Barred For Life

A few weeks ago I went to Thou Art in Sheffield, where unbeknown to me my glorious girlfriend had booked me an appointment.

Wipers - Is This Real?

Can't stop listening to this recently, I loathe myself for not discovering Greg Sage's punk genius until now. Brilliant songwriting on this album which influenced Kurt Cobain no end, so much in fact that he later covered D-7 & Return of The Rat with Nirvana. Worship this.

They were playing around with and cauterizing the foundations of what would later mutate into Grunge years before the Seattle sound gripped the international scene by the throat, but in the decades since they were at their best they've been skimmed over by the great rolling stone of general pop culture interest. Draw your comparisons with Husker Du and the other stalwarts of the 80's Indie scene, but appreciate them for what they are first and foremost



They asked me to take this link down, It is more than easy to find online however

No titles, All prospects

"I'm the one that has to die when it's time for me to die, so let me live my life, the way I want to."
— Jimi Hendrix

I repeat this back to my family nearly everyday of my life now, when they look at me walking out the door on my way to a show or when I come back to my cold bedroom with a tattoo dedicating myself to something I want to define my life by. I hate to say it but how can you say you know so much more than me if you havn't experienced things in life that I already have? Your straight-laced ways make no impression on me anymore.

Listen to this it will blow your fucking socks off.


Download (Mediafire)

Trash Talk. Tomorrow

Let's rage.

Insted - What We Believe

Download (Mediafire)
Formed in 1986 they were quite possibly birthed a little too late to have ever warmed themselves in the dirty limelight of America's independent Hardcore scene. The slow passage of time gifted the four sunblocked Californians enough wiggle room to feed the faster tempos of the mid 80's post East Coast explosion through a mesh of standard southern Californian Punk. Insted's concoction of straight ahead Hardcore is smattered with just enough snot to please any high schooler still blooming from the Descendants seed, and amps our far beyond the standard crunch you'd want from your hardcore - to set them apart from the bite of other scene mercenaries like 7Seconds & Uniform Choice.

British Punk this decade

Verse Chorus Verse

All over Pixies at the moment, smothering them like a cheap velour suit. This from Surfer Rosa is particuarly exquisite...
- More posts to come, I might put up a few shots I took from my photography project as most of them reference various Punk charlatans and scallywags in some way, shape or form, which you all might enjoy.

It rained dubstep inside my head today

The other week I saw members of Pendulum perform a DJ set in a basement only hours previously inked up by 'Australian Low-Brow Art Dirtbag' Kid Zoom. First and foremost I was beyond lucky to even be there, props to my girlfriend for letting me cling onto her coat-tails for the night. Tonight We Fire & Adelaide played one of the off shoots to the main basement room as part of their '09 tour and I got lumbered with filming the maelstrom of bodies and guitar necks colliding. Shouts to Matt Smithson for the best of the night's banter and a good catch up.

In between observing recreational drug use and dancing as white as a white man can dance, I took as many shots as the battery on Hannah's camera would allow. If it weren't for this photo evidence I probably wouldn't even remember being there, a true testament to the powers of a free bar and one guy who was more than willing to pour everyone shots of tequila. Cannot really figure out what time in the AM we peeled away from the house itself, but trivial details aside it was an absolute head fuck of a night and I devoured every sight and sound that my mind could latch onto.
'A good mopping later, none will be the wiser'

Tomorrow

Meet Me On The Equinox

Jesus-fucking-piss-christ this song is good. As a rabid, new material hungry fan of everything Death Cab spawn I'm most probably biased towards liking this song. It's just a shame the primary audience for this three minutes of sensual movement in the dark will be the mewing, pre-pubescent, kiddy-crap bandwagoners. Ben Gibbard has if anything punched a hole through the overly literate 'kid next door' voice and demeanour that pop culture seems to have plastered over him. Instead he gushes sagely about the fragility of life and the importance of compromise. Heavy yet beautiful stuff.

Lepers to feed the Lepers

I'd probably go as far to say that Trash Talk - Plagues is one of my favourite recordings of all time. You might think that's a bit transparent what with there being a good thirty years of punk backed up in the catalogues before the Sacramento outfit released that EP, but it is just so fucking unruly. Pieced together with so much hate and bile, it would out-evil the childsnatcher.

"For the path of the pale horse leads not astray. I wrote a song I hoped the world would hate as much as I hate myself today"

It is the resulting regurgitation of an absolute fucking recoil by four men and their mindsets fixed firmly against normal existence. I suspect most of you movers & shakers ingratiated within the international hardcore scene will know exactly what I'm talking about. For everyone else, spin Plagues to death like I have most nights for the past year, and knock your head against the wall. I really cannot say enough about this 5.2 minutes of sheer blood spilling, bone breaking, neck snapping hardcore.

A previous Trash Talk post can be found here.

Would this playlist woo a young lady?

Or am I missing something?
Also expect a post on Kidcrash soon enough, as they are 100% spectacular and I am falling into an emocore sticky love with them.

Jail Bait Core by Dana Goldstein

Check out the entire set here. Dana Goldstein is so fucking good, these inspire me no end. Can't remember where I saw these first but they came screaming back to me in a Vice magazine Hannah had.

The Receiving End Of Sirens

The Earth Sings Mi Fa Mi

Forget everything you know about the show pony jangling of today's preened teens of post hardcore, and start again with Boston's The Receiving End of Sirens. In 2005 they released Between The Heart And The Synapse and the resulting onset of bandwagon kids who had somewhat grown out of Jimmy Eat World rightly championed the band for their developed musical senses, at a time where a Blink 182-less Punk community was left licking it's wounds and awaiting the knock on the door from Fall Out Boy / My Chemical Romance.

Music has never been more of a commodity than it is now, some bands rush or are rushed by higher powers to machine build their albums and have them ready for distribution quicker than you can say 'major record label'. Dance Gavin Dance have put out three full lengths and an extended EP in just four years, I mean what on earth is that an attempt to do? Flood the market with their presence and just force a fan base into existence? Nevertheless I'd count myself a fan of their earlier work at least. But I digress...

The Receiving End Of Sirens released an album in 2007 through Triple Crown Records, under the title ' The Earth Sings Mi Fa Mi'. Jam packed with so much tinkering and slight of hand you'd think Willy Wonka had a hand in it's production, it featured new vocalist Casey Crescenzo - a kid they picked up from California with a voice so lofty it could open the pearly gates themselves. The great umbrella of post hardcore is annoyingly fitting for 'Sirens style, as they fatten their spine of Heavy Rock with familiar Punk overtones and delicate pop sensibilities. They find enough room for bleeding veins of keyboard driven experimentations into their sound to boot.

I definitely recommend this album, even if it's just to dispel the haze of bands in 2009 that have tore chunks of sound out of 'Sirens still warm corpse.


Download Here

Some Girls

I met a nice girl who listens to hardcore punk, proper hardcore punk and who has introduced me to so much already, I can't even begin to tell you. She reminds me of Zooey Deschanel in a big way, all I want to do is make art with her. When I'm not with her I want to be with her and I want everyone to know that I'm with her.

Oh My God - Wesley Eisold Career Reductive

Some people are born, headfirst into a cradle and never really escape that blanket security. Grow, eat, job, no time for life? They will always keep their cards and their souls close to their chest. The best experiences come from offering it to someone else altogether. Wes Eisold probably clawed his way out of the womb for fear of wasting his allotted time. The man, the musician, the poet, is a distillation of pretty much everything the counter culture has to roll out. Pageboy haircut tops a mind tank-melting pot of hardcore primitives and poetically twisted affectation.

The rolling panzer of American Nightmare / Give Up The Ghost defined for many kids, their flourishing adolescent glut of angst. The second wavers still paraded the likes of Gorilla Biscuits and H2O on their big apple shoulders, dashing the hopes of all but the truest punks willing to hark back to the '88 revival sound. I've never understood why the crew cut youth of yesterday are so unwilling to open up and embrace whatever mutant sounds the apple mac generation are crafting - without dismissing it as spurious faux-punk on first glance.

Equal Vision put out the insanely heavy, insanely mosh inducing debut LP 'Background Music,' which, after the self titled EP & the 'Sun Isn't Getting Any Brighter' EP stirred the mortar that would go on to cement Give Up The Ghost's place in modern hardcore culture. I am in no doubt that when they whipped out the likes of Am/Pm in whatever back alley sweatbox they were playing in, bedlam would ensue.

We're Down Til' We're Underground' continued the lightning war, yet saw Eisold & co. feel their way through the mesh of hardcore limits as a more realised sound coalesced into being. This album is an outright fucking tirade, a professionally orchestrated outing with the grime, grit and self reflection that hardcore punk can frame so well.


The heartstrings that lashed such a volatile band together eventually gave way, with a fallout that was felt throughout the listening community. They were just so incredibly good, so strong but equally listenable - along with The Suicide File they had inflamed the north eastern scene and beat it's chest raw. A collective driftwood of available musicians flooded the talent radar and one by one they each found new projects by which to ply their trade. Tim Cossar now flies the flag for metallic hardcore heavysets The Hope Conspiracy, and Jarvis Holden united with post-hardcore king Daryl Palumbo to birth the power pop snaps & crackles of Head Automatica. Wes pretty much just wiped the snot from his nose and threw himself head first back into the swarming mass of young bloods thirsty for the next chapter.

Some Girls congealed together rather naturally, as Wes joined forces with Justin Pearson of The Locust (and a plethora of other bands), to thrash out a more rudimentary, light speed soundtrack of warped destruction. In late 2003 they kicked out an LP All My Friends Are Going Death on Deathwish, which has subsequently I hear been remastered, mixed and issued along with some sweet etching, all on limited edition colour vinyl. Some Girls' unbridled fuck-you-we're-gonna-play-our-way coupling of attitude and sound flipped the coin completely. The union of past Unbroken, Tristeza, Holy Molar and Give Up The Ghost members was a rabid formula.

The second full length dropped in 2006, this time Epitaph swooped to put it out. The writing for 'Heaven's Pregnant Teens' was a maturing process for Some Girls. They kept their animalistic message crystal clear, and left no stone unturned in their quest to reach the desired ear slaying caterwaul.

Some Girls died a death unfitting of a band made up of such live wires. The band was 'quietly put to rest' in October of 2007, freeing up Wes once more. The rolling stone that gathers no moss had hooked up with the incomparable Chauncey and others as a side project before the Some Girls split, the cacophony resulting from forcing hardcore punk into a kinship with danceable electronica beats rattled the cages of even the staunchest 'punk as fuck' kids. The preppy long island new wavers most probably had their J-Crew socks blown off by the likes of XO Skeletons



XO Skeletons went on to record 'Bored By Heaven' in a series of sessions, later releasing it free to download.

In post Obama victory America Wes has spread his runners further left field, founding and currently running Heartworm Press out of Philadelphia, PA. Heartworm is a collective escape for talented punks and other such scene luminaries who can write better than the average dirtbag and have more than half interesting stories to tell. Some of it, if not all of it is genuinely brilliant, well crafted drug enduced stumbles through the inner workings of a teenager's horomone bank.

Musically hes moved even further into the darker corners of the electronic world with Cold Cave, concocting devilishly sombre slices of experimental synth-noise / no wave / dark wave. Whichever tag of the week is going through the hip-kid processing machine applies here. I think tagging Cold Cave as 'Cold Wave' is one step beyond the borderline of ridiculousness. Nevertheless some of their bites make me think of what Faithless might have sounded like if they had an even bleaker outlook on life and wore trenchcoats indoors, or had played jaw crushing hardcore for ten years prior. So check out what some people called the 'catchiest twelve minutes of 2008', The Trees Grew Emotions And Died

For The People That Died

Someone has introduced me to Heartworm Press, It is pretty fucking defining. For those who are blind to their prose genius - get involved at The Heartworm. Wes Eisold is a multi-trick pony, Even Fall Out Boy steal his eloquence. It's not just Wes, the contributions come from far and wide - and to me they spread the seed of the healing powers of Punk, along with the fucked up delights of America's scratch & sniff urban underbellies.

"From there I saw myself lying in bed with 'that girl' sharing and comparing all past crimes and misdemeanors to the sounds of crystal hearts colliding, and in that moment I saw colour for the first time. I lost my soul. To be honest, it was hers from the very start"

- Max G Morton, 'Indestructable Wolves of the Apocalypse Junkyard', Heartworm Press

Here's to not going down in history for standing still.

Expect fleshed out blog posts a-plenty starting this weekend. Check out my friend Thom's blog (Skate For God), it's much better than mine as he doesn't expel paragraph after paragraph about the bands he features, unlike me. Also his knowledge is great, we spend the best parts of college planning our sonic extradition from our normal lives. We want to mash our umbrella of influences together and see what sound comes out.

This past week I have been listening to alot of the following: Killing The Dream, Graf Orlock, Hüsker Dü, Every Time I Die (that new record is amazing, no messing) & Crime In Stereo.

He-God Has Favoured My Undertakings

Subsequently check out Hang The Bastard if you havn't already. They play a bilious torrent of sludgey tar colliding riff first with the primitives of hardcore punk - imbibed with as much death and goat worship as these filthy London folk can muster.
Hang The Bastard (Myspace)

Something A Bit Different

Last night I went to see Bury Tomorrow and a host of support acts including the good lads of From A City In Ruins, who, dispell just about as much effort as can feasibly be possible. Lead singer Adam spends more time in the air or on the floor in with the patrons than he does rooted stage side. The band have recently changed musical tact, pooling influences as far flung and contrasting as Joy Division, Refused and At The Drive-In, melding it together with their previously hard grafted metalcore chops. So check them out they deserve more attention.

www.myspace.com/fromacityinruins

Graf Orlock

There is a line out there, some say, which separates the sane and rational from the absolutely fucking absurd. Graf Orlock show up and do their best to smear that line beyond all recognition. By the time you reach the final track of any one of their releases you're likely to be headbanging to your own screams of 'Sarah Connor!'

They formed six years ago in Los Angeles as four kids united by their raging love for 80's & 90's cinematography (a detail you'll soon pick up on), and have been splicing audio snippets into their grind inflected hardcore ever since. Former vocalist Kalvin Kristoff was highly influential in Graf Orlock attaining their sound, with a scream so potent it could rattle glass to breaking point. Backed up by Jason Schmidt on guitar who's own voice resonates deep, almost Dave Verellen-esque growls, as if they were coming from Beelzebub's Abyss itself. Mainstays of the listening society have been quick to paste a 'cinema-grind' tag upon anything these Californian savages do - which I confess I'm not a fan of. I just think it trivialises the music, which could leave the band being just aswell known for their inclusion of script and quotes as for their sheer power to rage. I guess you guys will make your own minds up.

After a series of well received splits & EP's they embarked on a three-release trilogy based on a screenplay Jason and drummer 'Alan Hunter' had been fervently working on during their time at college. The 'Destination Time' trilogy is absolutely menacing, track after track of riff-spun fury bolstered extensively by their often ludicrous love of action film samples. Step forward into the melee as revved up Lemmy style bass parts crush insatiably into the churning guitar on tracks like 'A Shocking Interrogation' and 'Todd & Janelle' from the Destination Time: Tomorrow EP. The tempo changes snatch you by the collar and pull you into the tangled fray of Indiana Jones and Under Siege, pumping your senses with large doses of profanity and bloodlust.

While some people will pass off Graf Orlock as a gimmick band, others will jump on board as devout followers of the Predator meets Hardcore template. On a purely sonic level Graf have measurable talent for creating great chunks of hardcore, albeit few of those chunks see the other side of three minutes. I can imagine this band putting in an astonishing level of commitment and exercising their chops in intense hard to fault live shows, brimming with blastbeats and choice movie script dialogue. I just hope Graf Orlock's select list of cinema influences affords them enough room, to produce enough records, to satiate this writer's and the rest of the Graf Orholic's thirst for fresh takes on often stale sub-genres.



Destination Time: Yesterday
Destination Time: Tomorrow
Destination Time: Today

It's a cold world out there, sometimes I think i'm getting a little frosty myself.

In 1986 seminal record producer Rick Rubin embarked on a project that revitilized a classic American rock group, and perhaps more poignantly birthed a hybrid musical subgenre, with the fusion of rap and rock. You've probably guessed it, it was infact Run DMC's cover of 'Walk This Way' by Aerosmith. Released as a single from their album 'Raising Hell', 'Walk This Way' mushroomed into an International success by becoming the first rap single to break through into the top 5 of the Billboard Hot 100. It was something of an eye opener to the general listening public, grabbing modern assumptions by the scruff of the neck and heftily planting a bright white adidas trainer right where it hurts the most.

Flash forward to 2009 and the charts are still bothered by multi-platinum selling acts following a similiar template to the one Rubin crafted over 20 years ago, artists such as Linkin Park. Despite the breakthrough success, there lies a blistering underbelly where hip hop and rock can coalesce outside the charts, In a heavier, more satisfying allegiance. Enter Cold World who have been running with the torch for almost 5 years, albeit in a very black & white manner.

Cold World are bare as bones in their musical march, steamrolling interludes of hip-hop morsals onto a steadfast foundation of locomotive 90's hardcore. Adding a dash of hip-hop or rap influence for every stylistic value borrowed from Crown of Thornz or Life of Agony. Cold World play out of Pennsylvania, weilding a brand of hardcore not unlike the burgeoning east coast scene of almost two decades passed, very pissed-the-fuck-off but equally talented on instrumental terms which makes for interesting hardcore rather than the derivitive, mechanical concoctions many bands churn out in a feign attempt to replicate the Minor Threat or Sick Of It All glory days

There's very little out there strong enough to contend with what Cold World are doing right now and I recommend all their releases,


(Dedicated To Babies...)

(Ice Grillz)

Existing Underground

Posts have, and will for the immediate future be few and far between due to logistical reasons. Broken down it means i'm never in the midst of a good internet connection, so all my blog ideas have been given the pen to paper treatment as of late. I'll have to wait a little bit longer before I can spew forth the many, many metaphors i've collected to describe Thom Yorke's voice & the beauty of Radiohead at Leeds Festival. Meanwhile I've been listening to alot of Poison The Well, predominantly that new behemoth 'The Tropic Rot' (Get it here) and Joy Division, don't say thats depressing though.

Meanwhile...


Mike Patton from Faith No More / Mr Bungle


Johnny Depp in Donnie Brasco

I also think Tim Mcilrath from Rise Against looks like Thom Yorke.

The Troubled Youth of Suburban Life

Thank God for Punk, I owe my way of thinking to it.

An evening in with Fall Out Boy

There's no doubt about it, I used to dismiss this band. I never really let them register and even when I did it was a fleeting fancy for one or two of their big hits that more or less everyone could move to. I never thought of them as a band right at the forefront of making good music, they never were a totally amazing group of songwriters to me, Fall Out Boy didn't get the obsessive treatment I reserve for alot of the other big hitters I listen to. Nevertheless, as with anyone submerged in today's pop culture milieu they've always flirted with the boundaries of my listening radar.

For a group of guys who churn out solid hit after solid pop punk hit they possess somewhat double-edged sword charachteristics, take the very inception of Fall Out Boy; Joe Trohman overheard future lead singer Patrick Stump talking about Neurosis in a book store and went on to introduce himself. Not Bad Religion, not early Green Day but Neurosis! Pete Wentz, as preened and coiffed as you might like to think of him, played in a succession of hardcore punk and metalcore outfits, notably Arma Angelus (The Grave End of The Shovel), and Yellow Road Priest. Furthermore along with future drummer Andy Hurley, he played in the political straight edge act Racetraitor. It was only after the group discussed taking their musical aspirations in a direction that reflected their early pop punk listening habits (Descendants, The Get Up Kids), that Fall Out Boy came into being

I was really well and truly impressed with Folie á Deux, bringing it out roughly only a year after Infinity On High and still managing to pack in an abundance of delightfully well crafted songs aswell as furthering their musical maturity Is surely praise worthy in anyone's book. Bands don't do that nowadays, well not the gilded pop punk generation. They're so obsessed with the particulars of producing, mixing and mastering, to really put out what they want to put out. Pete Wentz, no longer the limelight thief with perfect teeth that i thought he was, is worthy of the recognition he gets. His lyrics are as satirical, layered, meaningful and seductively blazé. Metal has so many restrictions and boundaries that are watertight if you want to be deemed part of the fold, yet i have never seen a downside to 'wimpy' pop punk. It's just sailing in the sunshine, there's no downside to great hooks & great melody. Punk Rock is freedom, it is Art, someone great once said 'Art is expression, in expression you need 100% full freedom" .. and so i will advocate for Fall Out Boy.

So I've started my love affair, 5 years later than everyone else maybe, but hey, I'd like to think I listen to alot! The point of this blog? Probably to say that I was wrong to dismiss Fall Out Boy earlier on in their career, and also to say sorry to Pete Wentz - he's not the ego monster I labelled him as, he has quite a bit of wit about him, I love how he makes a complete mockery of young coked up Hollywood. Probably just a product of growing up listening to The Smiths.

For those who haven't heard Folie á Deux and feel like giving it a chance - Download

Wolf Whistle

My friend Josh alerted me to a band called Wolf Whistle, who play a brand of fast hardcore straight out of New Bedford MA. Pretty good on their own merit but dig a little deeper and you'll learn they're fronted by Pat Flynn from Have Heart; which is pretty special in itself especially to think that this might well take up more of his time once the final Have Heart tour is through. They're completed by Trevor Vaughan of XFilesX, Derek DaSilva, and Evan Radigan of The Rival Mob (Get Rival Mob's 'Raw Life' record) and wrote a 10 song demo followed by another 4 song demo with ideas now to get back in the studio and record further tracks.

Fans of Have Heart will no doubt throw themselves onto this wholeheartedly but on a purely sonic level they don't draw that many parallels with the Boston flag boys. Think faster, more sporadic drumming and frenetic guitars with the track times more than halved. Just a grittier approach to hardcore in general and a backlash against the soaring chants and thumping hooks of Have Heart. Pat Flynn's vocal prescense remains untarnished, he's just as relentless as hes previously known to be, spitting his lines like a brown bear on steroids. Pat Flynn's good friendship with Lee from Trash Talk might have rubbed off a little on Wolf Whistles style, who are definitely more aligned to that pissed off Sacramento/San Fran sound than anything Boston is tending to at the moment. Great Stuff, get listening!

Wolf Whistle - Demo '07
Wolf Whistle - Winter Demo 09 + Live on WERS

My Summer Overture

This is the last weekend before Leeds Fest 2009 lands and it's a definite case of 'the calm before the storm.' I feel the need to abstain from alcohol and other intoxicants in preparation for the four days of debauchery, kind of like the few days of fasting before the feast-banquet-marathon. Either way nothing but good times are in the pipeline. This is the finalised line-up, I could not be more stoked for Faith No More, after years and years of thinking i'd never get the chance to see them..