The Empire Crusts Back (part 3): Confrontation "1989" Ep, 1992

Growing old sometimes sucks. Well, I am not technically quite old enough - though Tik Tok would definitely disagree - to utter such pompous and peremptory statements and therefore may lack the necessary legitimacy and worrying back pains. But still, one observes, one witnesses and one is not a fool. As punks grow older, their record collection gets more and more important, threatening to make the living room's floor - and oftentime their marriage as well - crumble and collapse under its weight of vinyl, potentially crushing a charming gran living downstairs or, better, a twattish busybody who could not stop complaining whenever you play Chaos UK supposedly too loud. We've all heard horror stories of honest, ebay-abiding record collectors being squashed under a landslide of single-sided Japanese flexis, of granduncles being knocked out cold during a family reunion by a box of demo tapes that you had promised to take care of or of innocent pets being flattened by the limited edition of the Noise Not Music Discharge box (there are far worse deaths than this one actually). The exponential activity of collecting records can be hazardous physically but also mentally. 

 

Indeed, as records keep piling in their living room, old punks can become quite pedantic about some aspects of hardcore music (it is almost always about hardcore music), especially about the correct terminology of subgenres and about the inclusion or exclusion of specific bands in specific genres. Just ask on a message board roaming with officially recognized record nerds who the first real powerviolence band was and enjoy the ensuing verbal brawl and below-the-belt name-calling. Occasionally, physical violence can ensue - although it is quite rare as record collectors usually only resort to fighting to get first to merch tables - and combatants end up solving their personal issues in the octagon to assert their supremacy. As much as I would love to tell you that I am above such rivalries and epistemological disagreements, I must confess that I have already engaged in heated arguments about the archaeological position of Los Saicos in punk culture or the value of post-"New age" Blitz and while I haven't headbutted anyone because of my proverbial lack of basic bravery, also called being a wimp, there was a lot of finger-waving, scornful looks and offending accusations about being a middle-class poser and only getting into Blitz after I did. Oh well. I still think genres do matter and should be discussed and that precise descriptive names can be useful in order to reflect on histories, eras and areas. But instead of being bones of contention, arguments about genres should improve our appreciation and not limit it. Peace and love my friends. Which takes me to today's record: the 1989 Ep from Confrontation.

 

 

 

I have seen Confrontation being qualified as grindcore, as powerviolence, as crust - and even as modern hardcore but it was an honest mistake and the person was actually talking about the late 90's German band on that one so that the virtual tar and feather might not have been totally warranted and I probably should have refrained from sending anonymous threats to his house but I prefer to see this incident as a life lesson for the both of us. In actual fact, you would not be wrong indeed to qualify the band as grindcore, powerviolence or crust as each appellation makes sense for different reasons. Because of its dirty metallic groove and its blast beats the grindcore tag would fit Confrontation; but then 1989 having been originally released on Infest's label Draw Blank and because of the band's typical hardcore breaks and riffs you could say that powerviolence is not far off the picture either; and of course, because of the band's close connections to Glycine Max, Apocalypse or Mindrot - in a word the OC crust galaxy - and its raw and filthy punk production and emphatic cavemen vocals, claiming Confrontation were an old-school crust act is not irrelevant, and since we are on Terminal Sound Nuisance here, the Ep will be approached and tackled through a distinctively crust perspective, without discarding the other influences, because I am, after all, known, among other things, as The Magnanimous One. However, not being particularly well schooled in old-school grindcore - though I can hold my own to some extent - and being absolutely clueless about powerviolence - it always sounded too American to my delicate ears and I never really got the appeal, I will ask you to bear with potential inconsistencies. Now that the issue of terminology and nomenclature has been settled, we may proceed to the crux of the matter: my own record coll... I mean the band.

 

Confrontation was actually the first OC crust band I came across although at that time I had absolutely no idea that there had been a fabulous crust source over there and, apart from Resist and Exist, I don't think I was aware of other anarcho/crust bands from that area or aware that this area had its fair share of extreme bands. I was, as you might say, still green. Because finances were low and grim while enthusiasm was high and unquenchable, I was able to lay my hands on a second-hand copy of the Confrontation's discography cd after hearing the In Crust We Trust compilation that a gentle soul had found for me on soulseek, back when it took two days and a half to download an album. I did not enjoy In Crust We Trust as much as I thought I would to be fair. At that time, I was still in the process of discovery of crust and the title, which I now find cheesy as fuck, announced something spectacular and developmental. There were some good bands on that compilation, don't get me wrong, it had Disfear, No Security, Concrete Sox and Heresy, but if you look closely, there was not much proper crust and it was bit misleading really. In retrospect, I understand that it was just a sample of Lost & Found's catalogue and that the misleading title did not illustrate the content, much like The Best Crust Compilation in the World Ever! compilation whose hyperbolic irony was lost on me when I bought it, especially since, without really disappointing, there was, again, not much crust in it. But I did like the Confrontation songs - they are some of their best numbers - and seeing that Lost & Found also released a full cd of the band and that it was cheap, I did not fuck around and bought the copy online. I learnt later on that the not-so-virtuous label released this cd because they claimed that the band had received an advance payment for the recording of a full album which they never did since they broke up and the cd was a way to get some money back. Not really the classiest act on the part of a label that was famous for this kind of dodgy moves and it is no coincidence that the cd is listed as "unofficial" on Discogs. Just bad punk ethics.

 

 

 

I couldn't find many details about Confrontation's noisy career and I really wish some heroic old-timers from that time and place will one day write a book about the Californian 80's peacepunk/crust scene like Ian Glasper did for the British waves. A boy can dream. The band formed in Huntington Beach probably in late 1988 - the Ep was recorded in May, 1989, so that sounds plausible enough. I have seen a mention of that record being a demo Ep and it might have originally been some sort of demo tape that they decided to reissue as a proper Ep. Still it does not seem very likely as this practice was not widespread at the time, whereas releasing a demo again on a vinyl has become very commonplace these days. What's the point of engaging in an activity bound to saturate the already fragile punk records market especially since demos are readily available online and, well, they are demos, I hear you ask from afar? I ain't got clue guv. To get back to Confrontation, the band was from Huntington Beach and had Matt Fisher from Mindrot on vocals and future Dystopia bass player Todd on the bass. As my jaundiced speech indicated earlier, the band remained mostly associated with the mean and manically fast hardcore bands - the early powerviolence wave - and they shared some common ground with the groovy grindcore freaks that roamed this very part of California at the time. Just consider that powerviolence legends Infest were from Valencia, Crossed Out from Encinitas, No Comment from North Hollywood and the unique Man Is The Bastard from Claremont. All those hardcore acts lived in a 50 kilometers radius and therefore it is little surprising that the area, in punk's more or less unreliable collective memory, has often been closely connected with powerviolence. Similarly, just consider that grindcore legends Terrorizer - the grindcore equivalent of the 1992-era Ultimate Warrior - were from Huntington Park and Nausea from Los Angeles. The Infest connection is clearly the most relevant since 1989 was initially released on Infest's own label Draw Blanks Records - it was only DB's second release - although Confrontation sounded nothing like them so that's the grand network of friends in action for you. The version we are dealing however is not the original but the remastered one from 1992 that Misanthropic Records - the first output of Todd's label - took care of. 

 

There are eight songs on this Ep and let me tell you that Confrontation had little time to waste. The opening song "Deathtrap", my favourite number on the record, is a grinding crust masterpiece that reminds me of the early rawer Napalm Death, Electro Hippies and crust maniacs Mortal Terror. The first riff epitomized what old-school crust has always been supposed to sound like and Instinct of Survival on their split Ep with Guided Cradle had no reservation about borrowing it - to great effect I must say. After that groovy metallic crust introduction, Confrontation unleash their brand of fast and abrasive crusty hardcore with harsh cavecrust vocals. The rest of 1989 keeps maintains this high level of quality, navigating between snotty UK hardcore classics like the above-mentioned powerhouses, local OC crust heroes like A//Solution and Apocalypse and that contemporary brand of punishingly fast and violent US hardcore (some of the breaks undoubtedly fall in that category). In terms of production, and in spite of a second mastering work, the Ep sounds like raw and urgent early stenchgrind - the band included a five-second burst of referential noise called "Scum..." to wrap up the Ep, just to make sure the listeners understood where they were coming from - and can be said to be a typical and solid example of the sound of the area at that time. I love the cut'n'paste DIY look of the foldout bringing to mind the traditional early crust aesthetics and the band's logo depicting a roughly-drawn picture of a rather melancholy-looking crusty punk's shrunken head is wonderful and gets an A+ for me. The cover is undeniably more enigmatic as it is a picture of a prisoner-of-war or concentration or refugee camp with a dozen of miserable-looking men behind barbed wire. Pretty shocking and grim really. True realities of war. I do not know when this was taken or if it holds any relation to the year 1989 but judging from the prisoners' clothing I doubt it. I suppose the band's choice was meant to reflect the constant war mongering and disdain for basic human rights that defined the twentieth century and while I agree with the sentiment and the content, the visual form can be considered as awkward, or even, in 2021, as "problematic". From a very prosaic standpoint, it makes their shirt particularly hard to wear and I only sport if at grindcore gigs where I am confident the majority of the audience will be wearing far more shocking and distasteful shirts. Clever me.

 

The following Ep was released in 1991 - before 1989's remastered version - on Tribal War Records back when it was still located in New York City. Entitled Dead Against the War, it was the label's very first release (or was it actually the Warning Ep?). Confrontation pretty much kept on the same old-school grinding crusty hardcore tracks with new singer Ben, although they started to include heavy and suffocating doomy sludge part in the songwriting, adding a suffocating sense of atmospherics that will characterized what Dystopia would be known for a few years later. In fact, you could say Dead Against the War and the 1991 split Ep with Cantankerous (a band that had Matt from Mindrot on guitar) pretty sounded like a raw, unfiltered blend between between early Deformed Conscience, Concrete Sox and Embittered. Although I like 1989 better for its superior bollocking power and filthier blasting bum crust sound, the later material is also solid and thoroughly enjoyable and an interesting pre-Dystopia endeavour. After the demise of Confrontation and Cantankerous, Todd and Matt formed Dystopia along with Dino from Carcinogen (he actually provided some artwork and drew the liner notes on Dead Against the War) and Dan from Mindrot, a band that went on to write some of the most potent, original and influential punk music of the 90's. 

 

This write-up is dedicated to Matt, who sadly passed a year ago.        

 

 

 

Confront!