So Reflex (to not be mistaken with another hardcore band called Reflex, but from Germany) is a new band which seems to be based in Lille, France, but features four guys/girls coming from different parts of the country: David (formerly
from
Chicken's Call and Alarm and now in Maudit Dragon) is from Grenoble (close to the Alps), but the others hail from Lille, Brest and Lanvelec (north Brittany) and are/were parts of some loud punk acts you may have heard of like Litovsk, Kronstadt and Utopie.
Ok this being said let's jump to
the music!
If you're familiar with recent French hardcore punk you probably know that Lille got a great history of hardcore bands (with other French cities like Brest, Nantes, Paris and others...) and if you've heard of Gutter, Années Zéro, Don't Need You and Build Me A BombRecords you know what I'm talking about.
Obviously Reflex is more influenced by the slightly melodic side (like on Red Sun for example) of the American Youth Crew scene than the previously mentioned bands, I'm thinking of Gorilla Biscuits (not the vocals though) but also of Uniform Choice and the early No For An Answer releases for example. But don't get me wrong Reflex (despite its artwork that can be misleading) is not really a Youth Crew band (no super loud gang vocals here for instance) even if the closest band I can think of comes from the REACT Records stable: Rearranged, from Moscow, whose 2011 EP was successfully mixing early DC influences with a Youth Crew attitude (I listen to a lot less of this kind of hardcore now than I did back in the days, so my references may seem a little out of date). So yes that the kind of mix between different hardcore scenes Reflex is doing (well).
Anyway, it's fast, it's full of energy, there're plenty of mosh parts that will delight all the hardcore maniacs in sweatpants who jump around like Russian gymnasts and the recording sounds pretty good so yes it's a "putain de" good demo!
Split System (at last, a band that fully assumes its admiration for cooling technologies) hail from the great city of Melbourne, Australia,
and sorry bu yes, if you're into catchy rock'n roll, here's another Aussie band you
won't be able to resist!
This new five-piece is made of some of the usual suspects from the super
active Melbourne/Geelong scene, they've been seen in various rock'n roll acts bearing names like
Stiff Richards, Jackson Reid Briggs & The Heaters,
Speed Week,
The Black Heart Death Cult,
No Zu and
The Grand Rapids. According to the legend (and their bandcamp page) they "had only one
jam together before lockdowns kicked in again in Melbourne in 2021. Five
songs were written and with rehearsals and gigs on the back foot, once
again, the only option was to record remotely via email. Everyone recorded
their parts at home and Split System's self titled EP was
recorded."
Yes the music is still not done with
lockdown stories!
Released earlier this year on
Legless Records, this four-track EP was made with one simple purpose only: give birth to catchy tunes and make your fat ass boogie boogie on the beach,
honey!
Described as garage punk or punk'n roll, this EP is a perfect combination
of the old school sound of the catchiest late 70s punk / KBD / power pop bands (The Buzzcocks?, The Heartbreakers?, The Lurkers?)
and the sunny vibes of that good ol' australian rock'n roll/punk (shall I mention the almighty Psycho Surgeons?). Ok let's make it simple, take the
Anxious Pleasers, Amyl And The Sniffers,
Priors,
Trash Ferraris
and, of course,
Stiff Richards, just blend the whole thing together, add a couple of Hawaiians shirts, a
tablespoon of nostalgia for the 70s and a fat slice of Aussie laid-back
attitude: that's it, bottoms up!
Mixed and mastered by Mikey Young from Total Control and
Eddy Current Suppression Ring (like almost every rock'n roll record
coming out the state of Victoria right?), this EP is going to hook you
right away, don't fight it! Just enjoy that silly and easy rock'n roll fun,
this is exactly what you need right now! Yes it does sound a lot like
Stiff Richards and hundreds of "rock'n punk'n roll" bands you've
heard before but who's complaining?
Frankly for a guy like me who tends to dive heart and soul into increasingly fast and aggressive types of music, coming back from time to time to a band like Split System is a real delight, and I can't encourage you enough to do the same.
A short one today about the demo of this new hardcore band hailing from
Denver, Colorado.
It looks like the new Denver hardcore scene got something for the super
brutal, heavy and extremely angry stomping kind of hardcore (something in
the air maybe). If you've heard of James Trejo you may know he is
behind some of the sickest releases on
Youth AttackRecord
(Cadaver Dog,
Life Support,
Snarling Hate
to name only a few) and he's from Denver so it didn't come as a
surprise when I learned that
a proper scene for that kind of sound was on the rise there.
And Gordon, the singer of Prowler, is very much
involved in this scene, he's the drummer for
Direct Threat,
P.S.Y.W.A.R and
Raw Breed
but also sings in
The Consequence
(in which James Trejo plays the bass by the way), so yes I think
it's safe to say that Gordon is into brutal shit. To be honest, I
don't listen to that kind of stuff too much but it reminds me of the
energy and heavy anger of the first
Boston Strangler
LP (Gordon's T-shirt on the above photo!), of
No Tolerance,ofViolent Reaction
from the UK, and of all those bands influenced by the heavy side of the
Boston SxE hardcore scene (where at least one band member must have his
head shaved!). Anyway I think you got the point now.
The demo was released on tape (and on bandcamp of course) by
Iron Lung
a few weeks ago and I was immediately hooked by the kind of furious noise
these guys are making.
With five songs out six below the one minute mark, Prowler don't
really slow down compared to the bands mentioned before so you got what
you except: fast in-your-face hardcore punk, but with a slightly "less
aggressive" vibe! Saying that they play a less brutal kind of hardcore
than Direct Threat for example would probably be a lie even if it's
clear that the influences are clearly different. Where
Direct Threat is clearly showing an Oi!-influenced and heavy
stomping side (like faster versions of
Negative Approach,
86 Mentality
or more recently
Buggy
and
Heavy Discipline), Prowler got a slightly lighter (and faster) sound and, most of
all, show clear influences of early and pre-Youth Crew hardcore
bands from NYC.
So yes, as mentioned on the bandcamp page, classic names
immediately come to mind, names like
Youth Of Today,
Abused
or
Antidote
(yeah, pretty flattering references), and I'm definitely more into that
shit than into the stomping kind.
But here's the main news: this demo totally rips!
Whereas a band like
Thought Control
clearly takes from the Antidote side of New York Hardcore,
Prowler mixes perfectly the early Youth Crew influences (the gang
vocals etc...) with some very fast and pummelling drum beats (the
drummer's a killer!), catchy bass lines, crushing mosh parts and sharp
riffs. And most of all you don't feel like you're listening to the same
old hardcore song over and over again, each track got its own distinctive
structure and is a total killer!
As a debut release this tape's classified as a demo but, honestly, the
whole thing sounds so good it deserves a vinyl release straight away.
Ok I know I haven't been very active in April, I needed a break, I sometimes struggle to keep up with the pace I have chosen for the activity of this blog... I was also busy with the next Guimauve record (our first LP) which is now at the mastering stage.
Anyway here we are with a new compilation full of ripping hardcore punk tracks (lots of hardcore this time) but also some post-punk and other stuff!
N,J'Oi!
01 - Prowler - Facade 02 - Reflex - Any Decision 03 - Red Gaze - Narcissistic Injury 04 - The Dweebs - Braindead 05 - Sanitizers - Painleaking 06 - Real People - I Wanna go Home 07 - Stray Bullet - Factory 08 - Primer Regimen - Culpables 09 - Feral - Cycle 10 - Crosshairs - Camo 11 - Gripe - Perdido 12 - Draumär - Medisin 13 - Joker - Giggles 14 - S.M.I.L.E. - Lobotomy 15 - Warthog - Four Walls 16 - Gad Whip - Sky Bird 17 - Bodies - The Great Equaliser
Pitva is a noisy-punk quartet hailing from Vienna, Austria.
Dominik, the singer, is from Czech republic though and most of (all?) the
lyrics are in Czech (Pitva means Autopsy).
Dominik seems to be the very active type, I won't even try
to mention all the projects he's been involved in, but he was/is part of several Black
Metal influenced bands like
Parasite Dreams
and
Smuteční Slavnost
(Funeral party) but is also in
Autor
(I reviewed their debut release
very briefly two years ago) and in
Urban Lurk, not a band but a tape label and show promoter based in
Vienna.
Standing behind the synth is Robert Pawliczek, a german
visual artist and musician who plays/played in a bunch of bands you probably have heard of like
Heavy Metal,
Bobby Would,
Schiach,
Privat
and
Agir
(I've probably missed a few), he also manages an
"artist run off space" called
Drive-In / Drive-Thru
and is involved in a label and distro called
Quality Music. Yes the man's been busy.
Raphael, the drummer, is not the idle type either and he's
spent years exploring various musical genres (from black metal to
dark-wave and post-punk). He is the drummer for Parasite Dreams but also
the man behind
Rosa Nebel
and plays in
Gates of Londra, Phantom Gold and
Peace Vaults. He is also the other half of Urban Lurk with Dominik.
The guitarist, aka Johnny Brise, seems to be obsessed with Metal, he played/plays in
Death Racer,
Hagzissa,
Kringa,
Forgotten Shrines
and other loud acts which are light-years away from my musical interests...
Anyway you got the point, these guys obviously didn't grab their first
guitar/drum kit/whatever last week end... so what do we have here on the postmortem table?
Pitva's demo
was released at the end of 2018 on the Prague-based label
Stoned To Death
and let me be straight, I'm not going to spend much time reviewing it. I discovered the demo
after I listened to their self-titled LP, which is a completely different story, and the demo black metal infused
vocals is a straight NO NO for me, I just can't stand it. So yes this first release
sounds closer to Parasite Dreams, and all that black metal stuff
Dominik is fond of, than what came next. Give it a try if you're
into that kind of stuff, I'm not.
So here is what deserves your full attention in my opinion, Pitva's
recent (2022) self-titled LP released on the super cool Berlin-based label
Static Age.
At first I didn't really understand the cover picture (wtf?), and then I
remembered what Pitva means (I told you at the very beginning of
this post!) and the whole thing instantly made sense! (thank you dear Google Translation).
Ok here were are, forget about the lousy Black Metal shit, this record is something else!
To be honest I had to listen to this LP A LOT to be able to really figure it out, yes it starts a bit like a noisy but bass-less punk band, the synth building up a dark and gloomy atmosphere made of distorted layers on which the guitar nails acute and haunting melodies. The vocals and the drums counterpoint all of this, keeping the burning anger right in your ugly face, Dominik screams and shouts while Raphael keeps it sharp and fast. The whole noisy punk vibe made me first thought of Bathouse (even if the bass is a big part of the swedes' noise and not of Pitva's) and the comparison's not completely irrelevant in my opinion but limiting Pitva to that is way too narrow.
Indeed, from the third track onwards, the record turns into something else, something that sounds colder, something that sounds a lot more "disillusioned", something that sounds very German in my opinion and recalls dirtier versions of Maskeand, even more recently, of Die Verlierer.
But don't get me wrong, the noisy coldness "à la" Einstürzende Neubauten (the freezing cold Pytlak!) and the eastern anger from "behind the iron curtain" hardcore bands (Odpadki Civilizacije was mentioned somewhere, even if Pitva doesn't swim in the same kind of waters) are never very far. On Bestie the band even takes us halfway between Indus and cold-wave before diving back into a fast and cold synth punk.
But the main question in the end is always the same. Is it good? Do I like it? Yes and Yes I do but beware, don't be fooled by the "punkitude" of the first two tracks, the whole thing is a lot darker, gloomier and cold than what you might expect at first, yes, this album is a grower! The kind you're going to love coming to again and again.
Probably the best disturbing and noisy record to come out on Static Age since the amazing Walking Korpses LP!
Here we go for the 33rd edition of the infamous RAF compilation featuring a quite balanced mix of hardcore punk, noise punk, anarcho-punk and even some post-punk here and there (yeah the options in terms of adjectives you can put in front of the word "punk" are literally limitless!).
The 17 bands of today are from the US, Australia, Austria, Malaysia, Germany and Romania, mainly from the US to be honest, I try to keep on covering bands from all over the world but the American scene is so vivid and full of great bands it's just impossible to ignore them.
N,J'Oi!
01 - Crisis Man - No Standing Ovation 02 - Split System - Climbing 03 - Pitva - Kapr 04 - Church Clothes - Relative Power 05 - D.Sablu - Bomber Stomp 06 - ConSec - You're Not Going Anywhere 07 - Crime of Passing - Tender Fixation 08 - Deluded - Wash The Scum 09 - Straw Man Army - Faces In The Dark 10 - Mercenary - No Uniform 11 - Xero - Scheme 12 - No Future - Pig Fiend 13 - The Hard-Crop's - The Band 14 - Cold Brats - Living Room La Vida Loca 15 - Science Man - The Want 16 - Maske - Eiszeit 17 - White Suns - Night Pours In
Ok ok I know this demo was released early January, no no it didn't fly
under my radar, I mean I even included Red Lake Earth in
RAF#31,
so yes I definitely could have found the time to do a little write-up
about that killer tape, it was on my to do list to be honest but... well..
you know how life is, I got pulled towards other releases, other stuff
etc... and it didn't happen. Anyway Sorry State is now releasing a
new run of the demo tape which gives me the perfect opportunity to finally talk a
little bit about Invertebrates.
So Invertebrates could be described as another American band made up
of punk veterans (in this case from
North Carolina and Virginia)
who've played in numerous bands (Public Acid,
Wild Rose,
Lipid,
Wriggle
among many others) and who manage to play some kind of incredibly fast and tight hardcore punk (that' s a conclusion that me and a good friend regularly come to when discussing the quality of the "musicians" in punk and hardcore bands: with the exception of many bands from Scandinavia, especially Sweden, American bands play in a completely different league than European bands... which
is both a bit irritating and frustrating to be honest, but c'est la vie!).
So yes no surprise here this tape is an absolute ripper... it's just exactly what you can expect from the best of present day hardcore punk, it has all the right influences from all the classic super fast 80s US hardcore bands but it's played even faster and, most of all, much tighter! And that's the main difference with all the great names from the 80s, it's just incredibly well played (I could be wrong but I feel that, with the exception of a few really good bands, most of the 80's bands sound extremely sloppy compared to Invertebrates), the average skill level of US punk musicians is just super high these days (and that's great I guess). Invertebrates are probably influenced by bands like The Fix and Koro who were both fast and tight (and super good).
These guys obviously decided to make it sound as much as possible like a tape landing straight from the early 80s and it's a total success: the whole thing sounds quite "compressed" (a bit too much in my opinion). But don't get me wrong, it's still super powerful, the drums don't stop pounding your eardrums like a jackhammer at blistering tempos while the guitars manage to break through the chaos just like they should... it's just brilliant!
Invertebrates makes me think of three different bands for three different reasons: the comparison with Bootlicker (especially with their 2021 LP) is quite obvious as the vocals got the same kind of "low-frequency aggressiveness without being hoarse" (you know what I mean right?) and the drums... I mean the drums of course! Then there is Loose Nukes, I was listening to their Behind The Screen EP this morning in the Paris subway on my way to work (maybe I should start doing the "I can't talk about music without talking about me, myself and I" thing like a lot guys seem to be doing these days) and as much as I love their records I couldn't help but think that that "tape-sound-worship", or whatever you wanna call it, is a bit of shame when you think of how "life-changing good" (can I say that?) this band is on stage (Loose Nukes at K-Town in 2019 is one of the best shows I've ever seen) and the recording of their songs doesn't pay justice at all to that. So I have the same kind of feeling (a lot less than with Loose Nukes though) with Invertebrates. The third band is Krigshoder, because when I think of incredibly fast and tight I just of them, their tape was just the best (it disappeared from bandcamp but it's still on YT).
But enough pointless blabbing... just pump up the volume on your fucking air-pods and press play! Invertebrates rule the world and will outlive mankind, that's all that matters!
Just a short one today about this new band hailing from Helsinki,
Finland, and called Spicer, which released a pretty cool demo a
couple of months ago, in January.
I'm afraid I don't have much information to share about the band and its members, the three Finns were smart enough to stay away from the social media hype and fly under my, usually very efficient, radar. Everybody likes to brag online about the "genius" noise they make in their bedrooms you know (except these guys obviously).
So let's focus on the music rather than the gossips if you don't mind:
With a drum machine, a synth and tags like "dark" and "gloomy" all over their bandcamp page, nobody (and certainly not me) would have guessed at first glance that Spicer will have the distinct honour of being a guest on the amazing Rien à Faire page. No-bo-dy! But hey! I've heard that life is all about unexpected events and so here they are. Let me explain why.
Starting with the very-well-named Tense, the demo opens up with a heavy bass-line (and I'm a sucker for killer basslines you know, who isn't after all?) before letting the cold and mechanical drums hit you in the face with a very simple repetitive beat that "holds" some very deep and catchy vocals that sound like emerging from a dark and narrow Finnish tunnel. Yes there's a lot of reverb on those vocals, and that's cool! So yes let's just say I was immediately hooked! I didn't even mind the synth (which I usually hate), which manages to stay discreet enough not to pollute the straightforward atmosphere of the song (and I love "straightforward").
And that's exactly the winning formula the band keeps develops throughout the next four tracks, whether it's with a simple but heavy guitar riff on Inwards and Days Of Drifting, or with a fast "hardcore" beat on Not Yours To Keep (even if those weird synth sounds at the beginning worried me at first), these guys manage to do their thing while remaining "hardcore" in a way. And that's pretty cool!
Cold Machine concludes beautifully the whole thing with a perfect mix of all the tricks perfectly used on the previous tracks, it's catchy, it's straightforward and simple, the vocals get into your head... it's exactly what I wanted (it just lacks another killer bass line somewhere but eh! c'est la vie as they say in Paris).
So yes I really enjoyed this demo! I's love to draw super smart comparisons to some very obscure new-wave / EBM / synth punk bands but that's definitely not my area of expertise so I won't (well ok the only band I could think of was Special Interest because they fucking rule but that's very different!). Anyway, give this shit a listen and let's see if anything else comes from the north in the coming months... Fingers crossed!
I talked briefly about Running in my post about
Brandy
one year and a half ago, the two bands sharing the same vocalist, and this
new tape recently released on
Physical Medium
finally gives me a good reason to talk a bit more about the band from
Chicago.
I'm not going to "scrutinize" the quite long discography of the band but rather
give a quick "overview" of their main releases before taking a closer look at this tape. If you're not familiar with Running music, I would suggest to listen to the tape first and then go backwards, but you can do whatever you want.
Running released their self-titled debut album in 2010, a time
when mass extinction and World War III were still just another depressive
vague topic and not an upcoming date in our agenda. Running is
punk, chaotic punk with lots of noise. These guys make it loud, real loud,
the sound is heavy and crunchy but don't get me wrong, shrieking feedbacks
are never very far, ringing ears are just around the corner... To make it short I would say that Running is a mix between the sound of the MC5,
the energy of the dirtiest garage punk, Chicago noise-rock and a strong
punk attitude. What a mix, huh? Yes this is the type of cuisine the band has been cooking
up with every conceivable condiment for over a decade. Put on your bib, it's spicy and it
stains.
With Asshole Savant (their second album, if you consider that
a one-sided 12" is an album, I do) released in 2012, Running gets a
bit more reasonable, the chaos of exploding noises of the first album has
been tamed, the trio's now playing something closer to a trashy kind of
garage noise or something like that. Something that would not be
completely off topic on
Voodoo Rhythm.
This album is not easy to find online, so I uploaded the files I
found:Running, Asshole Savant.
That's it! With Vaguely Ethnic (2013), the band's found the
perfect balance in their recipe, delivering what is, in my opinion, the
embodiment of what Running music is. The trio keeps playing the
same kind of trashy garage noise they explored in
Asshole Savant but this time they add a stronger rock'n roll
attitude, catchy guitar riffs and, most of all, a great sound. Yes in this
LP is a bit of a rough draft of what Brandy will be a few years later: a
delightful cocktail of extremely catchy songs.
With Wape Up Applauding (2016), Running moves
away from the trashy, but catchy, garage punk of Vaguely Ethnic, to
make things slower, deeper, even more subtle maybe. Running is
still Running, that unique guitar sound and the very recognizable
vocals (with a lot of chorus effect) announce it very clearly from the
first seconds of the record. But this time the trio takes their time to
build up slowly noisy atmospheres, atmospheres which can almost be
described as psychedelic sometimes as the repetition of haunting riffs,
often heavy but never brutal, exalts the brain to excess. No catchy chorus or
melodies here, Wake Up Applauding is not danceable, it's dark,
twisted and dense. No "hit song" either, the album is a whole that you got
to attack repeatedly, from different angles, to be able to penetrate to
the core. A bit like this strange and thick layer of skin on the
cover.
Not their easiest album to get into, but perhaps the one you'll come back
to most easily.
So let's come back now toAsked You Nicely, the "cassingle" I was talking about at the very
beginning of this post. Recorded in 2019 in New York, these two songs are unfortunately the very last of Running, Alejandro Morales (drums)
passed away in March 2021 (RIP).
Opening up with WUYFOWTIA, Running benefits from
a particularly sharp sound that's used to punch you in the face with the best of their
noisy, almost raucous and cold, almost industrial, rock whose icy melodies
pierce your eardrums to the bone until your brain drips through your nostrils.
Savage!
But don't get excited, you're not getting away, the trio's not done with
your fragile mind: The five-plus minute track Asked You Nicely tortures every inch of your body and soul until you talk, sing and scream your lungs out... sorry no one
can hear you here in the basement baby. It's cold, very cold, and that
sharp shrieking metallic sound is going to hammer you down man... Wow what
a track!
The third and final track is a remix of Asked You Nicely by Bill Conors (the man behind Physical Medium, healso made the tape cover artwork), and this
version is even colder and darker than the original one. A lot
of gloomy electronic sounds are taking you hostage and your cell this time
is the antechamber of EBM and all this kind of gloomy, gothic and deeply
unsane electronic music. You're totally wasted in a sweating basement, the
party's been going on for days, weeks maybe, you can't move and you're
watching, helplessly, Running meticulously crushing your useless
brain...
What a tape! Probably the best post-mortem release Running could dream of!
