My favorite NYHC record besides the Burn 7". I have read that the guy who drew the cover art for it once beat Raybeez up for attacking a Puerto Rican family. Did it really happen? Seems plausible, right? Is there any story from that time / place that wouldn't seem plausible?
Of course Dischord's discography gets a little dicey starting around 1994, but there are quality nuggets to be found in there and this is one. Bluetip formed after the demise of Swiz and featured the drummer from Worlds Collide and Battery. Real solid, accessible post-hardcore with strong playing all-round. The nice thing about Bluetip is that if you dig around a little bit you can assemble their discography without paying more than like $3 for anything.
Domini Inferi were Ryan Förster's pre - Conqueror / Revenge band. This track from 1994 is their only recording and it's a great piece of ancient, decrepit death metal. Warhate respond with four short bursts of staggering speed and violence from 1998. NWN still has copies of this, and it's worth having for the layout and packaging alone. But in the meantime, get your Superion fix here:
For years I heard people say "You haven't really heard Chain of Strength until you hear the 7"s, not that LP hatchet job on Rev". And I believed them, but when I finally heard the mixes on the 7"s I was still struck by just how much better they were. Everything hits harder, rages more, and there are some parts and effects that were omitted entirely on the LP. So here are my rips of the 7"s; They're loud and clean and I hope they do the material justice, because words like "classic" and "seminal", though justified in their use, do not.
Have you ever had all of a band's records but one, and you just never got around to checking that other one out, and then when you finally do it just steamrolls everything you knew about them? Yeah. What a rager.
If you can call five songs a discography, that is. Carol was a hardcore band from Bremen, land of great hardcore. They had a brief run in 1996-97; I'm not sure what other bands, if any, the members did. All Carol did was a 7" on Per Koro, a split 7" with Stack and one compilation song. The song on the split, "Pandemonium", is head and shoulders above the rest. It's a towering, swarming fucking MENACE of a song. Dare I say it's the best piece of hardcore to come out of Germany in the '90s? Oh, I think so. The rest of their material stands up to it just fine, but man. That song. Man.
Two similar slabs of haunted drone/ambient/noise that carry a sense of loss and malaise. Recommended.
A half-hour of squealing shuddering lurching howling madness. Fuck you.
This is too good a record to not be on here. Especially Harnessed in Slums. There is a genuine eccentricity to Archers of Loaf that's never forced or contrived or "quirky" or "arty", and is tempered by a certain hookiness.
