An adventure in split Ep's! I have no gun but I can split: GRIDE / LIES & DISTRUST "S/t" split Ep, 1998

What could be more embarrassing than wearing a shirt saying "good girls go to Heaven, bad girls go to PRAGUE"? I remember a group of extremely pissed and obnoxiously loud Australian ladies visibly on a hen do all wearing such tasteful tops in the town centre and consciously vomiting on every street corners. The noise and the bilious yellowish ponds made them relatively easy to avoid - which was the reasonable thing to do - but the spectacle was insidiously compelling. The locals managed to remain stern and stoic, probably accustomed to such distasteful tomfooleries and were far beyond consternation at this point. Fuck knows if this locust-like group of destruction was going on the rampage all over Europe or if they specifically picked Prague as the epicenter of their own chaos. It made the Play Fast or Don't festival that I was going to look like a garden party among decent people. Who said punks could not be well behaved? Well kind of. 

Contrary to its neighbour Poland, from an outsider's point of view, Czech never seemed to produce as many bands that got to cross the borders in terms of notoriety. Comparing countries is often irrelevant as it does not take into account specific histories and contexts that inform the production of music and formation of bands, even if said countries are apparently close culturally and historically. Sometimes local dynamics can only escape and elude people from the outside. France is a case in point. We have been consistently shit at hardcore punk music contrary to Italy, Spain or Germany because rock culture has long been abysmal in the country. However we did alright with dodgy oi, self-obsessed depressive dark-wave and emocore- quite obviously - and we have one of the best hip-hop scenes in the world (or so I have heard because it is hard to believe judging from the dross that my 18 year old neighbour is blasting on a weekly basis... I mean what's with the fucking vocoder everywhere?). But if you don't live in France, you wouldn't know the reason why there were so few hardcore bands. So comparisons could be pointless to an extent even if the ties between two countries (like Poland and Czech or, for obvious reasons, Slovakia and Czech) were strong during the 90's (notably with the labels Malarie Records and Insane Society Records), which is the period I am interested in.

When I started to think about the series, I wanted to write about a Czech record because I don't often review Czech records, a pretty simple argument I admit. At first I though that I did not know that many 90's hardcore punk bands from there and then, after a couple of cups of coffee and a closer look at the collection, I realized that the scene was more prolific than I initially imagines. Czech punks love fast music so it is no coincidence that grindcore and fastcore have been popular genres over there since the early 90's, the well-respected, well-known and still active (!) Malignant Tumour being the best example of this phenomenon and a band like See You in Hell certainly stuck too. I am not an expert in grindcore or super fast hardcore in general so I would be at a loss to assess how big and well-liked the Czech scene is but with a solid culture of extreme music festivals (like the Obscene Extreme of course) I suppose that there are large segments of the scene I am not even aware of and I have learnt to be at peace with the idea that I will never be an omniscient übermensch. 

Now that is just unkind.

But to get back to subgenres that are my bread and butter and that I pride myself in being a gentleman connoisseur, namely anarchopunk and crust, not many names came out beside How Long?, CulDeSac, Exekuce and Lies & Distrust (other bands like Nonconformist or Coexist were from the other side of the border). On one hand, this kind of categorizations does not make much sense in the context of the time and petty classifications do not reflect scene dynamics. More often than not, whether you play hardcore or crust or grindcore don't necessarily really matter, what does is the sense of togetherness, solidarity and belonging. On the other hand, you also have to look at the music itself and how certain bands captured the global vibes of the time and crust was very prominent at the time. The choice of the split Ep between Gride and Lies & Distrust was an easy one: Gride exemplified what fast Czech hardcore sounded like in the 90's and L&D were a great example of the typical eurocrust sound that went well beyond the country's borders. The Ep is therefore relevant for two complementary reasons.

As I remember Gride were rather well-known back in the early 00's when I started dignifying the Paris scene with my exquisite presence. As I mentioned I was never a grind head but I heard the name enough to understand that the band was good (I cannot remember but they must have played here) and one of their Lp, 2003's Tanec Bláznů, was released on two French labels. However, before getting this Ep rather recently in my quest to create a comprehensive 90's crust library - to my mum's dismay - I don't think I had actually spent the time to properly listen to the band. I was expecting something much grindier and, while there is of course a grindcore influence, Gride were not an all out noisecore blasting machine. The primitive, straight-forward angry punk sound really works here and makes the songs very dynamic and energetic (the coconut-sounding drums are too loud though). The five songs are very enjoyable and are completely metal-free as Gride in the late 90's were first and foremost a raw grinding hardcore band rather than what we understand as grindcore today (often far too technical). The vocals are aggressive and rather classical in conception but don't feel too forced and I am reminded of their compatriot Mrtvá Budoucnost but not as blast beats oriented and on the whole of the punkier side of grindcore and bands like Intestinal Disease, Proyecto Terror or Wojczech. The band would change throughout the year and the split Ep reflected what they started out as, as a young band with this early lineup. Gride kept going and are still active although I have no idea what they sound like today.

On the other side L&D offer four songs of, well, classically executed raw cavemen crust. I could almost stop the description here since by now, after years of reading Terminal Sound Nuisance, you probably know exactly what I mean by that. But I am paid by the word and with the inflation and all that (have you seen the shipping prices recently? Buying records is turning into a luxury, even for first-world twats like myself) I just have to keep writing. I don't dislike the name Lies & Distrust and it could summarize adequately the programs of most of the current political parties but it is a but long indeed. I would have gone directly for Distrust because at that time in the mid 90's no one really knew about the 80's Swedish band (beside käng nerds I suppose) and I have no idea who that Ohio punk band was (thank you Discogs). I like the logo though as I am a simple man of simple pleasures. The popularity of the band today is pretty much non-existent and only crust old-timers would remember them at all. All my attempts to start a conversation about L&D have miserably failed for some reason and mentioning you love lies and distrust on a dating website is also a major faux pas. So let's say I am, once again, standing for the little man here.

Musically L&D is everything you can expect from a young 90's European crustcore band. The production is not exactly crystal clear and you cannot really hear anything but the cymbals and the gruff vocals. Don't get me wrong, it still sounds very energetic and punishing but in a very DIY punk-as-fuck passioante cheap way which often goes hand in hand with 90's crust and even defines it. What they lack in production L&D make up with aggression and hyperbolic crustness. As the cradle of Eurocrust, early Hiatus is the major ingredient of course and I can also hear a Polish crust influence, like Infekcja and Silna Wola, but there is also a distinct grindcore influence popping up from time to time as if they couldn't really help throwing a couple of blast beats to keep the locals awake. The same year the band would contribute three songs (with a slightly more balanced production) on another split Ep with another crusty Czech band Exekuce (with whom they shared a member) and in 1999 Shit Records (yes) would release a split Lp between l&D and Dischord from Brazil.      

The record comes with a pretty big booklet (that is a bit of a mess and I struggled to put all the pages in the correct order) with the lyrics and translations showing how political the period was. This split Ep was released on Insane Society, a long-established label run by Barvák who took over the vocals in L&D after the present split (he's actually mentioned as the new singer in the credits). By the time of the band's demise, two members formed the tighter gruff crust band Dread 101 (that we will see on the blog sooner than later).  

Gride & Distrust

   

An adventure in split Ep's! I have no gun but I can split: TOTUUS / HIASTUS "Sankari / S/t" split Ep, 1996

If you are looking for something clean, thought-provoking, challenging hardcore-punk that goes against the rules and regulations, codes and conventions, against "the norm" done by good-looking Instagram-friendly Americans who thrive on being "followed" by others and taking selfies, then this record is not for you. Or maybe it could be if you bother for a change, checking ugly bands playing ugly music to ugly people for a good price as I was able to find a copy of this split Ep for a mere 2€ which is about 15 times cheaper than a Turnstile record (checking this Zoomer band's website I realized that they sell grossly overpriced hats and fucking teddy bears but no physical records... what an odd choice for an ex punk band). Alright, let's stop with the boomer-flavoured rant, as we can hold hands, kiss and definitely enjoy Turntile and Hiastus, even though the latter were fortunately never nominated for any kind of awards, except a local beer drinking contest and a grizzli bear imitation one. 

Let's just get to the actual record in a swift fashion. This is not an excellent record to be perfectly honest. I like it a lot but that doesn't mean it is objectively that good and, in fact, even fans of the genres adopted by the bands could do without the Ep and live a perfectly normal, unhappy life. I am not, have never been and never will be, as you know full well, one deterred by average generic punk music. It is all a matter of love that is as blind as it is, in this case, deaf. This Totuus/Hiastus split Ep reminds me of the original noble goal that led me to create Terminal Sound Nuisance: "a blog promoting good (and not so good) genuine punk music". This record does fall into the "not so good" category but it doesn't mean it cannot be loved and rediscovered. There was something heart-breaking in seeing this battered copy in the 2€ record bin (my acute crust detector told it was only a matter of time before it got relegated to the 1€ one) and, being a soft bastard, I could not help but rescue this little angel from the dumpster, like a gran welcoming her seventh kitten because the little shit was hungry and homeless or something. 

I knew of Totuus before because I already owned the 1999 self-titled Ep released on Fight Records and I closely associate the band with this well-known and still active Finnish label based in Tampere that released or rereleased works from Kaaos, Tampere SS, Unkind, Positive Negative or Riistetyt. With such a list of culprits, one already logically imagines what Totuus - which translates as "truth" - will sound like: classic raw and direct Finnish hardcore. Clever but not completely true. The backbone of the band remains firmly rooted in 80's Finncore (think Terveet Kädet or Kantan Uutiset, even Riistetyt) and the production, or lack thereof, effortlessly reproduces the sound of that decade, but you can still tell Totuus was a 90's band. It would not be mistaken to compare them with bands like Rajoitus or Uutuus because, beside them all ending with the phoneme "-tus", they cook with the same old-school ingredients, but where the aforementioned bands almost exclusively rely on 80's Finnish hardcore (although Rajoitus were Swedes) Totuus also had a European hardcore influence and bands like BGK or Ripcord do come to mind. It would appear far-fetched to state that they were as good as all those canonized acts but their side of the split is still pretty solid and has that wild, furious, biting energy. 9 short songs in less than 7 minutes. The split Ep format fits the songwriting perfectly and makes Totuus and solid example of proper raw old-school hardcore done in the 90's and looking lovingly toward the previous decade. 

Do you remember that kid at school who was desperate to look like the coolest, most stylish, most popular cat and tried so hard to walk like him, dress like him, talk like him? That's pretty much the relationship between Hiastus and Hiatus. The former went as far as calling themselves Hiastus, which means - wait for it, wait for it - "hiatus" in Finnish. On the surface, this sounds adorable. A band trying to sound like their heroes, a band that openly wears its heart on the sleeve, a band that does not give a single shit about even trying to pretend to be original in any way. And really deep down, it is what most teenage bands are all about when they start. They just want to be The Clash or Black Flag or your older cousin's nu-metal band that for some reason seems to attract a lot of girls. 

D-beat, as a genre, works exactly like this, on worshipping and emulating the source material, referring to the signs and symboles. If one were to see it as a subgenre, 90's crust would be one that is defined strictly with a rather short time period - let's say from 1991 to 2005 and the rise of neocrust. D-beat also started as a 90's epiphenomenon but, contrary to the classic eurocrust sound, survived in one piece in spite of a certain drop in popularity in the late 00's, and then got even stronger and spread everywhere with time. Therefore "eurocrust" or more globally "90's crust" was not so much a subgenre as it was a wave, with a distinct sound that was used to build and lead the new generations of crust, as opposed to d-beat which by essence had to stay the same with some tone variations. Siblings of 90's crust, "cavemen crust" or "cavecrust" (as I like to call it) managed to stay alive, afloat and deliver proud examples of the Doom-loving crust traditions from times to times, especially in Japan - Doom-love was an essential trait of European crust in the 90's - and instances of classic ENT/Disrupt dual-vocal crustcore bands still occur but on too small a scale to state to states that there is a such a thing as genre-emulating or genre-referring 90's crust trend. Sob fucking sob.

But in any case, Hiastus were 90's eurocrust to the bone. It was in their blood, they breathed eurocrust, they ate eurocrust, they drank eurocrust, their wildest dreams were made of fantasies of splits between Hiatus and Warcollapse, Silna Wola and Subcaos, Enola Gay and Social Genocide. For all I know the drummer named his first-born Way of Doom. It is actually not the first time that I write about Hiastus as they appeared on the Never Again compilation Ep that I reviewed 10 fucking years ago. That stings. Beside the mighty Hiatus, the Oulu-based band was without a doubt very influenced by the national crust heroes Amen who, with a first deliciously sloppy Ep in 1990, belonged to the first generation of eurocrust. They clearly must have played Feikki and Paranemia quite a bit. With the band relying on the traditional dual vocal crust attack, like Amen, to spread the message - recent discoveries revealed that the first instances of such an aural technique may date back to the neolithic era, when humans could not actually speak and grunted like apes - early Disrupt and Extreme Noise Terror must have been blasted to death as well. The sound is obviously pretty raw (the surface noise only providing extra crust points) but the music is more energetic than I remember with a good pummeling drumming. The vocals are too loud in the mix and a little overwhelming at times, especially because of the very dedicated fellow responsible for the low growling parts. Ironically the spoken parts are too low in the mix, as if the singers, after three songs of shouting like demented sea elephants, were too shy to speak normally all of a sudden. The flaw makes the music sound a bit ridiculous but even more enjoyable as well. This is 90's DIY crustcore, not technical metal. 

Hiastus remind me of the Polish band Money Drug who were equally raw and a bit sloppy with their dual vocal eurocrust recipe, and of their countrymen Rotten Sound who started as very similar Disrupt-ish act with their Ep Sick Bastards in 1995. I like the Hiastus side a lot but, let's get real, this is one is for the crust completists, for the archivists, for the obsessed, for those who consider prehistoric 90's crust as the sweetest serenade and mid-table Hiatus-like bands as adorable underdogs in a decade plagued by shoegaze. 

You already know if you need this split Ep, I know I do.   

  

TOTUUS + HIASTUS = argh          

An adventure in split Ep's! I have no gun but I can split: DISMACHINE / CUMBRAGE split Ep, 1995

I have to confess that I have been oblivious to both Dismachine and Cumbrage for a long time. I am a bit at a loss to understand why. These two bands worked in a field that was massively overpopulated in the 90's, namely Swedish hardcore, aka käng or scandicore, and, when yours truly miraculously crashed in the scene in the early 00's, it was very easy to get lost among all the Disfear, Diskonto or Dischange of a few years past. Overwhelming would be the exact word. The two Uppsala units we are dealing with today were always hanging in the background in my mind. I knew who and what they were - at least roughly - but could not be arsed to properly investigate, a bit like the familiar faces you have been seeing at gigs forever but never bothered really talking to beside the odd "You alright mate?" a rhetorical question to which the only possible answer is "I've been fine, you?" as an honest one like "Actually I have been very depressed since my dog's death and I really need to talk to someone. Do you like dogs?" would absolute mortify me and force me to pretend to care about the fartful Captain Doggo's untimely passing. That was pretty much my relationship with Dismachine and Cumbrage: glad they're here but not enough to bother. Of course, when I really paid attention I realize I was wrong, an unpleasant but sadly not a rare occurrence these days.

In my tiny mind Dismachine were "that band that did a split record with Totalitär at some point" which is technically true but tends to dismiss them, on paper, as a sparring partner if not a sidekick. Unfair, definitely, and the incredible popularity that Totalitär have been enjoying for the past 15 years - they have arguably never been as popular as they are today - does reinforce that feeling. How many Totalitär-like bands does the world need? And I know what I am talking about, I play in one. When the record came out in 1995 my favourite band was still probably Ace of Base so upon release Dismachine may have been popular too for all I know. And at least the split Lp ensures that the name Dismachine will not disappear. 

The name they picked did not help. I don't really mind it as the practice to apply the "dis" prefix to a random name was still fresh in the 90's. It was not the smartest lexical choice but in 1995 it made sense. Not so much in the 2020's as I see the practice as very passé if not a little distasteful (lol right?) in some cases. We actually had a bass player put down when we started looking for a name with my band and he offered, smiling innocently like a bellend, "Dispocalypse". May Bob rest in Dis. Being called Dismachine in the 90's was both an advantage and a downside. On the one hand it allowed and still allows the band to be immediately identified and associated with the 90's Swedish käng/d-beat/crust wave which is like a dog whistle for stud-wearing Discharge nuts and crusters. On the other hand it limited and still limits the band to be immediately identified and associated with the 90's Swedish käng/d-beat/crust wave which is like a repellent and a source of prejudices for people who are not inclined to wear studs and have a decent dental hygiene and no lice. Before seriously diving into Dismachine, seeing they were from Uppsala and I am familiar with what the punks were up to there and then, I was expecting a Diskonto-like hardcore band with a more orthodox Discharge vibe. Yeah wrong again.

Dismachine managed to pull out a genuine tour de force: the blend of angry raw käng with furious blasting grinding fastcore. In theory it should not really work or at least not as fluidly, as effortlessly and as dynamically but they nailed it. When one thinks (by which I mean me) about the mating of käng and fastcore, one fears that it would produce something disparate and not cohesive, a bit like a kid with a faded Anti-Cimex shirt and a bullet belt but also a bandana and an American cap. What a dreadful sight. But in Dismachine's case, it sounds perfect. The split Ep format fits them to a T (well to a D) because the fast grindy vibe can be exhausting on a full length and of course the d-takt käng style is tailor-made for Ep's. On their side you will be exposed to proper raw energetic classic Swedish hardcore like Cimex, Asocial or early Totalitär and over-the-top punk-as-fuck blasting mean fast hardcore not unlike G-Anx or Dropdead. I love how they keep it serious and yet fun (the three-second songs clearly point out at the cheeky side of grindcore). If you bump into a record bin with a Dismachine record (that's where I found my copy as I remember it), you know what to do. The band members were busy bees and the Uppsala scene's seeming dynamism in the 90's has a lot to do with the fact that each one of them being involved in other projects: D-Takt master Jan Jutila also played in Times Square Preachers, Dishonest and Disjah (a studio project with Kawakami!) among others, Jonas was in Diskonto, Aparat and Nojsbojs (Noise Boys?), Linus also in Diskonto, Nojsbojs, Arsedestroyer and Masturbatorium (yes) and Masta in Aparat. The classic case of ten people equals ten bands. 

Cumbrage emerged from the exact same scene. In fact Jan Jutila this time is credited as doing some vocals (he was on the guitar in Dismachine and on drums with TSP, what a man), while Kjelle played in Zionide and Times Square Preachers. There is a strange indication on the Ep's cover that says "Featuring Times Square Preachers and C.U.M." which is little unsettling. If C.U.M. was Cumbrage's first name and it may have made sense to point out that it was the same band under a different albeit equally bad name (alright, Cumbrage is a little better, because it is at least incomprehensible), but Times Square Preachers was a different band altogether. It did share members with Dismachine (and Cumbrage) though, so that the purpose may have been to signal that people from TSP were involved and since they were one of the bands that kickstarted the 90's käng thing in Uppsala (along with Diskonto) it sounded reasonable. Or perhaps Dismachine was basically the sequel of TSP with a different lineup and songwriting style but then that would not make much sense given the propensity of this crew to start new bands all the time. Or would it? Please let me know. 

Cumbrage is more classical than Dismachine and in fact sound exactly like I once expected Dismachine to sound like: right on the border between raw old-school käng and orthodox d-beat. It you want to be a terminological smart-arse you could argue that Cumbrage are "discore". Or maybe just describe their crude hardcore tornado as an orgy between Totalitär, Dischange, Asocial and No Security. What really works here - and the same could be said about Dismachine - is the production as the music has that organic rawness, that spontaneous hardcore furiousness, the songs sound very dynamic and retain the Discharge-loving spirit of the classic 80's bands without trying too hard. The riffs are rigorously käng-oriented and the vocal flow and the prosody demonstrate that the singers know exactly how the genre is supposed to sound like and the drumming is a crash course in d-beat. 

Unsurprisingly both bands recorded their songs in D-Takt studio with Jan Jutila at the helm which is the hardcore equivalent of having David Beckham as your personal beauty coach: the man knows what he is talking about. This split Ep cannot be said to be a 90's classic but classically 90's. It is very solid and much better than what passes as Swedish hardcore sometimes and I see it as a käng candy, something predictably heart-warming with a by-the-book performance of raw pummeling dis-flavoured-käng by Cumbrage and something a little original with Dismachine's blend of furious blasting fastcore and classic 80's käng. The record just flows because of the very similar punchy raw production on both side, for all I know the two bands recorded on the same day which gives extra cohesiveness and conveys a real local Uppsala vibe. Did I mention that it was released on Jan Jutila's label Your Own Jailer Records?

A sweet little Ep that is better than you probably remember.  

Dismachine + Cumbrage = <3

           

Live by the Crust, Die by the Crust: Step to Freedom "The Rotten Era" tape Ep, 2019

This is going to be the last writeup of a pretty hectic year for Terminal Sound Nuisance. Initially, I intended to complete the Live by the Crust, Die by the Crust series by 2022 but I clearly overestimated my capacities - the malevolent would say it is not unusual - since, beside this one, there remain (at least) eight recordings I would like to tackle. And I actually had to trim off the overambitious original list which included even more records than I could chew (the files are ready so that they will be used at some point, like in 2027 or something). 

From the start, I considered this gargantuan series as a bold experiment that social scientists around the world were too scared and cowardly to undertake: how much crust can the human body take? For a year, I only wrote, thought and dreamt about crust music. Even for a music genius like myself, I have to admit that it has been a challenging experience and there have been times when I was only able to speak crust gibberish (basically a blend of band names and neanderthal exclamations) because I almost overdosed on the thing. But survive I did and I came out stronger, as I became a crustcore übermensch, the Captain America of stenchcore, the Goku of crasher crust, the hero you must call if a crust record has to be analyzed urgently because the future of the world is at stake - to facilitate the process I've had a crust signal installed on the roof of the building (I'll grant that, if you ignore that one time when a pigeon accidentally sat on it, it has never been used yet ). So yes, it has been a busy crust year for Terminal Sound Nuisance. 

The last of these smug homilies will be about Step to Freedom from Nizhny Novgorod (or Нижний Новгород if you want to impress your mates with some linguistic skills), a town East of Moscow. Let's be real: it makes sense to end the year with a Russian punk band. I am not going to get into the war that has been raging in Ukraine this year, as complete media saturation was quickly achieved. It seemed every punter suddenly became pub-level geopolitics experts even though they probably could not place Kharkiv on a map in February. A lot of them (and us sometimes) should probably stick to discussing football, spitting death threats to referees, grumbling about the new government reforms or, if that's your thing, the price of Japanese flexis. The current war(s) aside, Russia has been further turning into a war-mongering conservative authoritarian state that shits on human rights, LGBTQ rights, workers rights and protesters and I believe it is not always easy to be a punk band with something to say over there (to be fair, there are many other areas in the world where it is not either). And now young poor bastards are being sent off to war to fight for a political fiction - the Nation, God, Honour, Glory - as it always has been the case. Generals and ministers die in bed. So yes, not the cheeriest year over there and being called Step to Freedom in this context of stepping away from freedom and to tyranny is beautiful. Solidarity with punks in Ukraine, Russia and wherever life is hard because of delusional lunatics with military might and unlimited funds. I realize it is rather insignificant to say this on a music blog but the feeling is really there. 

Alright then, let's get started. I am not sure when STF exactly started but their first recording, entitled Social Zombies, was self-released on tape in 2014. The musicianship being quite decent, I would venture that the band had already been playing for a couple of years or that the members had already been involved in bands before. Or just that I am not used to people being actually able to play their instruments. I have written about Russian crust bands on several occasions (Fatum, Kärzer or Repression Attack) and I have grown to be very fond of their crust style since the start of the past decade. While I would not claim that Russian crust - perhaps a more relevant terminology would be "crust in Russian" because of the bands located in Belarus or Kazakhstan - is as specific-sounding as the very particular Greek crust school (although it has to be pointed out that they both work with a unique language), even a half-witted listener will have noticed that their national style has developed several significant idiosyncrasies and has steadily become quite recognizable. As a result there are several elements (visual, sonic, thematic, the effective use of the language) expected of and associated with Russian crust, which points to a genrification process to some extent. Time will tell if it sticks but I am betting my Antisect bottle opener that it will.  

Social Zombies was a promising first effort and has a couple of solid crusty metal-punk songs (a bit like Sanctum meets late Cimex or something at times) but some modern hardcore moments do lose me. Their next effort, a tape entitled Cemetery for the Humankind released on Makima Records, only came out in 2017 so the band clearly took its time and to be honest, it was well worth the wait as it is a much more convincing powerful work. These songs revolve around a decidedly thrash metal-inspired stenchcore formula enhanced through that typically aggressive howling Russian delivery. Basically a balance of a Cimex-influenced gruff crust sound and the moshiest, thrashiest end of the crust metal spectrum, not unlike Nuclear Death Terror on a date with Limb From Limb at a thrash-themed restaurant run by the second stenchcore revival's legions (Fatum is an obvious ship captain). I love when STF go all old-school crust through crushing mid-paced apocalyptic crust but not being a thrash/speed metal fanatic, they lose me again when they rock too much the bandanas out of their back pockets. An enjoyable effort but not one I would necessarily play regularly. The Rotten Era tape Ep on the other hand is another story.

Released in 2019 on the excellent Blown Out Media from New Mexico, this four-song jewel comes close to being a perfect Russian stenchcore gem. It still has that extreme old-school thrash metal influence but mean crust is clearly the dominant force on that one (the punk side of the Limb From Limb spectrum if you will) which suits me better. It also looks crustier visually with an abundance of crust signifiers (yes I am taling about the Antisect celtic frame). This tape is a proper scorcher. The mid-2010's Fatum filthy work plan can be said to be very much in use here but I am distinctly hearing some tasteful nods to UK classics like early Bolt Thrower, Genital Deformities and Antisect and the 00's stenchcore revival is also just around the corner (some sweet Effigy and Sanctum's touches here and there). The production is direct and very energetic, it highlights the angry vibe of the songs and these punks are very angry indeed at the bleak capitalist wasteland they live in and the specific phonetics are useful tools here. At the end of the day, The Rotten Era is over-the-top pissed off metallic crust punk with a bite at its best, a concept that I have come to link with Russian crust music. This definitely deserves a vinyl version. Maybe in 2038 for the fifth stenchcore revival?

Step to Freedom

  

    

UK84, the Noise Ain't Dead (part 6): Chaos UK "Just mere slaves" 12'', 1997

Like every year, Bloody Christmas is coming again and government twats loudly claim - assuming there are still people caring for what they have to say - that, in this time of distress, the country needs to celebrate merrily while respecting health safety measures. Christmas remains some sort of odd and painful traditional duty with an almost patriotic touch in our current situation, as this year you don't have to kiss your right-wing brother-in-law or your ass-grabbing great-aunt. So the pandemic is not totally without benefit, although you will still have to endure your nephew running berserk around the table and turning the living room into a battlefield. Thanks fuck no one cares for notorious punk-repellent Mariah Carey in my family, it's like garlic to us. But am I only here to whine about Christmas Eve? No indeed. For the last Terminal Sound Nuisance post of 2021, I would like to make you a present in the shape of a lossless rip of a Chaos UK classic. It is not something you will be able to put at the foot of the plastic Christmas tree because it really is a download file but I suppose that if you actually download and open it on the 25th it can count as a valid present. 

Who doesn't know Bristol's Chaos UK? And more importantly, who doesn't like Chaos UK? If you have people in your circle of friends who happen to dislike the band, then you are clearly hanging out with the wrong gang. There is no exception. Sort your life out. Chaos UK belong to this category of bands that everyone likes to some extent, or at least have a lot of respect for. I would include bands such as Discharge, The Mob or Subhumans in this category and many more but I don't want to spend time making lists of bands just to have a bitter geezer declare that, just for the sake of arguing on a monday, he never rated Why very highly nor enjoyed Mob 47. I love taking on that precise role but of course hate it when the situation is reversed. Human nature I guess. Chaos UK really are a bag of quality crisps. Some people have them on a daily basis, others just on the way home after a night-out, others on rare occasions because they want to be slim or eat healthily or whatever dieticians say, while there are also those that never allow themselves to eat crisps but secretly crave for them. Chaos UK work exactly like that. They have their devoted fans, freakish outcasts who can listen to live tapes from the mid-80's, and people who are fine with enjoying a bit of Burning Britain occasionally, on their grandmother's birthday for instance. I like to think that I belong to the first category, the one where the very best of heroes meet.

Claiming that I have a Chaos UK story to tell could be a little far-fetched. It's not like my mum revealed on my 15th birthday that she helped pen "No security" or something. But the band being something of a foundational, heuristic one for me in my teenage years, I inevitably remember well the first time I heard them and the context. It was in 1999. My school only had one real punk. There were also baggies-wearing "skatecore" types who were into Fat Wreck Chords and singers who sounded like ducks, and I know what I am talking about since I had a brief "skatecore" phase myself. But there was only one real punk. After meeting that one real punk, my life changed completely as I started to dress seriously with bleached trousers, boots and an oversized jacket with beer caps as badges. Proper class. I started to hang with the real punk and we became friends. She made real punk tapes for me with The Casualties and older British bands like Varukers, Abrasive Wheels, Cock Sparrer or GBH on it and my own conversion into a real punk was swift indeed, to the great disappointment of my parents who even started to miss my baggie trousers phase which is a saying a lot. 

 

The school we went to had little equipment to speak of but there was a "radio club". The name might be a little misleading though. It was a simple room with a basic hi-fi system - it had a broken turntable and an Out of Order poster for some reason which made us feel like rebels - located just at the entrance of the refectory. We could use the room once a week but he music we played was not broadcast in the whole building of course, the school was not at this level of high technology. We just installed a chair before the door of the room where we placed the speakers and played the music as loud as possible to our fellow students queuing to get into the refectory. The radio show, if you can call it that, took place during lunch breaks so that many unsuspecting, unprepared and, in most cases, unwilling students got exposed to 90's streetpunk and oi - a large portion of which was pretty shite in retrospect - as well as a tasteful assortment of 80's British punk-rock. The speakers' wire would often be removed by lads who did not enjoy our impeccable punk taste but amazingly enough we never got physically brutalized or too victimized, in spite of us playing Casualties' "For the punx" and "Riot" every week. There were threats of mob violence, pitchforks and torches, but, for once, the gods of punk seemed to be protecting us. My mate was heavily into Chaos UK's "Farmyard boogie" a song which she would play often. I did not particularly enjoy the number, although I did pretend to because I wanted to look like I knew my shit. It is after all a rather long comedy song that is difficult to understand if you are not aware of West Country's rural accent but it was my first encounter with Chaos UK and listening to that song always takes me back to the days when I considered a tartan flat cap and oversized bleached pants to be crucial parts of my identity. My friend assured me that Chaos UK were the punkest band of all and more than 20 years later I can say that she was right to some extent. 

The Chaos UK record my friend owned and off which she played "Farmyard boogie" was the 1998 Best of... Chaos UK cd. During a glorious weekend trip in London later that year I managed to find a copy of the very same cd in a record store which felt like a war medal. I had never actually heard the cd in its entirety, apart from "Farmyard boogie" that I knew by heart and "Kill your baby" because we tried to shock people with it, so that digesting the remaining 24 songs proved to be quite an experience. The selection is fine actually. You can find classic vintage Chaos UK numbers from their Riot City Years as well as songs from later records like The Morning After the Night Before (I can still along to "Little bastard with ease). Writing this review makes me realize that there is a lot of Chaos UK material from the 90's, basically the Chaos-as-singer era, that I am really not that familiar with and haven't played that much, but listening to the split Lp's with Raw Noise and Death Side while writing this piece shows me that I might have been - for once - wrong. Oh well, I shall correct the inconsistency. Let's get back to that "best of" cd, admittedly a terrible format but it was the late 90's so bear with me. On the whole, I really liked the record, the noisier hardcore songs as much as the singalong cider punk-rock ones. There was one track however that was truly horrendous and confused me to no end, a 1983 live version of "False prophets" take from Flogging the Horse. I have listened to many horrendous live recordings from the 80's since then, some of them deeply scarring, but this one may take the cake especially since it was released on a proper album by Anagram Records. As a teen, the song terrified me and the very first time I heard it I could not even make out what was happening. If you have never listened to that rubbish, give it a go if you think you are hard enough. It makes Confuse's 1984 live recording sound overproduced. It made Chaos UK even more extreme in my teenage eyes.

Alright, I digress as usual. For some reason, no song from Just Mere Slaves were included on the 1998 cd. Maybe it had to with not getting the original label's - Selfish - permission or maybe the curator just decided to leave the songs out (my guess as to why is as good as yours). As a result, I was unaware of the existence of Just Mere Slaves for quite a long time, until the explosion of music blogs in the late 00's. A real shame since Just Mere Slaves has become my favourite Chaos UK recording, along with the hardcore thrash masterpiece that is Short Sharp Shock Lp. I cannot claim to be a proper Chaos UK historian but let's have some basics right. At that time Mower was on vocals, Gabba had taken on guitar duties, Chaos was still on the bass guitar of course and Chuck on the drums (EDIT: although not being able to get into Japan because of a criminal record, Age, Lunatic Fringe's drummer, replaced Chuck on this Japanese tour). The studio side of Just Mere Slaves was recorded in Japan during the band's tour in November, 1985. Along with their fellow noise-making Bristolians Disorder, Chaos UK have been massively influential on Japanese punk music. In fact, it is widely argued that it was their impact on a certain section of the Japanese scene - let's say Confuse, 白 (Kuro) or Gai and their plentiful offspring, to be brief - that subsequently spawned a punk subgenre now called "noisepunk", a once confidential and obscure cult that has persisted in secret and which the internet has made accessible and very popular among the noise-inclined punks (the name was apparently coined by The Wankys but I feel the terminology is useful and meaningful enough to be liberally applied retroactively). So I suppose that the coming of noise heroes Chaos UK to Japan must have been a massive deal at that time and the shows cannot have been anything but short sharp shocks of punk chaos.

 

The four songs from the first side of Just Mere Slaves were recorded during that tour which probably means that they recorded the thing on November, 12th in Tokyo since they had a day-off. I imagine the band basically entering the studio, unleashing the fucking fury, getting pissed with local punks and being done with it in just one day. The brilliant result is highly impressive. The first time I listened to Just Mere Slaves I immediately thought that it did not quite sound like a typical mid-80's Bristol recording. Of course the songwriting, the raw snotty vocals, the demented atmosphere and the pissed-and-proud vibe were unmistakably mid-80's Chaos UK manic hardcore thrash (there is a new version of "4 minute warning" to help listeners know what they are dealing with) but the frontal layers of highly distorted guitar and the piercing feedback, the extremity of it all, had that Japanese punk texture. There is something of a Japanese hardcore energy to Just Mere Slaves. The four studio songs retain that Chaos UK essence, an energy-driven, hardened, primal and mad-sounding take on the UK82 but at the same time they sound like noizy, triumphant and hyperbolic Japanese hardcore. Were Chaos UK aware of the wave of Bristol-influenced Japanese bands? It would be mere conjecture but they must have been familiar with some Japanese hardcore through the tape-trading network so could it be that they actually decided to emulate or experiment with that Japanese distorted, blown-out sound? Or was it the engineer's idea? Both? Just an epic piss-up in the studio? In any case, this circulation and circularity of influences is fascinating indeed, from Bristol to Japan, from Japan to Bristol, and Chaos UK got to play with Japanese hardcore legends like Gauze, Outo, The Execute, Lip Cream, Goul and Gastank (that is what I deduce from the thank list on the backcover, there could have been more). The studio side of Just Mere Slaves included a crazy and lightning fast rerecording of "4 minute warning" and three new songs: the loud and aggressive one-minute long hardcore scorcher "Rise from the rubble" which they will rerecord for the Chipping Sodbury Bonfire Tapes 1989 album; "City of dreams" a mid-paced wonder with hypnotic tribal drums and demented vocals and feedback; and "Just mere slaves", a fast, anthemic and emphatic song which is actually not unlike epic and direct Japanese hardcore, especially on the introduction and some of the transitions. 

I feel Just Mere Slaves is a crucial record, maybe not a masterpiece per se, but what is commonly called a minor classic. The energy and intensity level on the studio side is breathtaking and relentless. The blistering side might only be eight-minute long and make you crave for more but it does not get much better in terms of "noise ain't dead" UK punk. It was Chaos UK at their noisiest but I do think Short Sharp Shock sounded more threatening and savage and therefore groundbreaking. The other side of Just Mere Slaves is a live recording from their Osaka gig on November, 16th. The sound is surprisingly good considering the sonic chaos - it must have been taken directly from the mixing desk or something - and the daring listener will be exposed to nasty rendering of early Chaos UK classics, "Control", "Victimised", "No security", "Senseless conflict" and, of course, "Farmyard boogie", the Chaos UK song of my youth. This is punk-as-fuck as you can expect but still very much discernible (even the guitar solo is good) and enjoyable. Another live recording from the Japanese tour, from their opening Tokyo gig, can be listened to on the B side of the Stunned to Silence 1985 tape (my friend Erik from the always great Negative Insight wrote an article about this little-known tape that comes recommended, especially since everyone at the Negative Insight HQ soundly thinks that everybody loves Chaos UK). As hard to estimate as it might be, this short Chaos UK tour must have left a mark on the collective psyche of Japanese punks at the time. To this day, Chaos UK, along with Doom and of course Discharge, remain one of the most liked UK punk bands over there with still many bands working on their legacy so it is a safe bet to assume that Japanese punks really never stopped connecting with their music and attitude. And of course the band, Mower especially, helped consolidate the fashion of terminal crust pants and utility belt in Japan which are now only worn by the most elite crusties. 

The record was originally released on Selfish Records in 1986, a label that put out far too many classic mid-late 80's Japanese hardcore records to mention. My copy is however a 1997 reissue (or is it actually a bootleg? It looks like one so you tell me) from Sewage Records, a short-lived that also released Varukers Ep's. Black Konflik Records from Malaysia reissued last year Just Mere Slaves on cd so support the scene and get it.  

I would like to dedicate this writeup to my dear friend from school who I mentioned at the beginning and who tragically passed away in 2019. Without her, I would have never discovered real punk music and gigs. It changed my life forever and more than 20 years after, I am still grateful and feel quite lucky. So may you rest in peace, in punk, in power and let's farmyard boogie. 

Just Mere Slaves             

                     

UK84, the Noise Ain't Dead (part 3): Legion of Parasites "Undesirable guests" 12'' Ep, 1984

Legion of Parasites is one of my favourite band names ever. Sure, it might sound like a bit of a mouthful at first, especially for non-English speakers - witnessing your average French punk even trying to pronounce it is a once in a lifetime experience - but LOP is a name that works superbly, both metaphorically and literally, and it always retains a majestic punk-as-fuck connotation regardless of the meaning you see in it. I first came across this truly exquisite name on Ebay, of all places, which is, I'm well aware, something of an anticlimactic and unromantic revelation that could have cost me some punk points back then but - in a world where (dis)liking a youtube link is the most common acceptable way to engage with new music - sounds almost charmingly innocent 16 years later. I wish I could say I first heard of LOP from a vintage 80's mixtape that a benevolent older punk gave me as a sign of acknowledgement and gang recognition or upon finding out that my mom had had an affair with the bass player when she visited England in the early 80's, but reality is often trivial and disappointing and still we have to live with it as best we can as my wellbeing coach would say. 

A guy on Ebay - he would later on create the very exhaustive UK punk-oriented Nation on Fire blog - was selling homemade cdr's with many - and I do mean many - rare and obscure recordings from UK punk bands that I had never heard of. It was the mid-noughties, I was not the stinking rich bastard I have now become and my Dickensian lifestyle meant I did not have an internet connection at home and could not download anything from soulseek. Therefore, once you got past your reluctance to sell your soul to the evil speculating, commodifying machine that was - and still is - Ebay, getting cheap DIY cdr's full of old-school punk goodness was a good solution and allowed me to become familiar with dozens of incredible anarcho and UK82 bands (A-Heads, Fallout, Potential Threat, Death Zone...) that I had never heard of and I could not find anywhere else. It was a time of excitement, wonder, discovery, celibate and also of waiting since the cdr's did not just instantly appear on your doorstep. Now I check new bands by clicking on a Google-sponsored youtube link and then complain about it on a Google-sponsored blog so that ordering cdr's on Ebay may almost sound deliciously quaint which is already saying a lot about the prevalence of nostalgia.

                                

 You've got to love the tiny shield and the determined facial expression

Reading the name "Legion of Parasites" on that cdr list made me giggle like a schoolboy upon hearing a fart. Now, that was a name I certainly could relate to. In those years dominated by the pompous neocrust lexicon, the name sounded rather puerile, irreverent and fresh and evoked music you could eat your bogies to. Most of those cdr's came with a cheap xeroxed cover of some original artwork and I was looking forward to seeing how the band had transcribed the notion of the legion of parasites pictorially. The name was highly significant after all. Did it refer to how the State treated the young and the unemployed as social parasites to be crushed and tamed? Or did it mean that, in the face of state capitalism, you should resist and become a so-called parasite, live on the dole, on the fringes, squat buildings, shoplift and shower as little as possible (this last one is not compulsory but still recommended)? Perhaps it met both definitions as it would have sounded more relevant politically? Perhaps it was a comment on capitalism' s parasitic nature? And then it could also be adequately used by a spikes'n'studs unit getting smashed in front of a derelict brick wall they just happened to walk by? And being "a legion of parasites" could mean all of that at the same time! With such a moniker, I thought, you just could not go wrong. In spite of the many hypotheses I silently pondered on upon waiting for the parcel of cdr's - it was best to buy them in bulk - not once did I imagine that the visual accompanying the cd would be that literal. 

In The Day the Country Died, guitar played Sean said about the striking choice of name that "we - everybody - were just this legion of parasites on the face of the Earth really. (...) We knew we were parasites as well, but we were trying to change that, trying to put something positive back in..." which points to the people-as-parasites-under-the-capitalist-system theory and makes sense. However, the first visual of LOP I saw did not exactly reflect it. The early discography cdr displayed the front artwork of Undesirable Guests as the cover which shows a rather crude - I have seen better technique from middle-schoolers - drawing of a body louse dressed as a Roman legionnaire. Was it some sort of postmodern situationist statement about the performativity of our radical political projections onto art or was it just a matter of "wouldn't it be funny if we had a louse legionnaire on the cover"? The insect parasite trope was further developed on the backcover through a drawing - quite accurate this time - of a flea (or is it a lice? Because of Fleas and Lice I can never tell) which seems to indicate that LOP were quite serious about the literal parasite-as-organism visual theme and the title Undesirable Guests seem to suggest that those body lice may have settled, uninvited and unwanted but clearly determined, in a comfortable and warm locale of the nether region. No more shall be said on the subject. Rather surprisingly when comparing with Undesirable Guests', their first demos' artwork, Another Disaster and Death Watch, displayed typical 80's anarchopunk imagery of blurry warships and sloppy drunk-looking grim reaper so that the choice of going body lice on their first vinyl could appear somewhat of a bold decision. Unsurprisingly and for the best, LOP did not use that fascination for parasitic insects on their next work. Still, for all the oddity of the cover, I would claim that the cover of this 12'' Ep might be the most relevant visual representation of the "noise ain't dead" series: unpredictable, punk-as-fuck and chaotic. And I love it.

LOP can be said to be a classic early UK hardcore band so details about them are rather easy to find now. But still, let me brief you a bit. The band formed in Bedford more or less officially around 1982 and recorded their first demo the same. Another Disaster was a primitive and quite discordant thoroughly enjoyable twelve-song effort if you are, like myself, into raw and energetic snotty anarchopunk, a bit like a cross between early Flux of Pink Indians, Disorder or early Anti-System, with some songs pointing at the fast noisy hardcore unit they would soon become although a significant portion of the demo was still traditional mid-paced anarcho music. The next recordings, Death Watch and Party Time, both recorded in 1983 and released on a single tape emphatically illustrated that LOP were the fastest band in the land, especially with Death Watch. Relentless and absolutely furious hardcore punk with a proper rawness that made most of the competition sound a little tame, the songs making up the demo opened the cdr I ordered - which covered LOP's punk years, from 1983 to 1985 - and I remember falling in love instantly. 

 

To be fair, the recording might possibly be a little rough for some but I would argue that this typical fast 80's hardcore vibe with the angry and snotty vocal delivery of Cian - guitarist Sean's brother - and the anthemic singalongs actually has to sound raw. Mob 47 with too good a production would have not have sounded half as good. As mentioned, LOP were one of the fastest bands around (with 1982 Antisect just a little behind) and one of the first British bands to incorporate a US hardcore influence into their recipe while keeping a distinct UK touch at that point in time (they would little by little turn into a US-sounding crossover hardcore thrash act). Let's say that in 1983, the band sounded like a boisterous piss-up with early Antisect and Anti-System, Perdition's Disorder, Void and Neos as guests. Something like this. The demo was so good that Marcus from Pax Records included two songs lifted off Death Watch on the Bushell-bashing Bollocks to the Gonads 1983 compilation Lp that included bands from the anarchopunk world like Anti-System or Instigators, UK82 acts like Riot Squad and Xtract but also foreign hardcore punk bands like Crude SS or Subversion which, for the very insular Britain, was something of a novelty. 

The next logical step was of course for LOP to record a proper debut which materialized in February, 1984 in Rocksnake studios (fellow Bedford band Government Lies also recorded there). Undesirable Guests can be seen as a perfect record once you get used to the so-bad-that-it's-good artwork. Like the previous demo, LOP's 1984 12'' without a doubt delivered a severe blow of anarcho hardcore thrash and, as could be expected, the sound on the record is clearer and cleaner but still rooted in the raw punk tradition. In 1984, they were not the only band delivering goods of that sort in the world of hardcore, although you could claim that few others delivered goods of that caliber. But what made LOP stand out was how genuinely catchy and anthemic their songs sounded like. While most fast bands of the era were perfectly happy to inflict six equal slices of all out bollocking hardcore to the eager listener - and I for one am perfectly happy to be inflicted such an pleasurable hardcore punishment - LOP's songs offered some significant variations in terms of tunes and speed. In fact, on the record, LOP make me think of a hardcore thrash version of Subhumans. Of course, there is a vocal closeness but there are also a lot of clever guitar leads and inventive technical drum beats highly reminiscent, probably unintentionally, of the anarchopunk classic and it has to be said that, just like Subhumans, LOP were a tight and proficient lot by 1984. 

Keeping in mind that pervading Subhumans creativity, the first song "Promises" offers a solid rocking metallic blend of Broken Bones, Skeptix and Anti-System; the second one, "Savages" is a gloriously memorable almost oi-ish UK82 mid-paced anthem with a threatening singalong chorus that goes "We are savages"; "Party time" takes you back to a much faster intense thrash attack with highly snotty Disorder vocals and amazing drumming; on the other side, the catchiness continues with the speedy Neos-meet-Dirge "Eroded freedom" and its simple but effective chorus "No, no, no, no"; afterwards "Hypocrites" sounds like Sketpix on speed; and finally "Condemned to live in fear", arguably the best and most intense, relentless of the fast songs of the record and one of my favourite raw hardcore punk of all time, the prosody, accentuation and intonation on that song are pure magic, assuming that, like me, you see magic as something a spiky punk can actually pull out thanks to frustration, passion and a couple of cans. The energy permeating Undesirable Guests is incredible thanks to the very impressive and energetic drumming style and to the typically British defiant and juvenile vocal delivery that clearly marks LOP as a real PUNK band and, combined with the top notch hooks, singalongs and overall songwriting, makes Undesirable Guests one of the strongest UK hardcore punk record of the 80's that can easily please any punk subgroup, although for different reasons. This slice of greatness was released on Fight Back records, a sublabel of Mortarhate, that also released absolute anarchopunk classics by Exit-Stance and Vex, and it has become a very expensive item because of unscrupulous sellers and too many drunk people impulse buying on Discogs. What a shame that it has not been reissued yet.   

                 

Undesirable Guests

 

EDIT: being a bit messy I originally inserted the wrong download link. In fact I inserted the link for the next post so that I have spoiled the surprise. Just don't open it right now, yeah? Here is the correct link to LOP's 12". Sorry for the mistake. 

The Empire Crusts Back - the OC Crust Years (part 2): A//Solution "Butterfly" Ep, 1989

Of course, no one could have known then. No punk band from the past could have predicted the effect their choice of moniker would have on future punk palaeoanthropologists. And let's face it, if a time machine had been working in the 80's, I very much doubt that it would have been lent to a scruffy punk band so they could check whether people still liked their music twenty years on - that would have led to at least 90% of bands splitting up - or whether calling themselves Genital Deformities, Pink Turds In Space or Seats of Piss was such a good idea after all. But then, they could have just asked their mum for a sensible assessment. It would be unfair and even far-fetched to claim that A//Solution picked a mediocre or embarrassing name. I actually like it a lot. It does not sound as straight-forward and ominous as Apocalypse or Misery but at least it suggests a glimmer of hope to the listener instead of openly offering the end of humanity or perpetual pain also known as the king size crust menu. A//Solution used a polysemous figure with the inclusion of a capital "A" at the beginning that can either indicate, on the one hand, the common indefinite article "a" which would mean that the band believed in one actual if indeterminate solution for our future or our peace of mind, or, on the other hand, because of the two slashes between "A" and "Solution", it could also stand for "Anarcho//Solution", the "A//" acting as a graphic substitute for the circled A. Both options satisfy me and I have to say that it might be more significant to keep the polysemic potential in mind rather than fixate on one interpretation. Know wot I mean?

 

Do people in 2021 think hard about A//Solution's lexical play? No, they don't. Should I? Absolutely, since the band's name - as appropriate and clever I found it - also implied hours of frustratingly unsuccessful internet searches when I first came across it. Before I lie on the couch and start getting into the details of my traumatic quest for A//Solution's music and biographical information, I should probably explain why I chose to tell such personal anecdotes about my first encounters with bands that I particularly love. Most of those stories are rather unromantic and commonplace and don't offer anything special. However, I feel that the way one discovers a band not only informs the relationship that will be built with it but is also part of a global punk narrative, evolving through time, contexts, technologies, with the hunt for the music sometimes far surpassing in intensity and pleasure the music itself, though the best is when both the quest and the treasure are exhilarating. I love reading about those micro adventures involving records, people and gigs and I feel that they do matter when considered as a collective choral of hearing-impaired stubbornly untidy persons. Beside, being paid 10p per word, it allows me to go on and on and still afford a pint of IPA once every fortnight.

 

 

After reading somewhere, quite possibly in an article in which the author had engaged in a self-rewarding heavy name-dropping session, that Mindrot had ties with the early Californian crust scene, I proceeded to buy their Dawning album. While the cd (of course it was on cd and of course it was second-hand) did not really do anything for me (what with being doom metal and all), it included a massive thanks section with a list of bands that read like a scene repertoire. Such lists were always very helpful at the time as they served as ideal starting points for younger punks like myself to dig deeper into a particular era and notice sometimes surprising links between bands (scenes were clearly not as clear-cut and discrete then). I was absolutely clueless about most of the bands mentioned on the list though - and still are to be honest with ya - but some were familiar faces (like Phobia and, well, Total Chaos) or already personal favourites (like Final Conflict or Dystopia) while others did catch my attention because of their evocative names. Among them were Armistice (the peacepunkest name in the world), Black Maggot (described as "total crusty black metal" with future members of Skaven) and A//Solution for aforementioned semasiological reasons. Because of my obsessive nature, I quickly started to look hard for materials from those bands. Armistice proved to be rather easy but A//Solution did not and Black Maggot remain to this day a myth. None of the venerable punks above 30 around me seemed to know or care to know about A//Solution while searching on the internet by myself proved to be a particularly labourious and gruelling undertaking. Just try typing "A Solution punk" and look at the results. Pages upon pages of rubbish that were often about finding a solution to keep your kid away from the ills of punk-rock. Face it parents, there's nothing you can do about it.

 

 Mindrot's formative thank list

 

Eventually, things sorted themselves out when the band created a Myspace account sometime in the second half of the noughties, which felt like a glorious victory against malicious and clearly nebulous odds. A miracle, that's what it looked like and I was elated. For good reason as the band had uploaded their Butterfly Ep, a work that can arguably be considered as the best Ep of early US crust, a big statement that, in my estimation, is quite reasonable indeed. A//Solution, from Fountain Valley, California, were the quintessential OC crust band (if you need a conceptual definition of the term, I invite you to take a look at the first part of the series here). In actual fact, as Head of the Crust Department at the Sorbonne, the carefully crafted curriculum of the Master's program - often nicknamed Crust Enough among students - includes an intensive comprehensive course about OC Crust. In the first week, students who were brave enough to enroll are required to listen to the Butterfly Ep for three hours straight and will be evaluated on a 10 000 word essay about it. No arsing around. That's how good and crucial this record is. 

 

A witch emerging from a... vagina?

 

A bit of history first. Information about A//Solution is scarce to come by to say the least and even in 2021 typing "A//Solution butterfly crust" in a search engine or on fucking youtube does not always lead the curious dork to the right corridors, and while I am quite fond of butterflies as metaphors of transiency and ephemeralness, the actual insect kinda disgusts me since I unintentionally swallowed a tiny butterfly upon riding a bike as a child. Not only did I become especially careful when opening my mouth since then, but I also completely gave up riding bikes, which was for the best anyway considering my poor skills and the destruction inflicted on the local fauna. Still, thanks to my relentless tenacity, I managed to find a recording of their short and lovingly sloppy demo from 1986 entitled Animal Pain/No Human Gain released on Vegan Babies From Hell Tapes (you can't make this up). It was quite certainly A//Solution's first recording, possibly done in the practice room in pure teenage punk fashion. The tape, I believe, included four songs and poems in less than four minutes and exemplified the strong aesthetical and political ties between the mid-80's Californian peacepunk waves and the late 80's OC crust bands. With animal rights activism as its main theme, this early demo was a rough and raw blend of early Antisect, Anti-System and local influential heroes Body Count and prefigured what bands such as Resist and Exist or Armistice would be doing at the turn of the decade.

 

 The first demo DIY OR DIE

 

Following this first attempt at knocking on the door of punk history, A//Solution released at least another demo. I read somewhere that there were two demos recorded before the Ep, one called Butterfly sounding precisely like the final steps towards the band's definitive 80's moment, and another one apparently entitled Love, which I have never heard and whose very existence I therefore cannot attest to, but if you do know something about it, there is what is called a "comment section" below that you can use, it's a just like the comments on Shitebook and Instacrap without the gratification. Anyway, the Butterfly demo was released in 1989 and saw A//Solution's sound really take shape. At that point, the band sounded like the perfect - and I do mean that - model answer to the early UK crust bands like Antisect's Out From the Void era (for the darkness), early Deviated Instinct (for the filthy vibe from the gutter), early Hellbastard (especially them as some riffs are liberally borrowed) and Pro Patria Mori (for the sheer intensity and bollocking). I cannot really find any flaw to the Butterfly 6-songs demo. As if such exquisite references did not suffice, A//Solution tried to win the crust race with their three (!) gruff and growling vocalists (like Insurgence had), treading heavy blows and rabid bites with one another. I find that the singers complete one another very well and it does give the songs some additional aural aggression, uncontrolled anger and a feeling of vociferous despair before the destruction of beauty and life.

 

 

As I pointed out previously, the Butterfly demo tape was very much a brilliant draft of the Butterfly Ep that came out the same year. Even the covers were similar, both of them depicting two butterflies being threatened - I presume - by some sort of bat-like vampiric demon with the head of a fox, the drawing on the tape's cover looking rougher and maybe not as otherworldly as the Ep's. On the other side, the backcover of the record depicts a witchy being, possibly back from the dead, emerging from a misty vagina shaped opening which, I suppose, reflected thrash metal's visual influence of the time (and, from experience, I can tell you that it does make for a pretty decent shirt on most occasions, your nephew's eighth birthday not being one of them). The Ep includes four re-recorded songs that were already on the tape, with a heavier and crunchier sound that will have you mosh frantically and give up showering right away. Quintessential, ultimate old-school stenchcore here. It does not get really better than Butterfly's demonstration of metal crust virtuosity. The balance between metallic power, genuine punk as fuck anger and a dirty crust-drenched vibe is masterly. The aforementioned British crust classics are obviously invoked and the Ep puts forward a tasteful variety of tempos that can be qualified as the Crust Grand Slam, from thrashing fast, to heavy apocalyptic sludge and mid-paced groovy trot. If I had to find one minor flaw to the Ep, it would be that the song "State of rule" is perhaps too long of an instrumental - especially when they had so much vocal power at their disposal - and that it would have worked better as the opening or closing song. But I am being picky. Listening to "Love" makes me want to run to howl "Looooaarrghhhoooove" - a clear reference to Disorder's "Life" - at the top of a building overlooking a post-apocalyptic landscape, looking up to the sky for the last time. Cheery stuff. The inside of the Ep is all in traditional cut'n'paste fashion and the lyrics are hand-written to the point of being a little hard to make out at times. Words deal with the transience of beauty and harmony, the butterfly metaphor, unity, love and its absence. Certainly not as gloomy than you would expect, and more in line with the peacepunk prose (the Iconoclast come to mind). The Ep was released on a Scarborough-based label run by Stuart from Satanic Malfunctions, I suppose they were penpals since it the only other releases were from SM.

 

Cut'n'paste or die presents: the second demo

 

 

Following this masterpiece, one would have hoped for a full Lp, a work that would have confirmed A//Solution as one of the very best US crust band to have walked and crawled this Earth but this was not to happen as the band tragically split up in 1990. What-iffing (yes that's an actual, if ugly, verb) is pretty useless but still, one cannot help but wonder. However, the band reformed with the full former lineup, minus one of the singers, in early 1992, their reunion gig seeing them rubbing shoulders with Confrontation, Phobia and Mindrot for what was probably the most direct way to go terminally deaf if you lived in the area at that time. A//Solution - finally - recorded seven songs for a full Lp later that same year but it did not materialize then and they split for good afterwards. I came across contradictory information about the Lp so I am not completely sure as to what the original plan was. A full album? I also read that it was meant to be a split Lp on Tempest Recors - Matt Fisher's label - with a local act called Relapse which I have never heard but has a song on a compilation tape oddly called Southercalifornia Not Saudiarabia compiled by Mauz from Dystopia before he launched Life Is Abuse (a rip of this tape would be very welcome). In 1995, an unmastered version of the '92 recording finally saw the light of day as a tribute to singer Nedwob's tragic passing. The Things to Come cd was a clear departure from Butterfly but still sounded as a logical continuation of their savage old-school crust sound. With its strong heavy rock influence and an earthy, organic feel, the album sounds like a post-crust blend of late Amebix, Zygote, early 90's Neurosis and even genuine grunge music and is actually a very interesting work, still in the realms of crust but also progressive and very well-written. Although it did take me some time to get into it - when I first heard it, I could not get into the rockier vibe - I have grown to really enjoy Things to Come and I love the story it tells as the songs resonate well with each other and illustrate great narrative abilities. You can tell that the band gave some proper thought to what they were going to express in terms of narration. Too bad it remained unmastered.  

 

That there has not been an A//Solution reissue yet feels like an absolute shame as it would finally show the greatness of this band to the world (well the crust punk world anyway). A//Solution were incredibly significant in that they reflected the evolution of the OC crust/peacepunk scene and their progress pretty much told its story: from anarcho peacecore, to absolute old-school metallic crust and finally heavy crust rock, all different stages and sounds but still very coherent and logical. Butterfly still remains their best effort and I rate it as the best early American crust Ep along with Born, Fed... Slaughtered, Earth and Cybergod. 

 

Butterfly