As you may know I already wrote a few words about the
Negative Approach influenced hardcore of
Heavy Discipline when
they released their demo
one year ago.
Well the four angry guys from Pittsburgh are back with a LP on
Pain Killer Records
(which also released the demo) and believe me, the mood has not changed
over the past year!
First of all I really like the artwork, inspired by the 80s/90s classic
hardcore drawings ahah these guys are really making ugly faces!
To be honest it took me a few listens to really get into this LP.
These guys know what they are doing and master every second of their
record to make it fit perfectly in the "hardcore codex".
So nothing new under the basement ceiling (and I tend to like bands
taking risks) but in the end I think I am quite convinced. It's reeeeally
well played, the songs are diverse enough to not feel like the same track
going on over and over, the energy is pfffiuu crazy... well this what I
expect from a good hardcore band after all!
But what really blew me away in this record is the drumming!
Tom Moran has played in many great Pennsylvania based bands in
the past years, including
Blood Pressure
and
No Time
but also more recently
Loose Nukes
(in which he plays bass) and
Machine Gun. I had the opportunity to see him behind the drums the two times I saw
Machine Gun last year and damn I have never seen anyone wearing
tight blue jeans playing soooo fast, absolutely
unbelievable.
It's just so fast, so neat with perfectly mastered snare and toms bursts,
like a proper machine gun...this guy is taking us to a war zone and, in my
opinion, brings this record to another level...
A good but not surprising album, just go for it with your eyes closed if you are into this kind of
hardcore!
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!
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.
I guess you do and these two gentlemen from New Jersey as well!
This 5-track tape released in march (including a cover of NA) is a great example of the legacy of the Detroit band: super loud stomping drum beats, heavy buzzsaw guitar riffs, bass lines you can hardly distinct in the noisy mess and of course the famous brutal vocals that made NA so popular among skinheads.
Oh yeah these two guys also play in Gel(and at least one of them plays or played in School Drugs),War Recordsis going to release their tape, Buggy is Tony's cat name and I love the cover art by Jon Mayo... N,J'Oi!
A looot of great new releases in this post-vacation / end of summer time.
Punk, hardcore, post-punk, noise-rock and some weird stuff I am not sure in which drawer to put in,
these 16 tracks will make you hop like a deer on your way to school!
N,J'Oi!
01 - Brandy - UFO's To Heaven 02 - GAG - Still Laughing 03 - Trash Knife - Ovary Concern 04 - Heavy Discipline - No Amends 05 - Jackal - Programmed 06 - Glueams - Mental 07 - Mspaint - Confidence (Consciousness) 08 - Whipping Post - The House Of Joy, The Final Hell
09 - Liiek - One Two 10 - Knowso - Peaceful and Extinct 11 - Mess -True Love 12 - Cells - I Hate Your Guts Pts. 1 & 2 13 - Cage Kicker - Foes 14 - Reacción Violenta - Dios y patria 15 - USA Nails - Revolution Worker 16 - Girls In Synthesis - Set Up To Fail
And as usual the full compilation can be downloaded: HERE
