This is somehow a stimulating one to review for Terminal Sound Nuisance as Farce firmly belonged (I assume they are no longer active) to the hardcore scene - X's are optional but felt - rather than the comfy anarcho/crusty one my magnanimous self is used to promote here. At the end of the day it's all punk, innit? So why the need to create divisions? A fair point but then isn't the context as important - if not more in many cases - as the text itself? We often tend to think that context always creates text (or music) which is obviously the intuitive approach but that would be disregarding the performative power of the act of creation that sometimes escapes and gets rid of its creators. It would be far-fetched to claim that Farce's rather humble demo tape reflects such philosophical matters and I guess that what I really want to say is that Farce come from a hardcore background but their music appealed as much to the spiky crew as the athletic one (let's put it that way).
Were it not for their cover of Doom - "Police bastard" no less than the band's most notorious and iconic song - I do not think I would have paid much attention to Farce, not because I dislike the music a priori, but precisely because the people from Farce are from a different crew and I can be close-minded (like my coworkers like to say when I confess my utter indifference to vocoder music). I make it sound like every subgenres is its own tribe with its council and its code of law that does not really mix with other tribes - be they rival or allies or just totally alien. Actually maybe we do have tribes or factions - it would be the appropriate term - that don't really mix, especially in large cities where you can afford to have this sort of artificial divisions. In smaller towns, everybody just go to "the gig" whatever the genre (beside monstrosities like skacore or shoegaze). It's not as complicated.
So basically I almost missed this very fine tape because the members of Farce were and are involved in bands like Game, Shrapnel, Arms Race, Violent Reaction or Obstruct - all bands I am not hard or muscular enough to listen to - and because the tape was released on Quality Control HQ, a very hardcore-oriented (in the US sense of the term) label I don't follow closely for its lack of hairy logos. It does not mean that I don't like some of the bands and it certainly doesn't mean that I don't go see them and support them. I did go to the Damage is Done festival last year and although, to be honest, it was for Framtid, seeing groups of grown men doing the two-step dance (Macarenacore?) and waving their arms like dysfunctional helicopters was a right laugh and some of the bands were objectively very good. As I said, different codes of behaviours are attached to specific punk factions, and mine is often more concerned with taking shit speed, nodding drunkenly to an average Discharge clone and discussing the bourgeois habit of taking showers while still Instagramming patches. All much more respectable and very noble habits, right?
But let's actually get to the tape. So why would both a healthy jumping straight-edge 35 year old hardcore kid and what can only be described as a stumbling human-shaped pair of crust pants love Farce? Because they proudly relied on the classic mid-late 80's UK hardcore sound of bands like Heresy, Electro Hippies or Ripcord and maybe even furious raw hardcore bands like Asocial or G-Anx (without the trippy bits) and whether you worship Siege and early Agnostic Front or Deviated Instinct and Sore Throat we can all be friend and mosh - respectfully and caring for wimps like myself - together. "Let's all be friend! Means to an end!" and all that. The tape has 8 songs in 11 minutes, the production is direct and gives the impression that it was recorded in 1987, the songwriting goes straight to the point, the pace is mostly of the fast and furious variety but you have some mid-paced moments to keep the grindcore crowd away. Just good, solid political hardcore punk. The label logo on this release has been turned into an homage to Icons of Filth's aesthetics, tasteful fan service I am sucker for. The brilliant artwork was done by Nicky Rat who, with his distinct style, has been working with tons of, often successful, bands since then. I wish Farce had had an Ep in them but that was not to be.
This silly writeup is dedicated to Ola - from Farce and Quality Control HQ - for obvious reasons.
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