An adventure in split Ep's! I have no gun but I can split: JUGGLING JUGULARS / ENOUGH! "S/t / Open your eyes to the world" split Ep, 1997

There are bands that just cannot help shooting themselves in the foot. 

The first contact you have with a band is through the name (yes, this review is co-written with my long-time friend and mentor Captain Obvious) and while good bands don't always stick - for whatever reason - good names do. Just look at 3-Way Cum. An absolutely brilliant band, one of the very best in the gruff crust genre in the 90's, a decade when the style was about as fashionable as a Tik Tok lip sync challenge today (don't ask) and yet the strange choice for a name may repel a lot of people and insured that wearing a 3-Way Cum shirt at the supermarket would raise some highbrows and attract some acutely disapproving looks (not so much at goregrind shows though). Not really a sticker (or for the wrong reasons). I am not going to talk about average or even mediocre bands that had great names because I am not that kind of person, especially since the last lawsuit, but let's face it: a good name for a band is like a good name in life, it's a good first impression. But it still is just an impression: Spectres for example is a fantastic moniker and yet they have become a Tears for Fears cover band. 

  

That's a little how I feel about Juggling Jugulars and Enough! - especially for the latter to be honest - good bands but why go for such names. And I do know what I am talking about as I play in a band called Turquoise (yes, go figure). People may not be aware of it but the phrase "juggling with out jugulars" is actually a line taken from a song by the mighty Rudimentary Peni entitled "Slimy member" (itself the name of a rather good US band). And - wait for it, wait for it - this very same song also has a line that says "severed head of state" just like that Portland band that used to be famous. How unlikely is that? A one-minute song with merely twelve lines reading like a poem has inspired not one but three bands in their brainstorming for a good name. That's some solid trivia if you want to show off like a dick on New Year's Eve. I recommend you start a drunken conversation about this exact subject at around 4AM with a total stranger. That'll show them. But to get back to today's topic, in spite of its clever and nerdy origin, which I personally like, Juggling Jugulars cannot be said to be a convenient name as it is a bit of a mouthful and the meaning is rather, well, cryptic. 

JJ are from Tampere and Pori and have been around seemingly forever, basically since 1989. The phrase "they are still around?" abounds whenever the band is mentioned. And yes the are still around. They have changed a lot throughout the years and have managed to forge their own brand of tuneful anthemic political female-fronted punk-rock that can be sung in the shower but still has an aggressive powerful edge. They did not start quite like that although you could already hear, here and there on this Ep, a tendency for melody and a quest for the balance between snot and tune. There are some really catchy moments and "Toy voters" with its infectious chorus and dark guitar lead is genuinely good and my favourite number. The one song in Finnish, "Suolia Ja Ulosteita", is a completely different animal, an enjoyably chaotic and humorous take on classic 80's Tampere hardcore. Very fun. The remaining three songs are decidedly punk-rock, navigating between snotty UK punk, Deutsch punk (or is it just me?) or even early hardcore. Not bad but nothing too spectacular either about those.

On the other side you will find the real heavyweight of this Ep with Enough! from Gdansk. To be quite honest, Enough! are the reason why this record made it to this series (which is a bit like being selected for the Crust Olympics). They check the two main Terminal Sound Nuisance boxes: they play groovy gruff crust and (yet) they are (still) vastly underrated. Arguably the band took some questionable decisions. The name "enough!" does not sound too good (why a name in English if all the lyrics are in Polish?) even if I like the sentiment behind it as it can be the source of a lot of misunderstandings and shit puns ("do you know Enough!?", "Enough! is enough" or "damn, I just can't get Enough!!"). As for wearing a shirt, well it'd just look a bit silly or even arty, innit? Not as silly as my English Dogs top depicting naked women riding dragons but still a potential inspiration for bad dad jokes. As for the artwork neither JJ and their cheesy drawing of a juggling clown nor Enough! with the sketch of an eye wide open really manage to grasp the attention (but then the Poles' Darkside tape displays a ridiculously ugly bat so the eye is not so bad after all). And despite all this, I consider Enough! as one of the best Polish crust bands of the time (and there was some harsh competition not like in France where about three bands were fighting for the throne). Actually, to be fair, I also rate Enough! as one of the best metallic crust bands of the 90's (name and visual aesthetics notwithstanding).  

Terminal Sound Nuisance is very much a home and safe space where prejudices are fought and notions of "good" versus "bad" music are challenged (to put it mildy). Maybe narrow-minded crusties ignored Enough! because they were not curious enough (pun half intended) and I seriously pity them because the band deserves much more attention than they get. These two songs are old-school metallic crust miracles with a thick and heavy production that is just dirty enough and highlights the pummeling groove and power of the songwriting. Of course the band emerged from the prolific and qualitative Polish anarcho/hardcore/crust scene of the 90's so they should definitely be seen in this exceptionally creative context that gave birth to better known bands like Homomilitia, Sanctus Iuda or Infekcja. You could argue that retrospectively, from the outside, the band may seem a little lost among all the other top bands and that may account for their relative obscurity outside of Poland. 

Darkside, their 1996 demo (six songs of which would land on a split 10'' with Nula in 1998) was already a strong start, a raw and aggressive dual male/female vocal filth-crust attack with a metallic edge (a bit like a fistfight between Homomilitia and Excrement of War taking place in a discarded scrapyard) but the improvement on this second recording session is impressive. Enough! sound unstoppable here. 

It can be difficult to sound genuinely heavy without sounding too produced but the two songs are just viscerally heavy, at the core. The first number "Życie To Tylko Łzy" reworks a classic Deviated Instinct riff to launch the track into a heavy groove-laden mid-paced vintage crust anthem with cavemen vocal to die - or kill - for. The second song "Bez Litości" also uses a classic band's riff as a songwriting basis, this time Sacrilege's, for the old-school thrashing stenchcore bollocking of the year. Colossal stuff. There is a definite 90's feel too on those two songs and the crushing power and the textures of Hiatus do shine through as well and I sense some of Misery's sense of gruff apocalyptics and at the same time Enough! definitely sound like a Polish crust band. Flawless and leaving the listener begging for more but, of course, there would not be more from Enough!, sadly. The crust adventures were not over yet as two members of the band got involved at some point in Filth of Mankind (Tomek eventually taking over on vocals).  

Did Enough! have enough (well) to record a full album with that crunchy blend of old-school UK crust and 90's eurocrust? Well, who knows. I see the band as a case of proto 00's stenchcore revival in a lot of respects although they sounded more primal and frontal. The degree of intentionality of the refrences in the songwriting remains unknown. In any case you should rush and get yourself the recent Lp reissue of Darkside as it also includes the two songs from the split Ep with a new cover but with an equally horrible closeup picture of a deranged looking bat. Really guys?

This nice split includes two very different bands who share the "network of friends" DIY vibe of the time. And it can be found for cheap. It was released on Trująca Fala in 1997, a label run by a wonderful man that started in 1992 as a tape label and is still very much active. 

Enough Juggling!  

An adventure in split Ep's! I have no gun but I can split: HAYWIRE / THE ÖBLITERÄTED "S/t" split Ep, 1997

In life, some things never fail to disappoint. Like my mate Paul's notorious drunken antics - often compared to a unique local brand of natural disaster - that have had him banned from most bars North of the equator or like the world consistently going to shit and sinking into a cycle of blind violence and blood cult at an always steadier pace, whichever of the two is worse for humankind. Fortunately, there are also positive things on which one can safely rely on and a good old anarchopunk split Ep from the 90's is one of them for me. What can provide you with a sense of well-being and comfort varies a lot depending on your tastes. For some it could be yet another rerun of Derrick, for others it would be paying half your monthly wage on a dodgy wellness guru who dispenses online training for reconnecting with your inner child and accessing your life savings. Whatever works. Derrick is cheaper but not as good for your karma I suppose. 

But we do live in dark times. For all I know, every generation has had the feeling that theirs was doomed or sacrificed and that the times they happened to be forced to survive in were getting worse and worse. Still, the fact that large parts of the Earth will become uninhabitable by 2050 is indeed a novelty that Dante would have happily validated, without mentioning the international conflicts that, tragically, are literally like Discharge songs. Instead of burying my head in the sand - which hurts a lot according to my mate Paul - I just play records I try to think about in the process, some that I have had for a while and kept in a collection where spots are highly coveted and fought for. Just to keep my sanity.

Today we're dealing with a split record released in 1997 between Haywire from Southampton, UK, and The Öbliteräted from the much higher profile Portland. It's not the first time the Southerners appear on Terminal Sound Nuisance as I already wrote about their first demo tapes, 1988's Blood Money and 1990's Freedom?, in 2012, here, a time when Brexit still seemed like a very unlikely prospect, twat king Trump hadn't been elected yet and no one knew what Covid even was (beside your weird cousin who has always been way too much into conspiracy theories and thinks the postie, a lazy if friendly bastard, is a reptilian). And let's not mention that I used to have far more luxurious hair back then. Recording-wise Haywire have always been rather sporadic. They formed as early as 1984 in Weymouth and did not get their shit together until 1988 for the aforementioned first demo. I suppose the four intervening years were both spent arsing around in the studio and, realistically, being involved in various DIY activities. If anything Haywire were a very outspoken political band which is not something you see that often any longer. They moved to Southampton - for some reason - in 1993 and managed to release two records during the decade, this split Ep and another Ep, in the same vein, entitled Mad Cow Disease the following year. With bands these days releasing two vinyls a year, Haywire's production is thin but then a lot of bands never cared much for releasing records and focused on playing live and actually practicing what they preach rather than feeding objects to materialistic persons like myself. 

Still, this Ep is a fine slice of a style of anarchopunk that was prevalent in 90's Britain. In the 80's Haywire had a metallic influence that was gone by then. By the mid-90's, the music was simpler, more direct and punkier in a traditional 1-2-1-2 fashion. The production is basic which works with the songwriting and confers a certain old-school charm point to the previous decade - which makes sense given the longevity of the band. I think the two vocalists and how they work together give some variety and energy to the songs. There are hints of early Conflict and Symbol of Freedom but most of all the songs remind me of 90's bands that were influenced by 80's anarchopunk like Portland's Resist or Deprived and especially of forgotten Yorkshire-based Armed Relapse who certainly worked on similar basis. The last song "Civilised" about animal and human torture - the other two deal with squatting and the Criminal Justice bill and the rise of fascism - is my favourite with its Antisect-ish riffs and its fast snotty punk vibe. Very enjoyable. I got to see Haywire live in 2007 at the Scum Fest in London and I have fond recollections of their performance. In 2008 they released their only album entitled Carnival of Chaos so their set might have been made up of those more recent songs (?). It would be far-fetched to call Haywire a classic anarcho band but they undeniably put their money where their mouth was and were vehemently honest which was it's all about at the end of the day. Three of them now play in Armoured Flu Unit.

On the other side are The Öbliteräted, a moniker armed with two umlauts, a bloody pain to write properly, keeping in the tradition of punk names using an adjective as a collective substantive. This PDX group is the perfect example of a band that had a genuine potential but did not quite get to produce the record they were capable of (which is the exact opposite of my bands: little potential but still releasing stuff). How many people outside of the members remember The Öbliteräted is open to question as I have never heard anyone mention them. Before playing the record after some years when I did my research, I realized I did not remember properly how they sounded like. I guess I expected some decent-but-not-that-good Defiance-type spiky punk-rock but they are far more tuneful and deserve a much better description than that. From today's perspective, they had a cracking lineup with Ben (later in the oft overlooked Phalanx), Matt (then in Defiance and later in Dog Soldier) and Todd (Resist, Deprived and the awkwardly named The Unamused, the man certainly like adjectives used as substantives) which does look good on Discogs I suppose. What I also did not remember is that The Öbliteräted had a female singer which was a pleasant surprise and makes the band stand out from the legions of boys - though truth be told a lot of women were involved in the anarchopunk and the wider punk scene in the 90's. 

I don't hear much of an American punk influence here. Of course Mankind? would be a rather obvious comparison but they were very influenced by UK bands themselves. The first number, a mid-paced gem called "False conception", is my favourite with its delicious nods to classic 80's anarchopunk like The Sears, A-Heads or indeed 90's DIRT (who significantly toured the States a couple of years earlier). The guitar work displays at times a sense of tune and melody that is typical of late 80's/90's bands however and along with the strong female vocals and the band's inclination to play fast while keeping a crucial of tunefulness, a band like Dan could be the most relevant comparison or even Polish legends Post-Regiment who were very popular in the U$. The production is very dynamic and energetic, not too clean. As I mentioned it's a bit of a shame that they did not quite reach their true potential. The following Ep, Insanity, is something of a disappointment as the band got rid of most of their traditional anarchopunk influence with a more direct approach. Some might favour that one though. Judging from the many pictures included in the Ep one can infer that they had some fun doing the band and, well, punk is serious but it also has to be fun, otherwise you should just stick to writing pamphlets and not bother playing riffs with and to friends. On the other hand, political punk cannot only be just fun for the sake fun, otherwise you could just play neu metal or something.

A fine little split with two bands working on anarchopunk but with very different results. The two covers look brilliant too: an evil dragon-like businessman tearing a punk in half with symbolic capitalism in the background for Haywire and a two-headed zombified punk clearly on the boozer in a sort of dystopian vomit-oriented punk wasteland for The Öbliteräted. It was released on Consensus Reality the label run by Kelly (from Defiance and about 136 other bands) brother of Ben. Small world.  

Obliterated haywire

An adventure in split Ep's! I have no gun but I can split: UNCURBED / SOCIETY GANG RAPE "S/t" split Ep, 1996

I recently went on vacation with my mum, something I had not done since 2012, for good reason as it transpired during this trip. Not that we argue much or anything, it is just that she is into the silent contemplation and connection with nature while I cannot help but doing a d-beat with my fingers whenever and wherever I happen to be. Beside I am highly distrustful, as a rule, of flora and fauna since the day  I got shat upon by an evil pigeon twice (!) in a single week. I bet it was the same fucker. Beside what are leaves for if not to hide dog turds for you to trod upon when you are taking in innocent Sunday morning walk after a barely remembered night out? Exactly. We don't get along much Mother Nature and I although judging from the lyrics of 99% crust bands trees are, apparently, crucial to the Earth's survival and, by extension, mine. So please don't die trees. Thanks.

Still we had a pretty good time and no bird fucked around with me. There is absolutely no connection between this quiet mother-and-son adventure and the present split Ep. In fact, had I told my mum that the prospect to write a review about a band called Society Gang Rape upon our return was very exciting, she would have looked at me with her usual look, a blend of worried disbelief and genuine maternal bewilderment that means "what the fuck did I do wrong?". And well, to be fair, I certainly would not wear a Society Gang Rape shirt. What with reaching 40 and being a bloke, I would definitely pass for a disgusting, revolting pervert, understandably so, and I would no doubt get my ass kicked before I can explain that the band was a feminist crust band from Sweden with three female members. That would definitely end up on some social media, I would be canceled for life and you would have to hide in the loo in order to read Terminal Sound Nuisance in secret, like a vulgar porn mag (note for zoomers, a "porn magazine" was a glossy newspaper with dirty pictures in it before you could not stream videos with your phone before). So yeah, I will stick to my Antisect and Deviated Instinct shirts. 

Both bands on the split were actually from the same - rather small - town of Avesta and both bands had the same contact address under the name of "Gunnarsson", a last name shared both by Marie-Louise (SGP) and Michael (Uncurbed) so that one could venture they might have been from the same family. Would the Uncurbed family be for real? I have never been there but wikipedia states in the "Sightseeing" section in order to attract tourists to this quaint little town that Avesta has the world's biggest Dalecarlian horse. Since you are clueless about what a Dalecarlian horse is, let me educate you. Dalecarlian horses are painted wooden statues of horses that have been around since the 17th century, at least. So I am guessing they are big on horses over there. Which I am not. They are mean creatures that stink of shit. For some reason, wikipedia does not mention any Uncurbed museum so there might not be one in Avesta which does come as a surprise. I have already written about the mighty Uncurbed and their really fun ...Keeps the Banner High album here, a work that illustrates rightly what heavy rocking käng crust sounds like. But the four songs on this Ep, recorded in August, 1996, a couple of months after Punk and Anger and almost a year before Peacelovepunklife, is different. Uncurbed loved the album format and they only released two (split) Ep's in the 90's, one with Disfear and the other with SGR. Possibly one of those bands that go into a songwriting frenzy before recordings and always end up doing an Lp. Not always for the best but sadly untreatable. 

If the four songs included on the Ep were instrumental and your eyes were closed, you would not necessarily guess that they are Uncurbed's. Not that they strayed far from their Swedish hardcore roots mind you, but still. Even for a genuine world-renowned expert like myself, with eyes closed and without the vocals, I would have said that we are dealing with a rare recording of some sort of Meanwhile or Disfear. The first two songs out of the four included on the Ep are impeccable raw pummeling "just-like-Discharge" d-takt scorchers done with taste. Of course the classic Uncurbed dual vocals immediately give away that the bunch of friendly Avesta punks are behind it. "The rope song" is a classic faster käng number typical of the band's catalogue while "Pissaa ja paskaa" is a short enjoyable Tervet Kädet cover. The production fits the songs perfectly, rawer and meaner than what Uncurbed usually go for. These are great six minutes. 

On the flip side are Society Gang Rape, one the few Swedish hardcore bands in the 90's that had female members. In fact SGR was an almost all-girl group as only the drummer was a man. This was pretty uncommon at the time and, if things have changed for the better, it still, sadly, is to a significant extent. The band started as a Swedish death-metal band in the early 90's and, just like hardcore bands, there were shit tons of those over there too. What a decade, though not a good one for hairdressers. I  cannot claim to be a connoisseur of death-metal although I don't dislike it and the Scandinavian brand has always stricken me as being particularly good (like their take on extreme music in general). The early version of SGR sounds very convincing with traces of crust already popping up here and there. They were initially called Sadistic Gang Rape which they wisely changed to the slightly less shocking Society Gang Rape. I have no idea if they ever made patches or shorts with the first moniker as the one google search I dared to do was extremely depressing. Obviously the fact that the band was predominantly female does cast a different light on the meaning of the name and highlights a proud feminist stance that is not taking any shit. Would it be possible for a band to have such a name in 2023? I can only imagine the online shitstorm and it is not pretty.

By the time they switched from the sadistic abuse to the social one, the band was slowly morphing into a decidedly crustier unit. Their second self-titled effort released in 1994 was a pretty typical 90's crust affair with brutal dual vocals but the production was arguably too clean and overall it lacked the aggression that the death-metal version of themselves, and indeed their later one, displayed. For some reason this recording was first released on cd in 1994 with eight songs and on an Ep under the titled More Dead Than Alive in 1997 with only four, both on Sound Pollution. Uncurbed and SGR were clearly closed tied with the American label that released four records of the former and two of the latter. 

The four songs on this Ep were recorded in August, 1996, at the same studio as Uncurbed and it is not unlikely that both bands recorded on the same day or week. The session proved that SGR sounded better, raspier and angrier when in all out raw käng mode. The songs are simpler, more urgent albeit a bit sloppier but then that's how the genre is supposed to be played. The metal influence is all but absent with only a delicious filth-crust break on the first song and a short introduction to the last one, itself a masterclass in direct chaotic pissed mangel hardcore with the cymbals really at the front  - I am sucker for that when it comes to this style when on the Ep format; it just works insanely well - that is almost Frigöra-like. Musically SGR here sound close to Uppsala bands like Cumbrage or Diskonto but the typically 90's crust dual female vocals bring something different in terms of flow, structure and scansion and made those four songs rather special in the context of the käng/crust/d-beat wave that swept over Sweden in that decade. I am reminded of the Swedish-inspired but crusty dual-vocal band Excrement of War, especially with Mags' voice, and in terms of gruff angry growls and shouts, female-fronted Polish crust acts like Stradoom Terror or Homomilitia are not far. Four songs in five minutes, no fucking around. 

However I would like to point out that the song "Fuck Chirac" is deeply insulting for French people and would make my dad really sad because he was a massive fan of the president (Chirac was a bit like his own Taylor Swift if you like) and he even shook his hand once (granted Chirac shook the hand of all the employees of the company but still, my father felt a bond).

Following this Ep SGR would release the No Fate Lp in 1997 (on Sound Pollution again) that globally built on the same basis but with a cleaner production (courtesy of one Peter Tägtren a death-metal specialist) that did not convey as well the similar vibe of a brutal käng attack and anger. Still a decent album, though a tad long, and one that you should definitely know if you are into what Swedish punks were up to in the 90's and into feminist or all-female hardcore punk, especially since the band seems to be half-forgotten these days. 

This Ep was released in 1996 on Yellow Dog Records, a once very active Berlin-based band and record store run by a member of Autoritär. A nice little record of crusty Swedish hardcore.  

Society Uncurbed Gang