demo

You can get wav files of the tracks here.

The band's 7" can still be found here.

The LP is available in many places, but was released by Trabuc Records, Spain.

A Very Special Brew

Whether you're of the opinion that Axegrinder was derivative or just happened to be doing similar things at the same time as other early UK crusties, you can't deny their place in the 'evilution' of the genre.  I for one have thoroughly reveled in their savage and methodical torments since discovering them for myself about a decade ago.  "Grind the Enemy" was Axegrinder's raw punisher of a demo released before their opus, "Rise of the Serpent Men;" but the rips I've been stringing along for years were a bit lacking. Now that I think of it, I probably could have found better rips if I was more persistent.   But, enter the (Italian?) bootleg operation, Pelvic Alee, who got it in their minds to release the demo on LP recently.  When this arrived at my doorstep, I was quite the giddy mess-- so much so that I decided to rip it.  The "label' did a quality job all around from the sound (keep in mind this is a 26 year old punk demo), to the covers, to the insert which includes lyrics and a biography of the band.  Check it out; I don't know if the quality is any better than what you have, but I wouldn't be much of a host if I didn't share.

Axegrinder "Grind the Enemy" demo, unofficial LP release

Wires of Storm and Song

I hope the reader will forgive my ADD by springtime proxy that has kept me away from this blog for so long. I hope s/he will also forgive this brief break from crusty hardcore to allow us to revel in a band which I always associate with spring, and not only because they are so obviously influenced by Rites of Spring. The Shivering may have artistic roots in DC/Maryland (ie. The Hated), but there is something all too Californian about them (Burlingame to be exact). The sap-risen angst of these youths pours out in April torrents of awakening and transformation, and always with that stabbing twinge of sadness, perhaps due to the overwhelming grandness of the splendor surrounding them, but with such little time and such paltry senses with which to take it all in. A noisier and more aggressive Rites of Spring is as good a start as any in describing The Shivering (or Bullets In, if you've heard of them), but their early work did garner at least one Jawbreaker comparison (merely a genre reference point). The link below offers their CD, two 7"s, and a 10".

The Shivering

"Behind Broken Eyes" CD (No! Records, 2000)

"To the Ground" 10" (Council, Into the Hurricane, and Owsla Records, 2002)

"Wires of Storm and Song" 7" (Council Records, 2002)

"Brand the Lion's Mouth" 7" (Council, Ahoalton, and Into the Hurricane Records, 2003)

Scream

Himei marks the smoldering nexus of several traditions and a touch of originality. The punked-out riffs can't decide if they want to be sharply angular or endlessly danceable, and for me they don't need to. All eight of the tracks on their two EPs meet so many of my musical needs with such pleasing efficiency, not least of which is the need to hear a possessed woman recently released from her straight jacket shrieking inhibition into a cowering little mass. Or a reasonable approximation thereof. Somehow Himei make good old hardcore punk sound fresh and new again, and their vocals rival some of my all time favorites.

Both Himei 7"s (H:G Fact, 2010)... here

Moselle As Fuck

Coexist is another French band whose 7" I didn't quite get a chance to post last week. Rather than savoring the screamotive excellence this country exported during the nineties, you may find yourself adjusting your palate to something more like what the UK bands were doing at the time (ie. Disaffect, Sedition, One By One). As the zeitgeist dictated, bands like Coexist were proud to eschew polish and precision in favor of heart-felt idealism and a dash of free-spirited creativity. Their rollicking, hard-edged peace punk is often garnished with more ambient build-ups that have now become mainstays in many a crust band's repertoire. The rather involved packaging of the first press of the 7" also stings me with pangs of nostalgia for the DIY days of yore: not only are there multiple inserts and a nice looking booklet, but the sleeve is made from a screen printed piece of sweatshirt fleece. While this is a far from perfect little EP, its spirit somehow leaves me with a warm glow, which its flaws only seem to enhance.

Coexist 7" (Ape Records/Brassica Rapa, 1995) Link includes scans of first press booklet and covers.

Studiocidal Transmissions from Planet Fascista

With this other oddball 7", we keep kindled the One by One fire with the waning hope that one day the former members will catch our signal and release the mythical discography CD. In the meantime, click the One by One label below for a bunch of their vinyl efforts, and the link below for the "Atrapad@s en el Fascista Planeta Tierra" 7". This one features a "studiocide" ("Silent Consent" and "Virtual Reality '93") and a "live evil" side ("The Monsters Almost Look Human Now," "Making Bacon," and "Nazi Raus"). Regardless of how you feel about live recordings, this is One by One, so it doesn't matter, but I do have to apologize for the abused condition of the vinyl being ripped here. By now you know the drill: One by One played passionate and unique political hardcore, members of which would go on to play in Ebola, Jinn, etc. Always a joy to hear, and an honor to post...

"Atrapad@s en el Fascista Planeta Tierra" 7" by One by One (Flat Earth & Victimas del Progresso- Crimines de Estado)