How grim can one get? Or rather, how grim, bleak and downright depressing can one look to others?
I am not an especially grim person. After a few pints, like every normally constituted person, I enjoy a game of darts, cracking a few dad jokes and getting into a drunken fight because I am a sore loser but I still do get reinvited, sometimes. It would be far-fetched to claim I am the life of the party but my presence illuminates the room enough and probably inspires many a youth to not be like me. I know how to prove myself useful. But to have a split record between one band called Servitude and another called Ebola does convey a vibe of tragedy, horror and overall doom so that it might not be the best topic for a first Tinder date and conversations starters like "Do you enjoy Servitude?" or "I much prefer early Ebola" haven't proved to be particularly effective. It's still marginally better than "Have you heard of Genital Deformities?" or "The last Coitus full length was something of a disappointment" I suppose.
From a punk point of view, of course, there is nothing wrong with a split between these bands, it made sense given the styles they used to work on. When I bought this Ep, I already had the split between Misery and Extinction of Mankind so I was already a lost cause as far as my terminological tastes were concerned. The symbolism of lexical fields and of naming in the punk world is absolutely fascinating and the fact that we have had our own stable but ever-changing metalanguage for 45 years is a testament to the relevance of punk. The downside is our tendency to rely too much on our cultural jargon, just like teenagers have always done to make their parents feel old, except a lot of us are well into our forties and fifties and our parents have mostly given up on us a long time ago and, unlike us, most teens do grow up. I might do a piece on punk language one day.
Before the record selection for this series, I had not played neither Servitude nor Ebola for a long time so it was an interesting re-exploration. I have had records from both bands for a while so that the fact they survived the often heartbreaking annual purges throughout the years indicated that a part of my brain knows that I like them even though I didn't exactly remember why (the punk brain works in strange ways). Servitude were from Minneapolis and belonged to the prolific local 90's crust and extreme hardcore scene that gravitated around Profane Existence and there are unsurprisingly many familiar faces when looking at the members' resumes. It would be silly doing exhaustive genealogical "ex-members of" lists but suffice to say that the individuals involved in Servitude did time in bands like Destroy!, Segue, Dissension or Code 13 and would later serve in Scorned, Provoked or Frenzy.
The band recorded a rough and ready demo tape in 1996 (I doubt it was really distributed) that hinted at what they were going for but things really took shape with the 1997 Ep Apparatus on Profane Existence and Skuld Releases. As tempting - if unwise - as it is to blame it on Alzheimer (it runs deep in the family, sadly, the only positive I can think of is that it might allow me to forget about ska-punk and shoegaze) I remembered Servitude as an all-out down-tuned savage crustcore attack with dual male and female vocals with that distinct 90's US sound but they are not really. The Ep actually has variety, tempo changes, even some emotional moments and while there is obviously a crustcore influence, it might make more sense to see them as an anarchopunk blend of progressive crusty bands like Jobbykrust or Unhinged, of Health Hazard's furiousness and of more dissonant heavy down-tuned hardcore bands like His Hero Is Gone with an urgent, direct sound. Like One By One infused with extreme hardcore or something or indeed, not unlike Ebola, the type of bands that Flat Earth would have released. A good Ep representative of a specific 90's sound.
The three songs that Servitude contributed to the split Ep are heavier and more down-tuned so that it takes a couple of (loud) listens to really to get into it, especially with just about four minutes of music. If the music's texture is different, it also feels like the next logical step and makes sense that the band would move toward such a production (it was after all in the air at that time). In terms of influence, Servitude never sounded as threateningly destructive, intense and angry as on this one. As mentioned above, it sounds like a bar fight between HHIG, Jobbykrust and One By One. I love how the vocals work together in that specific 90's anarcho way. Some find it dated, I find it endearing. My one reservation is that it is a little short for the style and a full Ep recording would have worked better especially since there are a lot of changes and some versatility involved. The three songs were recorded in early 1997 so, for all I know, Servitude may not even have been active by the time the Ep came out in 1999. The screenprinted cover on their side looks absolutely magnificent but I could not find who was the artist. Didn't they have Insta in 1999?
On the other side are Ebola from Newcastle. Yes, there have been a lot of Ebolas throughout the years (even a tongue-in-cheek French oi band), one of which was from Berlin and a contemporary of our one. The 00's delivered quite a few extra grindcore Ebolas which was to be expected since it is a pretty cool disease (from a safe European home of course) and wearing an Ebola shirt would probably shock your nan. The story of Ebola goes hand in hand with that of the 90's DIY hardcore punk scene of the North of England and the band changed a lot in their six years existence (between 1995 and 2000, I think). Alright, let me try entangle the thing.
The band started out with Karen and Micky (from the cruelly underrated One By One) teaming up with Andy (later on in Sawn Off and Shank), Chris and Jonathan (later in Sawn Off and Minute Manifesto). This lineup recorded the Incubation Lp in 1996 , released on Flat Earth Records (obviously), an album I have had for a very long time, that I like but is impossible to store properly because my version has a 13 inch record mailer envelope as a cover. It looks good but to this day, it is the only record that has never fit in any of my record shelves or boxes. Again, pretty endearing. This first effort was a pretty devastating one, just fast, punishing hardcore thrash with dual vocals and diverse tempo changes that sounded like a date between Health Hazard, Disaffect and American powerviolence during a conference about anarchism. Ebola were always very vocal politically, not to mention literally, and they were always careful to provide interesting things to read and booklets with their records (no longer a common practice nowadays but then I am under the impression that we are all so jaded that we no longer even care to read the lyrics).
The following Ep released the next year, Imprecation, with Nick (from Enslaved Records and later Boxed In replacing Jonathan) was even more savage, demented and unpredictable blasting hardcore, more focused and articulate too I suppose but less traditionally punk. An extreme record that would be exhausting as an album and can only work on an Ep. The 90's were not done with Ebola yet and the band recorded five more songs in September, 1998, for the present split with Servitude. The first striking thing is how raw the production is. While Incubation and Imprecation enjoyed a rather good sound highlighting the relentless aggression and the manic and destructive changes, their side of the split almost sounds like a live in the studio recording. If the songwriting is similar to the previous Ep, this shift in terms of sound confers a more primitive, primal vibe to the music, a low-fi nature that borders on DIY grindcore or squat-based hardcore powerviolence. Very intense and even less for the faint-hearted than before as the vocalists remind me of angry hyenas fighting for the last vegan sausage (let's just pretend that hyenas are into vegan sausages). Imprecation would be the better Ebola record as it sounds more accomplished, however this side of the split Ep probably displays more charm and even character as it demonstrated that Ebola could still deliver in terms of blasting intensity and aggression with a direct, raw, bass-driven sound, not unlike Dystopia at times. These five songs would be reissued with a new mastering on a one-sided Ep in 2000 on Enslaved.
As mentioned, Ebola were a political bunch. Each song is introduced with an audio sample which was customary in the fastcore/powerviolence trend in the 90's (even up to the mid 00's) and there is a proper booklet accompanying the Ep. The explanations to the songs are quite illuminating and describe what the motif, the feeling and the context were during the writing. I know some people hate the practice and consider that the songs should stand on their own without a notice but retrospectively the explanatory notes help understand the mood of the time and the songs against macho violence "Malevolence" definitely stands for a specific time period in DIY hardcore punk. The whole thing looks brilliant and emphasizes the honesty of the band and the motivations that point to the 90's anarchopunk tradition (veganism, anti-homophobia...) rather than what modern powerviolence (or however you want to call it) is all about today.
On the whole, I think that this split Ep is a good record, much rawer and more punishing than I remembered, clearly a testament to what DIY political hardcore was about at that time, musically, lyrically and visually. This was released on Clean Plate Records, the label run by Will Killingsworth who played in Orchid at that point in time.
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