THE SYSTEM "The Warfare" Ep, 1982

The System. A very special band indeed. Fair enough the name is a little strange, if not eyebrow-raising, and whereas I feel like I am the coolest cat in the neighbourhood when I am wearing my The System shirt, passersby look mightily unimpressed ("The system? Well, what about it? Does this prat think he incarnates the System?" I hear them think) definitely because they can't be arsed to spot "is murder" at the bottom and not because I am well into my forties, am about as unthreatening as a 5 year old and yet still believe I'm gonna make it in the wrestling business. But then I often treat them with Coitus or Genital Deformities shirts so I suppose they are also relieved that, for once, my great clothing style does not cause property values to drop. Oh well. I live in social housing so I really don't care.

One of my fondest memories of The System was when my best mate and I, admittedly very drunk, blasted the Thought Control Lp at full volume in the middle of the night many moons ago and started dancing around the coffee table in the living room in some sort of crusty danse macabre, singing along to the brilliant tunes like tuneless crows and clapping our hands like foolish happy seals. Because that's what really set The System apart from a lot of their anarchopunk peers in the 80's: the bloody great punk tunes. Of course the anarcho wave was replete with bands using tunefulness and melodies to get their point across but what worked so well with The System was that they borrowed theirs from the first wave of UK punk rather than poppier stuff like Zounds or Lost Cherrees for instance. I first ran into this Wigan-based act (up North, a name made famous by Orwell) through the aforementioned Thought Control Lp that I ordered directly from the Skuld Releases website sometime in the early/mid 00's. I trusted the label like a skinhead trusts his braces: faithfully. I expected Skuld Releases to deliver and it almost always did although on paper it was odd to see the label release in 1997 an Lp recorded in 1983 by a British anarchopunk band. Needless to say that it was great to be able to say that I technically owned an original record of this beloved wave of mine. That was well before I sold a kidney in order to buy the original pressings of their Ep's. Throught Control provided ace punk songs to sing along to and it sounded like the ideal break from all the dark crust that was omnipresent then.

As I alluded to, The System took their sense of tunes and catchy songwriting from the so-called '77 wave, something guitar player Andy clearly points out in The Day the Country Died. Whereas many anarcho bands from 1981 on started out influenced by Crass and their early followers, The System had been playing together since 1980 and the members had all been dicking around in bands since 1978 so that a large part of their influences, in terms of melodies and versatility and impeccable hooks and catchy compositions, can be located in bands like Slaughter and the Dogs, Crisis, Menace or The Ruts. And of course, the band remained gritty too, and on that level there is also something of the Upstarts in The System, and of course, it is undeniable that when they quickly got to tour regularly with bands like Flux of Pink Indians and the Crass Records crew the band also conveyed a tribal anarcho vibe and the appropriate politics. The System stands as one of these rather rare anarchopunk bands that can appeal to any punk-rock lovers. The music offers tuneful anthems you can sing along to in the shower (you don't actually have to shower, just being in the bathroom works just as well), it sounds aggressive enough to please your average UK82 believer and they have that melancholy, moody atmosphere that will speak to the vegan anarcho crowd and . In the end, just fantastic catchy punk-rock with a message.

The Warfare Ep was released in 1982 on Spiderleg Records, the label run by Flux of Pink Indians (The System's drummer would actually record the song "Tapioca sunrise" with Flux later on) notorious for releasing records by Subhumans and Amebix, and it includes three memorable punk songs produced by Penny Rimbaud, an unbeatable clue that it will have that typical "anarcho sound" that we've grown to associate with that scene. Opening with, arguably, the band's most iconic anthemic number "Dogs of war" with its infectious, boisterous chorus, the Ep has one of my all-time favourite anarchopunk songs: "Their corrupting ways". With its dark guitar leads, its hypnotic bass lines and its potent, passionate chorus, it is the perfect 80's blend of angry old-school punk-rock and postpunk. There are few punk songs that I consider perfect in the sense that they could not be better and I would not change anything about them (Demob's "No room for you", Naked's "Mid 1930's" and The Samples' "Dead heroes" are other significant examples) and "Their corrupting ways" is one of them. The very Flux-ish third song "Nervous breakdown" is another definite win of course with its heavy tribal rhythms (they did love those beats back then) and its simple structure and riffs, just a good way to make The Warfare stand out among the dozens of UK punk records released in 1982. And let's not forget the great artwork with several paintings (and the traditional foldout poster) illustrating the themes of the songs and, while they are no Otto Dix, they absolutely scream "1980's" and look sincere and original. Great stuff. The next year saw the release of the Is Murder Ep, another stellar punk Ep but I do prefer their first one. 

This copy has some patent surface noise so you've got the full English breakfast here. The band's first Ep's and a full demo can be found on the ...Is Still Murder reissue on Overground Records that is still available (on vinyl, the 2005 cd version with additional songs, among which a song from The Insane (!) by mistake, is of course out-of-print. The band is still going, albeit in a different version, and still really good by the way.     

The SYSTEM

EXIT-STANCE "Crime against humanity" Ep, 1984

The transience of punk bands' popularity is a phenomena that should be studied one day. It is dictated by contexts and trends, by fashion and by how what is deemed worthy of likability is connected with who loves it and why they do. I feel it was not so long (although it probably was a while ago actually I just do not want to admit the passing of time) that few people from the "DIY hardcore scene" around me gave little if any fuck about Exit-Stance. Punk bands connected with Conflict were associated with either mohawked punks or crusties, two tribes renowned for asking for cigarettes, or worse some change, at gigs which is generally frowned upon by the heavily tattooed New Balance-wearing population. Anarcho bands like Hagar the Womb had a clear tie to Conflict through Mortarhate Records, run by Conflict's frontman Colin, but because they were catchy and a bit pop-oriented, they were officially cleared to be listened to. Milton Keyne's Exit-Stance did not have this luck and their heavy, beefy and direct approach at first did little to convince large segments of "da scene" to give them a go. 

Well, I did pay a bit more to be honest.

The black-clad crews of course already knew about one of the most potent and original bands of this peculiar punk wave - or they brilliantly pretended to by posting Youtube videos - when vintage anarchopunk and its insta-friendly visuals started to enjoy a larger comeback in the mid 10's and have become, I believe, well respected since then. I also think that the recent appreciation for the band's old material can be linked to the success of Berlin's Industry, a very fine band highly influenced by the classic Exit-Stance sound - by which I mean their first Lp A Self Portrait At The Stage Of Totalitarian Domination Of All Aspects Of Life is basically a tribute and even included a cover of "They kill dogs" - that has been playing many of the coolest punk festivals and, helped by its second Lp being released on London's La Vida Es Un Mus, a label whose reputation and reach pretty much ensure your band will be touring and enjoying great distribution, managed to appeal to many people far outside the International Federation of Anarchopunk Nerds - I happen to be the leader of the French chapter and subscriptions are open. 

On the one hand, witnessing new people, even those who wouldn't know their Icons of Filth from their Anti-System, uttering dithyrambic perorations about Exit-Stance is positive because, first, I also love the band and, second, it allows me to say that I knew them first and mastered their discography since those intensive anarchopunk classes, given by some proper old-timers with bad backs who owned the original records, I took in 2003. On the other hand, it makes me want to behave like a dick and pompously explain that three members of Exit-Stance originally played in the bizarrely named Ethnic Minority, "didn't you know? What a shame, I thought that people wearing an Exit-Stance badge would. And were you aware of Bristol's Exit-Stance, an excellent punky goth band? Yeah, nah, I thought not". But at the end of the day, I do thank Industry for at least making people checking the band and, who knows, maybe other similarly influenced bands would pop up and I would have to shut up for once.

In any case the first Ep of Exit-Stance - a particularly and laughably hard name to pronounce for a French person - subtly entitled Crime Against Humanity stands as one of anarchopunk's hardest and most intense works of the 80's. The three songs included on the Ep were recorded during the same session as "Operation successful", a song specially recorded to appear on Mortarhate's very successful Who? What? Why? When? Where? compilation Lp that showcased the band's strengths that put them on the punk map: punishingly heavy tribal beats, hypnotic guitar riffs and some of the most aggressive, most frontal, angriest vocal flow and prosody of the genre. As a listener you get the impression that that mental lad at the back of the bus decided to sit right next to you and started shouting at you about political violence, oppression and ecology for 7 minutes like an anarchist doomsday sayer. When you mention Exit-Stance people will rave about the incredible, and yet seemingly simple, drumming and the impassioned vocals reminiscent of Conflict or Icons of Filth but arguably even more pissed off. In The Day the Country Died bass player Jevs reveals that the drummer was really into Killing Joke and I like the idea that Exit-Stance blended the heavy tribal beats of this band with the more primitive approach of mid-paced songs from Chaos UK or Disorder or even Flux of Pink Indians and with the angry rants of Conflict, or indeed, Crass. Of course it would be silly to think that the band did it consciously but from the safe place of retrospection it makes sense. 

This is an absolute classic and if you read this you are probably already well aware of it. I don't know why it was not released on Mortarhate like the mini-album While Backs Are Turned in 1985 but on its sub-label Fight Back. Quite surprising. Something to do with pressing numbers? Another hidden reason? It had nothing to do with styles as records from Vex or Legion of Parasites were released under the Fight Back banner. The fact that Crime Against Humanity has not been reissued yet is rather shocking but the Mortarhate (and therefore Fight Back) catalogue having been sold, it is Radiation Reissues that takes care of the operations and from what I see they almost never do Ep's. But then Legion of Parasites' Undesirable Guests originally on Fight Bacl as well was eventually reissued on General Speech so who knows what will happen with Exit-Stance's jewel. 

Exit-Stance of Humanity

   

 

DIRT "Object Refuse Reject Abuse" Ep, 1981

When feeling blue, a lot of people indulge in what they call "comfort food" in order to feel better. Something familiar, predictable that brings back - if temporarily - that feeling of safety and warmth. Granted, some of that "comfort food" must be called "comfort booze," and "comfort hangover," afterwards but I suppose it fulfills the same purpose: getting over shit through what you intimately like, through familiarity, for instance through greasy crisps, a can of cider and the blasting of Why - not that I would ever need to be comforted, I just bought my second yacht thanks to Terminal Sound Nuisance and the fourth attempt at hair transplants seems to have finally worked as my scalp is not as purulent as last time (that one Turkish barber advertised on Youtube was dodgy indeed in the end, I should have been more cautious). I am a spoilt man.

From my tiny spot in this big bad world, a good way to feel better, if only briefly, is, of course, to play a vintage UK anarchopunk records that I have listened to death for the past 25 years and whose corners, circumvolutions, flaws and every single tiny details I have learnt to love. Just as important to this comfort-seeking enterprise is the exact memory of where and when I first bumped into the band, in this case Dirt. It's funny how you can remember - usually fondly, even though it might have been a crap show - gigs that took place so long ago but are barely able to name the opening bands of last Tuesday's concert. I bought my first Dirt record on October, 4th, 2002, at an Inner Terrestrials gig in a venue called Fahrenheit near Paris. Unless you were there at the time, there is little chance that you have ever heard of this venue but it used to play an important role in the alternative punk scene between 1984 and 2008. For the record Nirvana played there in December, 1989 in front of a manifestly rather scarce audience although listening to some old-timers who suddenly pretend to have been there indeed you would think they played to a full house.

But back to my petty story. At this Inner Terrestrial gig, a band I really enjoyed then and still do, Active Distribution had come along and they had set a little distro table with political fanzines I would mostly pretend to be interested in in order to look cool and sophisticated and a couple of cd's the label had put out among which was Dirt's double cd discography Black and White, referenced as Active 1 for you nerds and originally released in 1997 so I suppose I was lucky to find it at all for cheap then (it now goes for more than 40 euros on Discogs). I am aware everybody hates cd's these days because they have no cachet - and because Stranger Things is set at a time when they did not exist yet they will therefore forever be deemed unworthy of coolness and of viral Tik Tok videos - but the cd version included two amazing unreleased songs that were not on the vinyl version. Who's the fool now, huh? 

I would be lying if I said it was love at first sight between Dirt and I and it did take me some time to get used to Deno's unhinged shrieks, especially on the band's early years. When I did totally get it, I couldn't help but think how disturbing and challenging the vocals would have been 20 years before, back when it originally came out. By then female vocals in punk were still tacitly expected to have some melody, some tunefulness to them. Of course, punk-rock questioned gender norms and expectations and bands like X-Ray Spex, Crass of course or Vice Squad did challenge the conventional image of female rock singers and while there were evidently angry and passionate political female rock singers before punk, they did not really sound angry and did not shout in the microphone like demented howls if you know what I mean. Dirt took things one step further in 1981 with Deno sounding deliciously tuneless on this first Ep and showing no pretense of any intellectualism (unlike Crass I guess) or of any London art schools bollocks or of poster punk stardom. The legendary repetition of "Object refuse! Reject Abuse!" concluding "Democracy" remains an iconic (as Gen Z's would say) bit of anarchopunk history and the best way to deter burglars. 

It is easy but nevertheless true to claim that a Dirtless world would have been more boring and many a young punk - female or male actually - might have been influenced by the strident vocal style and by the efficient simplicity of these four songs and thusly galvanised into action. On this level, I would personally argue that Dirt's snotty punky discordance was as important as Chaos UK or Disorder's, although their influence may have been more circumscribed to the anarcho realms (this is very difficult to assess from our perspective as many local scenes then were not as split and tribalism not as prevalent as we can imagine and people freely listened to all sorts of punk and besides, let's keep in mind that no less than 13000 copies of Dirt's Ep were sold at the time). 

In any case, and if the amount of patches and shirts still worn today is any indication (which it probably isn't, the band may just prove to be more Insta-compatible), Dirt remain one of the most loved anarchopunk bands of the era. As mentioned the crazy, defiant shrieky vocals of Deno are still what they are primarily known for - for good reasons as they still sound so mental and spontaneous almost 50 years later as I got to experience by playing the band to my "I listen to a bit of everything" work colleagues - but I would venture that the three-chords simplicity, the raw sound, the energy, the distortion, the primitive tribal beats, the frontal punk vibe and the dual vocals (let's not discard Gary's ace vocals as well) all make this Ep an absolute 80's punk classic. Of course, a less thoughtful, more direct version of Crass is an obvious point of comparison as they definitely borrowed their mentors' love for noise and distortion - and let's not forget to mention that the Ep was obviously produced by Penny Rimbaud whose very precise, strict, inimitable ideas of what bands were meant to sound like went on to define what we know call "the classic anarcho sound". Rereading Glasper's The Day the Country Died I noticed Gary mentioned that they would listen to 6 Minute War a lot in the band's very early days and that Dirt was at first basically a faster, noisier version of their songwriting, which makes a lot of sense sense; and I personally would throw The Epileptics/The Licks in the mix as well - albeit in a much spikier mood. Finally, one might contend that Dirt's long-standing popularity also has to do with their image that, along with their music, was significantly more punk than a lot of their anarcho comrades like Flux, The Mob or Omega Tribe who were often discarded as "bourgeois" or "hippie shit" by the spikes'n'studs crews, especially in the pre social media days. But Dirt never were, perhaps because of the punk-as-fuck spontaneity of their sound, they were paradoxically easier to listen to alongside Chaos UK, The Exploited or The Business, and because later on they reformed before it was fashionable to do so and toured with DIY crusty hardcore bands like Hellkrusher or Final Warning and played many DIY festivals and squat gigs in the 90's, they definitely maintained that anarchopunk street cred, all of these elements making them such a respected and beloved band.

So yeah, there's nothing like Deno's vocals when you are looking for comfort and now that I think of it the band foes very well with a cold can of cider and some crisps. 6 minutes and 30 seconds of delight.

Object Refuse Reject Abuuuuuuse

    

TRAGATELO / KONTRAATTAQUE "S/t" split tape, 1999

Music is known and indeed used as a means to bring back memories and, more often than not, "normal" people do not enjoy music out of love for the art but precisely because it has the power to bring back memories of their youth. My dad doesn't really love the Bee Gees, he just misses the days when he was smoking hot on a dance floor in 1978. All kinds of memories can be summoned by a tune, be they good or bad if you have been dumped to a particular soundtrack. I suppose it is very much a utilitarian, reflexive and in the end self-centered use of music because we only really just remember ourselves. Whenever I hear Tragedy I'm reminded of the early 00's back when I was right in the brilliant process of discovery of hardcore and crust and d-beat and all those lovely things that my mum hates with a passion. Those were times of wonder, magic, awe, amazement, like a kid upon entering a candy shop for the first time (but with nose rings and cheap speed instead of caramels), so I suppose I'm guilty of this myself and I do miss the innocence and excitement of times past, sporadically rekindled when I read about some obscure anarcho act I have never bumped into before. When this happens, albeit fleetingly, I feel like I'm 20 again. 

This tape does bring back memories, although they are not strictly about the music itself (which I have to admit I only vaguely remembered before writing the review) but about how I actually got hold of it. I think I must have already told about it at some point but since I happen to be the dungeon master I am still going to bring some context. Back in 2003 I lived in sunny Manchester for about a year as part of a student exchange. I said goodbye to the Eiffel Tower and learnt the way of the local indigenous people, the Mancs Tribe, and learnt some of their customs like being twatted by a total stranger in front of a pub I had never even been in. Good times. At that point in time I was heavily discovering heavier and darker punk music, namely crust, and I was an avid model student. For the first time, I had free internet access through Uni and would spend hours scouting, searching the world wide web for bands. Through fanzines like Slug & Lettuce, Profane Existence or local ones like Punk Shocker, Attitude Problem, Headwound or Reason to Believe, I was able to make lists of bands I knew I had to listen to in order to be taken seriously by older, cooler, balder punks. At the top of the list was, unsurprisingly, Sacrilege. I had been lucky enough to be able to listen to them for the first time at an older friend's house in Leeds and had been in complete awe since. Getting a copy seemed impossible until I found an American distro called Catchphraze Records.

Catchphraze were located in Arizona, really fucking far indeed from Manchester, and was run by people from Contravene. They ran the label of course but also had a tape distro, mostly homemade cassettes of classic bands as I remember, and they had Sacrilege's first album on tape so that I quickly placed an order (they must have been a bit curious). At that time shipping costs were still relatively affordable so that I added many more tapes from the likes of Amen, Battle of Disarm, Scumbrigade, A//Political, some of which I still own, and among the selection was today's split tape between Tragatelo and Kontraattaque. I distinctly remember the day when I got the parcel and religiously played the tapes for the first time but cannot recall why I actually picked this particular tape in the first place. I don't think I had even heard of either bands before so it could have been a case of sheer curiosity. Or perhaps a mention to Los Crudos was made in the description and since everyone love Los Crudos (for good reason) I went for it. Or I might have confused Kontraattaque with Köntraklässe which I remember writing down on the list because I had read something about them in Slug & Lettuce. Whatever prompted me to order the tape, I kept it throughout the years.

This version is, as you can see, a DIY bootleg and the following message was added to every tapes Catchphraze did: 

"This tape was made in order to make the music, and the ideas that go along with it, more available to people without having to pay the ridiculous "collector's" prices in order to get it. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever that this tape should have cost you more than $2 in the U.S., $3 in Canada or Mexico, or $4 anywhere else in the world (ppd). If you were asked to pay more than this you were ripped off and the entire point in making this reproduction available has been missed."

A noble endeavour that will undoubtedly sounds very odd to anyone born after 2000. Tragatelo (meaning something like "suck it up" I guess) were from Los Angeles and was very part of the Latino hardcore punk scene that was so active then (and still is and has become quite established from what I can tell). The band was best known for having Martin Crudos on the drums but singer Lina also fronted the 90's anarchopunk band Subsistencia. There are five songs on the tape and I had forgotten how raw, fast and urgent they sounded. I am reminded of classic Italian hardcore bands and of course more modern US bands like Los Crudos or even Migra Violenta with great vocals and a typical rapid fire delivery in Spanish with a direct political message to boot (the song titles are fairly transparent). The kind of bands that make you want to jump until you realise your bad back won't really let you and you'll just look like an old frog. Tragatelo would go on to release a full album in 2003 on Lengua Armada, the long-running hardcore label run by Martin Crudos (I'm aware he did many more bands but in my tiny mind he'll always be referred to as Martin Crudos). 

On the other side you'll get three songs of Kontraattaque for a grand total of two minutes and forty-seven seconds of music. Well, music might not be the aptest substantive here because this Los Angeles unit played mean grinding hardcore with an effortlessly raw old-school edge and gruff vocals in Spanish. Somewhere between Denak, Dropdead and Los Crudos perhaps? Kontraattaque was a rather prolific band too, an important part of the late 90's/early 00's Latino hardcore scene and they have a solid discography, sharing splits with the aforementioned Migra Violenta and Looking For an Answer, back when many hardcore bands were faster and more direct than they are today. Three great minutes that will have you crave for more (or less if your idea of punk is Turnstile) and will certainly be the angriest thing you are going to hear today (if your neighbours happen to sound more aggressive I suggest you call the ghostbusters as soon as possible). 

This split tape perfectly illustrates the political anger, la rabia and the intensity of this sector of the hardcore scene in the late 90's and treating myself to both bands' discographies felt oddly "fresh" and I strongly recommend you (re)explore them (Kontraattaque have a bandcamp where you can find everything: https://kontraattaque.bandcamp.com/) but the raw production - or lack thereof - of these songs makes them so compelling and reflects a sense of urgency that is hard to top. Just good, pissed hardcore punk with a message. The cassette was originally released in 1999 on Subversive Rhymes, the label of Heric and Dirk from Kontraattaque.

Tragate la attaque

  

STATE MANUFACTURED TERROR "S/t" demo tape, 2023

Finding the right name for your band is a complex operation and the negotiation process can be painful, especially when the drummer or the bass player suggest a particularly cheesy name (drummers should, clearly, stick to hitting things rather than offer lexical insights while bassist should be happy to even be part of a band considering their usually limited skills). Trust me. I have no idea how these New York crusty punks came up with State Manufactured Terror but you know that when a band goes for a three words moniker, things get tough quickly. In any case it makes it hard for non-English speakers to pronounce the name without sounding like stuttering ducks? Crust does have a bit of a history when it comes to difficult band names. Anyone who has ever heard a French person say Constant State of Terror, Remains of the Day or Icons of Filth knows exactly what I'm talking about. I like the idea behind State Manufactured Terror though and they couldn't go for State Manufacture (too industrial) or State Terror (sounds like a corny name for a 90's German hardcore band) or Manufactured Terror (too philosophical and academic) anyway so they must have had to settle on this one. And well, the acronym SMT sounds alright too.

State Manufactured Terror have emerged from the very active contemporart New York punk scene that seemed to have gained a lot of momentum since the early 20's and they contribute to put this peculiar city on the crust map again. When you mentioned New York hardcore to someone it instantly conjures images of muscular lads wearing jerseys and bandanas, trying hard to look hard and idiots moshing brutally in "the pit", attitudes that are synonymous with hardcore for many people. So I'm really not talking about this part of the scene as you would expect. To an extent you might argue that bands like Crazy Spirit or Perdition and others that gravitated around them played a role in the rebirth of raw hardcore punk or heralded the coming of a new generation in New York, although things are never as mechanical of course. New York has always exerted a fascination around the world as towns proclaiming they are the center of the world often do. I cannot say I was ever really enamored with New York punk or the idea of New York punk maybe because if it did give birth to the grandiose Nausea, it also created Leftöver Crack and that sounds really scary indeed. This said, given the quality and the crustness of the new wave of soap-dodging punk bands there I might have to investigate in person one day.

Many recent or active New York bands are well worthy of interest (acts like Straw Many Army or Kaleidoscope have be come well-established bands that can appeal to different audiences) and, because I obviously cherish crust music and have been militantly advocating for the recognition of crust pants as intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO (currently waiting for their reply), my attention quickly focused on the old-school crust revival taking place in the local squats. The town incontestably has a rich history when it comes to this sound with the hugely influential crust legends Nausea and the whole Squat or Rot scene with other smelly bands like Insurgence or Jesus Chrust. There haven't been many overtly crust bands in New York afterwards beside, from the top of my head, Atakke in the mid/late 00's, Zatsuon in the early 10's and Subversive Rite in the late 10's (they were more of an old-school metal-punk affair to be accurate but there is a Sacrilege influence after all so let's say they were concomitant to crust) so that the impressive current boom appears rather unexpected from abroad. Thanks to several successful tours Flower are undoubtedly the trend's headliners and undeniably one of the most exciting current crust bands but State Manufactured Terror utterly deserve to be praised too.

This tape is the first demo, released in 2023 on Peace of Mind, a local DIY cassette label responsible for a lot of brilliant recordings from the likes of Disputa, Witness or Love & Compassion (it does sound like the title of a book about the power of crystals but the music is actually ace). State Manufactured Terror is made up of people who also play in bands like Porvenir Oscuro, Headsplitters and Instinct? and is fronted by graffiti artist Wombat. Far from the often generic and predictable post Hellshock stenchcore that has largely become synonymous with the very name of the subgenre, State Manufactured Terror, in terms of sound and songwriting, keep it more old-school, at the very birth of crust between 1986 and 89. They could have played the Mermaid if you know what I mean. The atmosphere is chaotic at first and fairly raw which confers an oft sought-after but rarely achieved old-school vibe (presumably the demo was recorded in DIY conditions that might be rather similar to those of the pioneers) and as mentioned the band relies more on crust as era and moment rather than on a specific couple of bands. Being an elite crust expert, I can still hear Concrete Sox, early Heresy and Deviated Instinct but also some US bands like Confrontation or the little-known Cirrhosis and, well, I'm sure they love Bristol too. They sound abrasive, noisy and use different beats, from fast hardcore thrash to groovy dirty mid-paced metallic moments so the experience is pretty intense indeed. The band sounds really genuine with a real personality and politics, something that is not so common these days. The hand-drawn artwork looks as chaotic, dense and teeming as the music with a real punk feel reminiscent of these late 80's/early 90's pre-digital aesthetics. Well class.

The band released an Ep entitled The US Government is a Kleptocratic Doomsday Cult (making it almost harder to pronounce than the band's name) in 2024 on Autsajder Produkcija (Outsider Production, you get it?) and a split Lp in 2025 with Flower recorded live in the studio in Poland during their Euro tour with a very different production that makes it a very interesting listen indeed. Hopefully these lovely people have a full Lp in them.

Crust Manufactured Terror

 

RAZA ODIADA "Salta la hijueputa frontera" tape, 2016

Running a highly successful punk blog praised for quality writing, cultural relevance and avant-garde critical thinking for 14 years is no walk in the park, I can tell you that. Every week I receive dozens of parcels from random bands begging me to review their mediocre latest offering, sometimes even willing to pay for some of my outstanding words, and it breaks my heart to have to decline (after I take the money of course). Fortunately for me my personal assistant takes care of all the admin and all the denied bands do get their own personalised letter and even a signed picture of yours truly for consolation. I'm not a monster. But sometimes acquaintances or friends physically gives you the record, literally putting it in your hands, taking for granted that because you actually know them I will be more than grateful to spend a couple of hours applauding their band and I would be too cowardly to say no anyway. That's the reason why when I spot a mate looking for me with his band's records in his hands I immediately rush to the toilets. 

This Raza Odiada cassette landed in my lap pretty much against my will because a good friend of mine is a renowned specialist of the aforementioned technique. To be fair it was not his own band's but friends of his' and he gave me a couple of other tapes on the same day because he likes to share and because he doesn't really give you a choice anyway. Some of them did not really hit the mark but this one definitely did. I had never listened to Raza Odiada prior to this poisonous punk gift but had heard the name and was aware that they were based in Barcelona and made up of Latino punks who had fairly recently moved there. The 2010's and 2020's saw a significant rise of often rather young punks from South America or Asia - as well as from so-called Eastern Europe but this specific punk migration started well before - moving to Western Europe creating in the process the renewed notion of "migrant punk" with what it entails in terms of life struggle, discrimination and hardships. They shed light on the practical experience of migrating as a punk and, in many cases, for punk. 

There could be many different reasons for such a trend (that was not completely new either, after all Los Dolares relocated from Caracas to Spain in the 00's) and I do think one should not generalise and each personal situation is specific but I would argue that the internet culture did play a positive role in that sense, making it easier to build connections between continents and easing the process of moving as a solidary community. Where there's a punk gig, you're never exactly alone, right? Punk was always an internationalist movement so it was only a matter of time before Third World punks were finally able to land in Europe's hottest punk spots like Barcelona, London or Berlin, clearly the places that I would associate the most with the phenomenon. Inevitably this breath of fresh hair in scenes that sometimes tended to grow older led to bands being formed and asses being kicked and Raza Odiada should be seen in the light of this wider development. 

For once, Paris was not late to the party and we even had our own Colombian hardcore punk band in the mid 2010's aptly called Sinnaciön (and later on Ansiax) but as mentioned a cooler town like Barcelona certainly takes the cake especially when it comes to Latino punks making noise (it's not BETOE's playground for nothing). Enter Raza Odiada, a boisterous hardcore punk band made up of members from Colombia, Venezuela and Brazil some of whom previously played in Muerte Cotidiana and Final Slum War. Raza Odiada immediately caught my precious attention because of the spontaneity of the music. There is no pretense, it's direct, they are not trying to be your fancy d-beat or raw punk bands with pedal boards as long as an anaconda, no, their purpose is to play crudo metallic d-beat thrash with angry political lyrics about poverty, violence and migration (they did not pick a Brujeria song as a moniker for nothing) spat out by a singer that could have sung in some 90's Chicano hardcore bands. The production is raw and I love the sound of the drums, simple but very energetic and crushing. You can tell the guitar player cherishes his old-school metallic tone very reminiscent of Armagedom. Actually Raza Odiada could be described as a d-beat version of the aforementioned Brazilian thrash punk legends (which they'd eventually cover) and Lobotomia and I would add some Crude SS and Bathory, all blended in the pure DIY chaos punk tradition. 

Salta la Hijueputa Frontera stands as a very enjoyable recording that sounds authentic and punker than most, far from all the Insta nonsense and online cosplaying. The band released a full album in 2021 which I would also recommend but I like this tape better and I believe the length is perfect for their style. If this had come out on a fancier label... 

Raza Punk

KŁAMSTWO "Alienacja" tape, 2002

The times we currently live in suck. 

I wonder sometimes how I would be if I was a teenager in 2026. Of course, I can imagine myself being some sort of avant-garde enlightened Tik Tok influencer claiming to be on the verge of success, but this imaginary self born in 2010 would also probably be more miserable than the actual one of 1999 and might be firmly convinced that the world as we know and hate it is about to be annihilated by some madmen. And that's without mentioning the insane pressure that punk kids have these to pretend to love Turnstile in order to fit in. In my days when you were getting into "real punk" you had to pretend to hate Green Day because they were sellouts and dared to have tunes (which was the same thing). It was much easier and a cheap way to look rebellious. The irony in all this is that, I'm told, current teens fantasise about the 90's and even the 00's, an unspoilt pre social media - to be understood as prelapsarian - era, free from hateful online bullies and the constant stress to be connected, visible and available at all times which does sound horrible. The anti Myspace critique of the mid 00's do feel almost innocent in retrospect and have the aroma of desuetude, those days when punks still believed that social media and the world they carried in their dark hearts could be resisted. Not the most clairvoyant moment in punk history I'll grant your that.

Will the Kłamstwo tape cheer everyone up? Well, I think it might do the trick, at least for a while. This Polish band was all about energy and tunes, great ones, that will survive in your head for a couple of days. This rather obscure act were from Knurów, a mining town in the South of Poland where, according to the band's presentation online, boredom ruled in the 90's, the future felt bleak and punk was the ideal means to face reality and be creative, so not exactly a fancy seaside resort I presume. A classic punk origin story. The term "kłamstwo" means "lie" in English and it is, clearly, much harder to pronounce but isn't punk as much as a network of friends as it is a network of languages? I don't know much about the band itself and while I would love to have a great anecdote about how I came across this largely hidden gem, I'm pretty sure it just popped as a recommendation on bloody youtube which is certainly an unromantic anticlimax and a perfect example of how the internet sometimes makes our passion feel tame. But anyway, I clicked on the thing because I like Polish punk (knowing a bit of Polish I knew where they were from) and it was love at first listen.

Kłamstwo played tuneful and highly energetic female-fronted political punk-rock (the two doves logo suggests an anarcho leaning) with that distinctive Polish flair for catchy guitar hooks and vocals. The introduction from the label Zima you can find on its website (amazingly the tape is still available) says that the youthful band formed in 1998, somehow managed to record a very DIY demo in 2000 that they were unhappy with (one song off this recording "session" made it to the tape as a bonus and to be fair I think it's not that bad) and as result went to a proper studio to record 12 songs in 2001, the album Alienacja that would be released in 2002, and... well, it looks like it was pretty much it. The band then appeared on a massive tribute to Dezerter in 2006 but, not owning the thing, I am unable to tell you when the cover was recorded. Similarly I could not find any details about the members' whereabouts following the end of the band sometime in the mid 00's I assume. Zima was and still is a very active label that specialised in alternative music, not just punk but also reggae (the genre is very popular in Poland), that notably released the whole discography of legendary 80's band Śmierć Kliniczna who were local to the area and dozens of other weed-smoking acts I have never heard of (since I read somewhere that smoking weed could make people enjoy Manu Chao I firmly decided to never smoke again).

24 years later and Putin is still in the charts.

The label's blurb indicated that Kłamstwo were influenced, among other bands, by Post-Regiment, Konwent A and Kanada, three bands that have strong female singers. If the comparison to the immensely influential Post-Regiment can make sense (not just vocally but also because the guitar player tries to infuse some memorable melodies although Post-Regiment's sound remains somewhat sacrosanct) and is fairly obvious, the Konwent A parallel proves to be more relevant as the two bands share a similar sense of tunes and intensity. The chance that you would have heard about Konwent A is slim - unless you are an old-school punk from Poland - as they never released anything when they were originally active in the mid/late 80's although there are, of course, live versions of their songs recorded at the Jarocin festival. Pretty classic story for a Polish punk band at the time. This said, Konwent A must have circulated in DIY fashion through tapes and the appeal of the band is easily understandable. I would also throw the 90's band 105 Lux from Gdynia that displayed musical qualities and some elements of the songwriting that Kłamstwo would make their own and because of my own musical background I cannot help but think of tune-driven UK bands too like Dan or Sofahead too or even 90's DIRT, bands that made punk energy melodic.

The Polish scene has had this long tradition of strong female-fronted punk with a message and Kłamstwo fits right into this category. Some tunes on the guitar leads are absolutely brilliant and I challenge anyone to listen to "Konformista" and "Miasto" and try to resist the urge to whistle to the tunes. Of course, you can tell Kłamstwo were still a young band and there are a couple of sloppy moments, however the production is very clean, if basic, and highlights the catchy guitar work and the deceptively simple vocals that sound warm and upfront. It's such a shame that they never recorded more. 

Alienacja

MOBCHARGE "Self-titled" tape, 1997

Well, well, well. Unless you are as thick as a log or you got into punk just last week after watching Turnstile's latest video (if you haven't and if you are above 20, you might want to abstain, it's unsurprisingly absolute dross), this review will be about a d-beat band. They called themselves Mobcharge for a reason and didn't want to mislead the punters: "Mob" because Mob 47 and "Charge" because Discharge. Life can be simple sometimes. Of course, form the perspective of 2026 such unsubtle linguistic combination meant to appeal to the members of the punk sect are not, by any means, unusual. Just think of all the Dislickers, Shitcontrol or Wolfcharge of this world and the staggering need to "refer to" that plays such a huge part in modern DIY hardcore these days. It could be seen as a global movement that extends far beyond the punk wasteland. Are we Stranger-Things-ing punk-rock and thus ourselves? Is it reinvention or musical cosplay? Should I care as long as the D is good? Should I stop dicking around and get to it already?

Mobcharge was a project based in Spain, around Barcelona (the band's address is located in Barna indeed) active in the mid-90's but they somehow crawled from their grave in the late 00's too - no doubt due to popular demand. If you have been around and care to dig a little you will realize that the mobchargers have been involved in about as many bands (if you can call some of them "bands") as you have had showers since Covid. The band proved to be one of the many sonic ideas of the Becerra brothers Tonio and Chico who played in the excellent old-school DIY grindcore band Violent Headache which I have always rated highly and is exactly my kind of grindcore: punk, non-technical and cave-compatible. Mobcharge wasn't the insatiable brothers' first attempt at beating the D in an orthodox fashion since they had already done Angry Mob a couple of years prior starting Mobcharge. While the moniker was not as Dis-oriented, on their crowing "glory" 1996's The Genocide Contiues Angry Mob sounded arguably even more like the most faithful Discharge followers. But that band, in an even more primitive form, was in fact created as a two-piece in 1989 by the aforementioned infernal duo (before singer Jordi joined in 1991 in time for the 100% Nordico tape) and a few songs can be found from this period. In a time when so many bands buy pedals and struggle to sound raw and crudo, this earliest Angry Mob recording proved that you just have to be motivated, possibly bored, punky teens to achieve the quintessential, genuine, stripped down Dis (granted, Spain already had a tradition of rough, chaotic, angry hardcore bands in the 80's so it was not illogical or that much of an anomaly).

But let's get back to Mobcharge a band that relied on a very similar basis and walked the same ground as Angry Mob, namely the first d-beat wave and 80's Swedish hardcore (I was once told that at that time in Spain, in the late 80's/early 90's the term used to refer to what we now call käng was "el ritmo Sueco"). Beside the Becerra brothers (Tonio on the guitar and Chico on the drums), Mobcharge included Avellano (who was also growling in Proyecto Terror at the time) on vocals and Peña (who did L-ctro Pills with the three scoundrels) on the bass. This Mobcharge tape was released in 1997 and included the band's second (B side) and third demos (A side) recorded in 1995 and 1996 respectively and if you are interested in the band's even rawer first recording adventure you can find songs off the first demo on a split tape with Anti-Clinex if you dare (yet another scandicore project from the Becerras with an unfortunate but ultimately pretty funny moniker).

So yeah, there is a lot of dis love on these demos, the earlier one being expectedly a bit more direct and rawer, although to the uninitiated they will just sound like a lot of noisy bollocks anyway. Fundamentally Mobcharge - and indeed Angry Mob - should be seen as pertaining to the first d-beat wave, that pivotal time in the 90's when vintage Discharge (let's pretend 1984 and beyond never happened) turned into a passion with a legitimate blueprint and its own subgenre with its strict and admittedly limited set of specific rules. In the present tape you can hear some demo quality early Dischange or Disclose and some 90's Uppsala käng like Time Square Preachers but the recordings also convey a rawer 80's hardcore vibe like Shitlickers or Violent Uprising (and let's throw MG15 for the sake of it). Very angry-sounding and highly self-aware at the same time with covers of Varukers, Shitlickers and Discharge if you need to be reminded of what's happening. The kind of d-beat bands that you just have to play on tape if you know what I mean. This one was released on HFN/IMA (a small label run by a member of Grito de Odio) and Squeal Records. In 2008 Mobcharge recorded again and two years later a full Lp entitled Apocalyptic Horror was released by a handful of labels. The band had certainly not gone emocrust but if it delivered the typical goods, I miss the rawness of the early stuff as any self-respecting nerds should claim.

Let's get real, Mobcharge is for the diehards but they, along withAngry Mob (these people do like mobs, don't they?) did pave the way for the typical Spanish raw d-beat style that bands like Destruccion or Regimen de Terror today went on to repeat and popularise although it might have been an indirect influence. At the end of the day, Mobcharge belonged to this category of bands I call "posers detectors". If you see a so-called self-proclaimed d-beat fan covering his or her ears when Mobcharge is playing then you know they are either an undercover cop or worse a fucking poser. In both cases to be disposed of as fast as possible. 

Charged Mob