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?
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.
Candle was pre - Antioch Arrow and Clikitat Ikatowi. I think this 7" is a good example of the things that '90s emo bands did right. Two driving songs that remind me of Grain or Amber Inn or maybe even Breakwater at times. Lots of good energy and just the right amount of teenage incompetence.
A record with a very free-jazz-oriented lineup playing less skronky and more hard-bop. most of this sounds closer to early-60s Blue note than a lot of the madness that was coming out on BYG/Actuel at the end of the decade. In fact, Moncur lead two sessions for Blue Note in '63 and '64 and they're both well worth tracking down, especially Evolution. But back to the record at hand; The bigger chunk of the record finds the band in a fairly laid-back mode. I really like Dave Burrell's piano on this record, he keeps it simple nearly to the point of being ambient at times. "Space Spy" finds the other players weaving in and out of an endlessly repeating motif from Burrell. "Exploration", as the title hints at, is a little more out there. I couldn't find eny evidence of this existing on CD, but this rip is clean as can be.
Well, I scored this at a local record store today and I'm pretty pleased about that so here it is for all to enjoy. These bands should require no introduction.
I wasn't really planning on putting this up here, but the June Paik song is the best hardcore song I've heard all year. I thought they were really spinning their wheels on the last 10" but the new new track is a beast! This is still in print and available from React With Protest, Adagio 830 and the wonderful IFB Distro among others. Go fetch.
Channel featured Nate Newton pre-Jesuit and pre-pre-Converge as well as Brian Benoit pre-Dillinger Escape Plan and played chunky, mid-paced hardcore in the vein of Groundwork and Chokehold. This is their first 7" from 1994. This is here more as a matter of historical curiosity than anything, but I wouldn't have posted it if it completely sucked. I think "Justice" in particular is a pretty solid jam.
A bigtime grower. So at first I thought this was a decent melodic crust record, but as I listened more I realized it was way better than that: It's a fusion of that From Ashes Rise style with a fat dose of Uranus / '90s Bremen HC thrown in, and it's fucking potent. This made more sense when I found that Jeniger morphed into the most excellent Zeroid.
A very interesting new comp LP from the Ajna Offensive. They still have a few left and have promised a CD version eventually, but here's my LP rip in the meantime.
The Slang side is one minute long and they spice up their ripping Japanese hardcore with just a touch of Swarm / LFD heaviness. They steal this one for me. Mind Eraser respond with two Mind Eraser songs. They're kind of in this zone now where you know exactly what you're getting when you buy their records, good though it is.
If you're only up on Comets On Fire's Sub Pop releases (which are great), these two limited-run LPs may come as a shock to the system. Actually, they're pretty much a shock to the system anyways. Both eschew the recent studio materials' polished bombast (yeah, I wrote that) for raw, unadulterated ROCKING. These are live/rehearsal quality recordings, but that does not prevent them from tearing a hole in your head.
A little weird to think that this is the guys from the great Drift but it's been like 15 years and things change, ya know? I have trouble describing Complications' sound. Not that it's necessarily ultra-original, just that I don't really listen to much like this. I hear mid-period Die Kreuzen and some other Touch & Go bands, and maybe some Killing Joke. Rest assured that there are great songs on here though!
Walls rule, as I hope you know. I didn't see them on this tour, but I picked the 7" from somewhere. two new originals and a Die Kreuzen cover from one of the best live bands in hardcore.
I've posted some other Resurrectionists stuff, why not this? Resurrectionists give us their tightest and most brutal output to date; fantastic. On the flip side, BOW359 continue on their quest to become Welcome the Plague Year 2.0. This is probably their best stuff yet, but I'm not convinced that I'll ever hold them to be a really great band.
