Ten Steps To Make Your Life CRUSTIER Starting Today (step 6): Sarcasm "Your Funeral My Party" Ep, 1991

Yes, you guessed it. Once more, I am going to rave wildly and without any restraint, with an excitement similar to that of a teenage punk upon finding a rusty Blitz badge crushed on a sticky venue's floor, over a 90's band that embarrassingly few people seem to care about nowadays. And, mind you, it won't even be my first time since I already wrote about Sarcasm in 2012 (no less than eight years ago according to my calculator! o-m-g!!!) and yet, in spite of my very positive review of their Brave new World Ep, it saddens me to say that the band has not seen any spike in popularity for the past decade. I have to admit that this horrific realisation made me feel like a crust army general, standing upon a hill and about to charge headlong at the enemy (at, say, a legion of shoegazers), and taking one last look, before unleashing the fury, at his glorious orc-like troops lying in wait behind him and... seeing no one there at all since everybody fucked off because they suddenly all remembered at the same time that they were really into postpunk after all. However, being a resilient bastard basically unwilling to face the truth with a genetic predisposition for Alzheimer disease, I was bound to try again and spread the good word about Sarcasm.

Did you know there was a late 80's Slovenian speed metal band called Sarcasm? No, neither did I. Or a mid-80's crossover hardcore band from New York also called Sarcasm and even humbly referred to as "The Original Sarcasm" on youtube? Well, I did not know them either, and if the rather typical New York hardcore boasting does not come as a surprise, NYC Sarcasm may not have been the first Sarcasm around since the first incarnation of Leicester's Sarcasm had their first run in 1984. If you want more details about the band's story (and you should in fact crave for more details), as usual, a dive into Trapped in a Scene and a lovely cup of tea come highly recommended, but strictly out of crustian charity, I am required to provide at least some intel about the band. At the start, during their existence in the mid-80's, Sarcasm endeavoured to be as noizy as possible and were influenced by the likes of the legendary Skum Dribblurzzz (which they considered as their mentors and even covered) or the mighty Dirge and could therefore relevantly be seen as being part of the noisiest part of the squat-loving UK hardcore punk spectrum that also welcomed such hugely talented acts as Asylum (from Stoke), Eat Shit, No Brain Cells or System Sikness and religiously drank scrumpy at the altar of Bristol's punk gods Chaos UK and Disorder. Sadly, I have never had the privilege to enjoy the noizy chaotic punk sound of early Sarcasm but for some reason but I still know how it sounds: fast and fuzzy and fun and gloriously ear-damaging.

The second coming of Sarcasm took place in 1989 and their subsequent noisy career was well documented with three full Ep's, two split Ep's (with Sanctus Iuda and Wojczech), a split tape with CFDL as well as other demo and tape recordings. Today's post will focus on the band's first Ep, Your Funeral My Party, that was released in 1991 on Rotthenness Records from Sao Paolo, a label specialised in grindcore. The Ep was actually a reissue of Sarcasm's first demo that was originally distributed as a tape at gigs (no idea what it looked like as it is not on discogs) although judging from the crunchy, powerful sound, you would not guess that it was "just" a demo recording (done in only 8 hours!). By the time Sarcasm reformed, singer and songwriter Mark had played the guitar in Extreme Noise Terror (you can hear him on A Holocaust in Your Head and the second Peel Session) and guitar player Barney was formerly in Dirge so you can imagine without too much trouble what the revived Sarcasm sounded like in the early 90's: a noizy and crusty thrash attack.

If maximum crust cred is to be achieved, as we have seen, anything less than a substantial mastery of the stenchcore canon will not do and if you have to spend sleepless nights learning the early Peaceville catalog by heart, then so be it. However, filthy metallic crust punk cannot suffice if you aim to become a well rounded crust lord prone to display an impeccable piosity so that it is crucial that you develop a sensible expertise in the noizier branch of the crust philosophy, primarily influenced by the sophisticated works of the Bristol and Kyushu schools, and more generally 80's hardcore bands that believed in the curative powers of distortion, glue and really fast music. Sarcasm is a fun band to listen to - and I say this with the utmost respect - especially on this recording which truly conveys their intent to make a bloody racket and enjoying themselves in the process. Starting with the song "Suppression" which opens with a deliciously filthy stenchcore introduction, à la Deviated Instinct, before diving headfirst into cavemen crust oblivion, Your Funeral My Party is an intense listening experience and if you are looking for nine minutes of extravagant aural savagery, it will be your thing. While the aforementioned "Suppression" and "Crisis point" can be described as aggressively gruff and distorted cavecrust numbers reminiscent of Extreme Noise Terror, Doom or early Disrupt but with a Bristol vibe, the four remaining songs are shorter and faster, highlighting the band's talent for revisiting the mid-80's Disorder/Chaos UK hardcore sound, not unlike Plasmid, Dirge or Insurrection but with a heavier sound and a nod toward Gai and raw Japanese hardcore. I love the hyperbolic, insanity-driven crusty vocals and the classic "low growls reply to high-pitched barks" pattern. Primitive and gnarly noizy crusty UK hardcore thrash or something. Whatever you want to call it, this Ep is a proper delight if you like old-school ear-slaughtering hardcore punk that smells like cider and squats and, on some odd ontological level, Sarcasm sound like what their font look like. Right?

As you can imagine from the title of the Ep - which I personally adore - the lyrics are quite angry and direct indeed with songs against popstars (with the classic line "Don't give me one of their record, or I'll stick it up your ass"), the rich, politicians and the fucking system. The following Ep, The Lowest Form of Wit released in 1992 on Tribal War Records, might even be better and, well, even crustier. I strongly recommend the compilation of all their vinyl output, entitled Noise Bastards Vol. 1: a Collection of Ep's and Splits released in 2007 on Impulso Ruin from Peru.

This Ep kills posers.  

Your Funeral My Crusty