Live by the Crust, Die by the Crust (2012-2021): Carnage "34°23'41"N 132°27'17"E" demo tape, 2017

It is generally agreed that punk-rock is a genre that has seen both a lot of carnage (everyone still have in mind the infamous streetpunk debacle or the ghastly Concrete Sox reunion a few years ago) and a lot of Carnage. And for a good reason: it is undeniably a great name for a punk band. It is therefore little surprising that bands striving to express some sort of anger, despair or bloodthirsty medieval in punk history. You had a decent, albeit pretty standard, and quite prolific 80's anarchopunk band from East Sussex, a very good Antisect/SDS-influenced stench-crust band from Mie City, Japan, and a noizy 80's punk band called Karnage (the amount of bands picking that spelling probably as a way to be original and break out from the Carnage crowd is paradoxically astonishing) from France. The other Carnage-oriented genre is predictably metal music, this time in awe-inspiring proportions. You have of course the early Swedish death-metal Carnage but also at least four 80's thrash-metal acts with the same name. That possibly made for some awkward situations in the mid-80's but, after all, the lads all had sleeveless denim jackets, permed hair and played overlong solos so confusing Oklahoma's Carnage with Illinois' Carnage cannot have been that bad a mistake. In fact, if you were to gather all the metal Carnages, you would be able to have a proper two-day festival (three-day if you invite the Karnages too), not to mention a great aftershow with the hip-hop Carnages. The Carnage Festival. You read it here first.

The Carnage we will take a look at today wreak havoc on Lisboa and I suppose they must have been well aware that the lexical spot was already well crowded but still took the liberty to be baptised as such. And who would blame them, is it not an ideal name when you do the crust? And after forty years of hardcore punk, all the good names have been taken so that the Council of the Punk Sages (an unelected body of pompous record collectors) decided that it was alright to recycle a punk band name as long as and only if said name had not been used for twenty years in a given punk subgenre. A fair enough amendment. 

I am not completely sure about the members' resume but drummer Rafael previously played in the brilliant Subcaos in the 00's as well as bands like Etacarinae and Atentado. Given the obvious aptitudes and apparent songwriting experience of the musicians, I would venture that the Carnage boys (that's a great name for an Insta-compatible oi band) are not exactly pubescent punks. Not the wildest guess. In fact, I was supposed to review this tape years ago but ended up procrastinating like a prat. But since 34°23'41"N 132°27'17"E is one of my favourite European metallic crust recordings of the past decade, it was hight time I included the work in Live by the Crust, Die by the Crust, the number one online resource about the crust lifestyle. 

34°23'41"N 132°27'17"E are the exact coordinates of the Hiroshima hypocenter and I don't think I need to tell you why. Let's get to the music which is, as could be expected, heavy, dark and rocking. In spite of the tape being technically a demo, you really should listen to it more as a proper album. The production sounds precisely as it should, heavy and clear without being clean, just raw and primitive enough, which allows the two guitars to work properly together. You can hear everything perfectly and the level of the vocals is just right for the metal crust genre. Carnage are an epic lot and they love guitars, so be prepared for hyperbolic Japanese-styled metal punk leads. There are four songs on the tape, two of which are significantly longer and, well, epic as fuck. "Carnage", an eight-minute long adventure, starts out with a triumphant rocking metal-crust galop with throaty shouts that will have you ride a horse or a motorbike (or - if you're too much of a wimp for both like myself - tap your foot pretty hard) before going into an eerie, soft and slow progressive part with first anguished choking words and eventually climaxing into a massively heavy and moody sludge-y conclusion with some actual Amebix-like spectral creepy singing. Brilliant songwriting work here. The last song "Final debt", an apocalyptic crust ballad with similar vocal versatility, is equally well thought-out and shows that Carnage genuinely succeeded to set up an atmosphere of their own although their influences are clear and proudly worn, no mean feat considering the well-trodden path.     

         

There is a certain 00's stenchcore influence on 34°23'41"N 132°27'17"E as Hellshock and especially Limb From Limb come to mind but Carnage have something of a more rocking, almost Frost-like, pounding metal-punk side to them and it is no coincidence that they mention GISM, Antisect, SDS (later period) and English Dogs as influences. As previously pointed out, there is a significant pagan Amebixian sense of epics running through the music and I would throw some of Sworwielder's galloping crust power, Fatum's thrashing madness and AGE's demented metallic punk grooviness, just to be safe. I could go on but it would feel a little silly (a crust version of Maggot Slayer Overdrive? anyone?) and unnecessary as the band is definitely good enough to stand on its own terms. Carnage are old-school and referential enough to attract old-fashioned fool like myself and modern enough to make them stand out and memorable. It's heavily rooted in classic crust but they include other metal elements into their sound, or rather they syncretize the best of vintage guitar-driven mean metal-punk (Japanese and British) with old-school apocalyptic metallic crust to give birth to a dark, moody and epic crust hybrid that will make you do Mad Max cosplay in no time.

There were only 150 copies of 34°23'41"N 132°27'17"E and I was lucky enough (and quick, I am not known as the Crust Viper for nothing) to grab one. Unfortunately, I could not find a copy of their subsequent Ep, Duality..., released on Profane Existence in 2019 which is a genuine bummer. One day I will. The tape was released on Monolith Records, a local label, and looks brilliant with its gloomy artwork and runic-like lettering for the lyrics. 

The real deal.   

Unleash the carnage

Live by the Crust, Die by the Crust (2012-2021): Kärzer "Howl" tape Ep, 2017

The crust punk is an organism that has fascinated scientists since its birth and rapid virus-like spread in the mid 1980's. Some of the brightest in their fields, biologists, anthropologists, zoologists and even astrologists, for some reason, all tried to define and theorise properly and rationally what makes the crust punk so unique, mysterious and, indeed, endearing. Once a rather common punk subspecies that could be found in most industrial cities - there was a clear connection between the vitality of the crust punk population and how socially acceptable dumpster-diving appeared to be - up until the late 00's, the population of crust punks has seen a dramatic decrease since. The decline of crust punks and their culture is polyfactorial and studies have shown that there could have been several causes for the downfall including the rise of the price of brew, having to get an actual job or the gentrification of punk-rock (also called the postpunk revival). 

This resulted in the disruption of the traditional crust mating season (often, though but not restricted to, three-dayers crust festivals during the summer) and therefore, were it not for some heroic crust strongholds, in some specific areas in the world, crust punks would have probably gone extinct. Even its Japanese subspecies, the cruster, is starting to be endangered according to alarming studies. What a world we live in... It has become rare to be able to witness such magnificent creatures in their natural habitat, they who once roamed city centres, attired in elaborate crust pants, sleeveless brownish jackets that used to be black and rotting biker boots. Under pressure from the WWF, the international community has even thought of creating natural reserves for crust punks where they could thrive again, free from shoegaze and indie rock. Please, donate to Terminal Sound Nuisance and help protect the crust punk population.

One of the places where crust is certainly neither dead nor dying is Russia. The past decade saw the rise and solidification of a strong and lively hardcore punk scene that has produced some of the best crust records between 2010 and 2019, an incredible feat considering Russia did not really have d-beat crust bands of note prior to that, with the notable exception of the mighty Distress who undeniably pioneered a whole new punk territory, and their influence in kickstarting the Russian crust contingent cannot be underestimated. I first heard Distress in 2005 as a friend of mine had traveled to Russia and brought back a demo tape of the band. It was the first Russian d-beat hardcore band I became aware of and because I found the Russian language particularly deep and aggressive and fitting the genre perfectly, I figured I would be watching out for more bands. I think Komatoz was the first "post-Distress" crusty thrash band I became familiar with, followed by Antimelodix whose metal-crust blend also caught my attention, despite a somewhat odd concept. I got to bump into the latter through the great Crust Demos blog that was a massively useful source for young upcoming crust bands keen on promoting their shit and while some of the bands posted were quite average and quickly vanished, I loved the dedication and got to discover some proper gems. Closely after Fatum came along with Skverna and then it was not just "crust" that was knocking at my door but its evil metallic twin: stenchcore.

Clearly the old-school metallic crust style, stenchcore, has been the most popular take on the genre in the 2010's in Russia but maybe I just have not lend an ear to the other styles. In any case, Russian stenchcrust bands regularly started to pop up, confirming that Moscow and Saint-Petersburg were the real deal and, at some point, could be said to have become effortlessly the genre's new epicentre. Solid bands like Repression Attack, Duke Nukem, Chaosbringer, Step to Freedom and of course Kärzer, the band that we are dealing with today. They started in 2012 and I think they are still active, although Covid may have struck a fatal blow to the band for all I know. The Ginsberg-ish Howl was recorded in 2016 and first released on tape on Go Tape, an apparently rather important and diverse tape label. It was rereleased the following year on Headnoise, a good label that specialised in the d-beat/crust/käng thing. The tape adopts a "barbarian Warhammer orc crust" imagery which is seemingly quite popular among Russian crusties (The Lord of the Rings has a lot to answer for this). 

Howl is self-described as an Ep and, fair enough as it has a solid sound quality and production so that it is definitely better-sounding than what you would expect from a demo recording (although you never know these days, there are crust demos that could easily pass as class albums). You can tell that the Kärzer boys are quite proficient with their instruments and had precise ideas as to what they yearned to achieve in term of songwriting. The result is brilliant. Greatly helped by a top notch production able to highlight the many details of the guitar without losing any of the power and heaviness that define the genre, Howl is an impressive and inventive Ep that builds significantly on stenchcore revivalists like Contagium, Instinct of Survival and of course Fatum. You will find the typical filthy and thrashing mid-paced moments, the heavy and slower mosh-crust parts and of course the punishing and pummeling fast bits. I would be perfectly fine with Kärzer sounding just like a traditional, if generic, stenchcore revival band. It's not like there are dozens of bands doing it as well as this Saint-Petersburg lot so I would have been happy. But Howl is more than your predictable stenchcore band as it incorporates eerier, more melodic guitar parts, that borrow from heavy Killing-Jokesque postpunk as well as bands like Zygote and especially Bad Influence. Of course, Instinct of Survival's Call of the Blue Distance precisely did that, mix old-school crust with more psychedelic, moodier sonorities so that Kärzer's Howl can be said to be as influenced by North of Nowhere as it is by its followup. The Ep almost sounds like a equidistant meeting point between the two, with the great Contagium carefully refereeing and because the band is so tight and intense - they really sound like an angry and anguished lot with those mean howling screams -, the production so clear and enhancing the guitar works, the recording does achieve what it set out to and installed Kärzer right away near the top ten of the official Crust Rankings.

 

The next logical step would have been the recording of a full album which, if it kept that sort of progressive stenchcore sound and songwriting, would have become a classic. But Kärzer then undertook a lineup change and decided to record another tape Ep in 2017, which I have never physically seen (even Howl proved to be a little difficult to grab hold of). The band wisely stuck to its old-school crust recipe but somewhat the four new songs have a rawer vibe and lacked the energy and magic of the previous tape's and I just was not as excited, but then I might have been a little overexcited the first time around so the element of surprise was logically no longer there. It still is a solid slice of metal crust, don't get me wrong, and if you see a copy on a distro table, get it quickly and, if you are a generous and rightly deferent person, send it to me as an offering. Thank you. 

Howl  

Live by the Crust, Die by the Crust (2012-2021): Yuppie Gore Filth "...+ The End" demo tape, 2021

It is often said that subcultural dynamics are cyclical in nature. I guess bitter bastards would say that is just a fancy term for going around in circles but you get the idea. This is just as valid applied to high street fashion (you know, that thing that will be burning during the coming anarchist revolution and shit) as the recent dramatic increase in twats wearing Fila trainers attests as it is for punk-rock (still pretty much a Fila-free haven). Once new and exciting punk innovations - amazing and inspiring music like käng or crust and other much more distressing ones that are better left unmentioned - have turned into proper subgenres. This process implies that, through their sphere of influence and because of the strong desire to emulate, they become solidified and codified, the initial newness generally giving way for replications and adjustments. Or even blatant resurrections, out of nowhere, so to speak, wherever nowhere is located at a given time, as the French oi revival proves. Fuck me. Who could have predicted that one? 

The issue of cyclical trends (or "cyclicality of subcultural dynamics" if you studied sociology in college and need to feel smart) has been a major one in the punk scene. Many people, once very active, moved on and left the scene because of punk's creative stagnation and craving to emulate past trends. And fair enough. On the one hand, it can be disheartening to see punks still doing Discharge cosplay in 2022. On the other, it can signify a genuine subcultural practice and identity. On a meta level, trend revivals could be approached through the prism of survivance and liveliness. Retelling the same stories has a certain consolidating quality. It is a cultural validation. Whether it is a validation of punk's fear to innovate and thus of its imminent irrelevance or a validation of its undying pride in and renewal of its fundamentals is a matter of perspective and of how much a bitter bastard you really are. It's probably both, really. It can give birth to sterile bands just as much as class acts. Whether Yuppie Gore Filth belongs to the first or the second category is up to you. But if there is one thing everyone can agree on it is that YGF are fun.

YGF are extremely unoriginal. YGF are also very original. They are to Electro Hippies what Disturd are to Antisect. And how many hyperbolic Electro Hippies-loving bands can you name? Exactly. And I love EH. I remember getting the Peaceville digipack reissue in the early noughties because I loved the Spanish Revolution reference on the cover - and therefore thought the band would probably sound like Sin Dios - and because it was called The Only Good Punk, which proved to be quite the premonition in my case. What's not to love in EH? They play blinding fast mid-80's anarcho hardcore punk with a distinct UK vibe and a metallic influence, not to mention that their lyrics are both political and sarcastic. They were never technically a crust band - although later versions of songs like "Acid rain", "Terror eyes" or "Unity" did have that UK stenchcore vibe - but the crossover tag is somehow pertinent. I have to admit that I have always disliked the term "crossover" primarily because of its heavy American hardcore origin (it was coined by DRI after all and as everyone knows "DIY not DRI") but EH can be part of a reasonable conversation about DRI, Siege or Septic Death, in spite of their distinct British sound, as well as one about Deviated Instinct or Hellbastard, in spite of a significant US influence. 

But let's get back to the pith of the business and to Yuppie Gore Filth (a name that sounds like a Sore Throat song). As a band emulating EH, can they be said to belong to the recent crossover trend? Bands connected to in vogue labels like Quality Control or Sorry State, acts like Scalple, Tempter, Tower 7 (those two are really good) or Mere Mortal have been resurrecting that crossover sound that was rather unfashionable not so long ago judging by the low amount of Suicidal Tendencies and Corrosion of Conformity shirts and bandanas at gigs. Those bands do not sound alike, truth be told, and the degree of speed, metallic crunch and constipated tough guy impersonations does vary. Because of the insularity, Japanese punks tend to have their own trends and dynamics so I would argue that, if YGF's music could sonically fit with a contemporary "crossover trend" - the term "revival" would be too much of a stretch given the marginal, if significant, number of bands involved - it is more by chance than by design. Something in the water maybe.

YGF started around 2020 in Osaka, a town renowned for its many quality punk noise units. As you would expect from punk's incestuousness, members of YGF are not young'uns - the live videos suggest they are not part of Osaka's old guard either - as they play or played in bands like the top notch all-female gruff crust band Defuse (for drummer Hisako), the ferocious anarchocrusters Avvikelsse, one of the bands I was too hungover to properly pay attention to but sort of sounded like traditional Japanese hardcore Rigid, a band I have never heard of Trans and even Osaka's undisputed noise crust champions Zyanose. However, YGF do not try to sound like any of those as they firmly intend to build on raw UK-styled 80's fast crossover stench hardcore which, as an elite-level nerd obsessed with 80's UK punk, speaks to me on a pretty profound level. As mentioned, Electro Hippies are at the head of the table but they also gladly invited Notts heroes Heresy and Concrete Sox as well as Ripcord and Scum-era Napalm Death (the cavemen voice of the second vocalist does convey a grinding crust feel). I was never scholarly trained in crossover hardcore and apart from the crustier-sounding British bands that stemmed from the buoyant DIY hardcore and anarcho punk scene but were equally influenced with the fastest US hardcore bands and thrash metal, I don't know that much about worldwide 80's crossoverness so that there could be more adequate comparisons (SOB? DRI? COF? other acronyms?). Feel free to pontificate.

          

Apparently, YGF claim to play "filthy crusty stench speedcore" which sums it all appropriately and with all the class one would expect from an Osaka crust punk band. The tape has six songs, two of which are merely 5 seconds-long short blasts of hardcore noise - like Electro Hippies, Napalm Death or Sore Throat used to do. The first five tracks were recorded in late January and early February 2020 while the final song "The end" was recorded in November of the same year along with three other songs, each of them appearing separately on the three other versions of the demo tape. My copy is the white version released on the Dis-obsessed Deleted Records from Malaysia has "The end" (like the red version) while the UK version on PMT (a good London-based tape label) has "Anihilation" and the brown Japanese version on Armed With a Mind has "Life". Cheeky bastards. 

This is not the best demo tape of the year but it is certainly one of the "freshest" in my book. Some crusty crossover anyone?    

Yuppie Gore Filth

Live by the Crust, Die by the Crust (2012/2021): Relief "S/t" demo tape, 2016

Originality can often be very overrated. Not in the sense that it is unnecessary or inessential, and as my last post about Akrasia showed, I can heartily welcome tasteful touches of innovation in my crust. I am after all a man of rare sophistication (I am currently wearing a Zoe shirt if you need uncontested proof). However, I do not need nor crave for supposedly fresh or unorthodox takes on punk music all the time. To be fair it is not that common anyway and, more often than not, I distrust bands or labels claiming that their brand new release "challenge the listener", "blur boundaries" or "offer something new in the face of conformist punk music". This sort of fake and artificial art school PHD incantations turn out to be quite shallow and generally the promoted bands excessively rely on massive pedal boards that are bigger than an actual surf board and are worth a monthly. I'd much rather have an orthodox take on a beloved punk subgenre emerging from a new or marginalised position, area or points of view instead of wankers pretending to be trailblazers in order to appeal to the middle-class "indie" part of the scene. 

Sometimes you just need to listen to something that is extremely predictable. Something that comforts you in your long-established tastes, way of life and dubious sense of dress. Something soothing, life-affirming, something that says "you are not alone" like in that Quarantine song. Something sentimental that makes the old heart beat. Something that sounds exactly like Doom for example (may be substituted with Discharge, Antisect or Amebix) and Relief does exactly that. And I mean in every way, without flinching or trying to bring something original to the table. From the opening of this demo tape, the educated listeners instantly know what Relief are on about, the very name Relief already being a gigantic clue anyway. If you did not see that coming, you not only lost a not inconsiderable amount of crust points but may also very well be on the dangerous track of becoming a poser. Sort your shit out pal.

I am not completely sure about Relief's location but since this demo was recorded in a studio called Strange Matter apparently located in Richmond - it was shut down since though - I would venture that this three-piece were from Richmond. Yet another great piece of clever investigativeness on Terminal Sound Nuisance. I am not very familiar with the Richmond punk scene but I have been told that there were some solid noizy bands over there and quality acts like Destruct and more especially Future Terror do point in that direction and caught my attention. I would not be surprised to read that some of the Relief members are or were somewhat connected with them. 

Because of the overall lovable amateurishness of Relief - and I write this in the best way possible - I would endeavour that they were probably a side-project to a more serious and established band that may have been born after a boozy session when someone just exclaimed: "Let's do a band that sounds just like early Doom". The eight songs making up the tape are saturated with delightfull Doomness. From the opening of "Perect world" (!) to the obligatory referential "Relief Pt VI", the tape perfectly refers to and emulate the gruff and raw early days of Brum's favourite cavecore unit. There are also clear smelly hints of other classic European Doom-loving bands from the 90's like the mighty Hiatus so that on a metatextual level, Relief are as much a tribute to Doom than a conscious and self-aware tribute to the 90's art of Doom-loving, placing the band in the long tradition of Doom love epitomised by the aforementioned Hiatus or Japanese crust bands like Abraham Cross, Macrofarge or Mindsuck, a country where Doom love is strong, idiosyncratic and seemingly immortal indeed. They are a tribute to the tribute as much as just a tribute if you will and, if anything, Terminal Sound Nuisance is first and foremost a place where punk romanticism can shamelessly expressed itself and Relief's upsurge of respectful Doom mimicry does pertain to this field.

The sound on the demo is raw, direct and there is an undeniable feeling of urgency. I cannot really tell if the band consciously decided to sound as basic and primitive in a "Alright then, we've got six hours in the studio, let's record as many songs as we can and piss off to the pub as soon as we can". I feel this rather primal approach to the already primal subgenre actually benefits the songs and I do find, again, that sloppy but genuine very-late-80's/early-to-mid 90's feel of early Disrupt, Hiatus, Macrofarge and Co. Maybe Relief went even further into the meta side of prehistoric Doom love with their actual tape. The first side of my copy is actually in mono while the second one is distinctly lower. It might only be my own copy but I like to think that Relief, through the intentional bungle, are also paying tribute to such ancestral mistakes that were very common in the old world of passionate Doom-ish crust tapes. But it might only be wishful thinking. Romanticism indeed.

The tape looks fine and there is a proper double-sided insert included with the lyrics and scribbled bottles of special brew (I assume). It is a pretty rare artifact as far as I can tell and, if you are not particularly keen on a highly referential unoriginal '88-'89 era Doom tribute band or a highly referential unoriginal tribute to the 90's tribute to '88-'89 era Doom sound, you may not like Relief that much. But if you are actually a stylish person, then Relief is for you. I know it is for me.   

                                                                    DIY or fucking die

                                                                            RELIEF                

Live by the Crust, Die by the Crust (2012-2021): Akrasia "Observe the darkness" Ep, 2019

Here we go, let's crust again. As I pointed out earlier Live by the Crust, Die by the Crust is a series that will probably be carried out throughout the year and will focus on new contemporary crust music, works released between 2012 and 2021. After years of - mostly - tackling older bands, I felt the urge to promote modern recordings, not because I have grown tired of writing about old records - I could read myself all day, as you know - but because we are caught between two seemingly contradictory trends that have more to do with global cultural consumptional dynamics than solely with punk music, an ultimately small, if brightly coloured, fish. On the one hand, we have become obsessed with a glorified past as the constant flux of reissues suggests while on the other we engage in an endless race for novelty and the newest hot bands that are consumed impulsively and emphatically before their inevitably quick discardment. There is much room for complaining for a chap like myself. As a result, in order to save punk-rock once again, not unlike Lorenzo "Renegade" Lamas but with less hair and my uncle's moped, I will try to depict the vitality of crust in the past decade with the mighty force of my well-known - and indeed feared - wits so that you will get an excellent idea, the best possible idea in fact since the selection is mine, about what this beloved hardcore punk subgenre has been up to since 2012. And Terminal Sound Nuisance celebrates its tenth anniversary this year so it made sense on that level as well.

So what about Akrasia then? Despite duly watching out for new crust bands to assess, Akrasia completely slipped under my radar at first, which is extremely odd and even a little offensive and I did have to let my apparently inept scandicrust informant go as a consequence. What makes this mishap even weirder is that I have been following the label, Ruin Nation Records, and always keep an eye on the latest release (well, clearly not in the case of Akrasia but if a lesson should be learnt it is that no one is wholly perfect). On the bright side, since I did not see the band coming and was late to the party, I had no real expectations and was taken by surprise by the existence of an old-school crust band that already had two (!) records out, something of a blissful ignorance which, in 2022 sadly does not happen too often because of my advanced and omniscient crust detector (it is cider-fueled if you must know). In any case, it felt great to meet a relatively established band with all the refreshing candour I could muster.     

Akrasia are from Oslo, Norway, and must have formed in the mid-10's. While they are technically a young band, some - if not all - of the participants in this crust-making enterprise cannot be said to be exactly innocent inexperienced newcomers and I am not saying this just out of discourtesy. For instance, my confidential sources (well, Discogs really...) tells me that the singer, aka Offender, a common name in Norway, also growled for the metal band Throat Violence and grindcore machine Whip in Oslo in the 00's, as well as two other extreme acts in Italy (I smartly assume he moved to Italy at some point) more recently, Morbo and Sangue, four bands I have never heard and therefore will not make a fool of myself by commenting. Guitar player "Kraka" however is a much more familiar punk face since he used to play, among others, in Hevn, a strong anarchopunk band from the 00's and the magnificent Summon the Crows, undeniably Norway's best crust band. 

Akrasia play, and I quote, "cataclysmic space crust", a brilliant name for a subgenre of a subgenre of a subgenre. In general, the specialists of such terminological inventiveness are Japanese punks ("d-beat raw punk" is the most famous example but the presupposition that any Japanese d-beat and crust band have coined their own lexical style almost always proves to be true) but I salute this bold and daring move from this wild Scandinavian lot and I personally like the concept of cataclysmic space crust a lot. Observe the Darkness includes two long songs, almost twelve minutes in total, of heavy metallic old-school crust with some psychedelic space rock moments. The length of the songs really allows the band to tell and developed a full story (with an introduction, the setting of a specific atmosphere, a pause, changes in mood, a climax and so on) with each number which places Akrasia in the great crust traditions of epic crust of Amebix, Misery and the likes, a narrative aspect reinforced by the use of a psychedelia-inducing synth which I am a huge sucker for. 

The vocals also distinguish the band, they are quite theatricalised and reminiscent of an angrier Tom G. Warrior, which is something of a double-edge sword, but at least can be considered as a welcome change from all the grizzli growls that crust is usually and rightly associated with. While I did not feel the vocals always worked on the First Demons - Birth of the Void Lp from 2017, they perfectly fit here. And actually I cannot find any real flaw to the Ep, it is a brilliant crust record. The space rock influence is present but acts more as an atmospheric tool than a structural songwriting one. I am reminded of progressive crust bands like Morne or the mighty Counterblast, with the potent metal groove of Celtic Frost and late Amebix, a dash of classic Misery and early AGE and a spoonful of Iowaska and Bad Influence trance crust. It reads like name-dropping nonsense but just trust the crust, Observe the Darkness is nothing less than one of the best records of the genre of the past decade. and above all they do not sound like any other bands while still comfortably relying on the classic canonical crust tropes. Both fresh and yet familiar.

This wonderful Ep was released in 2019 on the ever-reliable and hard-working label Ruin Nation Records that has been going since 1993. It is still available so I strongly suggest you treat yourself and support the label and the band at the same time and actually take a fiver from your wallet and get the thing. Space anarchy propagation indeed. There is a link just below to RN's website comrades.

                                                                                Get it

                                                                    Cataclysmic space crust  

                          

Live by the Crust, Die by the Crust (2012-2021): Deformed Existence "Hate with patriotism" demo tape, 2019

If you are unaware of Terminal Sound Nuisance's resolutions for 2022, please read the first entry to the brand new series Live by the Crust, Die by the Crust - it is my family motto if you must know, with our coat of arms depicting a cheap-looking plastic battle axe and a half-empty cider bottle. We like to keep things realistic. For the tenth anniversary of the blog, I will focus only on modern, contemporary crust recordings that I enjoyed in the past ten years in order to illustrate how important it is to support new bands, distros, what's left of the fanzine scene or gig promoters (cough cough, and blogs, cough cough). As much as I revere the old classics just like your average snobby nerd, new and active bands are those who keep the punk scene alive and interesting ("new and active" also includes heroic old farts who will keep crusting until the end of times, hail to them). Reviews will be shorter (?) but there will be more of them. Basically less anecdotes about my thrilling life but still my proverbial jocularity.

I first heard of Deformed Existence when planning my trip to Osaka in 2018 for the All Crusties Insane Noise Victim festival. I had never been to Japan and a brilliant lineup in addition to the last ever Gasmask Terror gig convinced me that the time, indeed, had come. I had a great time of course although I drank myself into a stupor like a twat on the first night, got lost on the way back to the hostel, overslept and missed bands on the day after that I had specifically flown to see. A cultural practice also known as "in true French fashion". I still feel like the ultimate bellend for this unforgivable misgiving although I suppose it does make for a good story and, at the very least, gets me some extra punk points (right?). More details about that fateful trip will be added in due time throughout the series (possibly as a cliffhanger at the end of the season three's finale or something). But back to today's topic since I actually saw Deformed Existence during the All Crusties Insane Noise Victim (a very apt name for the lineup). 

I remember reading the band's moniker on the poster online before leaving and wondered inquisitively what this lot were about. Let's deal with the lexical elephant in the room right now: "Deformed Existence" sounds exceedingly like classic 90's band's moniker "Deformed Conscience". In fact, to this day, older punks have proved to be almost completely unable to pronounce "Deformed Existence" correctly. They always end up overheating, awkwardly mumbling something like "Deformed Conscistence", collapsing on the floor and having to be turned on and off again. Typical. I obviously love Deformed Conscience - I am not a poser - but even a renowned man of letters like myself struggle to properly pronounce Deformed Existence, and I do actually like the name a lot (which, I suspect, must refer more to Reality Crisis' Deformed Society than Connecticut's crust stalwarts). I quickly guessed, thanks to my innate deductive power, that they were a young band since I could not find any song from them online and indeed they had that young-band feel on stage. Upon asking around, several rumours seemed to indicate what I already knew in my bones: they were an old-school crust band. Of course, it was only a hypothesis which needed to be confirmed with the scientific method, in this case fucking off to Osaka and enjoying the noise (and drinking far too much for my wimpish constitution). 

DE played quite early on the first day of the festival - at King Cobra Squat of course - and were very enjoyable. The omnipotence of streaming platform and the pressure to always be connected and updated about this week's new bands have made us very difficult to surprise. We are all guilty of systematically checking out bands before seeing them live or buying their records so that we seldom get to watch a band we have never heard before at all (the first gig of your mates' new bands do not count and you only have to endure a couple of songs out of forced friendship anyway). Even though I knew it was going to be crust - crust pants were involved to dissipate any possible doubts - it was a pleasant feel to watch a band I knew I was going to like but did not know yet but it might have been the booziness talking.

After thirty years of passionate War Crimes worship, you would think the impact of Doom on crust-loving Japanese punks would be less preponderant than in it was in the 90's. You would be quite mistaken, it is still pretty much intact, acting like an ancestral source of power for the local rags-core punks. So, of course, and it won't come as a surprise: DE also love Doom. But they love Doom in a way that is both traditionally deferential and somewhat original (to a degree, it is still Doom-loving cavecrust, don't expect ska breaks). From what I gathered, DE formed as a three-piece around 2015 and are based in Niigata, although drummer Yoichi - who also hits things with the fantastic Asocial Terror Fabrication and plays guitar for the long-running Voco Protesta - is from Tokyo. There is apparently a 4-track demo crd predating this tape but I haven't been able to hear it and I suspect it must be a rougher version of Hate with Patriotism's songs. 

From the opening introduction "Catastrophe", you get a distinct idea of where the band is sailing toward, as it is a tasteful blend of Doom's "Confusion" and the opening of "Means to an end". The discerning crusty would be quick to jump to the conclusion that DE is then going to unleash a barrage of gruff early Doom worship like the classical Japanese bands Abraham Cross/early Reality Crisis did. But that's where, as discerning as one might think to be, you would be - partly- wrong as DE have a very strong 90's crust vibe (more mid-90's Doom than '88), even reminiscent of 90's eurocrust, not a common occurrence in Japan. In terms of vocals, singer Kubo sounds very much like Tom Croft, who stood behind the microphone for Doom for most of the 90's and had a very Swedish-like aggressive, direct and threatening style, while most Doom-like bands go for the emphatic gruff style of Jon. To my great delight, DE's sound is strongly rooted in that 90's style, and as well as Doom - and the inescapable Japanese love for Sore Throat - other top cavecrust bands of the era definitely come to mind like 93'/95' Hiatus, Excrement of War or Private Jesus Detector (although they always claimed that they were a raw Dis-loving hardcore punk band and not crust which they associated with the more metallic sort of school which made sense in the late 80's/early 90's) but I am also reminded of pioneering just-like-Discharge d-beat bands like Disaster or Meanwhile and even Hellkrusher. And to keep gratifying myself at my own acuity, let's throw some national points of comparison like the aforementioned kings of Doom-love Abraham Cross and '93/'95 Battle of Disarm as DE share a similar sweeping, seemingly unstoppable power.

DE's music is simple and energetic with appropriate dark riffs, some welcome spoken parts and a desperate angry feel running through the music. The tape has eight songs for about 17 minutes of crispy pummeling crust so it feels like a serious work that could easily appear on vinyl. I have to say that I was rather surprised by the guitar sound at times as it uses uncommon effects (flanger? chorus? some guitar magic?) for the genre. I do enjoy it a lot as it one of the elements that makes DE subtly stand out despite the traditional, unambiguous and therefore very sharply defined crust style. The band's lyrics are also better than most given the template with "Merchant of death" tackling patriotism and "Elitists" being a criticism of the superficiality and artificiality of some corners of the punk scene. The insert displays a reworked Doom cloud logo at its centre (in case you forgot for a minute what you are holding in your grubby hands) while the black-and-white cover and the fount nod toward the classic 90's crust aesthetics. Hate with Patriotism was released in 2019 on Doomed to Extinction, a label based in California but run by a Serbian punk, that has been releasing some of the best crust records - among other styles - of the past decade. A cracking label whose productions we will be seeing again in Live by the Crust, Die by the Crust. 

Now, there is the retro 90's crust band I had been waiting for. More of that please.  

     

     

Deformed Existence           

Live by the Crust, Die by the Crust (2012-2021): Instinct? "Pray to death" tape Ep, 2020

So I have been thinking. 

In 2022 Terminal Sound Nuisance will be celebrating its tenth birthday. I have never really held anniversaries in high regards, even less so now that hearing "fuck me, has it been twenty years already" is steadily becoming part of the punk conversations I regularly engage in. Time flies, aeroplanes crash. I started the blog in 2012, a time when punk blogs were already either dead, largely dying or grinding into a halt that would eventually grow to be definitive. But in the late 00's there were many active blogs all over the place. Those offering a distinct take on punk music through a selection of little-known bands that reflected the blogger's tastes and approach were genuinely great and acted as points of entry to large sections of punk history that I and many more were unaware of. Others focused on new bands, promoted the immediate vibrancy of punk and reflected a dynamism and an inspiring belief in the relevance of contemporary punk music. Others were basically database with hundreds of links to download without much, if any, context so that you were left with just the music and bits to assemble on your own. But what mattered the most were the different voices, the different places, the different time periods, the different styles and tastes that you were exposed to. Not all of them were good and some were very short-lived. Running a blog is time-consuming and requires passion. It is also by essence a solitary work that is not rewarded by instant gratification, unlike a youtube link or a social media post that you "like". A blog post cannot just be scrolled down and mindlessly "liked" - well it can, but it becomes utterly pointless - and you have to connect at least a little bit with what is being said (unless it is just a download link, but this kind of blogs are near extinct). In an epoch when our insecure selves, our tastes, our looks need to be constantly and instantaneously validated, consistent blogging, and of course fanzines and punk websites, offer something different and hopefully interesting and fun.

So I have been thinking as you can see. I gathered my scattered wits, dismissed as much negativity from my mind as possible and decided that 2022 would be a little different. Not that Terminal Sound Nuisance should transition into adulthood, it will still be governed by the heedlessness of youth, but, as my well-paid business advisor suggested, I should diversify my activities. I guess that makes sense. The same old same old is alright, we all need a routine, I know I do, but new things must be tried. Therefore I intend to publish more interviews this year and curate more scholarly punk compilations in order to bring some diversity in terms of formats and contents and provide some breaks from the coming onslaught of crust. Also, I decided to focus more - perhaps even exclusively for a while - on contemporary and active bands. Although I have oft written about old bands and vintage classics and about our contextual relation to them, I realize I have not tackled contemporary bands for a long time (not since the Ashes to Ashes, Crust to CRUST series in 2017). I am very much an enthusiast for current bands and support the scene as much as I can, even if it just means hanging out and getting pissed before the venue while haranguing the public on their bourgeois lifestyle. Punk is a moving animal, an indestructible creature and while I love raving about obscure and sloppy raw crusty punk bands from bygone days, 2022 will see me raving about obscure and sloppy raw crusty punk bands from the past ten years (2012 to 2021). A groundbreakingly different undertaking. Routine, meet your death. Where will it take me? To the gates of madness? To world fame? Surfeited with crust you shall be. 

Since all the recordings we will be dealing with are recent, it will prove difficult to study them in perspective. How will they age? Future crust classics or just decent examples of the genre? From all the works I have ripped, there are some that I know are bound to eventually become part of the crust canon. Once approved by the venerable World Crust Council it will be a done deal. Others will vanish from collective memory and be remembered only by the loyal fanatics of the genre whose brains function as giant encyclopedic archives, the names of those obscure bands gloriously engraved on mental cenotaphs. But at the end of the day, my guess is as good as yours so I could be wrong about the future classics although there is a high probability that I am right as usual and that my guess is actually better than yours. So I have decided to write shorter reviews and to focus on the band and the music as much as possible, instead of blabbering about irrelevant meditations, so that I can work on as many recordings as possible. There will be exceptions because resolutions are meant to be broken - law and order up your arse and all that - and some bands are just too good and meaningful not to be properly tackled - by which I mean lengthy tirades - but the idea is to stick to a shorter format. Live by the Crust, Die by the Crust will offer a wide panorama of crust music, in all its diversity, recordings I enjoyed in the past ten years in no particular order - because law and order up your arse and all that. I intend to speak mostly about bands that I have not had the chance to deal with yet, so that great crust records from bands that already liberally appeared on TSN might not be included (I am still a bit unresolved about that though but time will tell). Finally, all the rips provided will be my own rips. I am aware that you are able to download lossless files of most of the fuckers on bandcamp but I enjoy the process of ripping my own records. Besides, it will make you feel like you listen to my own copy on my own stereo (if you close your eyes you will be drinking my own coffee and enjoy my own conversation as well). If my tape has a sound issue, you'll hear it and if there is a scratch on an Ep, you'll hear it. That's the full TSN experience for you. Let's ave it.  

 I am afraid our instinct is war indeed...

I had never heard of Instinct? before the tape hit crust's dancefloors during the spring 2020, back when Paris was about to experience it first lockdown. Good times. The year 2020 had its fair share of solid records, although it is far too early to claim that any one of them are grand cru or that some will eventually be seen as minor classics (some labels will have you believe that every one of their records is bound to be come "a classic" but who are they trying to con?). Pray to death still proved to be one of my favourite of the year. With five songs in about seven minutes, you can imagine that Instinct? are not fucking around. There are bands that enjoy taking their time in order to set up a mood, an atmosphere that will inform the story they are going to tell. Instinct? are not one of those bands. At all. From the very first riff until the very last growl, this Philadelphia noise unit unleashes hell without any restraints nor thoughts for the innocent and unsuspecting passerby who might just find himself within earshot of speakers. Tough shit mate. 

It is a short but furious ride. as there are only five songs on this tape (discogs says it is a tape Ep but I see it more as a demo tape, a first ferocious draft if you will). In terms of style, I would locate Instinct? at the intersection of three schools. The most obvious one is the heaviest style of käng (that's the initiated lingo for Swedish hardcore, try to remember it in order to shine) especially its 90's incarnation. It is fast, relentless, pummeling, riff-driven and I am reminded of top shelf bands like 3-Way Cum, Discontrol or early Genocide SS. There is also a distinct cavemen crust influence with the emphatic, gruff vocals and some of the arrangements that nod lovingly toward classic Doom and Sore Throat (especially the cavecore song "Gozpelfuckers" which also cheekily refers to Jesus and the Gospelfuckers). Lastly, some frantic drum parts and the overall hyperbolic noisy chaos - and some vocal intonations too - sometimes point to Japanese käng (Framtid) and crust (Reality Crisis). But then those three branches very much grow from the same tree so that Instinct? sound like a seamless synthesis in the end. The sound is deliciously raw indeed but the heavy pounding power and the intensity of the delivery are such that they completely make up for any potential weakness (although I feel the last song does not sound quite as aggressive as the rest because of the production). The tape looks alright albeit quite unoriginal. A typical war picture and a collage of crusty punks in action and not much else. Some details about the recordings, the lyrics and a thank list would have been welcome I suppose.

 

The band is from Philadelphia, a town that has been delivering some excellent crust bands since the mid-10's, arguably some of the best of the decade actually. We will definitely be coming back to Philly in this series. As I understand it, even though there have technically been a lot of bands, the people involved in them are very much the same, not unlike in Portland or Halifax I suppose, so that we must have five punks playing in as many different bands. It is by no means an uncommon phenomenon and it sometimes feels like telling the story in terms of groups of people rather than bands would be more relevant. Incestuous scenes. Discogs tells me that someone from Instinct? also plays in the primitive and poetic d-beat käng act Arseholes but I am sure the rest of them play in equally brutal bands too. My copy of Pray to Death was released on tape in 2020 on Sickhead Records, a brilliant Malaysian tape label specialized in international käng and crust music that is worth your attention, and there is another version of the tape released on the prolific Kiev-based No Name Label, an entity that focuses pretty much on similar noisy things. In 2021, Bunker Punks Discs & Tapes reissued the tape and a vinyl reissue also exists since Regurgitated Semen Records (the infamous grindcore label from Germany with a questionable moniker) put out a single-sided 12'' last year, an odd choice given the current prices and since Pray to Death easily fits on a 7''. Oh well. 

 

In any case, if you see the tape or the vinyl looking lonely on a distro table, jump at the opportunity. As for me I certainly look forward to the next Instinct?'s recording, I think a 15-20 minute long 12'' with a better sound, in the raw and heavy sense of the term, a couple of mean mid-paced anthems, some more Peaceville worship and an ace-looking poster will do nicely, thank you very much. I expect it on my desk by the end of the year.            

Instinct?

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