Ahhhh Summer - long, hot, mindless days spent sweating through your clothes - while you invest in large quantities of Gold Bond to prevent chafing.
You, soaked in misery, toiling at your job that pays your bills and passes the time while whimsically staring out the window and dreaming of what it must have been like to be a fly on the wall at that one practice session when Discharge decided to rip off the Buzzcocks’ drum beat, lighting a fuse designed to destroy all our hearing. The magic of it all!
While normal assholes and shitsticks are out there playing baseball, consuming copious plates of apple pie and lecherously ogling oiled up bodies headed to the beach, proper punks, skins, hardcores, ragers, thrashers, bangers, mosh maniacs, and all related mutants are instead, pondering the stacks of black plastic slowing crowding them out of their living space and asking, just what are the best releases of the year so far? What are the essential jams? What records are worthy of me choosing to purchase rather than throwing away my hard earned cash on things like “food” or “rent”? Never fear, dear readers, I got you covered. Behold! The best records of the year! So far!
*Caveat: Yes there is a new Muro record out - no I haven’t heard it yet. All reports from my random Euro friends are saying that is probably the best record of the year and while Euros are wrong about many things (examples being not being into air conditioning, small cups of coffee, generally not using ice, etc.), my guess is this assessment is probably correct…
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Alambrada, Ríos De Sangre 12”
Absolutely raging thrash from Colombia - I think this has some people from Muro but not 100% sure but it certainly has that same sort of disjointed and manic sense of urgency.
Raw and careening in this manner where everything sounds like they are about to fall apart at any moment but it manages to hold it all together. Brilliant stuff!
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Armor, Afraid of What’s to Come 12”
Burly as fuck, stomping bomping hardcore from the wet dick of America aka Florida. Ferocious Swedish styles in the manner of the more stuttering, chanty, ranty Totalitär songs born out of a melding of d-beat thunder and hammer down, football terrace-inspired Oi! It’s an angry, absolutely ferocious record.
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Assistert Sjølmord, Assistert Sjølmord EP
This is sick as shit Norwegian hardcore punk done in the old style - you know X-Port Platter records, Stengte Dører, Bannylyst, etc. Riff heavy, tuneful with mountains of energy - it's just all go, go, go!
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Bloodstains, Bloodstains LP
Well this is a long-awaited LP - at least for me. Their demo from a few years back set the stage for me to be absolutely obsessed with them - as some of you may know I’m a sucker for that early OC/SoCal melodic hardcore that just drips with melancholic angst and these folx do it to perfection.
It’s as though Rikk Agnew bestowed these riffs upon them from his deep vault. Think D.I., think Adoloscents, think more recent bands like The War Goes On, Red Dons, No Hope for the Kids, etc. Absolutely perfect.
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Bootlicker, 1000 Yard Stare LP
I fucking love Bootlicker - I mean they are this perfect Canadian take on Missbrukarna Swedish proto-hardcore jangle with a tinge of the musicality and reverence for hooks of Totalitär but with a more modern production style. It’s absolutely infectious stuff here.
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Dollhouse, I Hate You Don’t Leave Me EP
NYC’s Dollhouse is so fucking great - Darby Crash-style snotty vocal approach with a poetic, angst soaked lyric approach layered over Revolution Summer style melodic guitar work. It is a truly powerful and beautiful release.
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Faucheuse, Rêve Électrique LP
There’s a quip in the press materials for this where they equate this French band to Japanese legends Paintbox and I find that to be fairly apt especially with how they play with completely out-of-genre normal elements (operatic metal, groovy basswork, moments of etherial dissonance, meandering guitarwork, etc.).
It's all placed on a solid kång/d-beat backbone which serves to support what could be unwieldy and incongruous ideas - making them somehow work, all without losing a ounce of punch or energy.
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Fried Reality, Dissolved Mind CS
Absolutely feral sounding hardcore punk mayhem from here in Richmond - the vocals on this really make it for me, just this snarling, rabid onslaught of dripping venom layered over pummeling distort-o-rama hardcore punk. Killer.
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Home Invasion, Enemy LP
Ferocious, go-for-the jugular hardcore from Chicago - hard as nails, massive breakdowns which surface infrequently amidst track after track of thrashing drums and guitars backing up this snarling vocal attack.
So much of what is called hardcore these days is just slow and heavy nonsense designed for jocks to listen to while lifting weights - this is not that. Think Voorhees, think Out Cold - my only complaint is that it could be faster.
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Invertebrates, Sick to Survive 12”
This is fucking great! This is fucking great! This is fucking great! Careening, maniacal, full throttle thrashing hardcore punk from here in Richmond, Virginia. I’ve seen them enough times to sorta have a feeling how good this would be but, this surpasses my assumptions.
Everything just feels like its at the top of its game, from the drumming to the guitars to the interplay of the bass to the vocals. A frenetic ball of relentless energy and power. Its such an exciting and inspiring thing to see a band produce something which fully captures them at their best moment. Outfuckingstanding.
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Jupiter Hearts, All That Pain You Left Behind LP
Hey check it out - homies from Louisville got a new band and it rules! Rob Pennington (Endpoint, By the Grace of God, etc.) has such a distinctive vocal style that is just perfect for the musical backdrop that leans heavy in the Revolution Summer, Rites of Spring/Rain-sorta thing but there is a tinge of that Wipers via Obits moodiness that really drives it home.
It’s somber, intense, and earnest music and lyrics which pairs with the current era we live in.
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Night Fever, Dead End LP
Fucking great, high speed, thrashy Euro-core here. It's got elements of early '00s bandana thrash, Burning Spirits-style anthemic guitar leads, Ray Cappo-style ranting flipping to full-throated clean melodic rock vocals, and later era Poison Idea-sorta riffing. Its like all things at once and just oozes energy.
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Phane, Maniac LP
Oh, how I love Phane. They’re one of those bands that I just stumbled across by popping by a show one night and I’ve been in love ever since. High velocity, riff-soaked thrashing hardcore that takes the English Dogs thing, speeds it up and adds in one of the best guitar players I’ve ever seen in real life.
Just crazy riffs and shredding but done in a manner where it doesn’t detract from the power of the songs - an absolutely glorious release.
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Public Acid, Deadly Struggle LP
From the first time I got to witness this powerhouse of a band I’ve been just fixated by their ferocity and intelligence around their songwriting. Live, they are unstoppable - just a juggernaut of monstrous riffs saturated in a cacophony of noise inducing frenetic mayhem and general bedlam.
While I’ve been a fan of Public Acid's releases from the first drop of the needle, none of them truly reflected the feeling of them live like this album manages to do. It’s a tricky thing, distilling all of the energy and volatility of the live setting to a few minutes of tape in the recording studio. How do you harness chaos without losing the power in the punch?
In many ways Public Acod manage to combine the duality of my hardcore musical tastes - profoundly immoral sounding metallic riffing a la Gastunk or GISM saturated in sheets of white noise driven through a filtration of Tom Robert’s early manic riffing on Kings of Punk and the urgency of Mike Dean fronted COC. Just a monster of a record - essential.
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Rotura, Al Atro Lado LP
Absolutely brilliant, melodic punk from Spain - it's got a dark moody tinge to it but retains enough pop sensibility to not bring you all the way down.
For me, it brings back memories of hearing Gorilla Angreb or the Vicious for the first time, not in how it sounds, per se, but in how they are able to creative powerful melodic punk without removing a sense of ferocity and punchy aggro. Fucking great.
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Skamfläck, Synka Alla Klockor för Midnatt LP
14 tracks of Swedish hardcore punk from members of Svart Snö, Agoni, Acursed, Sunday Morning Einsteins, etc,, where we see them taking the classic d-beat, kångnave sound and adding this moody almost despondent feeling to it - moody at times, melodic at others with this pervasive dissonant riffing accenting the more traditional fist-pounding onslaught of mangel.
It’s a dense and powerful record, taking old forms and manipulating them into something new and interesting.
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Vidro, Upp Till Dans EP
Well this is exciting - if you managed to catch Stockholm’s Vidro last year on tour you know how good they are. Taking an aggressive yet danceable approach to Swedish punk. It has this sort of staccato pogo thing going on with swirling guitars and bass while their drummer helps to drive the point home, providing a stable foundation for vocalist to rant in this almost rhythmic style themselves.
Truly great and compelling stuff - outstanding!
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Woodstock 99, 99 to Life LP
90% of this is what one might expect - rampaging, face blistering hardcore punk from Cleveland with minimally distorted guitars in a manner that sorta crosses over into a garage punk vibe. It rips and rages in all the best ways - then its flips the script into this meandering, jamming, nearly eight minute long acid induced freak rock track. It’s weird and wild and totally perfect.
More of this please!
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Yambag, Mindfuck Ultra 12”
I am a total Yambag fan - I mean if you know anything about me, this makes total and complete sense, right? Thrashing, moderately sloppy hardcore punk thats played at such a pace that it feels like its about to fall apart at any moment -whats not to love?
11 tracks clocking in around 10 minutes - totally ferocious.
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Tagged: public acid, yambag
