War/System / Grind the Enemy "Conform!!!" split cd, 2011

And while we are at it, let's take a look at Grind the Enemy's sole other record, the split cd with War/System from Worcester. This was released in 2011, like the GTE/Discarded tape, on Winston Records and Angry Scenes Records from Brum, a label run by a member of Contempt. I got this cd totally by chance a few years ago while browsing through a crust as fuck distro from Belgium. Thanks fuck I don't judge a book by its cover, because the cd cover is not exactly indicative of its content... I was not even aware that GTE had released anything then to be honest and if it were not for the cheesy drawing of a bobby on the cover, I would have probably passed it. When I realized it was actually a GTE record, I was speechless. Glad of course, because I love the feeling of aimlessly searching through a distro and unexpectedly finding a gem, but also a little surprised since I didn't really imagine that it would look like this. Oh well. Punk-rock.

I already knew War/System from their 2007 cdr demo and I think I saw them play in England at some point. Pat from Terrorain used to sing in W/S (he now sings for the rather good Endless Grinning Skulls along with ex-members of Heresy and Hard To Swallow) but on this recording the vocals are managed by the guitar player, Dave. W/S is a band that I have respect for, because I like what they stand for and I can relate to their lyrics and their staunch DIY punk attitude, but I cannot say I really enjoy the music. W/S played modern metallic hardcore, a genre I am unfortunately not familiar with, with political lyrics. They remind me a little of a more metal-sounding Rectify probably, but the sound is too clean and not groovy enough to my liking.

As we saw in the previous post, London's GTE played old-school filthy metallic crust. The "Conform!!!" cd contains four new songs from them (including an Axegrinder cover... you'll never guess which song they picked) and three interludes, one of which being the smart opening track called "Bukowski". The sound is better and heavier than on the demo tape although the songs were recorded at the same place, the Deathdrop squat, not long after their first session (there is no recording date provided but I am guessing in late 2010). The better production gives GTE a more modern feel: there are different layers of guitar and several samples (probably too many in fact) but the songwriting is sufficiently anchored in vintage crust to keep me interested. I suppose it is a more accomplished work than the demo, but I miss the simplicity and tension of their earlier work a little. It doesn't mean that GTE's songs are overproduced by any means, we are still in the realms of crude stenchcore here, and the song "War of the poor" is clearly the highlight of the cd: a perfect blend of early Axegrinder, Hellbastard and Effigy with dark, groovy, thickly textured riffs. "Your war" on the other hand has more of an early Bolt Thrower feel, which works paradoxically fine here because it remains sloppy and punky enough, and "More beer for the punks" is exactly what you think it is: a drinking metal-punk anthem not unlike mid-90's Genital Deformities. The band's version of Axegrinder's "Grind the enemy" is also remarkable. GTE cleverly readapted the song, adding a second layer of guitar, reworking the bass and guitar riffs and infusing it with new leads. It emphasized the band's resourcefulness and almost turned "Grind the enemy" into a song that could have appeared on "Rise of the serpent men". This is smart crust songwriting.

Apparently GTE toured in Italy before the release of this cd, which makes sense the whole line-up is originally from there, but they must have split shortly after, although I am at a loss to confirm it for sure.      

War/Enemy

Policebastard / Defiance "S/t" split cd, 1995

Hatred and contempt for the police is certainly one of punk's most basic common factor. I have personally always loved outrageous anti-police songs (Hard Skin's repertoire gets a lot of playing at Terminal Sound Nuisance's headquarters) and really, who doesn't? Then you have bands taking police-bashing to the next level through the inclusion of their pig-hating sentiment in their very moniker, a game that MDC paved the way for but that Throw Bricks At Coppers are sure to win. Would I wear a Policebastard shirt in England? Probably not, since I heard some police officers now have some reading skills and I am not so fond of masochism. I sometimes wonder what the Brummie coppers thought when they passed by a PB gig poster, especially if the mention "members of Doom and Contempt" was added below the name... Probably something along the lines of "back in the day, people respected authority, Queen and country... and now look, dole-scrounging tramps taking the piss out of our glorious institution. Is it for people like this that Winston won?". If you were a policeman in Birmingham in the mid-90's and would like to share with us, please leave a comment. The author of the best comment will receive a Cracked Cop Skulls button.

If you have never heard of Policebastard, you will probably be a little upset that you have been missing on one of the very best UK crust bands of the 90's. If you have heard of PB but never really listened to them for one reason or another, let me tell you that you will be feeling like a fool soon enough. PB formed in Brum in 1993, pretty much by chance if one is to believe "Armed with anger". In the early 90's, Stu-Pid, was singing for Contempt and was meant to tour Germany with them. For some reason, other Contempt members couldn't commit, but Pid and bass player Trogg decided to still do the tour and formed another band in that prospect with none other than Jon, who used to sing in the original Doom line-up, on guitar, and drummer Clive, from the second Filthkick line-up. Now, that already looked like a solid enough punk team if you ask me. The boys rehearsed a set made up of Contempt and Doom songs and did tour Germany. Where there is a will... As for the name "Policebastard"? Well, since the band did Doom covers and had the original Doom singer on guitar and vocals, I am pretty sure it was a heavy nod to Doom's first Ep, but I don't know, this is just a very wild guess.

For those of you who have not yet identified who Pid is, he was (and still is) the singer for Sensa Yuma and also got to sing for English Dogs in the late 90's. I suppose that he was, in a quite literal sense, the punkiest punk in the band, whereas Jon and Clive were certainly more metal-oriented at the time. And that's precisely the reason why Policebastard were so brilliant, they were the perfect blend of fast and snotty UK hardcore punk and of crunchy crusty metal. Contrary to more recent bands who start off with an accurate enough idea of playing a specific brand of metal punk, I would argue that PB's sound resulted from the collusion of members who wanted to play 90's flavoured British hardcore punk and others who wanted to infuse it with extreme metal. The result could have been disastrous and disparate-sounding, but I guess the four members all coming from the same 80's punk background gave PB's its cohesiveness.

The ten PB songs on this split cd are basically the "Traumatized" Lp, minus one song. This is a totally unique album and definitely one of the best crust albums of the 90's. Contrary to bands like Extinction of Mankind or Coitus, who had a rather slimy, glutinous old-school crust sound, PB's is much colder and dryer, more modern in fact. While very metal-oriented, the guitar work looks forward in terms of influence (there are elements of industrial metal and 90's extreme metal) rather than backward. This Lp reminds me a little of Doom's "The greatest invention" in terms of songwriting, but I would argue that it takes all the good ideas of that Lp one step further. You have fast crust-punk songs as well as crushingly bleak, metallic mid-tempo numbers, all played heavily and with a rare intensity. The vocals are particularly effective here with Jon's deep growling voice complementing perfectly the furiously snotty one of Pid (it is metal AND punk even in the vocal harmony I would say). Imagine a rabid and yet focused meeting between what Doom, Deviated Instinct, Nausea and Filthkick were doing in the early 90's and the new generation of fast and aggressive punk bands that was starting to emerge then like Substandard or Hellkrusher.

Lyrically, Policebastard were genuinely angry and certainly had a lot to say about the social, political and cultural context of the early 90's that were marked with the Criminal Justice Bill and the Poll Tax Riots. Don't think that it is going to be about inept war haikus or basic anti-system rants. "Traumatized" is about our own desensitization before disturbing images of war or starvation. This song was actually a comment upon all the horrific record covers that depict such atrocities but eventually miss the point since we are no longer sensitive to such representations and rather we prefer to shut down and distance ourselves from the implications. "Dance, be happy" was a song about the growing rave culture in the UK that was becoming more and more a brainless drug culture about getting high. "Inferior" was one about the social pressures that are put upon our bodies and the rising commodification of beauty and sexuality, all in the name of profit and at the expense of self-esteem and genuine well-being... Well, as you can see, musical integrity and innovation were not PB's sole motivation and you can feel that the band really meant something politically as well, there is a distinct anger, an urgency that permeate the songs, as if the members had been waiting for such a band to exist in their life to be able to sing about these issues in that specific way.

The "Traumatized" Lp has been reissued recently along with the songs recorded during the same session that appeared on the split Lp with A38. Following the Lp, the band toured Europe with the mighty Maggot Slayer Overdrive and released the convincing and almost nu-metal-sounding "Gulf War syndrome" in 1998. A split Ep with Unkind in 99 and another Ep, without Pid, "Cursed Earth" in 2002 were supposed to be the band's last... But then, in the late 2000's, Policebastard reformed, started touring again and recorded a very good split Lp with War//Plague in 2011 for Profane Existence (there are brilliant covers of Peni and The Mob on that one). By 2013, Jon rejoined PB as well and, almost magically, the spark got re-ignited and Policebastard rose again as this monstrous crusty metal-punk machine and recorded the "Confined" album. This is easily in my Top 5 crust album of the 2010's and the first time I listened to it, I almost had troubles believing how good it was (I must admit that I didn't expect it to be THAT good). Honestly. Almost 20 years later, there is the same level of anger, focus and urgency as on "Traumatized". I guess 2013 is pretty much as shitty as 1995, right?

The next ten tracks of this cd were penned by a band that is much more famous than Policebastard today, although back in 1995, my guess is that the Doom connection could have made the opposite true, at least in Europe. Anyway... Defiance it is then. I briefly talked about the early Portland anarcho scene when I posted the 1989 Resist demo but these recordings are a bit older, between 1993 and 1995. Defiance was made up at the time of members from Resist, Deprived and Unamused. I suppose one could say that Defiance was pretty much the maximized version of those bands, keeping the anarcho ideology, the energy and the intensity and adding tunes and catchiness through the incorporation of a more obvious UK82 influence (though I doubt the term was in use then, let's say "second wave of British punk-rock). You could say that in the first half of the 90's, when you were a US anarcho band, you either went crustcore like Destroy, Disrupt or Deformed Conscience, or you picked the UK-influenced path like Defiance, A//Political or Aus-Rotten. But I would argue that Defiance succeeded more than the others thanks to their Oi-tinged mid-tempo anthems that you could  easily sing (and drink) along to. 

While undeniably catchy and skilled song-writers, Defiance slowly became more or less linked with the then growing "streetpunk" scene of bands like The Casualties, The Unseen or The Virus (they do like names starting with "The" those bands). While their lyrics were as radical and political as those they wrote for their former bands Deprived or Resist, their tunefulness and the musical references to the UK studs-and-spikes scene somehow tied them to the Punkcore bands, although I doubt it was their original intent. Anyway, one could have thought that a catchier music would appeal to a larger punk audience and thus expose them to more serious and interesting lyrics, but that's putting a lot of stock in the power of lyrics, when a lot of "punks" are just looking for a good pogo and new tips to raise their double mohawks... Oh well. 

This said, these early Defiance songs are really good. The ten songs on the cd are actually from their two first Ep's, the self-titled one from 1994, with Tony from Deprived on vocals, and the "Burn" Ep with Alaric from Unamused, you also have one comp track from the "Start a riot" Lp and one track from their European tour Ep. Of course, Defiance would reach their peak a little later, in 1996, with their fantastic "No Future No Hope" Lp, but the basis are already there: catchy Kelly-styled bass lines, shouted snotty vocals, classic chorus. It is basically the best of the Riot City bands played with a US hardcore energy.  

The lyrics of Defiance are also much smarter than you could think. Songs about the class war, voting as a con so that the system can maintain and justify itself, American interventionism, social control to pacify us... The texts are pretty long, well-written and boiling with rage.    

I bought this cd in a second-hand shop 15 years ago. Back then, I was very much into the "streetpunk" thing and I must confess that I spent a fiver on this baby just for the Defiance cover. I mean... LOOK AT THE AMOUNT OF STUDS ON THEIR JACKETS!!!!!! It's insane! In my naive teenage mind, I thought that they must be at least as punk as The Casualties so I bought the fucking thing. The Policebastard cover tended to scare me a little though... This split cd was released on Ataque Sonoro in 1995, a label I already talked about when I posted the glorious Genital Deformities/Subcaos split cd (the man sure loved his split cd's!).  

Policedefiance

Genital Deformities / Subcaos "Who did this to my sister?" split cd, 1994

I honestly feel a bit sorry for the snobs who have an aristocratic disdain for the cd format, especially since most, if not all, of them didn't grow up with vinyls. Like any self-respecting punk geek, I largely prefer vinyls, but I certainly don't despise cd's. They may not be as cool (but then, nothing is quite as uncool as cd's these days) but let's remember that they are sometimes the only way to get some recordings with a decent sound (for some reason, the vinyl elite doesn't seem to mind listening to youtube or shitty mp3's) like discographies including demos or unreleased tracks or whatever.

And sometimes, even 20 years ago, some records were only available on cd, which must have been rather unusual in the DIY punk realms then. In fact, with this one cd you could have released two full Lp's of Genital Deformities and Subcaos. Ataque Sonoro, the label, must have loved the concept of the packed split cd since they released another very worthy one one year later with Policebastard and Defiance (who were no Punkcore infidels then).

I see this record as a genuine 90's crust classic, albeit a largely unsung one, with, to my right, the almighty Genital Deformities from the Birmingham area, and, to my left, the Lisbon crust heroes, Subcaos. As knowledgeable as I may be in UK crust, one of my main obsessions in my exhilarating life, GD remain a bit of a mystery to me. I know they started out as an unlistenable all-out-noisy-bollocks grindcore band similar to Sore Throat and I dare you to listen to their 1987 demo without fainting. In 1989 they released the fantastic "Shag nasty Oi!"Lp, a crucial record that blends old-school filthy metallic crust and shambolic grindcore with over-the-top, even goofy at times, vocals. It has to be said that the Lp cover is possibly one of the ugliest one, if not the most embarrassing, I own. I must admit that I don't wear my GD shirt everyday. Although my copy of that Lp doesn't have an insert (was there even one?) I am pretty sure that there must have been some significant line-up changes along with the new musical direction in the early 90's. In 1992, the demo "Profession of violence" (which would be released as a split Lp with Nuclear Death a year later) indicated that the band had truly found its own sound, an impression confirmed with this split cd with Subcaos. It is unclear whether GD played a lot of gigs when they were active in the 80's and 90's and sadly they are not included in Ian Glasper's book (from what I recall, they didn't reply to the questions in time... what a shame). What I can say is that Tom Croft, who joined Excrement of War and Doom in the early 90's, doesn't appear to play on any of GD's 90's recordings, although he does take part in the newly reformed GD.

Q: What can I expect in terms of sound?
A: Top of the shelf UK crusty metal-punk.
Q: Great! Could you be more specific?
A: Of course my son. You remember the cheesy "metal-punk death squad" debacle from a few years ago?
Q: Sadly, I do.
A: Well, GD did it a thousand times better without the lame posing. Just picture a bunch of original crusties playing Celtic Frost-influenced hardcore punk with a 90's British punk flair and a crunchy metal sound. It is beefy, powerful and mean with guttural, threatening vocals. Know what I mean? Not unlike Coitus or Corpus Vile, or even recent bands like Gurkha or Warprayer, but with a distinct twist that makes GD remarkable.
Q: Thanks! You're so awesome!
A: Don't mention it. I'm only doing my job.

Despite a name that probably played no small part in the relatively small amount of GD patches in existence (unless it was pisstake of gory metal? just some silly and juvenile punk humour like the Pax compilations? who knows...), GD was a serious band with decent, angry anti-government, anti-religion, anti-system lyrics (as the genre requires I suppose) but you can also find a couple of songs about dark characters lurking in street corners as the cover suggests. Really good shit indeed.

If you are into crust music, and assuming you have any self-respect, Subcaos should be no stranger to you. However, more realistically, I suppose most of you are not all that familiar with them. Along with Simbiose, they are Portugal's crust warriors, and their 90's output is definitely worth an earbleed. In fact, I personally rate Subcaos very high on the always reliable Hiatus music scale. By 1994, when they also released the great "Revolution" Ep, the band was at the top of its game and easily one of the best crustcore band in Europe. Granted there were a lot of bands doing the Doom/Hiatus thing in the mid 90's but Subcaos did it particularly well and this split cd is certainly their best work. Expect an intense dual vocal anarcho crustcore attack bringing to mind Disrupt, Hiatus and Extreme Noise Terror. The production is absolutely perfect for the genre: effortlessly raw and powerful. The addition of a female singer on some songs (just like on Disrupt's "Unrest"... Coincidence?) and the fact that most of the songs are shouted in Portuguese definitely make Subcaos stand out. What I particularly enjoy is the punk-as-fuck feel of the songwriting: pummeling Swedish-style drums, good, simple riffs, aggressive and biting crusty vocals that are not too forceful, some spoken parts and carefully chosen samples to show that they were an angry bunch with something to say... It feels spiky, genuine, sloppy, youthful and pissed off which is everything you are entitled to expect from this wonderful genre. It is almost as groovy as Stàte of Feär, which is no mean feat if you truly think about it. Lyrics about police violence, animal abuse, political corruption, the uselessness of voting and, of course, war will remind you of the decade of production. Icing on the cake, they have an anti-Rupture song and they cover Doom's "Relief" which was a prerequisite of crust back then.

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of this split cd, the recently reformed Genital Deformities and the surviving Subcaos (who now look like the Portuguese chapter of the Mad Max fanclub and play solid metal-punk) did a split Ep in 2013. Pretty good to be fair but nevertheless miles away from this top quality record that deserves a respectable spot in the 90's crust legend.

Subgenital Chaos Deformities

 

Krigskade / Peur Panique "live in Paris" split cdr 2012

I was in a relatively good mood this morning since I didn't have to wake up at 5:30 am to fuck off to work ("running arooouuuuund like a blue-arsed fly"). And then I saw these bloody awful ads on Terminal Sound Nuisance and let me tell you that my joyful spirit didn't last long... It appears that all the blogspots have been affected, or rather infected, during the night. It probably isn't enough that we are being bombarded with advertisement all day, everyday, everywhere, they had to throw in a few more on blogs just to make sure that you spend your money and make some bastards richer.

As a consequence, in order to fight this atrocity back, I chose to post this rough and ready split live demos with two Parisian bands that you already know if you are a regular reader since I posted their demo tapes a couple of months ago. Of course, because these are live recordings, the sound won't be as good and polished but you will be able to feel the intensity of their performances. Since Krigskade and Peur Panique play very often in Paris currently, it is almost as if you were attending a squat gig in the city of light and dogshit (and yes that includes the smell). For the wretched beings who haven't the chance to listen to these local bands, Peur Panique play blistering and (really) fast hardcore while Krigskade are Heratys fanboys with a US hardcore feel to them and lyrics in Danish.

The cover was made by your truly and as you will see, my talents don't stop with writing top notch reviews, my accurate musical ear and my sophisticated tastes. I am also a remarkable graphic artist as the drawing on the cover will attest. And I am pretty good cook too.


EDIT: I got a bit carried away as it appears that the fucking ads everywhere were the result of my computer getting an adware or something like that. I do however stand by my words about the world of advertising. :)

People working in advertising are wankers

Warboys / The Afternoon Gentlement split cdr 2007

Nothing is quite as unfashionable in the DIY punk scene today as a cdr. While in the 2000's, bands were perfectly happy doing demo cdr's, recent years have seen a shift in terms of medium: back to tapes. Now, I don't dislike tapes (quite the contrary), I enjoy playing tapes, old or new and my intent is not to point fingers at modern tape-releasing bands . However, this return to the tape format raises a few issues.

The punk scene is sadly very nostalgic of something that never really was (Sore Throat quote for ya!): the golden era of the 80's. Paradoxically, the older punks I know who have actually experienced that decade are much more enthusiastic about new bands and much more critical of that "golden age" than the younger generations who, deprived of the first-hand 80's punk experience, tend to idealize that period and everything that pertains to it (something I am very much guilty of myself). As a result, original records from the 80's are highly sought after and the vinyl format acts like an hyphen between the supposedly glorious past and a present that sometimes only offers backward-looking re-creations of the past (as accurate and musically potent as these re-creations might be). The consequence of such obsessions is that we no longer buy music. We only buy records. The medium, the form has effectively replaced the content - the music - in terms of importance. This largely accounts for the unpopularity of cd's, one that is inversely proportional to the popularity of vinyls, a medium that, sound quality notwithstanding, offers us a piece of "authenticity". Of course, this phenomenon only affects the punk scene, a microcosm and I love vinyls as much as the next punk nerd.

The glorious come-back of the tape is a bit more problematic to me. It is still relatively easy to find a turntable in order to play vinyls and the format certainly stands for the love of music. But what about tapes? They used to be a convenient means of music reproduction before computers. They were cheap, could be recorded on again and again and a mere tape-recorder placed at the centre of the rehearsal room was a first step toward eternity (and utter chaos). Tapes once had a significance and they played a key role in spreading punk music throughout the world, of sharing and spreading the DIY spirit. However, this role was circumscribed to a time, to a context and with file-sharing and the close disappearance of tape players, tapes have lost their role. Choosing to do tapes today can be seen as a tribute to the format, another heavy nod to the golden era, the DIY punk scene's own shibboleth, a chunk of the 80's experience by proxy. But it is also a very exclusive, if not snobbish, gesture. Indeed, the only people likely to buy punk tapes today are the ones who are already into buying punk tapes out of nostalgia and fetichism. And this is extremely problematic. Originally, tapes were meant to be easily spread and shared, that was the whole point. But now, they are the exact opposite. How many teenagers in 2013 own tapes? Just imagine a 16 year-old kid going to a punk show and really enjoying a band. He/she is going to try to get some music from the band we all did that at some point, didn't we?). And then he/she is faced with a tape which implies that he/she is going to have to find a way to play it, that he/she won't probably be able to lend it to a mate, to share it with his/her friends. In 1983, anyone had access to a tape-player. In 2013, in Western countries anyway, it is becoming more and more unusual. Before tapes were trendy again (two, three years ago?), in the late 90's and early 00's, in my area tapes were mostly seen in distros from Poland or Czech Republic (which made sense since a lot of people there didn't own a cd player at the time) and local bands did their demo on cdr's, a format that is less glamorous than the tape but that has the same DIY quality.

My point being: why not do tapes AND cdr's (or at least give a download link) of the recording? That way you can have both: music fetichism (because tapes are great objects indeed) AND you can spread your music to everyone (because that is also supposed to be the point of punk-rock). And everyone is happy!

Now that my rant is over, let's get to the record, a split cdr demo between two Leeds bands: Warboys and The Afternoon Gentlemen. Both bands recorded their songs in 2007 and have since released other things (one Ep for the Boys and a myriad of split Ep's for the Gents). Even though you will easily distinguish one band from another, the Boys and the Gents play in the same league: the Fast, Furious, Snotty and Blasting Bollocks Championship. The Boys describe their ferocious music as "Leeds ghetto powerviolence". Now, I must confess I have never really understood what power-violence actually is other than superfast hardcore with many breaks and heavier parts. The Boys sound like Siege doing a powerslam on Hellnation and the name Warboys is actually a reference to a character from a British sitcom called "One foot in the grave".

I must admit that the Gents have my preference on this split. They lie more on the grindcore side of things with a dash of aforementioned powerviolence and are absolutely manic. The vocals are completely over-the-top and mean-sounding. In spite of the metal breaks, the songs have a real punk feel to them. Think Looking For An Answer, Violent Headache, more modern-sounding bands like Nasum, more metal-oriented grinding affairs and a spinkle of cavemen blasting crustcore (also known as Massgrave).

Both bands have six songs and no lyrics are included and, let's face it, one is unlikely to understand what they are yelling about. Judging from the song titles, the Gents have a couple of songs about booze and booze-induced mayhem. I don't think "Have you got 20p?" is actually a cover of The Ejected, more like a re-writing perhaps (after all 10p in 1982 has to be at least 20p today). The titles of the Boys' songs tend to suggest a sarcastic approach to the world (they do have two songs called "Get a job").

If you are not into grindcore or powerviolence, this demo could turn into the 14 longest minutes of your life.

Boys versus Gents                

State of Filth / Anarchy Spanky split cd 2003

I suppose one could find some similarities between the Mortal Terror/Aural corpse split Lp and today's record, the State of Filth/Anarchy Spanky split cd. After all, both splits are made up of one band playing old school anarchopunk sounding music (Mortal Terror and Anarchy Spanky), while the other is an all out crusty massacre (Aural Corpse and State of Filth). And thinking about it now, my favourite splits are those that have two (or more) bands that don't sound the same and yet are pulling in the same direction. In this spirit, the bands wrote this at the bottom of their thank lists: "Over the years the development of the punk scene has led to the creation of many sub-groups and unfortunately, divisions between people who share a common goal. With this release Anarchy Spanky and State of Filth bring together two totally different styles of punk in unity of the DIY ethos. Enjoy!" Now, that's definitely the state of mind I love!

I know cd's are uncool now. Whereas tapes were looked down upon only a few years ago, they seem to be all the rage now and I have recently seen a band that had their brand new album on vinyl for 12 euros and on cd for just a fiver! It was the exact same record and yet the vinyl version was twice as expensive. While I do prefer the vinyl format to the cd, I find this disdain for cd's snobbish and elitist. And don't get me started on the new trend on making tapes again. But anyway, the State of Filth/Anarchy Spanky is not even a proper cd: it is a fucking cdr! Shock! Horror! Disgrace! Joking aside, the object is as DIY as you can get, you can tell it was a small project done with the heart and that is really what matters. It was released in 2003 on Why Records from Yorkshire and FCR, the label done by the Ripping Thrash bloke, a fantastic, long-running DIY hardcore punk zine.

SOF were from Preston, Lancashire and must have formed around 1997. I actually got to see them in february 2004 at a hardcore fest at the 1in12 Club in Bradford. The band was fronted by Wayne Southworth, who also used to sing for the Blood Sucking Freaks, the Devils and, of course, for Doom in the late 90's (which I also had the chance to see with Wayne on vocals at the 1in12 in early 2005) and let me tell you he always displayed great showmanship, making ugly faces and looking mean and demented. I am not sure if there were other ex Blood Sucking Freaks' members in SOF, but it really sounds like there could be as I can really picture SOF being the sonic continuation of BSN. SOF played fast, heavy and direct crustcore with a classic dual vocals attack. There are also old-school grindcore influences on some of their songs, like early Rot or Terrorizer. It is absolutely brutal, crushing and angry. What makes is so good is that it is not overproduced, but it is not fakely raw and distorted either. Doom would obviously be a good point of comparison - though SOF are noticeably faster - or a more grinding Excrement of War, Deformed Conscience or even modern bands like Massgrave from Canada.

There is a cheeky, snotty feel to the songs as well. The lads are pissed (both literally and figuratively) but also a bit deranged, as if the hardly hidden madness of our modern societies was really taking its toll. I really love the lyrics and they only stress the mad aura of the music. There are 29 songs, so I am not going to comment on all of them but my favourites are: "Whatever happened to the wankers", a song about "hardcore superstars"; "Poncified I", an anti-emo song; "Shitlist" is a rude but glorious attack on the decadent lifestyle of the toffs; "Shitend of the stick" describes the anger and frustration fuelled by having no money and working shit jobs while the rich "wine and dine"; and "Royal assassin" is about the hypocrisy of the aristocracy and the sycophancy and submissive behaviour of those who admire them.

Anarchy Spanky is another kind of animal as they played in the spiky punk league.  They were from the Manchester area and were around in the early 2000's. Unfortunately for me, when I lived in Manchester during the school year 2003/04, they had already split up and this record is therefore a postumous release as far as AS are concerned.

I have always been a sucker for female-fronted British punk-rock so I was bound to love AS and I have to say their music is both familiar and yet quite unique. First, AS were not a one-trick pony as throughout their seven songs they use several rhythms from fast ("Mobile Ho") to bouncy and mid-paced ("Smack your vein"), and there is even a rather sad and melancholy ballad song in there ("Parent reject"). The guitar has a thick, earthy sound and there are some great melodic leads as well. Straight-up punk-rock may look like a simple genre to play, but contrary to louder punk styles where you can hide behind a wall of noise and aggression, you have to come up with solid tunes when playing old-school punk-rock and AS certainly understood that because each song is quite memorable. What really makes the band stand out is the peculiar voice of the singer. It is raucous and powerful but still remains tuneful. AS reminds me of Scattergun, Slaughter of the Innocent and Combat Shock on that level, with a bit of Potential Threat for the vocals.

The band's lyrics dealt with rather original subjects too: sadomasochism ("To satisfy a sick mind"), sexual predators and perversion ("Black box"), hypocrisy and fake friendship ("Mobile Ho"), neglected children and Parent Reject Syndrome ("Parent reject"), great sex ("Give me more bliss"), the sickness and shallowness of plastic surgery ("Designer vagina") and the danger of heroin abuse ("Smack your veins I'll smack your face"). Somewhat unusual topics for some of them but you can tell that the songs come from the heart.

As for the aesthetics, the cover is an old drawing depicting an apparently respectable bearded old man on all four being riden by a maiden while she whips his bum. The backcover is a pixelated reproduction of an old war painting representing an army charging and killing commoners. To be honest, I don't really see the connection between both pictures. Any idea?

State of Spanky