Another short one today about this young band from Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, whose online information is unfortunately quite
scarce.
Call them rude, call them highly offensive, call them what the fuck you
want, Crotch Rot (to not be mistaken with
the Brazilian grindcore band, the
80s metal band from NYC
and the
crust/punk/metal band from Sacramento
bearing the same name... you can of course forget all that stuff and treat
yourself with the
Chronic Sick's song) is a band with an attitude. But let them describe themselves: "Shitty riot thirl punk. We eat men. Subtle, classy, ladylike, nuanced,
mellow." Yes you got it, a lot of Riot Grrrl influences, a strong
Queercore attitude and a taste for clown costumes... sounds interesting right?...
Sucker Cuntis, I guess, the band's digital demo and very first recording. It was released on bandcamp early March and features this cool Jackie Kolifrath artwork that fits the "fuck you" feminist punk attitude the band has clearly decided to embrace.
A cover that immediately gives a certain "smell" to the record, now let's see how it sounds.
Crotch Rot deliver seven very provocative mid-tempo songs midway
between low-fi teenage punk and raw Riot Grrrl (a less grungy version of Babes in Toyland / Bikini Kill ?). It got this strong taste
of a young band demo, it sounds like everybody just picked up some random
instruments a couple of months ago with a strong urge to spit to the face
of all kind of establishment (isn't it like all young bands start?). So yes it's hesitant, it's a bit messy, it's
pretty basic but really... who cares? You've listened to the
first Bikini Kill
release right?
A bit like what
Critter
delivered a few months ago (with a less teenage vibe though) or what a more "american" version of
Sniffany & The Nits
(the vocals immediately made me think of the Brighton band) could sound
like, Crotch Rot is in the lineage of groups clearly marked by a
certain feminist/queer philosophy and is far from reinventing a rather
well-established concept but on the contrary seems quite credible in the
continuity of a "fight", or at least of a cause, which will probably
always be relevant. And that's what Punk can (should?) be.
The meters of energy, radicalism and willingness to make a change are all
at their peak and I'm sure the band will use all of it to improve and
deliver more (and better) killer punk tracks in the very near
future.
A short one today about this 7" from Sublevación, a new band from
Barcelona, Spain.
Released on
Discos Enfermos, this is the band's very first release and I unfortunately didn't find much information about these guys.
Based on the cover picture I would say that it features two members of
Irreal
(the singer and the drummer) but I may be wrong.
Anyway the comparison with Irreal is far from being irrelevant as
the two bands are swimming in the same pool, which happens to be the pool
where Spanish raw punk / d-beat bands frolic
happily in studded swimming suits. Similar yes but not the same anyway, yes the
drumming and guitar riffs are heavy, the vocals come from far away with a
lot of reverb (a bit like if the singer was locked in the cathedral
basement and was singing through the window well) and everybody's playing
quite fast but the low-fi recording gives a "demo" or "an obscure old
Spanish band tape unearthed from the posthumous mess of some old alcoholic punk
whose liver would have finally exploded" vibe.
Irreal has always
benefited from a more than decent recording quality, even on their very
first demo back in 2018, and to be honest this 7" from Sublevación sounds exactly like it was Irreal's first demo tape (before the "official" demo) with a "real" demo tape sound.
So it's a cool little 7" of good-but-not-surprising Spanish raw punk. I'm just a bit disappointed by the recording quality (except if it actually is a demo) and the maybe too much similarity with Irreal (what's the point of playing so similar stuff?).
I really start to enjoy doing these little write ups about Japanese
bands, it's a real challenge to get proper information and I love
it.
No No No are a trio from Ibaraki, Japan, they started in 2009/2010
(taking influences from the Swedish bandNödslakt, maybe after they saw them live or met them, not clear but I read
something about it), released a live tape, had a break of several years
for personal/job reasons, got back together and have been seriously
rocking for four years or something now. Sakai, the drummer, is
also involved in
Kili Kili Villa, a
label
and
webzine
covering the DIY scene, and in
Vogos, another band in which drumming does not sound challenging at all.
No No No made the cover and were interviewed in El Zine #47 (THE punk
zine in Japan, you can find a few old issues in
pdf on archive.org
if you're interested and read Japanese), if anyone got a link I'm interested.
Ok let's give it a try!
No No No's four-track demo
is the only release of the band's first period (roughly one year long
between 2009 and 2010). It's obviously a live take but it does
sound pretty good.
The trio delivers some classic Japanese hardcore punk, a bit shaky but
full of energy and reminiscent of the classics that everyone quotes when
it comes to Japan (The Comes,
Lip Cream
etc...) even if it doesn't really sound similar, but above all No No No recalls another female-fronted band from Ibaraki, the excellent
悲鳴
(Himei)
which was active around the same time.
More than seven years later (early 2018), No No No self-releases
Cutting Edge, a ten-track CD (whose artwork makes me think a lot of
the Little Prince for some reasons).
Based on the first track only you could think that the trio took it off
exactly where they left it so many years ago with a not-so-fast classic
kind of hardcore punk, but, as the following songs quickly show it, the
tempo has increased "a little bit".
You see speed, fastness, "velocity" (or whatever you wanna call it) is a
state of mind in punk, there is the "normal fast", the "super fast", the
"ripping fast" and the "insanely fast" (and probably others for that
matter)... and the one we're facing today is probably close to the
insanely fast level, the one you mostly meet in genre bearing barbaric
names like grindcore or power violence (or quite simply fastcore). And of
course when you got a Japanese female-fronted band playing at that speed
there is only name that can pop in your mind:
Melt Banana
of course!
Yes yes yes Melt Banana... a band that totally destroyed the
limits of the mental universe the word music was filling in my then
teenager brain, many years ago now...
But Cutting Edge is not just about super power-violence-fast
tracks, there is also the slower and very good
Sensitive Song whose "melodic" vocals are pleasantly surprising,
the mid-tempo instrumental Shadow, the almost 2-minute long
No No No which starts like an anthem and explodes in a more
"conventional" hardcore punk way as well as
Vanished (Into the City), the last track, whose slow and "scary"
bassline beautifully concludes the album.
To be honest I've found this album a lot more surprising and enjoyable
than what I was expecting, it's a good record!
A bit later in 2018 got out
Live Fast, the first No No No 7", released by
悲観レーベル (Hikan), a label run by one of the member of
悲鳴
(Himei).
Eight tracks that finally allow the band to demonstrate their mastery of
speed and anger, tracks that benefit from the best recording quality the
band has had access to so far and that are, in the end, more than a
demonstration but a proper lesson in technical mastery.
Technical mastery yes, but not at the expense of spontaneity and real
listening pleasure, No No No has perfectly understood the
importance of "breaks", of pauses to let breath, of the "low" intensity
parts that make the "high" intensity ones even higher and more efficient,
in one word the importance of carving in full and hollow.
And that's what totally blows me away in this record: ok it's insanely
fast and angry but it's so much more than that! It's diverse, it's
"melodic", it's sad and desperate but most of all it's not boring for a
sec. I mean listen to the beautiful break of Live Fast, to the bass
break of No End In Sight and of course to the so beautiful and
surprising Upset which recalls the 90s grunge / Riot
Grrrl scene...
I'm definitely impressed... I don't think I've ever heard
something like that.
2019: No No No,経血(Kei-Ketsu)
and Eyescream (to not be mistaken with the indonesian or russian bands of the same name), three furious female-fronted hardcore punk bands from the Ibaraki
and Miyagi areas, team up on a three-way split released by
Break The Records
and
Foad Records
and called
Croon A Lullaby
(and I absolutely love the cover artwork).
You should absolutely check out the whole record as all bands are quite
good but I will only focus on the one I'm interested in today if you don't
mind.
Well I didn't think it was possible but it really does sound like the
trio is playing faster than ever (these guys won't stop astonishing me).
What can I say?
Yes it's faster, rawer, crazier and probably better than ever!
Four tracks for a total of less than four minutes and a half, I think I
can say that No No No know how to keep it nice and short. And once
again it's well balanced, the breaks are just where they should be, the
"insanely fast" parts are absolutely insane and just long enough and there
is even a beautiful, but short, sung part on Silver...
It's just super good... once again...
(the Fynal Tokyo project is an initiative of the punk
photographerTeppei Miki)
The Indonesian label
Gerpfast Record
released this
Raw Live Fast Tape
in summer 2019 and it's exactly as described, it's a raw live recording of
a bloody fast band. I'm not a big fan of live recordings but this one at
least has the merit of showing (once again) that the band's speed is not a
studio affair and that seeing this band live can only be a mystical
experience. 12 minutes and 39 seconds, that's a decent show length.
I'm glad I've wandered around that page though, thanks to the label
recommendations I've discovered another Japanese gem,
the all-female bandOtoboke Beaver
from Kyoto (don't dare tell me that you're not impressed by
THIS!)... damn it looks like I have a lot of catching up to do on recent Japanese
punk...
2021: here is what is described as No No No's first full-length;
released on tape by
Gerpfast Record
(with a collage artwork by
Luna Kadima
from the Spanish bandSatélite)
and on CD by
Kili Kili Villa
(with
a different cover). It will also probably be their final release as they announced the end
of the band in December 2020 (I hope I understood that right).
The label announced really clearly that there was no digital version
(for now or at all, I'm not sure) so as surprising as it can sound in 2021
it means we will have to do with the two tracks (out of fifteen) which
were posted on YT for now...
And despite a small line-up change (new bassist), it doesn't sound like No No No has decided to give up and sell out...
Don't get fooled by the above picture of these three young and lovely
Swedish hipsters, today we're talking loud and nasty music (aren't we
always?).
I have to be honest here, I discovered this band quite recently thanks to
the great blog
Perte&Fracas
(a bottomless pit of noise culture in French only, merci Xavier) and I was
immediately hooked! So even if their latest release is not exactly super
new (it's from late 2020), I decided to write a little something about it
anyway because, first I absolutely love it, and second I feel that it was
mostly ignored by the punk/noise intelligentsia and it does deserve proper
"publicity" (and I do what the fuck I want here anyway).
So here we go!
Based in Malmö, the Swedish trio prepared for battle in a few other bands
before (and after) retreating to the bat-cave around 2015, bands like the
dark punk quartet
War In Youth, the indie act
Mary Anne's Polar Rig
(they released their debut album a couple of months ago), the loud
British/Swedish post-punk duo
Sex Act
and probably others that the omniscient world wide web has no idea of.
I will pass quickly on
An Album for Rawkers
and
Never Enough Rawk, from 2016 and 2017 respectively, which are most likely rehearsal
recordings and don't do justice to the band's sound. One song
(Hell) did make it to the below album though.
But let's start with a quick stop on the cover artwork which I find
highly effective in its simplicity but that, most of all, made me
immediately think of the cover artwork of the Mexican punk classicSedicion's
Verdaderas Historias De Horror...A great albumwhich, as you will easily agree, has absolutely nothing to do with
today's topic except for the drawing of the proud chiropteran.
Ok enough fucking around let's start with the difficult task of
describing what Bathouse actually sounds like. Hum hum (clearing
throat), imagine a nice day of spring, the sun is shining, the air is just
warm enough to feel comfortable wearing a t-shirt only and you're sitting
in the grass, in a quiet and lovely piece of land next to a small lake
with a peaceful surface, the soft sound of the water is only disturbed by
the discreet and cute chirping of birds happy to be back in the good
weather... you got it? good! well that's exactly what Bathouse does
not evoke at all!
Imagine a very noisy base, so noisy that it's hard to figure out how only
one guitar (and one organ?) can create all this mess, so noisy that your
brain takes you straight to the dark closet in the back of your foggy mind
where
Scratch Acid,
Brainbombs,
Pissed Jeans
are getting shitfaced with
Walking Korpses
and
The Hospitals... add some relentless heavy drumming, a few overweight distorted
bass lines in the background and some vocals ranging from anguished and
heartbreaking screams to 90's-style laments (Chemical Violent, which recalls, for some reasons, the chorus of
At-The-Drive-In's One Armed Scissor) and you'll get a closer picture of what kind of ruckus
Bathouse is able to make...
But you're not there yet though, there is also a bit of grunge (the
tearful Hell?), a bit of silly noisy punk bands influences (like
Bastard Kestrel?) but most of all there is a shitload of energy and a clear will to go
for it, to not let you quietly sip your aperol spritz with your cardboard
straw like a jerk but rather to kick your fat ass until you can recite the
Greek alphabet in reverse.
Even the quieter and "groovy" Moon Creature, full of cool bass
lines and screeching guitar riffs, has the strong smell of nursing home curtains set on fire by a toddler with matches from your kitchen. Yes
swedes can be unpleasant too.
One last good point, the band had the good taste to maintain all this
noise and fury in a duration fitting in your next-door hardcore punk
record, about 20 minutes... well I admit that I would not have minded a
little extra time, when it comes to love you don't count after all but at
the end of the day I do believe that intensity is better appreciated on
short records (who wants to listen to two hours of power-violence in a
row anyway? this is not Guantanamo here for Christ's sake) so that's fine with me... as long as you're not gonna make us wait
another 4 or 5 years before the next delivery guys!
It's unfortunately too late to include this record in
My Best Of 2020
list but believe me, as soon as I got my hands on a time machine taking back to crappy years, I do it.
Illiterates are a three piece outfit from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (a particularly fertile area for hardcore punk), from the same bunch of guys behind Speed Plans (check out their
Field Of Vision LP
from last October) and
Kill Enemy Records.
Illiterates release
this demo
in February 2019 (digital only?) and within five tracks show a lot of love
for fast straight forward old school hardcore punk. The band clearly
positions itself towards a midway approach of the early straight edge
scene with quite heavy rhythms and, above all, the kind of recognizable
gnarling vocals that recall
Youth Of Today
or
SSD. But don't get me wrong, it's far from reaching the point of bands like
86 Mentality,
Boston Stranglers
or even their compatriots from
Heavy Discipline.
The band doesn't sound exactly like the umpteenth incarnation of one
of the winning versions of American hardcore though, they obviously didn't invent
gunpowder (and that's not what we're asking of them), but I appreciate the
short melodic guitar passages and the bass line of Never Enough for
example, which take us off the beaten track a bit.
Honestly it sounds quite good for a demo, the guitars are a bit weak
though and take away from the energy of the whole (especially on the first
tracks) but don't prevent from greatly appreciating this cool debut release.
September 2019: this second release of the Pittsburgh's band, named
Fall Tape 2019,
takes it off exactly where the demo left with five new tracks of
not-so-fast gnarling hardcore punk.
Yes at first sight not much new here, and yet there is clearly more of this "crew spirit" made of
a lot of barking gang vocals which
confirm the Youth Crew influences and give a "more hardcore" feeling to the lot. The overall sound is quite similar with some not-so-heavy guitars and "background" drums leaving a lot of space for the singer(s) to growl and roar at will. There is even a slight oi! vibe in Klout.
I dig the break/mosh part and silly lyrics of Illiterates :
An Indian
And two dumb hicks
The aptly named
Illiterates
It doesn't matter if you're from the sticks
Or raised by immigrants
Cause if the boot fits
You could become
Illiterates
A cool tape that shows the evolution of the band in a more and more hardcore style that, after several listenings, makes me feel like the trio distinguishes slightly itself from the demo by more assertive but maybe also less "daring" choices.
But here is the release that brought Illiterates to my
attention,
their first LP released on Kill Enemy Records in March 2021. I recently read the interview of the guy behind the Richmond label
11Pm Records in
Razorblade&Aspirin #8
and was a bit surprised to read him say that "I always tell the bands that the cover is way more important than
whatever you put on it. ‘Cause 90% of the people aren’t ever gonna pull
the record out and listen to it." Well I strongly disagree with that (It's probably true to some extent in the US but down here I don't know anyone who does not listen to his vinyl
records, that sounds like a super dumb and snob thing to do...) but I do
agree though that a record cover is damn important... and the
Illiterates' one is a proper success!
Not a surprise when you know that the artwork is signed by
Keith Caves from
White Stains
(another great hardcore punk act from the city of bridges) who already
made a few great cover artworks for various punk bands/labels (mostly from
the Pittsburgh area) like the latest White Stains' LP of course but
also for the
Heavy Discipline's LP, the
Mutant Strain's LP, a couple of
Living World's releases (damn that band is sooo good) and the
S.L.I.P's Slippy When Wet LP
among others...
But back to the analphabetics; this LP has clearly one and only mission: stomp on your
face at high pace with heavy steel-capped boots all along twelve raging
tracks (including only one track from the previous tape, the unavoidable Illiterates, and one track from the demo). Luckily for you hardcore is still hardcore and none of them make it
past the 1:40 min mark...
Keeping the recipe of Boston-influenced / early youth crew hardcore the
band had developed in their two previous releases, they just made it
meaner, faster, heavier this time... enhanced by a perfect "hardcore"
sound (recorded at the Braddock Hit Factory, run by the
ex-Pissed Jeans bassist Dave Rosenstraus if I'm not
mistaken, guilty of producing and recording countless furious Pennsylvania
hardcore acts over the past ten years) that will instantly hit the right spot in your hardcore punk nerd frontal lob.
Yes it's fast, mean and angry and it sounds closer than ever to
Heavy Discipline,
Blood Pressure,
Concealed Blade
and all the PAxHC crew (it should be a thing if it's not already ahah) without reaching the, sometimes extreme,
heaviness of these bands; heaviness borrowed (and amplified) from straight edge ayatollahs like
Negative FXand
DYS.
In an nutshell that's the album the band deserved to deliver, it's all
you can expect from this kind of band.
A small remark however, I regret a little that the trio abandoned the
small deviations of the beginning (the bass lines and the guitar touches
mentioned above) to submit to a formula which is certainly more effective in its thrashing precision and brutality but which also is more predictable
and expected, bringing Illiterates back in the batch of the
bands which kick asses but don't mark their time.
Anyway if you're pissed off and feel like burning the whole world down...
You're welcome!
Bibione is a new all-female trio hailing from Prague, Czech
Republic, whose name seems to refer, for unknown reasons, to the Italian
seaside resort of the same name, near Venice, where some of Prague's youth
may go in search of sunny afternoons at the beach.
The first appearance of the Prague trio was with the trackKafe je kyselý (The Coffee is Sour)
on the
Crooked To Death III
compilation released on the Czech label
Stoned To Death,
at the end of last year, in partnership with
Crook, a Czech skateboard magazine. A rather uneven compilation I must say,
with mostly tracks that are clearly not my cup of tea but a few cool ones
though like the
München Konflikt's, the
Guest User's and of course Bibione's.
Kafe je kyselý is a very good mid-tempo punk track with a
heavy and stomping rhythmic session but also an overall slight surf
vibe distilled by the main guitar riff. It's dark and disturbing and
immediately recalls some of the heaviest Riot Grrrl bands like
Babes in Toyland (and a less "hardcore" version of the
Lithuanian band
Crucial Features).
Check out their killer video-clip (I find it super cool) made of
video footages taken of the 1964 movie
Straight Jacket
featuring a disturbed and scary ageing Joan Crawford.
A few months later
Bibione
release their debut 7" on
Stoned To Death
and, in contrary to their first title in Czech, have decided to do it
all in English (a bit of a shame in my opinion as I am strongly in
favour of bands singing in their own language but ok).
So with five new tracks (seven if you include the two bonus ones on
the
Stoned To Death's digital version) Bibione explores a side of DIY culture that is far from
being limited to the heavy side of the
Riot Grrrl influences you could hear in Kafe je kyselý,
on the contrary. The music of the trio turns out to be rather soft at
first listen, the guitar sound reminds of bands like
Shopping
while the bass lines build discrete but catchy melodies, also
reminiscent of the English band. But it would be a mistake to believe
Bibione harmless, anger is hiding and rumbles in the background,
ready to
explode in short angry bursts
at the bend of some surf-influenced melodies. The singer then
transforms her beautiful melodic voice into screams and shouts that
immediately take on a much more punkish quality that sounds like a
warning, Bibione can bite, hard.
Bibione follows in the footsteps of bands like
Bikini Body,
MrWrong,
Necking
and
Nape Neck
which, perhaps influenced by slightly older bands like the
above-mentioned Shopping, have incorporated the post-punk of
the Slits and Delta 5 into a contemporary approach from
which the Riot Grrrl movement cannot be absent but does not
predominate.
A remarkable debut EP which gives extremely high expectations for what's coming next...
