Alright then, let's finally get back to work. I wish I could tell you that Terminal Sound Nuisance was dormant because I was busy pursuing my dream of becoming a referee in professional wrestling but the reality is, as it always is, much more prosaic and unexceptional. Our luxurious 22m2 mansion was broken into and my computer (with all the blog's files stored on it for extra pain) got nicked. It could have been worse as none of the records has been stolen, as far as I can see. I can't help but imagine the face of the burglars when they entered our tiny two room flat and witnessed the ridiculous quantity of dodgy-looking vinyls not to mention the massive Antisect flag hanging above our bed. If they were young lads, which is likely, there is a chance they had never even seen an actual record before. They must have thought that some olympic level losers live here. Thank fuck they did not find my shark costume. In any case, to their credit, they did not wreck up the place at all and just grabbed the two computers. And my electric razor for some reason. That actually really pissed me off. And how disgusting, for all they know I could use it to shave my arse with it. Not to mention that they did not even take the charger.
But enough whining, there are worse things in life like surviving in a war-torn country, crying your eyes out because you can't feed your kid or losing a mint copy of Deviated Instinct's Welcome to the Orgy. As I pointed out in a previous post, the focus of this next series will be more around medium and less around content. For that reason a split Ep's special felt like the perfect choice. I have often ranted about how great and specifically DIY punk this format has been but I have never actually taken the thing to the next level, embrace the concept and embark in an epic split Ep series. Not only is the witty choice convenient, comfortable even, since I have a lot of them, but it also felt relevant because this traditional medium doesn't seem to be as popular nowadays than it once was. So buckle up, or don't if you are not a proper punk and a mere shoegaze poser.
To open such a series, I just had to pick an Agathocles record. It would have been deeply insulting not to as the Belgians have released an insane amount of splits with bands from all around the world since 1988. They epitomise, excessively perhaps, the essence of the DIY punk split Ep based around cooperation, togetherness and mutual support. It is also much cheaper to do as costs are, well, split. Because of this overproduction Agathocles have become a legendary gimmick band, one that is known as much if not more for their music, the content, as for the form, the record-as-medium. I mean, even my aunt Sylvie did a split Ep with them for all I know. Although I understand people who are, I am myself not a massive fan of Agathocles. The Lp records I own are great because a mate who's also a grindcore freak (and not illogically an eternal bachelor) recommended them, like the split Lp with Unholy Grave or Razor Sharp Daggers. The rest of the Agathocles records in my collection, I bought for the other side, for the band they shared the split with. Like Drudge, Depressor or indeed Social Genocide. And let's start with this cruelly underrated Austrian crust band.
First, I must get on my knees and apologize to all of you. As I endlessly exhibit my knowledge and love for 90's crust, a genre that, inexplicably according to my jazz-loving twat of a shrink, I adore, I completely forgot, to my greatest shame, to include Social Genocide on my Crustmas compilation a few years back. The band just slipped my mind and there is really no excuse for that. Criminal. Truth be told, they do have a pretty shit name that sadly prevents me to ever wear a Social Genocide shirt (Genital Deformities' at least is merely gross) and hasn't aged too well, especially since the Covid pandemics which saw the emergence of legions of idiotic conspiracy "theorists" who thought that the virus and/or the vaccine were an attempt from "the rich elite" to exterminate "the poor", which is extremely stupid and shows how little-educated people are when it comes to basic knowledge of class antagonism. The capitalist class needs the working class to work for them in order to extract value and benefits and they need unemployement to impose low wages and blackmail workers to accept shite jobs in order to raise even larger profits. If you eradicate large segments of the lower classes, who's going to do the dirty work? Exactly, not millionaires' children. They need us so the idea that they would think to wipe us out on a grand scale is idiotic (at best). Digression over. Let's go back to Social Genocide.
I don't know much about the Austrian punk scene beside the fine 80's hardcore band Extrem, a couple of '77 style acts and more recent bands like Ruidosa Inmundicia (cracking band). Was the scene big in the 90's? Europe then was overrun with hardcore, grindcore and crust bands, the latter trying hard to sound like Doom, but as far as I can tell - which might not be that far at all and I am hoping to corrected - Austria was not exactly a hotspot for smelly crusty punks. And yet. And yet Social Genocide is the epitome, the best example I can think of of traditional 90's eurocrust, and my failing to include them on the aforementioned compilation hurts even more. Really. Conceptually, as masters and pioneers of the eurocrust style and wave, both in terms of quality and quantity, Hiatus occupied the unique spot of being the first quintessential eurocrust band, the epicentre of the crust pandemics, THE first band one will mention in the discussion. And yet, if you take eurocrust as style and wave, it necessarily implies that, while Hiatus were inspired and prompted into existence by Doom and more generally UK crust, Social Genocide and the likes were primarily influenced by Hiatus themselves. Therefore, what I mean with the term eurocrust in the frame of this review are the typical and characteristic post-Hiatus bands, those that Hiatus inspired (in addition to Doom or Extreme Noise Terror).
Thus, in that light, along with Subcaos, Social Genocide are basically the most relevant example of a perfectly executed, generic and typical - in the positive sense of term - referential eurocrust band. They were around at the apex of the wave, between 1994 and 1996, not just in Europe but also in the States and Japan, and absolutely delivered. Hailing from Götzis, close to Switzerland, Social Genocide's two songs on this Ep stand as delightful, delicious slices of a cavemen eurocrust cake found in a bin. With the raw and aggressive primal and punchy production, Hiatus heavily come to mind, pleonastic of me to point it out, but there are also large spoonful of genuine early Doom and I sense a distinct Japanese crust influence, which was certainly unusual in European crust at the time, as Battle of Disarm - if not Abraham Cross - are points of reference as well. Paradoxically maybe, Social Genocide managed to be a eurocrust paragon and yet included a Doom-loving Japanese crust touch in their sound (on their Ep's especially, the Lp had more of Private Jesus Detector/Masskontroll feel to my ears). It is subtle but present, if heavy, primal, filthy bear-like pummeling cavecrust can be called "subtle". This tendency is confirmed visually with their side's cover depicting a representation of the band drawn with that sort of naive post Disorder/Chaos UK style that Japanese crusties used - and still use - heavily. Beside, if you look closely, on this crustier-than-though piece exhibiting elite cartoon crust pants, the guitar player has GISM and Swankys stickers on the instrument. And of course the band's On the Brink of Destruction Ep was released on the Japanese label Peace Punk Records so there might have been some trades going on. Clues?
While we are still on the subject of referentiality, the first song opens with a sample that Anti-System also used on the No Laughing Matter Lp so that the learned listener immediately knows that Social Genocide also know. Wink wink. Utterly brilliant gruff crust songs and band. In our day and age that often celebrate minute worship and copies when it comes to crust or d-beat, the fantastic unoriginality of Social Genocide deserve to be acknowledged. On a side-note the drummer, before hitting things in Social Genocide, played in an obscure band called Dreaded Instinct, the name of which greatly excites my curiosity, further exacerbated by the Sore Throat-ian cover of the tape. Send it to me please. I'm begging ya.
On the other side, well, Agathocles and I have to say that I really like what they are doing here. They are not so much getting high on their traditional blasting 4-track sandpaper mincecore in this case, which I am able to enjoy from time to time, and more on a furious crusty cavegrind mood which appears to be the most relevant path they could have picked on such a split. The first song starts of with a spoken part that remind me heavily of the Belgian anarchopunk band Dona Nobis Pacem (probably the closest Antisect-worshipping band in Europe in the 90's) so that it might be a tribute of some sort, I hope. The vocals are guttural and the production is primitive and there are enough variations to appeal to the grindcore freaks but not so many as to repel the basic Doom-loving crust nuts. As the latter, I am reminded of a crude version of Terrorizer with some Embittered and Disrupt but I am sure grindcore experts would say otherwise. And at the end of the day, as undisputed pioneers Agathocles just sounded like themselves by 1995 but I am not an expect agathoclian so it would be impossible for me to really put this Ep in perspective with the rest of their immense discography. Social Genocide were close to the grindcore scene anyway since they also did a split with Cripple Bastards in 1994.
Unfortunately the insert of this split Ep is missing. Did I lose it or was it never there, I don't remember. It is on discogs if you care.
Eurocrust is dead, long live eurocrust.
