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