If you are looking for something clean, thought-provoking, challenging hardcore-punk that goes against the rules and regulations, codes and conventions, against "the norm" done by good-looking Instagram-friendly Americans who thrive on being "followed" by others and taking selfies, then this record is not for you. Or maybe it could be if you bother for a change, checking ugly bands playing ugly music to ugly people for a good price as I was able to find a copy of this split Ep for a mere 2€ which is about 15 times cheaper than a Turnstile record (checking this Zoomer band's website I realized that they sell grossly overpriced hats and fucking teddy bears but no physical records... what an odd choice for an ex punk band). Alright, let's stop with the boomer-flavoured rant, as we can hold hands, kiss and definitely enjoy Turntile and Hiastus, even though the latter were fortunately never nominated for any kind of awards, except a local beer drinking contest and a grizzli bear imitation one.
Let's just get to the actual record in a swift fashion. This is not an excellent record to be perfectly honest. I like it a lot but that doesn't mean it is objectively that good and, in fact, even fans of the genres adopted by the bands could do without the Ep and live a perfectly normal, unhappy life. I am not, have never been and never will be, as you know full well, one deterred by average generic punk music. It is all a matter of love that is as blind as it is, in this case, deaf. This Totuus/Hiastus split Ep reminds me of the original noble goal that led me to create Terminal Sound Nuisance: "a blog promoting good (and not so good) genuine punk music". This record does fall into the "not so good" category but it doesn't mean it cannot be loved and rediscovered. There was something heart-breaking in seeing this battered copy in the 2€ record bin (my acute crust detector told it was only a matter of time before it got relegated to the 1€ one) and, being a soft bastard, I could not help but rescue this little angel from the dumpster, like a gran welcoming her seventh kitten because the little shit was hungry and homeless or something.
I knew of Totuus before because I already owned the 1999 self-titled Ep released on Fight Records and I closely associate the band with this well-known and still active Finnish label based in Tampere that released or rereleased works from Kaaos, Tampere SS, Unkind, Positive Negative or Riistetyt. With such a list of culprits, one already logically imagines what Totuus - which translates as "truth" - will sound like: classic raw and direct Finnish hardcore. Clever but not completely true. The backbone of the band remains firmly rooted in 80's Finncore (think Terveet Kädet or Kantan Uutiset, even Riistetyt) and the production, or lack thereof, effortlessly reproduces the sound of that decade, but you can still tell Totuus was a 90's band. It would not be mistaken to compare them with bands like Rajoitus or Uutuus because, beside them all ending with the phoneme "-tus", they cook with the same old-school ingredients, but where the aforementioned bands almost exclusively rely on 80's Finnish hardcore (although Rajoitus were Swedes) Totuus also had a European hardcore influence and bands like BGK or Ripcord do come to mind. It would appear far-fetched to state that they were as good as all those canonized acts but their side of the split is still pretty solid and has that wild, furious, biting energy. 9 short songs in less than 7 minutes. The split Ep format fits the songwriting perfectly and makes Totuus and solid example of proper raw old-school hardcore done in the 90's and looking lovingly toward the previous decade.
Do you remember that kid at school who was desperate to look like the coolest, most stylish, most popular cat and tried so hard to walk like him, dress like him, talk like him? That's pretty much the relationship between Hiastus and Hiatus. The former went as far as calling themselves Hiastus, which means - wait for it, wait for it - "hiatus" in Finnish. On the surface, this sounds adorable. A band trying to sound like their heroes, a band that openly wears its heart on the sleeve, a band that does not give a single shit about even trying to pretend to be original in any way. And really deep down, it is what most teenage bands are all about when they start. They just want to be The Clash or Black Flag or your older cousin's nu-metal band that for some reason seems to attract a lot of girls.
D-beat, as a genre, works exactly like this, on worshipping and emulating the source material, referring to the signs and symboles. If one were to see it as a subgenre, 90's crust would be one that is defined strictly with a rather short time period - let's say from 1991 to 2005 and the rise of neocrust. D-beat also started as a 90's epiphenomenon but, contrary to the classic eurocrust sound, survived in one piece in spite of a certain drop in popularity in the late 00's, and then got even stronger and spread everywhere with time. Therefore "eurocrust" or more globally "90's crust" was not so much a subgenre as it was a wave, with a distinct sound that was used to build and lead the new generations of crust, as opposed to d-beat which by essence had to stay the same with some tone variations. Siblings of 90's crust, "cavemen crust" or "cavecrust" (as I like to call it) managed to stay alive, afloat and deliver proud examples of the Doom-loving crust traditions from times to times, especially in Japan - Doom-love was an essential trait of European crust in the 90's - and instances of classic ENT/Disrupt dual-vocal crustcore bands still occur but on too small a scale to state to states that there is a such a thing as genre-emulating or genre-referring 90's crust trend. Sob fucking sob.
But in any case, Hiastus were 90's eurocrust to the bone. It was in their blood, they breathed eurocrust, they ate eurocrust, they drank eurocrust, their wildest dreams were made of fantasies of splits between Hiatus and Warcollapse, Silna Wola and Subcaos, Enola Gay and Social Genocide. For all I know the drummer named his first-born Way of Doom. It is actually not the first time that I write about Hiastus as they appeared on the Never Again compilation Ep that I reviewed 10 fucking years ago. That stings. Beside the mighty Hiatus, the Oulu-based band was without a doubt very influenced by the national crust heroes Amen who, with a first deliciously sloppy Ep in 1990, belonged to the first generation of eurocrust. They clearly must have played Feikki and Paranemia quite a bit. With the band relying on the traditional dual vocal crust attack, like Amen, to spread the message - recent discoveries revealed that the first instances of such an aural technique may date back to the neolithic era, when humans could not actually speak and grunted like apes - early Disrupt and Extreme Noise Terror must have been blasted to death as well. The sound is obviously pretty raw (the surface noise only providing extra crust points) but the music is more energetic than I remember with a good pummeling drumming. The vocals are too loud in the mix and a little overwhelming at times, especially because of the very dedicated fellow responsible for the low growling parts. Ironically the spoken parts are too low in the mix, as if the singers, after three songs of shouting like demented sea elephants, were too shy to speak normally all of a sudden. The flaw makes the music sound a bit ridiculous but even more enjoyable as well. This is 90's DIY crustcore, not technical metal.
Hiastus remind me of the Polish band Money Drug who were equally raw and a bit sloppy with their dual vocal eurocrust recipe, and of their countrymen Rotten Sound who started as very similar Disrupt-ish act with their Ep Sick Bastards in 1995. I like the Hiastus side a lot but, let's get real, this is one is for the crust completists, for the archivists, for the obsessed, for those who consider prehistoric 90's crust as the sweetest serenade and mid-table Hiatus-like bands as adorable underdogs in a decade plagued by shoegaze.
You already know if you need this split Ep, I know I do.
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