Ten Steps to Make Your Life CRUSTIER Starting Today (step 1): Generic / Mortal Terror "S/t" split Lp, 1988

Hallo there, how's life? 

It has been four weeks since the end of the confinement and, little by little, it looks like the average locals are slowly finding their way back to being their own self-centered arseholes in an open air environment again. Excruciatingly banal stories of how they survived lockdown through Netflix and virtual boozing session with their mates now fill the air like butterflies in spring. I suppose future anthropologists will analyze this gregarious storytelling frenzy as a truly moving sign of resilience proving that life - or what passes for life anyway - always finds a way. As for me, I find it quite perplexing that the inevitable global realization that modern life is basically a massive existential void - one fueled by our own vanity, our shortening attention span and our belief in a new trinity made up of the superficial, the performative and the spectacular - has not sparked more philosophical questioning about the culture of consumerism, speed and artificial abundance we call home. 

Like everything else, punk-rock has been put on the back burner. At this time of the year, Europe is always full of touring bands looking for gigs and a way to sell their new record and the main issue has always been how to respond logistically to all the demands. But now, as Subhumans once said, there's no more gigs, at least for a while and no punk festivals will be held this summer. Punk is a multifaceted entity composed of several species and subspecies (often referred to as "scenes") that can usually coexist and even sometimes interbreed, although the gathering of some antagonistic punk species (like tough guy hardcore jocks and gutter teen punks) is injudicious and bound to result in testosterone contests, venue bans or plans of split records, which is much worse. However, there is one particular gene that runs through all the different punk tribes: the festival gene. Punks can't get enough of fests. Festival organizers tend to blend species that can appreciate, or at least tolerate, each other in order to avoid too much confrontation, so that everyone on location wears similar tribal distinctions that makes the audience feel at home and part of a passionate and dedicated community. From the outside, it just looks like two hundreds black-clad scruffy drunks in a field pretending to watch other scruffy drunks trying to play loud music on stage. But festivals can be said to symbolize the apex of the punk year as they are spaces for the expression and reaffirmation of a collective cultural identity. Ideally booked during the punk mating season, summer, festivals are also perfect opportunities to parade in full regalia in order to boast and impress potential partners, belittle possible rivals and cement your punk credibility through the acquisition of tasteful shirts and badges (you can stream the records online so why bother paying for them?), or you can also share beauty tips, trade useful contacts abroad for your next tour and further develop your love for nature in lice-ridden camping sites that are little more than a barren wasteland littered with cans and the first wave of festival goers. Heaven.

With the festival season basically ruined, the delicate reproductive cycle and natural balance of punk is endangered as the hot new bands of 2020 will not be allowed to tour this summer and that ace-looking studded jacket you completed in March will be left vastly unseen, a real shame if one considers the number of likes it already got on Insta. So what now? With the cancellation of punk festivals, summer can quickly get bleak and I have a feeling that the crust species, always particularly fond of festivals because of their natural tendency to get dirty and their imperviousness to most natural infections and parasites, will be especially badly hurt. And when my people are in trouble, when suffering awaits them, when they are no longer able to enjoy an average Doom-like band at 3am while downing their twentieth can of lager of the day, well it does make the eye watery and one just knows one just has to do something, especially if one never shirks from doing one's duty, albeit at one's small personal level, to make a festival-free summer bearable. So why not revisit records from the classic crust era, from the late 80's to the early 90's, and from the cradle of genre, Britain. I have been longing to write about (sometimes minor) UK crust classics for a while and now is as good a time as ever to indulge in this difficult but delightful task that will hopefully cheer up my fellow crusties in these dark times and provide with fancy topics of conversation and perhaps enlighten some commoners in the process (open-minded me, right?). 

What a lengthy introduction... My congratulations if you have read that far, your lionhearted tenacity shall be rewarded. Let's proceed to the actual record, one that I am particularly fond of and yet does not really get the credit it deserves. The hometown of Alan Shearer, Newcastle, and its wider area have always produced quality punk bands and the two participants of this split, Generic and Mortal Terror, both hailed from this town and epitomised that Northern take on the mid/late 80's UK hardcore wave although in different fashions. To be honest, I selected the album because of Mortal Terror, a band that, as one of the very first crust-influenced crust bands, managed to synthesise all the characteristics of the foundational crust wave in a very free and unselfconscious manner. Few crust records sound as gloriously spontaneous and punky as MT's side of the split with Generic and I cannot overstate how much I like it and, in fact, for a self-proclaimed crusty to claim the opposite would be tantamount to high treason. Therefore, although Generic technically occupy the first side of the Lp, I will deal with MT first. Let's start with a bit of formative history. Trapped in a Scene tells us that there were a couple of pre-MT bands, none of which released a demo, though I would have loved to give Nausea a listen as it was made up of Duncan and Scales who ended up in MT, Steve who went on drumming for Senile Decay and Hellkrusher (and much later one The Vile) and of Mandy, on the bass, who would end up singing in Health Hazard. By early 1988, the first MT lineup solidified with the aforementioned Dunc on the guitar and Scales on vocals, another singer named Pug, bass player Phil and another Phil on the drums who was at the time also responsible for the epic rhythm section of Newcastle's undisputed crust heroes Hellbastard. Small world, innit?

I already wrote a bit about MT ages ago (well, in 2012) when I tackled their split Lp with Aural Corpse but the split Lp with Generic being my favourite, I had always been toying with the idea of ranting once again on the crusty allurement of MT. I have to concede that, at first, I thought that the split with Aural Corpse was the band's first. My reasoning - if flawed - was pretty sound and based on the theory of punk evolution which determines that the Antisect/Anti-System/AOA anarcho hardcore style predates the ENT/Deviated Instinct crusty mayhem. However MT did it the other way around, starting with crust savagery and ending up sounding like they were around in late 1984, which was fairly unusual. In our deleteriously hyperconnected world, the relative obscurity of MT remains mysterious and I am disconsolate to confess that my specially-made MT shirt has not yet proved to convert anyone to the band's greatness. Truly unexplainable when one considers that MT's music is crust gratification of the highest order and tick absolutely all the boxes you are entitled to expect from an old-school UK crust record. From their very moniker that manages to sound formulaic even in 1988, but is at least an honest indication as to what you are going in for, to the obligatory ten second joke "song", the numerous mid-tempo filthy metallic "stenchcore" moments, the hyperbolic dual vocal cavemen crust teamwork, the epic grungy introduction to the deliciously raw and urgent sound (the eleven songs were recorded in five hours for £29), the MT side is classic in the best sense of the term, reminiscent of early Extreme Noise Terror for the speed and the brutally angry vocals, Terminal Filth Stenchcore Deviated Instinct and Grind the enemy Axegrinder for the crunchy and dirty dark metal riffing, Ripper Crust Hellbastard for the epic crust power and even early Napalm Death and Sore Throat when MT sound at their most manic and obnoxious. Whenever I play their side of the split (which is often, hence the skips), my face light up with beatific glee and the moment when the first song "Horrible death" kicks in into that typical, quintessential early crust sound after the ominously catchy introduction, to me, that epiphanic moment basically signifies crustness in all its disgusting glory. The ultimate crash course in crust.

This recording is equally fascinating because it stands for an early instance of crust-inflenced crust music, meaning that MT were one of the first punk bands to borrow openly from the genre's forefathers - who were peaking at the time - and try to replicate and indeed synthesise the original UK crust sound. The force of the band in 1988 precisely lied in their youthful and direct synthesis of the crust style that was at its apex at the time and could even be said to become quite derivative at that point. Therefore, I would further that MT absolutely sounded like generic UK crust and that, if in the late 80's or early 90's it would have been something of a limitation, a couple of decades later, I would argue that it is precisely what makes it so good and the perfect synthetic introduction to the original sound of crust. Besides, if you are really craving for creativity you've got that moody anarchopunk tone on "Sick butchers" and an merry oi-ish vibe of "Yankee go home" that does not really work that well but you could argue that such creative imperfections and silly humorousness are part and parcel of the crust genre and are therefore legitimate. MT's insert is a traditional cut'n'paste artwork completed with a sloppy collage and the lyrics are politically-oriented and deal with with animal abuse, US imperialism and an evil man called Bernard.

On the first side of the Lp are another Geordie orchestra, Generic, who were, in a paradoxical act of self-awareness and humility, not that generic in the British context of the mid/late 80's. If you hold any interest in that part of the music scene, then you will undoubtedly be familiar with Generic. If the name does not at least ring a distant bell, I'd, first, recommend a serious re-assessment of your life priorities and second, an immediate exploration of the band's solid discography. I wouldn't blame you too harshly for this academic lacuna since, in spite of releasing three Ep's and two split Lp's between 1985 and 1989 and being really active during a crucial period of the UK punk scene, Generic are tragically seldom discussed nowadays. As usual for this type of band, I strongly suggest you read their chapter in Trapped in a Scene if you want all the juicy bits about how they came to be, but since I don't really have anything better to do right now, I might as well throw in a couple of trivia details. The band formed in 1985 in Newcastle and was made up of Sned and Micky, who used to play in the excellent anarcho band Blood Robots, and of Terry and Wizz from In Memorium (which I have never heard). The driving idea behind Generic was to play energetic and angry hardcore punk with uncompromising political lyrics and although it would not be irrelevant to classify the band in your dusty and thick "fast hardcore thrash" folder, some pieces of songwriting were still quite reminiscent of the golden anarcho age (for example in the band's frequent use of spoken parts or in some of their darker, more tuneful moments), an artistic take on the 80's hardcore genre that undeniably increased my liking for them. Sure, you can enthusiastically jump and wear bandanas to the music, but there is always a Chumba-like moment just around the corner as well (or even litteral Chumba members like on the Torched Ep).

I freely admit that I played the Ep's more frequently than the Lp's and I feel that the Generic side on this particular album would have made a good Ep, were it not for the strange and uselessly long dub outro to "Violation" and the rather forgettable untitled last song (more a joke than anything else I guess). By the time Generic recorded the songs for the split, the lineup had changed several times and the band even survived a separation. As well as drumming, Sned played the bass on this one, with Wizz on the vocals and Terry on the guitar. If you are looking for energetic, versatile and angry hardcore punk with raspy vocals this sunday then it might very well do the trick. The songs are mostly fast-paced but the many manic tempo changes and songwriting creativity, notably some delightfully heavy crusty mid-paced moments or eerie anarcho intros, keep the listener on his or her toes and engaged. Clearly not formulaic and taking inspiration from a wide hardcore spectrum, Generic stood for international hardcore punk, both musically and conceptually, more than any other British bands at the time. I can hear MDC, CCM, Siege, Negazione, Olho Seco, Heresy, BGK, Black Flag, Kuro and probably many others. While the creeping anarchopunk influence gives away that Generic are indeed an 80's English bunch (the accent effortlessly revealing the specific region), I would argue that the music's core, its inspiration lies in the international hardcore wave and in the desire to be a part of it in the philosophy of "act locally, think globally". A pretty good listen even though I keep thinking that with a bit of trimming it would have a smashing Ep instead of a decent split Lp. In terms of lyrical content on this one, Generic appear to be quite critical of "the scene" and all the stereotyping, especially as far as masculinity is concerned, it can generate. There are also songs of empowerment encouraging you to seize the day. Generic always had relevant and relatable political and personal lyrics and it is indeed very shocking to know that the singer Wizz later on got charged with sexual misconduct which understandably makes an official Generic discography impossible.

This split Lp was released on classic Darlington-based label Meantime Records (run by Ian from Dan) in 1988 and I'm starting to realize that I'm basically posting all the Meantime discography little by little. Damn. After this album, MT went on to release another split Lp with Aural Corpse with a different lineup on Looney Tunes Records before they split. Scales then went on to sing in Sawn Off (with Sned from Generic) in the late 90's and Afterbirth in the mid 00's while Dunc played in Grudge. Generic recorded a last Ep, Torched, after this Lp. Drummer Sned and first guitar player Micky reunited in the great One By One in the early 90's and played in many bands afterwards (without mentioning running Flat Earth Records for Sned).

Enjoy this humble album as it conveys a relevant image of what the DIY punk scene was about in the North of England in terms of music and honesty. I love it.

PS: unrelated to the issue but since it cannot be said enough: fuck the police institution, fuck white supremacy, fuck the class system. Fuck.  

Generic Terror