Summer's finally hitting the northern hemisphere and it looks like the next months (and probably decades) are going to be hot as hell... well so is the new RAF compilation!
Bands these time come mainly from the US (I can't help it if the quality of the American productions is so high) but also from Sweden, Germany, Serbia, Spain and France.
It starts out very hardcore before taking a more weird-punk turn midway through...
N,J'Oi!
01 - Gluer - Ride it Down 02 - Total Sham - Backstab 03 - Ex-Dom - Immer in der Ecke 04 - Crna Žuč - U Rovovima 05 - Salted Wounds - Count On You 06 - Invalid - This Life 07 - Irreal - Era Electrónica 08 - Judy and the Jerks - I Lost My Feet 09 - Little Angels - You Can't Always Get What You Want But I Can 10 - Daddy's Boy - Superspreaders 11 - Placid - Vexed 12 - Spread Joy - Ich Sehe Dich 13 - Girlsperm - Disembodied Man 14 - Syndrome 81 - Violence Sociale 15 - Astaffort Mods - Sentiment 16 - Malflora - Lady Damiana
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!
I've been really busy lately and I really struggled to maintain the frequency of my posts. Anyway here is, like every months, a new playlist/compilation of super hot punk stuff! A lot of killer hardcore punk but some post-punk and weird shit also.
I will probably have to lower the frequency of my reviews in the coming months but I will always keep this show running!
C ya soon!
N,J'Oi!
01 - Chain Whip - Two Step To Hell 02 - Anxious Pleasers - Errand Boy 03 - Ex-Dom - Desesperanza 04 - Imploders - Rip Em Off 05 - Ready Armed System - Hair Of The Dog 06 - Delivery - Floored 07 - Night Lunch - Stop Spots 08 - Cutters - Australian War Crimes 09 - ШТАЗИ - Штази 10 - Ilusión - Metiche 11 - Soursob - TV 12 - Super Cheap - Lines 13 - Show Me The Body - People On TV 14 - Modecenter - Chain Boys 15 - Dog Rally - Dog Heave
They've been called no-wave (The Contortions
?) and even free-jazz (Blurt
?) sometimes but to me, with this kind of line-up and sound, the obvious
comparison is
Lucrate Milk. Ok let's say a less-crazy-and-without-keyboard version of
Lucrate Milk
but Lucrate Milk nevertheless. So, just for you to be warned, in case you're allergic to chaotic and arty
French punk, I am going to mention Lucrate Milk a lot in this text
(I mean, even more than I already did).
Recorded in 2016 and released in 2017, this 9-track tape called
Plaza Demo
is the very first record of the band and immediately registered it in the
outside-the-box punk band box (if I may say). The songs' structures are all quite similar but effective, as Max can't
blow his horn and sings at the same time (some have tried but...),
Alejandra builds up the beginning with a hopping bass line, before the
"distorted" saxophone jumps in and Max drops some short, repetitive
sentences. And Alejandra sings as well.
And damn I can't help it, I hear
Lucrate
everywhere! Don't get me wrong it's a cool comparison, so yes there is a strong weird-early-anarcho-punk vibe in Preening, which is cool as well!
Demo Again
was released a few months later, as a tape as well.
If I understand right, these tracks were recorded in march 2017,
rerecorded for most of them actually as five out of the six songs were
already on Plaza demo, so I assume the band was not happy with the
result or felt that they had improved enough to justify a new recording
session. The difference is not striking to be honest but yes the quality is
better, it sounds more powerful, cleaner and the songs got more energy
(and we can actually hear the drums now).
SO I guess that this second demo should be considered as the band's debut
release.
And it's a good one! I am not gonna go through the
Lucrate comparison all over again, you got it now. The "new" track (there was only a 46s draft version on Plaza),
Bite The Sash, is actually quite interesting as it's a bit
different, yes the saxophone still bursts delirious madness all over the
place but there is also a slower, heavier background which gives an
almost-noise-rock vibe... It's definitely a different style but it makes
come to mind
Hit Cap by Giddy Motors.
Only one month after the release of the second demo (in august 2017),
Preening drop
Beeters, their first vinyl record, a 4-track 7" out on
Digital Regress. The songs comes from the same March 2017 recording session as
Demo Again. Big Big Brains makes a deserved comeback, as well as
Plaza Scare (both were on the first demo) and two new kids make
their entrance.
Beeters opens the show and sums up beautifully all the band's
concept in a great, very powerful and quite catchy track. Ok
Lucrate Milk all over the place etc... you got it now we
said! I feel that overall Alejandra sings more (mainly backing vocals) on this
EP and it gives a strong early British anarcho punk to the whole thing.
Yes I haven't mentioned it yet but there is of course a serious bit of
Crass, and maybe Poison Girls, in the background of it
all.
I finally understand that the march 2017 recording session was quite
prolific.
This 5-track EP (out on
ever / never records) is another (and the last!) "result" of the 2017
Left Field Studios session. Indeed I totally understand why the
trio decided to not release everything at once but rather piece by piece,
it gives free hands to focus on shows and new songs while keeping an
"alive" discography
(smart move). A total of 14 tracks were released between
Greasetrap Frisbee,
Demo Again and the other 7".
Two "old" songs from the Plaza Demo and three new ones, it's a
balanced mix I would say.
Poison is more quiet, less "hopping" (and slightly longer as wall)
than the old tracks, there is more of this noise-rock / experimental vibe
I could feel in Bite The Sash and that I find really
interesting. Same with Face On which manages to mix the anarcho punk influence
(that Alejandra-only vocals make really vivid here) with this slower, more
subtle "new" atmosphere.
Two of the best Preening songs so far (in my humble opinion).
With this third 7" Preening delivers what is probably their most
arty and dis-musical (you know what I mean) production until then.
Released on
Fine Concepts
in mid-2018,
Nice Dice
is composed of four new tracks recorded in may 2017 in Oakland and the
difference between this new recording session and the one from march is
huge.
Ok I will pass quickly on the fact that this song AND this video are
OBVIOUSLY making me think a lot of Lucrate Milk (once again) and
their frantic, Dadaist, surrealist and absurd videos (check out
this recap of their DVD).
Indeed the trio is pushing the "no-wavish" concept a step further:
CPD's "give it back, it makes no sense" stands as the leitmotiv
spine of this perfect anti-pop song, Effigy (a shorter version of
the Demo again one?) and Fascist Flecks are even "worse", reducing the idea of
song structure to a cubic painting whereas
Sister Corridor Oases got a more "classic" Preening song
construction (hopping bass line + ducky-ish sax).
So I would says that this 7" is not the most accessible of all
Preening's releases so far, but it offers a very good example of
the band's capacity to offer something "different" while fine-tuning a now
well-established concept. And that renews my interest even more.
Moving from a short to a long format is a risky challenge for a band like
Preening, which frantic disorder fits well a 7" but can become
tiring, or even worse, boring, on a full album.
Well I have to say I am extremely, and pleasantly, surprised by
Gang Laughter, the full length challenge taken up with flying colours by the
trio.
Back on
Digital Regress
(that they had left after Beeters), Preening delivers ten
tracks of subtle, well-built and more jazzy
than ever,
no-wave punk. Indeed it's been almost two years since their last recording and it's
obvious that everyone is more comfortable with his or her instrument.
Going easy on the frantic sax and slowing down on the hopping bass lines,
the band reaches a more "melodic" aspect of their music that is more
suitable to the LP format, less raw, less "punk", more arty maybe but more
suitable for sure. It may only be because I have discovered this Japanese band very
recently, but I feel like there is something of
Daisuck & The Prostitutes
in this new side of Preening, and I like it.
But don't get me wrong, the "old" band is not dead:
Dogtown Top Ranking, Slabs, Durango R or even
Water Closet to a lesser extent are here to make it clear, but even
those sound more mature, quieter... being the result of years of
practice. You can also feel that the trio is happy to (successfully) explore
unpaved ways:
There is the surprising interlude of Gang Laughter with its
"bells" or xylophone I don't know but also the "long"
Pillow Case which mixes pinches of "synth space noises" with an
obsessive pattern recalling early Nick Cave's music. And it's almost too early, while we are finally settled in the album,
that the end track, the absurd Everything is a T-shirt, beautifully
concludes this wonderful achievement by a very balanced mix between the
"old" and the "young" Preening, fading away in a jazzy but powerful
saxophone melody...
Good job!
Almost two years later, Preening is back with
Dragged Through The Garden, a new 9-track LP recorded in two sessions in 2019, out on
Ever/Never
this time
(like the Greasetrap Frisbee 7").
From the first minutes of this new full length it feels like
Preening picks up exactly where they left off at the end of
Gang Laughter. Preening is still Preening, the mature
band that had already displayed the full extent of their talents all along
their previous LP.
It starts as expected with Barn KP and No Season which take
us without any surprise into the, now well mastered, world of hopping
anarcho punk / no-wave with saxophone. It slows down a bit with Economy Head where the saxophone slowly
takes off before reaching a plateau of all-together vocals but in my
opinion it's really with Twinning that we really get into the core
of the band's formula. Dual vocals, insane soaring saxophone parts, long
"breaks"... no wonder it's one of the longest track of the album, the band
took the time to push the whole concept
a bit further... which is great!
After Twinning's "launch pad" to sky high excitements,
Red Red Lava paraglides us back to earth, acting like a noisy
background interlude, before the band fully resumes to their powerful
formula with the three following tracks: Autocon, You Gave It Away
and Rapt Fashion.
But it's really the very last track, the 4:30-long
Extortion, which offers a hypnotic finale composed of long
electronic sequences, diverse and offbeat noises... something I can
picture as a
David Lynch sound film. It recalls a bit what the trio had tried with
Pillow Case on Gang Laughter, but longer and more
"extreme". Described as a "Human-Eastman Dub" I suppose that this track was "built"
on the spot with both sound engineers but I wish the trio would keep
digging that direction...
So yes Dragged Through The Garden
is a good album, it's the expected successor ofGang Laughter. And I'm sure everybody will be delighted by these nine tracks and it's
a really good release to start with if you're not too familiar with the
band discography.
But that's probably precisely why I'm a little disappointed,
Preening has already demonstrated on several occasions its ability
to explore stranger, longer, more inaccessible areas and that's what I
expect from them now, to be to their past selves what PIL was to the
Sex Pistols...
Still a lot of tracks from late 2020 releases but also the first 2021 killer punk tunes.
A lot of hardcore punk this time but not only, I try to keep it as good and diverse (in the limits of my very good taste of course) as possible.
N,J'Oi!
01 - Thought Control - Thought Control 02 - Hackjob - Friends 03 - Pensioner - I Don't Sweat 04 - Futurat - во сне (vo sne) 05 - Black Button - Casualties of Progress 06 - Hüstler - Who's Your God 07 - Headlice - Auto-Erotic Asphyxion 08 - Preening - You Gave It Away 09 - Yard Act - Dark Days 10 - Imposition Man - Resilience 11 - Select Sex - Signals Turning Sour 12 - Lumpen - Dominan Tu Futuro 13 - ISS - Spikes 14 - Ero Guro - High Life 15 - Wails - Among Dogs 16 - Klämp - An Orb 17 - MelmACHello - Je laisse surgir
And you can of course listen to all past shows on Mixcloud!
Nutrition is hailing from Kamloops, British Columbia (Canada) and
has been around since 2015 or something.
Featuring members of the local punk and hardcore scene,
Nutrition can be described as a side project of the
Bootlicker's singer, Lewis , who happens to also be one of the two "CEO" of
Slow Death Records
(a very good label dedicated exclusively to BC hardcore bands) and plays
the guitar in Nutrition.
Lewis seems to be one these super-active guys who is always doing
something somewhere for the scene (a very loud something usually) and he
was part of several punk, hardcore and power violence acts like
Skuff,
Butcher,
Watch Dog,
Moxie,
Headcheese
and probably many others on top of
Bootlicker.
But no super heavy hardcore / D-beat here, Nutrition is a "freak
garage punk" band as Lewis described it himself.
This tape covers one year period between late 2016 and late 2017 and is basically a
compilation of the nine "singles"
released by the band at the time.
What's immediately striking with Nutrition is the vocals, I mean
it's a weird combination of moaning, baby screams, 77-like-singing and
hardcore shouting... It's super bizarre actually, there is all this
semi-hardcore structure with a clear guitar sound and a huge 77 weirdos
influence with this kinda onomatopoeia singing...
It's a bit like the Toy Dolls' vocal concept applied to modern
approach of punk rock coloured with US hardcore punk... well... something
like that!
It's catchy, it's kinda crazy and it's quite enjoyable!
The recording quality is not the best but it's good enough.
Even if there no songs longer than two minutes, to be honest 18 tracks on
one tape is a bit too much and I get a bit bored at some point but well...
that's me!
Not much surprise here as only 3 tracks out 8 are new, the other ones
being some of the best tracks from the singles. They all have been
recorded again with a better sound and some changes (Hate Myself (Still)
is coming after Hate Myself and Hate Myself V2).
So same formula for a better result.
Catchy, straightforward and snotty ? I have read the word "sassy" to describe their sound...
Still there are the vocals, you love it or you hate it, there is no
in-between!
And here is the band's latest release, the one which made me
discover and enjoy their sound.
No
is a 6-track EP (on
Neon Taste Records
once again) and it's without a doubt their best material to date.
More hardcore than the 2018 tape, Nutrition keeps its unique style but develops it to its best. Fast and catchy yes but with clear and discernable instruments' sounds, it's powerful and well-balanced, it's straightforward but smartly built in a way that all the breaks and small details make it stronger, more efficient and more "beautiful".
Andrew has not abandoned his so characteristic way of singing but is now mastering it really well, it's still super snotty and "sassy" but understandable and deep and gruff enough (especially on the opening track Out Of Time).
In the end No got more deepness and harshness than the previous releases, which brings back the band in the catchy but also in-your-face punk area.
Rolex is a punk hardcore band from Los Angeles,
California, featuring members of past punk acts from the Golden State like
L.U.U.M,
Surgeons,
The Imposters,
Grimly Forming
or
Broken Vessels.
Well despite its poor visual interest, the cover of the
Rolex's 2017 demo
has at least the benefit to clearly show that the four guys from California are not
referring to a
Ugandan delicacy
but to a famous not-so-affordable Swiss watch brand... good to
know, I was really wondering.
With only one song over the 2-minutes-mark, Rolex is not here to
make it last. Six hard and fast songs ok, but what makes the band stand
out from your average local hardcore punk quartet is the heavy dose of
deranged guitar melodies, of hopping bass lines and of changes of pace
embedded in the expected hit and run formula.
Yes these guys know their hardcore punk classics by heart but don't
hesitate to add a pinch of tasty weirdness in their recipe... a great mix
between Black Flag, the early Minutemen and some early 2010s
No Way Records bands like
Acid Reflux.
So yes... it's pretty good!
I will not say much about the five
R.O.L.E.X
"singles" released between December 2017 and September 2019 as all the
songs (except You Are My Sunshine, which is not really a song, from
the first tape) have been re-recorded and released by
11pm Records
on one
self-titled EP.
So with 9 songs out of 10 under the 2 minutes mark, Rolex keeps
the pace fast and the punk hardcore. Thanks to a better recording we can
deeply enjoy the energy and efficiency of the band. Weird, angry and
highly enjoyable are probably the adjectives you are looking for while the
black wax 7" is spinning on your turntable...
When you decide to change a well-oiled machinery as the 80s American punk
hardcore genre the whole difficulty is to add parts without losing the
genre's core (the energy, the speed, the anger etc...) and I have to say
that Rolex manages it perfectly.
These weirdos add all the possible freakiness (great job from the
guitarist) without making us think for one second that we are not in front
of a hardcore punk record.
