To start off I’ve been waiting for this one to get released officially just so I can gab at you about it. For the better part of this year I’ve been rocking the first full length from Seattle’s YELLFIRE, “Dear Gods”. They just took a minute to get it out into the world but I’m really glad it’s here. It’s one thing to hear these impressive sounds on wax, and another to experience their heaviness live. Taking sound and inspiration from other Northwest titans like Botch, Heiress, and Harkonen Yellfire add a bit of their own metallic hardcore tinge to forward-thinking heavy music and it certainly pays off. They’re able to adequately pay respect to their peers (heck, some of them even show up to do guest spots on the record) while bringing that sound to an audience that may have been too young to originally see the groups Yellfire is holding a candle up to. In other words, they do it right, move it forward, and I’m here for it. It’s a cool looking record from a cool-sounding (and incredibly heavy) band full of some cool cats. Here’s to hoping others get a kick out of this as well.
Next I ask the question, ‘does it count when your full length is 13 songs in as many minutes, or conversely, when you could potentially fit the entire recording on a 7”? Is it still a ‘full length?’ I bet you NOWHERE doesn’t care one bit. They’re dishing out their new record, “New Pain” and for those keeping score, it’s a one-sided LP with a really cool looking screened B-side. So call it what you will. I caught wind of them awhile back when they released their last batch of songs and this just really pushes things into a defined and hostile sound. It clicked a bit more when I found out one of the members was in Retox at one point and that definitely shows here with the short-fast, almost grindcore approach to these tracks, mixed with the oddball spazz-outs you’d find across the Gravity Records catalog (see “Wooden Nickels” and “Tool Got Dull” for examples of that). There is no song here that breaks the two-minute mark. You could drive to the grocery store and listen to this entire thing twice before grabbing a shopping cart. Wild stuff man.
As for records that take their time a bit more… Being a guy in the know I was aware NULL had recorded a new LP months ago, but I wasn’t sure what they were going to do with it. And all of a sudden they just went and released it on very short notice, which honestly, is kind of great way to go about things. Just get it out there, right? So yeah, “First Sign Ahead” is the Birmingham bands third record and it sees them continuing on the path they’ve been on for the other LPs- simplistic, heavy, trance-like riffs with eerie melodies, a bit of outer-space/futuristic sounds, haunting vocals, and gigantic riffs. I know that sounds like an apt description for stoner metal but Null have more of a likeness to bands like Lungfish in terms of repetition, they just use more guitar pedals and some synth too. They have developed their sound a bit though here with some nods of moody post-punk in the way some of the vocals are approached (especially later on the record) and through some of the sound textures present. Null is kind of an ‘all hail the riff’ sort of band, but contemplating it with a mug of coffee to sip rather than dropping out of life with bong in hand.
A couple of my favorite moments in CUT N’ PASTE: THE AMERICAN HARDCORE FANZINE book, which primarily covers hardcore zines of the 80’s up to the early 90’s, is firstly- an image of a less-than-professionally drawn cover of O.C. Shitz zine of a family at Disneyland aghast in horror while in full view of a straining Mickey Mouse taking a giant shit next to a tree. That’s the type of high grade entertainment one can expect from 80’s punks just getting into making their own zines. Secondly, this nugget from Bill Florio, editor of Greedy Bastard zine who describes how Paul Bearer from Sheer Terror sent him a hate letter, but also called Bill late at night to tell him he was writing the letter. Love it.
As a person who also got into zine making right around when this book sort of cuts off I was blown away by just how many hardcore-related zines were going in the 80’s as it wasn’t always terribly easy to have the resources to do this stuff at that time. However, the numerous anecdotes from the 30 or so people who contributed stories say similar things- you just went for it. You knew a person, or relative, with access to free copies; or the community college art department that didn’t lock the doors after hours; or someone who would send you pictures of bands you contacted through MRR classifieds. Whatever. It was a loose network back then and I found myself in similar situations when I first started doing stuff like this too. It was cool to see. The book itself is laid out wonderfully with literally hundreds of various zine covers from stuff I’m familiar with to stuff I’ve never heard of. I’m actually pleased to see many of the anecdotes came from lesser-known zinesters rather than just the already well-documented rags of the time like Schism, Suburban Voice, MRR, Touch and Go and more (even though all are represented and are essential to the story of the era). My only suggestion would have been that it seems like each interviewee was given a set of questions to answer but the questions are not shown and many of their answers seem like they’re responding to a question not asked which makes reading some of them a bit odd.
Also, if anyone out there has extra Letraset or Zipatone they have no use for please send it my way. I still love using stuff like that.
Moving on to those who have a bit of age on the rest of us, there’s always been something in the water in the Chicago/Illinois region that produces some of the most jarring, but expertly played, rock music around. It’s been a thing there for decades of consistently high quality ear damage. How do they do it? Perhaps off-and-on stalwarts BIG’N could answer that as they’ve been on the lesser known end of that world since 1990 and had a couple extended pauses during that time to look in for perspective. It’s been a pretty long time (over twenty years in fact) since they released an LP but have had a couple EPs in-between. But on “End Comes Too Soon” they come back more intense than ever with an awesome collection of tracks and I’m very excited to see them quite active again. For the uninitiated they lie somewhere between the sparse and tight practicality of Shellac mixed with the unhinged rhythmic clobbering of The Jesus Lizard. On their older material the wild growling of the vocals was almost outrageously out of alignment with the tightly-wound riffs, but they’ve found the balance here and it’s pretty much just through a really excellent recording that plays to the strengths of both the bands lock-step tightness through simple and effective riffs and the raving mad vocals attempting to tear it all to pieces. There’s a number of not-quite interludes throughout that sometimes act as fodder, sometimes as what amounts to unfinished song ideas, but they hardly get in the way of the pile of new songs making up the bulk of this record. I’ve had the good fortune of seeing Big’n twice now over the last few years and they’re unbelievable to witness. This record adequately captures that energy and it even looks really cool too.
Speaking of cool-looking records, it’s been a really weird few years for reunions in that many, many bands from when I was a teenager that were not really all that well-known when they existed are getting back together for one-offs, maybe even small tours, and even sometimes new music. SAMUEL S.C. (originally just Samuel) are one such group that were always good, but largely forgotten and they didn’t have a huge discography by any means. Still, they up and decided to release a new album last year and have played a handful of shows, and it’s all been good quality stuff. So now they’re following up with a new 7” featuring two tracks- “Exit Scene” b/w “Who Says” that have a big, upbeat approach, and a fierce message. Sure, they still sound like a 90’s college rock band on par with the likes of Velocity Girl, the Spinanes, or Autoclave but with more of a punch, and I’m here for it. Of note, the design group/printing press/record label LandLand released this and it’s always worth taking a look at what they do because they put in massive effort with their packaging for every release. This is no exception as a really nice screenprinted design adorns the custom Stumptown Printers arigato pack (I’ve used these for a couple releases myself and they’re great).
Maybe it was somewhat inevitable that two bands of such long-standing renown would do a split together after spending a significant amount of time on the road together. But QUICKSAND has never been a band to do splits, and rarely pulls off a cover. HOT WATER MUSIC, on the other hand, has a pretty long history of various splits, EPs, occasional covers, and man oh man, do they do a picture-perfect rendition of “Fazer” by Quicksand. It’s almost identical to the original, save for the trademark gruff vocals of Chuck Reagan. They also offer an original track and to be completely honest it’s been many years since I really dived into new HWM material. I was a huge fan of their earlier, more scrappy stuff but “Undertow”, represented here, is a decent track- very upbeat, a bit rough, though very polished.
Quicksand do a cover of one of my favorite HWM tracks- “Radio Free Gainesville”, a song which Walter did backup vocals on on the original. So now he’s just singing the whole thing. It’s still kind of an odd take for Quicksand since they’re just completely in their own lane it almost feels weird to hear them do a cover at all. Walter takes a lot of liberties with the vocals and pattern, and some of the guitar work. The rhythm of the song remains the same as the original. Their original contribution, “Supercollider”, is a true-to-form chunky, grooving ripper one would expect from the band that could easily find a place on their most recent LP. There’s a bit of the space-y melody that dominated much of “Interiors”, but sticks mostly to the bouncy riff that we all know and love about the band.
Finally, NO ESCAPE always felt like a weird anomaly to me as they emerged at an interesting juncture of hardcore (and a few years before my time). The youth crew era had come to a close and the metallic chugga-chugga of bands like Earth Crisis (when I did begin getting into this stuff) had yet to take off. So their sound sort of felt a bit like a bridge between those scenes. This is a remixed/remastered version of their original discography (which, on CD, was called “Just Accept It” as their lone full length and included split tracks, comp tracks, and their demo). I’m honestly glad it was re-released this way now under the title, “1990-1993” because it sounds sooooo much better and does justice to their raging hardcore. A lot of No Escape stuff was a bit on the slower end, embracing some of the tougher-sounding NYHC of the time but played a bit uglier, a bit meaner (I suppose if you had to live in New Jersey the animosity would be in your DNA…. or more likely your tap water), and vocalist Tim Singer’s distinctive shredded throat. On this, his first band, he’s pretty much all screaming and not the talking/ranting maniac that came out once he played in Deadguy and Kiss It Goodbye. But that, mixed with the ultra-pissed music, made No Escape sound dangerous. It’s like “Just Look Around” (the record, not just the song) as played by early Melvins. This collection does come with a large booklet with tons of pictures and flyers, but I’m not sure how much of it is new and how much is culled from the original discography. Either way, it’s worth getting just for how much better it sounds than the originals. The reunion EP they released a few years back ain’t half bad either.
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