The punk scene in Hattiesburg is definitely living up to its reputation,
and now the small Mississippi town is once again delivering a very high
quality tape on the label of one of the pillars of this hyperactive scene,
Mr Hampton Martin. If you've read my (very) enthusiastic post about
one of the
latest Judy And The Jerk's live tape
and the
Earth Girl Tapes label, you already know what I'm talking about.
Anyway Hampton is back with this new project called Fumes,
back behind the drums but also back behind the mixing table as he recorded
and mixed these tracks. I don't want to seem like I'm ignoring the other
three band members (Ash, David and Blaine) but unfortunately I don't have
any information to share about them (that's always the problem guys when
you have a band member with a longer resume than the others). But enough
blabla, let's jump into the kitchen show circle pit!
Fumes play fast, even super fast most of the time, delivering
super catchy hardcore punk songs you immediately shake your head to. But
who says fast says short and, out of the seven tracks from the tape, three
are less than 40 seconds long, three make it past the one minute mark and
I will talk about the seventh later...
From the first seconds of the intro track (very smartly called
Fumes) the band sounds like a fucking classic, following in the
footsteps of some of the best 80s US hardcore bands names like
Ill Repute, Koro or The Fix immediately jumped to my
ears. And don't think I'm mentioning these classics because I'm reluctant
to reference newer bands or for any other kind of "old jerk reason", no
there's really something in Fumes which makes their songs sound
like they come straight out of this (some would say golden) era. And
that's exactly where I'm getting at with Inherited Consequences,
the seventh and longest track (2:56, an eternity in the hardcore punk
dimension)... and also my favourite!
In the purest tradition of "the long and slow song of our hardcore
record", Inherited Consequences is a little gem of American punk
that evokes Fuck-Ups' 7", F.U.'s Die For God or
Code Of Honor's What Price Would You Play (which are all
killer songs by killer bands by the way).
Of course I can't end this review without mentioning one of the other
great Hattiesburg hardcore band,
Baghead (another Hampton Martin joint), whose discography has recently
been released by the very good British label
Richter Scale. Not so far from Fumes after all.
Anyway if you didn't get it by now you can go hang yourself:
Hattiesburg punk AND Fumes fucking rule!
