Mop Buckets is a new quartet from Los Angeles, California, made of
three guys from
Cunts
(the ones from LA not
the ones from Australia with a Z, don't be misled by their album lame Metal cover artwork, these guys
play cool punk songs) which is a good point for a start as I can't help
but feel a lot of respect for anyone playing in a non-grindcore band
called Cunts (there is actually a Japanese grindcore band called
Cunts
but it has no relevance to our topic). These guys also played in bands
like
Retox,
Dead Cross,
Niis, Qui,
Planet B
(three of them are produced by
Ipecac Recordings
by the way) and other punk/metal/trash/whatever bands from the Los Angeles
area...
So a 6-track one-sided 12" just got out on
Order 05 Records, a pretty cool label from BerlinI already mentioned in my
post about
Skeleton Glove, and it's definitely worth a write-up so here we go!
Happy, the opening track, immediately sets the scene of the next
fifteen minutes, it's going to be dark, weird and deeply tormented. The
bass and the battery lead the song, like in a lot of noise-rock track,
while the guitar and the synth/electronic noises alternate between
"reasonable" surf-ish melodies and dives into madness. Of course
the vocalist's screams and shouts are not here to help us regain our sanity and the defenceless listener can't help but be drawn into this insane delirium whirlwind.
Scroll brings the heaviness back, the guitar crushing massive
chords on your fragile eardrums, unfortunately leading at times to some very Metal-inspired parts the album didn't need at all.
The four other tracks subtly mix a heavy "noise-rock sound" with the kind of "maniac spoken words" parts which will immediately make pop in your mind the
crazy face of the leader of a famous band from California that took its name from two famous murdered Democrat brothers. Yes THIS guy. In fact, the similarity is not limited to the tones of the singer's ramblings, but also includes the music, you know that "surf guitar vibe" and all that. Of
course the Man has put his speaker talent at the service of other bands as
you well know (D.O.A, No Means No, The Melvins and of
course The Guantanamo School Of Medicine and others) and I will let
you decide which of these sound the most similar to some parts of
Mop Buckets' songs.
But don't get me wrong Mop Buckets is not spoken-words band, they increase the tempo at times and clearly leans towards an appreciable hardcore punk side.
And strangely the riff of It's A Love Song brings Refused to mind (The Deadly Rhythm?) but that's probably just me.
But my favourite track is definitely Little Fucker (the closing track) which starts like a haunting rhyme about "the little fucker, the sneaky little bugger", a highly disturbing rhyme that one can easily imagine being repeated senselessly by poor Jack Torrance, before the song unleashes, in a ball of heavy guitar and obsessive melodies, all the contained fury that the madman has stored up for too long... IS THERE NOTHING YOU CAN DO?
Brilliant!
Anyway don't get me wrong with all these comparisons, I really enjoy this (short) album (except for Scroll's lame Metal-inspired parts), there are a lot of great things in these songs but I would have appreciated more deeper plunges into "insanity" (like Little Fucker). But I'm sure the "Journey Into Madness" of these guys is just starting and the best is yet to come... in the meantime don't deny yourself the perverse pleasure of listening to Mop Buckets!
Glaas is an international band from Berlin, Germany, featuring five
ladies and gentlemen who all together have a rather very long curriculum
vitae... There is Seth (American, guitar) who has played in numerous
bands from numerous genres including
Clock Of Time,
Couteau Latex,
Useless Eaters,
Idiota Civilizzato,
Life Trap
(I love Life Trap!) and many more (these days he is involved in an
electronic hip hop project called
Blaq Hammer
and in a no-wave/post-punk act calledÖPNV)... there is Raquel (Spanish, bass) who has played in
Tortura,
Owner,
Retrofuture, her own solo project called
Lacquer
and plenty of other bands... there is Alexis (german?, vocals) from
the furious
Cage Kicker, there is Cosey (german, synth) from
DAS DAS
who also released a solo tape last year called
Interior Escapes
and there is Jan the drummer who was also behind the drums in
Idiota Civilizzato
and
Life Fucker.
Yes on paper Glaas does look like a "super group" or an
"all-star punk band" and we know that the result, although almost
always making labels extremely happy, can very quickly turn into a
pompous show-off where everyone tries to justify their "reputation" by
overdoing it (I have in mind the example of a 7", recently released on
the same label as the group which interests us today, yuck) but let's
not give in to the ease of prejudice, let's open our minds and ears and listen carefully to these
first three tracks, a little appetizer before the release of a LP in a
few months.
Easy Living was probably the obvious song to choose for a
promo tape, it's not "surprising" in the sense that you know you've heard that kind of stuff before but you also remember enjoying it a lot. It's a very good catchy
bass-driven song mixing modern post-punk influences (Sarcasm, Clock Of Time and even
Negative Space
at times) with old classics like Crisis and
Uk Decay (the "punk period"). Lead by Alexis' vocals,
which remain quite "punk" (if that means anything), the mix lets the
upfront guitar build the melody whereas the synth stays in the
background... and that works really well! That's exactly the kind of
"post-punk" I like to listen to!
All this remains rather similar on I'm The Problem and
Concrete Coffin (even if Alexis' vocals get even more
aggressive, which is not to my displeasure) with the exception of the
synth which gets more in the way of the guitar, building melodies of
its own, a very fashionable symptom nowadays which can really quickly
lead to some synth-punk bullshit if you're not cautious (I hate
synth-punk)... and Concrete Coffin for example is clearly
approaching my tolerance limit in terms of synth melodies...
So you got the idea, Glaas proved being able to make a great
songs of "predictable" post-punk and may give birth to one of the best
European album of the genre in 2022 (and I'm sure the hype around it
is going to be absolutely massive anyway) but it will find grace in my
eyes only if the whole holds the road in a certain diversity (that
should be fine in view of these three tracks) but especially if the
majority of the songs are not built around upfront synth melodies...
but that's probably just me and my old allergy to "new wave".
Anyway the best way to have a good preview of what's will be in the
LP is to watch this livestream concert with Pigeon (Pigeon rules!) recorded at
SO36 last August (and it's true that it's rather promising):
Wipes is a new trio made of "old-timers" from the Pennsylvania
punk/noise-rock scene. That may come as a surprise but a trio usually
means three persons, two of them
(Michael and Ray, the drummer and the bass
player)
coming from
Tile
(if you're into heavy, hammered, noise-rock edging with sludge you should
definitely check them out) and Matt, the "new" guy, is not really
new as he owns Shard Recording Studio where Tile is a
regular. Michael and Ray also played in
Bad American
(super good hardcore punk), Michaels drummed in
Fake Cult
and Ray was in
Fresh Meat.
Very well I think the introductions are done, what do we have here?
Released on
Limited Appeal Records
(like four Tile records), this 7" features two tracks only but is a
great appetizer before the release of their 14-track LP titled
Making Friends which should be out on
Hex Records
(home of
USA Nails
and
Alpha Hopper
among many others) in a few months (it was recorded a few weeks
ago).
Dumpster is a catchy noise-rock track which uses a rather "light"
guitar riff as a regular hook while the vocals naturally carry us along a structure that is more varied than it seems at first listen,
renewing the "spell" with each (very catchy) chorus. Dumpster mixes
some "more classic" rock'n roll/punk elements with a noise-rock base and is
clearly the A-side track that makes you want to hear more. It makes me
think of a less "dirty" version of some early
Brandy
or
Running
tracks.
You're The Boss is a lot (a LOT) heavier and sounds closer
to the kind of racket that Tile does when the word sludge takes
its full meaning.
If Making Friends keeps that mix of "sludgy" and "rock'n noise" tracks, providing that "Pissed Jeans nihilism", I'm pretty sure my headphones gonna eat and drink some Wipes for a while...
Mano Fico is a quartet hailing from Oakland, California, which
features people who played/plays in
NO,
Suss Law,
Erradict,
Anti-Sycotix
(and probably other way-too-loud musical acts), as well as the guy behind
Mental Crash Records.
Just a little extra information that will make you look cool at your next
local punk trivia: the name Mano Fico comes from an old hand sign,
the fig sign, which is far from meaning "good luck mate!" in some
cultures. You're welcome.
Mano Fico's first release got out in February 2020 on
bandcamp. It also says "Mental Crash Records" but it doesn't look
like any physical release followed the digital one.
I guess the four tracks of this EP could be described as some fast
raw-punk (leaning on the street-punk side at times) with female vocals and
could be reminiscent of Scarecrow or
S.O.H
(there is this kind of "d-beat linearity vibe", especially on
Loving Memory) but with
a less "overwhelming", less powerful, kind of
sound (the "demo sound"?). Also the vocals are a lot less hoarse than
Scarecrow's which give to the whole thing a stronger "punk rock
vibe" than the two previously mentioned groups.
I mean, in the end I may just be trying to draw weird comparisons and
Mano Fico is just a pure punk band taking as much from old classics
like Vice Squad (the vocals on Dysphoria!) as from
Peace Talks
or
Concrete Lawn... All that to say that this demo/EP is pretty good but doesn't really
stick out from many bands I've listened to before (which is also a weird
thing to say because I listen to most of the bands I listen to because
they're in line with bands I've listened to before... well you know what I
mean).
And then things changed.
The guitar player left and was replaced by Kevin from
NO. And Kevin from No doesn't play guitar, he plays synth. So
Mano Fico went from a most classic punk/rock set-up to a band with
a synth but no guitar right? Yes and then they delivered
Inferno Night.
Taking advantage of a much better recording than the demo and in spite of an atmosphere leaning inevitably slightly towards a synth-punk side which could have very quickly put me off, Inferno Night is obviously a very catchy track. The synth finds its place, keeping a very heavy and distorted sound which doesn't take anything away from the straightforward touch of Mano Fico's punk. A great song and a successful career transition!
Let's talk a little bit about my Christmas present, the DVD of the 2012
documentary titled Punk In Africa (yes I think people around me
have finally figured out my main areas of interest).
With this kind of title one could be expecting a review of the whole
continent (which sounds both extremely weird and arrogant) but as the
subheading clearly specifies the movie's not about punk in all Africa (54
countries... most of them where punk probably never existed at all anyway)
but specifically about punk bands in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Mozambique
(so the eastern part of southern Africa) but, as I will explain below,
mostly focus on the SA (South Africa) scene.
National Wake
The movie opens with a review of the different punk scenes in SA in the
late 70s / early 80s, scenes which could recall by
their sizes
the very small early Australian scenes of the not-so-big cities, but in a
completely different and completely specific context. It's essential to
understand what was the kind of atmosphere at the time, an atmosphere
deeply linked to the political regime in the country which was very far
(and that's an understatement) from conservative, but liberal, Australia.
So, and that's the real point of interest of this movie, how was the punk
movement able to develop under the racist authoritarian regime of the
Apartheid?
Following the
Soweto uprising
of June 1976, the start of the punk movement was inline with a contest
movement against the racist SA regime. Punk started as a white western
youth movement in Europe and North America and therefore spread mostly
(only?) among the working and middle white classes of SA. Regarding how
conservative and oppressive the SA society was at the time (for example it
was obviously forbidden for white and black people to live together but it
was also forbidden for blacks and whites to dance together) it was quite
"easy" to be "subversive" and seen as a "threat", even as a band made of
young white people, and consequences for any kind of activities seen as
political activism could be really severe (arrests, police harassment and
even unexplained "disappearance"). It was also a time of
war in Angola, the situation there was a bit complicated but to make it short the SA
government was not too happy about the independence of their neighbour
from Portugal domination in 1975 and the creation of a communist regime at
their border. Troops were sent and Angola soon became another theatre of
conflict in the global cold war where American-backed SA troops fought
local communists and Cuban soldiers (a lot of Cuban soldiers) sent in by
Castro to support the young free country (and he did so against the will
of the soviet union). And it lasted more than ten years...
So you can guess that a lot of young SA men were not too keen to to go
get killed fighting communists in another country, opposition to the war
and conscription soon became another important "subject" to rebel against.
And rebellion is exactly what Punk is.
But let's come back to music.
The very beginning and the Durban scene:
The documentary takes us first to the city of Durban (which, according to
some, was the epicentre of punk in SA) where
Wild Youth
(which is considered the first punk band in SA), was trying to fight
boredom and the establishment with noise and rock'n roll. They were soon
joined in this noble quest by Safari Suits from Cape Town and they
both featured on the 1979 compilation Six Of The Best with two
tracks each (it's not on YT but you can download it
here) along with other bands from that time.
After Wild Youth came
Power Age
(in 1981) whose raw sound fits easily into the UK82 or anarcho-punk genre.
They're actually a great band with very strong anti-Apartheid lyrics, I
discovered them with this movie and tried to go through their discography,
it's really worth it and you should really give it a go. Despite many
difficulties and some line-up changes they played for seven years and are
probably one of the most important SA bands from that era.
The scene was small, and sometimes extremely small, but there were other
bands too. You can fin some of them (Rotors, Leopard,
War Spike, Gay Marines etc...) on the 1983
Afrika Corps tape compilation released in France which features ten
bands from the early SA scene, mostly from Durban I think (it's on YT but
you can download it here
also).
Johannesburg:
The movie takes us next to the big city of Johannesburg and the main band
there seemed to be National Wake(formed in 1981). Contrary to the
bands in Durban which seemed to be composed of white people only (the
regime was "strongly" against blacks and whites mixing),
National Wake started as a multi-racial band, not really on purpose
but because it was coming from a "house", a "community" where people of
different skin colours were living together.
Clearly calling for unity and a big change in SA society,
National Wake started as a punk band with a rock'n roll sound but
quickly drifted toward reggae. Of course their "mixed racial activities"
didn't go unnoticed and they had to face many problems with the police but
it looks like they managed nevertheless and were even able to play in some
townships.
Unfortunately, after the release of their album in 1981, the police
harassment kept getting worse and worse, the band members lost their
shared house and had to cease their activity.
Another Jo'burg band is mentioned, the completely different and more arty
Koos. They're part of a scene which decided to express themselves
in Afrikaans and not in English (it's a subject I don't know well enough
to try to develop here but languages are linked to important political
issues in SA). Yes we start drifting away from punk shores but if you're
curious about arty and experimental new-wave from SA you should give it a
go.
Cape Town:
So apart from the already mentioned Safari Suits, Cape Town gave
birth to the Kalahari Surfers in 1982,
a band which "was essentially
a string of studio projects realised by Warrick Sony
at Shifty Studios during the 80's" according to discogs. Anyway it
was more or less a real band (a duo?) at the time of the release of
Gross National Product, the first Kalahari Surfers' album.
As you'll quickly notice the music is based on beats and percussions and
doesn't sound punk at all, the political involvement of
Warrick against the Apartheid as a musician and as a person (he was
strongly opposed to the army) is, more than his contribution to punk
music, the main reason for his presence in the film.
And from there the movie starts to drift further and further from shores
of punk to bands (like
The Genuines) which obviously, by their very existence or by their lyrics were
challenging the regime yes... but were not playing punk music. So I
started to slowly lose interest in the rest...
After the Fall:
The Apartheid finally ceased (after more than 40 years since it was
officially formalized) in the early 90s, bringing the youth of SA into a
new era which will not be exempt of challenges and disillusions but which
also gives opportunity, at last, to people to play and sing the music they
want.
So that's all very good news but unfortunately the movie seizes the
occasion to take us into the 90s ska-punk / pop-skate-punk scene (Hog Hoggidy Hog,
Fuzigish) and... that's not really my cup of tea. I mean that's not SA's fault,
the 90s were a tough time for punk in most countries after all...
An interesting point though is the importance put by these white young
men into their South African identity but also into their African
identity, yes it can't be denied that these guys are Africans and it's
good to recall the obvious sometimes, being from Africa doesn't mean being
black and vice versa.
Outside South Africa:
Unfortunately I was also quite disappointed by the parts about Mozambique
and Zimbabwe.
In Mozambique the only band mentioned is
340ml
from Maputo which plays some kind of rock-reggae very far from punk. Their
story is quite interesting though and I don't have the occasion to hear
everyday musicians from Mozambique talking about their experience in a
"socialist" country which went through a 16-year-long civil war until the
early 90s. So yes ok that's kinda cool but that's not punk!
Same with the part about Zimbabwe which mostly focus on two bands:
The Rudimentals, a ska band fronted by a Zimbabwean but that is based in Cape Town, and
yes these guys also got interesting things to say (especially about the
problems experienced by Zimbabwean immigrants in South Africa) but what
they're playing is not related to punk music... Same thing for
The Evicted
from Harare whose music is even less bearable...
Powerage
Conclusion:
In the end I've got really mixed feelings about this movie, on one hand I
was really fascinated by the first part about the development of a punk culture
in such a difficult political context and how the involvement in that
culture was always deeply linked to a strong (and dangerous) rebellion against Apartheid.
I also discovered some cool bands along the way.
On the other hand I find the second part (the post-Apartheid part) less
relevant, Ok the context is still quite interesting and I don't hear very
often about more or less related punk scenes in countries like Zimbabwe
and Mozambique but all that is very far from punk.
Anyway if you're interested I've uploaded the first part (about South
Africa only, until the end of Apartheid) and you can watch it below,
unfortunately there may be a few minutes in Afrikaans without subtitles
but it's mostly in English.
N,J'Oi!
ps: the last documentary I wrote about was about the life of the first singer of Camera Silens, Gilles Bertin, and it's right HERE. It's in French but with English subtitles made by myself.
I wrote a little something about the latest Sial 7" in my
2021 Best Of Records list
explaining how Sial's music didn't really interest me at first and
how it finally grew on me, especially after getting really into the above
mentioned 7". So I started going through Sial's discography and
even if they didn't become my favourite band they probably prepared my
ears for Xyresic on which I stumbled upon a few weeks later.
But let's first answer the most pressing question that has been bugging my inquisitive audience for at least a paragraph : where does that weird
word come from ? Well
the internet tells me
that it could be an almost forgotten and very obscure English word coming
from from an ancient Greek word meaning "sharp as a razor". Sounds like a
cool explanation for a punk band name (I could also be completely wrong
and it could simply be some indonesian slang for glue sniffing, who
knows).
Anyway these guys play together since 2017 or something like that and
some of them played in
Rataa
and
Violent Pacification
a little prior making the world a little louder with
Xyresic.
First thing first, it's important to says that
Xyresic's lyrics are in Spanish (well at least the songs' titles
all are, not sure about all the lyrics as I don't understand anything the
vocalist is screaming all over the place), which is an interesting fact
for a band whose members all seem to be from Singapore (I could be wrong)
and for those who didn't go to school at all: Spanish in not one of the
four official languages of the Lion City. Interesting indeed because at a
time when bands from the Spanish speaking world seem to have (mostly)
turned their back on English (good!) to fully embrace their native
language they seem to have also become a strong enough influence to make
Spanish become another kind of lingua franca of punk bands for
some. I'm strongly in favour of bands singing in their own languages (why
would someone sing in a language not spoken by anyone in their own
countries?), yes it's really an "anti English language imperialism"
intellectual stance (says the French guy writing a blog in English).
Seeing another language taking English place is not really what I had in
mind (Yes I know we're not there at all) but it's a start (now let's ban
English lyrics in French bands!).
Ok so the fours tracks of this demo from 2018 sound really like they
could have been written in a squat in Barcelona or somewhere in Colombia.
Yes that's incredibly similar to Spanish speaking raw punk (that's the
whole point I know), Xyresic's songs are linear and fast (puh pah
puh pah puh pah) and aggressive with a shitload of reverb on the vocals
(of course), fully embracing the codes of the groups taken as models. It
alternates between "fast" d-beat parts and slower mid-tempo heavy raw punk
parts.
I've seenUna Bèstia Incontrolable
(a band that I don't like) mentioned a few times but I was more thinking
of
Irreal
(of course),
Korrosive
(if they were singing in Spanish, Finnish hardcore is not far from that
genre after all),
The Juakinners
for the D-beat side and of courseReacción Violentaor
Pobreza Mental. Well you got the idea.
This demo doesn't bring anything new to the good old recipe but I
surprisingly found myself listening to it several time and really enjoying
it. With three tracks out of four under the 1:30 mark it's short enough to
not be boring, it's well played, it sounds good and it's exactly what I need to blast through my headphones sometimes. A cool demo in my opinion!
Xyresic doesn't waste any time and comes back one year later
(2019) with a brand new 10-track LP (released on
Pissed Off Records
and
Dead Bir Records).
So no surprises here, Xyresic didn't turn into a Rastafari reggae
quartet (fortunately not everybody is Bad Brains), the Singapore
band keeps delivering "classic" Spanish D-beat raw punk songs, which after
the demo review I just wrote above should be just enough to satisfy my
humble needs right? well yes but (yes there is a "but") for some reasons I
don't really get into this album, yes there are some pretty powerful songs
like Dos Caras, Rastreadores Espeluznantes or
El Diaspora and others but a couple of things annoy me though.
First the vocalist seems to want to add a lot of waaarrrghs everywhere
(I'm not against a few
waaarrrghs here and there at times,
waaarrrghs can be cool) and that's a bit too much, it recalls bad taste
Crust and Hardcore and it's tiring. Second I don't like the way the whole
think is mixed, contrary to the demo the guitar sound has no "depth" (or
not much), the drums sound a bit faint and the vocals are way too upfront,
which gives a disappointing result (in my very humble opinion) and my ears
can't really "get hooked".
Despite some cool tracks I find the whole album a bit hard to listen till
the end, a bit boring and tiring to be honest. It will probably fulfil
your wildest and rawest expectations if you're a die-hard D-beat fan
though.
Two years later (in December 2021) appears Nuevo Orden Mundial on
their bandcamp page. Just one song and no explanation, nothing. Should we
hope for a new release in the coming months? I suppose so.
I would even say "let's hope so!". Yes that new song sounds pretty good,
the mix is great, it's catchy and aggressive and (to my knowledge)
introduces a new kind of beat in Xyresic's history (which is cool).
It's still doesn't have the "wall of energy vibe" of Sial's sound but
it's getting a bit closer.
I will let you know as soon as a new release shows up.
