Soft Torture is a new punk quartet from Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, made up of Chuck, Jess, Sam and
Aaron. Chuck (bass) played in
YDI
(pronounce Why Die if you're cool), an early 80s
hardcore punk act from Philly, Sam (guitar) plays in
DeStructos, Aaron (drums) plays in
Haldol
and
Blank Spell, has played in
The Stasi
and even in
Bad American at one point, a killer hardcore punk band mentioned before in my post
about Wipes. Aaron also manages
World Gone Mad Records
which has released some of his bands' records,
Soft Torture being no exception.
Ok that's way enough for an introduction, turn up the volume
and listen!
Fast and loud indeed! With no track exceeding two minutes, there's no time to waste, they play a super tight kind of fast-punk/hardcore punk with frantic rhythms and guitar riffs supporting mad and hallucinated female vocals. These eight songs (I don't count the outro as a real song) got that weird twist that would make some add the adjective "arty" to my previous and, I'm sure you'd agree, most accurate description ("arty" tends to be used a bit too often to describe anything slightly different from your next-door drunk pogo punk band so I'll refrain from sticking it on Soft Torture's music today, if you don't mind), let's just say that these guys are pretty skilled at making their songs sound both super fast AND super weird, a difficult outcome to achieve that requires a certain amount of musical "mastery" (the guitarist's killing it!).
The vocals also has a lot to do with the strong sense of "madness" and frenzy that immediately made me think of the awesome Judy And The Jerks, of their English counterpart of Sniffany And The Nits and, to a lesser extent, of Thing and CrotchRot.
The record concludes with a 2:30 long outro which pops up like a pin-up from a cake at your grandma's birthday party: a bit unexpected you know... (well I don't know your grandma but I figure...). A slow and melancholic instrumental ballad more reminiscent of some Doors B-side than of Black Flag but I like it, isn't the world slowly sinking towards its own extinction anyway?
Soft Torture falls into a well-known category of super tight and super fast "weird" punk with female front vocals that's been extensively explored over the past decades but that I always enjoy (I'm a sucker for this shit), especially when it's played as well as Soft Torture do. A very good release!
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...
Half is hailing from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and started as a
two-men studio project around 2018 if I'm guessing correctly. I assume the
name of the band comes from being a duo, but after all, who gives a
damn?
Demo Of Half, released in 2018, starts like you'd
expect, with some straight forward, simple punk songs full of 1-2-1-2
drumming and angry vocals. Some faster parts break the mid-tempo pace most
of the songs are based on while the guitar brings the little extra
interesting something that hook you up enough to want to come back in a
couple of years to see how it's evolved.
Ok that was just the start, there is also the painful Razor which
drags us deep in some parts of the cold wave world I don't really want to
visit and there is Time Will DestroyIt which is probably a
good private joke making fun of some weird EBM drone stuff but turns out
in the end to be a pain in the ass.
So I can clearly feel that these guys are in between the world of
hardcore punk and some darker shores, closer to post-punk, goth and other
weird electronic scenes, and it's an interesting mix after all. This demo,
despite being not very convincing (but that's a demo after all), makes me
wish that they will keep digging in the right direction.
The duo comes back one year later with their first full length (if a
7-track 19-minute long record can ever be called that) which is, like the
demo, a digital-only release if I'm not mistaken.
As the first track makes us clearly understand, the Philly duo maintains
the focus of their 2018 demo (which was mainly hardcore punk) but their
home recording and effective songwriting abilities have clearly improved
in a year. Far from sticking to the "let's play some fast hardcore, dude"
motto, Hype I and Burt Murder (great names by the way) don't
hesitate to venture in a slower, more US punk-minded area with tracks like
Just Tell Them You're Still A Student (great track's title dude)
which ends slow enough to perfectly introduce the pace of
Skin Trashers and its old-school horror punk vibe.
These two guys successfully explore the land of 80s US punk (I can't help
but think of Circle Jerks on tracks like George Town for
example) but they're far from limiting themselves to heat up the same old
formulas (which is sometimes more than enough to make a good punk band by
the way), no they manage to successfully play with the codes, to bend the
genres' edges and to distort all that shit to make tracks that come really
well together in a "harmonious" whole.
What I mean is that I am particularly sensitive to albums that
manage to build a "journey through various levels of intensities",
building ascents and descents, bridges between rage and speed, gateways
between several levels of emotions and, above all, "rest areas" that allow
you to inhale a well-deserved breath of air after a steep hardcore track.
And I do believe that's what Half has successfully managed to
create with The Years of Time.
As on the demo, they can't help but conclude with a dark, slow and rather
boring track that probably fills a need for coldness and gloominess that
this rather successful punk record (so far) was lacking.
If you ever feel the same urge here is a little tip by
Burt Murder himself:
The snare sound on track 7 was achieved by placing a large turd on the
drum's surface. It was wrapped in many layers of saran wrap and masking
tape.
And I would add: please skip the baked beans in the morning.
Summer 2020: it's a two-track single we get this time, the hard to describe Three Animal Bones whose slow punk vibe and
distant "radio" vocals don't really convince me but which got nevertheless
something from the Half I know, and the "surprising"
3AB whose haunting and strange beginning makes me think of
Twin Peaks until the tortured, twisted, heavy and desperate vocals,
sifted through a rather ugly "radio" filter, come to add an extra layer of
discomfort it definitely did not need.
To make it short: not the release I'd recommend to anyone who wants to
get into Half.
And here we finally reach the record which introduced me to Half's
sound and convinced me to lay down the few words that your eyes have the
pleasure of reading right now.
Wiss is a record you gotta listen to a few times. Don't be
mistaken by Fast, the opening track, which may make you think that
Half is just making once again this good old mix of old school US
punk and modern sound, nah: Half has taken off and spread its wings
to the fullest.
Probably benefiting from the best recording and mixing quality of its
"career", the duo develops its "art" with care and subtlety in the
different directions already briefly explored in the previous records.
There is the "classic punk" side of course that has now turned into well
mastered songs called Fast and Damn for example, songs which
recall a lot but don't make any names immediately pop into mind (which is
a good point I guess).
And then comes the 4:46 long Firepit. Ok I have to admit I have
not been really nice with the dark-wavish tracks from their
previous releases, but surprisingly I find this one quite enjoyable. It
probably comes from the strong post-punk side gently built up all along by
the guitar, even imposing itself during the 3:45 mark explosion and its
downfall. But there's news here, we don't get a lonely darkish track only
this time, Laphroaig follows quite naturally as another good
post-punk track.
Belltower appears like a hybrid monster between the punk Dr
Jekyll and the heaviness of an indescribable Mr.Hyde, it's slow and fuzzy
as fuck and then it's fast, the vocals are upfront and in your face and
then distant and lost in the mist, it's angry ok but it's also sad and
full of despair... and what about this insane piano part which takes us
into the mental image of the haunted house that we all have in our
subconscious, an image built during childhood evenings spent alone in
front of
more or less cheap horror movies
while dad and mum were out...
But it's Projection which really put me on my knees, starting like
a ballad taken from The Stooges first album it turns into a highly
deranged soft song recalling the
Reverend Beat Man
/
The Monsters
and their obvious lack of sanity. I love it.
Ok that's already way too many words about a band called
Half.
Let me just recap: it's fucking time that a bloody punk label takes these
guys out!
Half rules!
PS: it looks like Half has turned into a real live band.
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.
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!
Thought Control started mid 2020 as the solo project of a punk / hardcore enthusiast from Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, named John K who played in
Bearings, plays in
Dirt Queen
and runs the new records label Electric Flesh with some of his
bandmates.
The project quickly turned into a proper band with members from the
straight edge hardcore act
The Diving Line
and from the Revolution Summer-inspired melodic hardcore band
Sunstroke
(an exciting line-up which suggests the possibility of upcoming live shows).
All right, the boring introductions having been made, what do we have
here finally?
Five tracks of fast, ripping, straight forward, super pissed-off hardcore
punk! That's what we got here!
John didn't try to play it subtle or innovative, no no! pure ripping
hardcore is purely and simply threw right in our faces: fast stomping
drums, simple in-your-face guitar parts but most of all, super angry
snarling vocals à laRay Cappo! Yes indeed
Youth Of Today, and many bands inspired by it (True Colors
etc...), were the first things which came to my mind during the very first
seconds of severe punching delivered by Thought Control. You know
how important vocals are in punk and hardcore and John's managed to put
soooo much intensity in it here, it's simply breathtaking! You remember
the very first time you listened to Urban Waste's Police Brutality? I hope you do! Well there is a bit of that here! (wow that's a nice
compliment ahah).
Talking of classics maybe Antidote's Thou Shalt Not Kill EP is the best comparison for Thought Control, there is the same raw intensity, the same kind of rushed super-pissed off bursts of energy, the very same impression of witnessing a deluge of desperate violence from a man on the verge of sanity!
I really hope that the band that has come to life around this project will be able to keep ensuring such a deluge of unleashed savagery, actually I'm confident they will!
A fantastic release!
And it looks like my wish is coming true, Not For The Weak Records has announced a 7" coming this spring!
