Good bad Music for bad, bad Times!

More than two years ago, I had featured what then was a mystery band from Utah: A group named SPITTIN’ TEETH. Three incredible songs on the not too popularly known SIREN compilation of which one (“Destruction”) is nothing but a milestone. No kidding: I’ve seen grown men twice my size struggling with their tears upon being exposed to this song! “Destruction” is larger than you and it’s bigger than anything we can achieve in our little pointless lifes. Hats off!

When I first heard the two songs of the 7″, I was a bit disappointed, but upon giving them a little more time, I came to realize they are both really great. I first had to learn that you cannot measure everything by the dimension of “Destruction”, sometimes you just have to step back and choose a human scale. On these two songs, we hear the same charismatic singer (this man, Fred Allredge, is one of the best Punk singers I ever heard!) and probably the same guitarists too (Margaret Amberson and Greg Anderson). “Leap of Faith” has much of a NUNS vibe and when the short lead part comes in towards the end of the song, my ears are glued to the speakers. “No Guarantee” is amazing. What a lascivious, dirty little song!

Thanks to a recent Ebay auction and now especially thanks to Behjan Mirhadi who sent in these soundfiles and scans, we can lift the curtain of mystery a little higher. SPITTIN’ TEETH had released this hardly ever seen two song 7″ back in 1980 already. It seems like nobody really was aware of this. Not even Behjan, the KBD detective nummero uno, had heard of this single before and neither did his “connections” (picture meetings in parking garages or on big public squares, with hastily moving middle aged men wearing false beards, sweating and breathing heavily while exchanging suitcases that look alike).

Since these are not my own rips, the two sound files are encoded in 128 b/shame. If anybody has an original copy of this 7″ for sale, please get in touch. I want it!

No Guarantee.mp3
Leap of Faith.mp3

And for those of you who missed SPITTIN’ TEETH the first time round, here are the three incredible songs from “The Siren”:

2nd Generation.mp3
Prostitute.mp3
Destruction.mp3 («What kind of a fool do you think I am? Do you think I could be happy with this?!» Sung with the utmost of disdainfulness)

Still couldn’t figure out how to fix the picture enlarging issue. When you hold your right mouse button and choose “show graphic” (or something like this), you can see the big scans for more details.

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“Paere Punk er het stykke historie” – yeah, fucking well said.

This formidable piece of hard plastic has never been reissued and that, lads & lassies, is a crying shame. Some Punk Grandezza here, even though the super hits are maybe missing. LOST KIDS deliver one nice DEVO tribute, by making “Mongolid” an “Asocial”. The other two tracks are nice, with a bit strong Sex Pistols influence (lacking the aggression of them though). SODS start off rather weirdly with the mocking “Rock’n'Roll” song, but “Tin Can Army” is a stomper and “Military Madness” is extremely pleasant too. Next up come ELEKTROCHOCK: Kinda whacky, haha, but probably meant dead serious. One of the worst female singers I heard. The guitar licks sound so nice you’d wish there was more of them. SLIM probably had a pub rock band past, before turning Punk. Their bassist should have been sacked and the singer maybe too. They have a song called “Fuck the Queen”. Well said. Haha. The chorus is hillarious, makes me roll around every time I hear it and when he sings “fuck the pope”, I yell “and fuck me too”. That makes me have a good time at the expense of no one. Yes, I’m a humanist, I think in these moments, and give meself a hug.
Flip the platter over and off you go with KLICHÉ. Funny organ there and I love the vocal line. Wow! And then, hooray, there are three exclusive BRATS tracks, not yet in the same vein as the mandatory LP. Definitely punkier, with not much of the later NWOBHM audible. Very nice, but the LP stuff is of course much better. Crazy, how bands sometimes change within a year’s time, between two recording sessions. Another bigger name follows with DREAM POLICE. “Johnny come with me” was on the first 7″ too, wan’t it? “Bubbles” is great too. Great singer! NO KNOX is the last band on this rare comp. Three arty blues and noise songs. They took the Punk thing seriously by tearing it apart and probably people won’t have liked them too much, up there, in that horrible country of Denmark. Good when you’re drunk, I suppose, though I never tried. When I’m drunk, I normally don’t play compilations because that would overstrain me.

Download the entire PAERE PUNK Comp. LP here.

666 Hail Satan 666

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The infamous «Thrasher» bonus flexi by ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT. Magazine copies had no sleeve, but I think I once saw some kind of a hand made one.

What can you say? Short and great, in between the incredible “Dead Serious” demo tape and the so-so LP. And a blogger’s dream, really. One song and no cover issued – couldn’t ask for more.

Destruction’s End.mp3

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After NEO PUNKZ came SUSPENSE and released another 7″ full of great Punk Hardcore borderline sloppyness. The three b-side songs are short and full of DISCHARGE riff glory, the a-side sounds definitely more sophisticated and although I personally find it a bit of a drag, I can hear that these guys could have evolved musically into an interesting direction. I don’t know if it did however, eventually with the guitarist or singer joining other bands.

And the song “Murder with the Axe” made me post this 7″ in its full glory. NY’s NIHILISTICS had the balls to steal this song and sell it as their own on their second LP – one Great Punk Rock Scam. And in the meantime, with revealing this story, it has also become the Funniest Punk Rock Scam Lie Tactics Mini Campaign. Just check out the above link and read carefully through the comments. It’ a wonderful read that, by its logical structure, could come out of any bible group in the world. And these comments claiming the NIHILISTICS came up first with the song just keep coming and coming!

Murder with the Axe.mp3
Crazy Sod.mp3
Heroin Child.mp3
Welfare.mp3

Until I figured out how to make the mouse-over-image-and-click-to-enlarge function work again, you must use your right mouse button to view the scans in original size.

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A few days ago, I got a short message from Jason Flower: The NEOS “Hassibah” mastertapes have finally surfaced. From what I remember, they had been lost for years and years. Looks like a proper re-issue is about to be released soon.

I think I first heard NEOS on the legendary “Beating the Meat” comp. It was fucking unbelievable. I didn’t hesitate and ordered what at that time I thought to be the first NEOS EP (a little later, I learned that the band had released another one already, the hard to find “End all Discrimination” EP). It was the more commonly seen pressing of “Hassibah gets the Martian Brain Squeeze” on the Rat Cage label from NY. It wasn’t until the days of serious collecting (you know, with MRR and Flipside ads and those endlessly long lists you’d send around the globe) before I managed to find me a first press of “Hassibah”. 500 made of this and probably a couple thousand of the Rat Cage press. Collector scum.
14 songs of relentless thrash, recorded on September 18 in the year of 1982 (!). The EP is packed with info: The incredible song book with lyrics and notes, short explanations to every song etc. I like the first NEOS EP, but it doesn’t come close to what Hassibah meant and means to me. I’m sure, privately the three guys were funny blokes, but this record sounds extremely SERIOUS and DEDICATED and that’s what I always liked about Hardcore. Although it’s much the case like with POISON IDEA, DRI, URBAN WASTE, NEGATIVE APPROACH, KORO, FIX or DEEP WOUND’s EPs (and yes, that’s the league of NEOS!), these classics are entities, I still would say there are two tracks that stick out a bit for me: “(Almost) Typical, obligatory Anti-Government Song” (or “Russian Folk Song”) and “Opposition to all Violence” (or “Triplet Beg.”). The lyrics of the latter song used to piss me off massively, though.
Still a bit ill, so I’ll leave it at that, although I would have liked to go a bit deeper into the song comments and lyrics and had some anecdotes and bits and pieces.

Destruct.mp3 & They’ll destroy themselves.mp3
(Almost) Typical, obligatory Anti-Government Song.mp3
Ambitious.mp3
Where did you go wrong?.mp3
Just like all the Rest.mp3
Look around in Despair.mp3
Conscripts.mp3
Jungle Beat – so it seems.mp3
Other World.mp3
Opposition to all Violence, even if commited in Self-Defense.mp3
Die for the Cause.mp3
Ripped off.mp3
Sexual Revolution.mp3

PS: Since the latest Wordpress update, thumbnails don’t enlarge when clicked on anymore. I have no idea why this doesn’t work. Suggestions?

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Caught a little cold hiking through the snow yesterday, so I’m not feeling like writing much.

I wanted to rip & post this for a long time: One of the most criminally overlooked LPs of all time. Canaduh’s PERSONALITY CRISIS sounded like no one else and still today, this LP gives me goose bumps all over my godforsaken body. Of course, the main attraction here is the singer, but the incredibly potent song writing should not get unnoticed. A total hit-o-rama here, with not one second of annoyance or redundancy. And a total love it or hate piece of work.
Released on Risky Records from San Francisco – yeah, the one that also brought you TOXIC REASON’s “Independence” LP and the “Ghost Town” 7″.

This has been made availalable on vinyl again in the year of 2000 and I feel you should not just download this but buy the re-issue.

And while we’re at it, here’s the great and rare LOWLIFE 7″EP that had one of the later guitarists of PERSONALITY CRISIS. A KBD-type hit monster!

Download the entire PERSONALITY CRISIS LP here. And here’s one of my favourite tracks off this monstrous LP, called Twilight’s last gleaming.mp3

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Repost from August 19th 2006. Freshly ripped and missing songs added!

I have no idea whether or not this gem has been reissued (other than on one of the fab “Smash the State” comps), so I’m only posting the title track of LOWLIFE’s 7″. It’s the best of the three songs anyway, but drop me a line if you need more and I’ll post the rest too.

Richard Duguay who played bass on this was later one of the guitarists in PERSONALITY CRISIS. If you want to hear some of their LP “Creature for a while” (which is one of my all time faves!), let me know too. I know there were some songs from “Creature for a while” on another mp3 blog (can’t remember where I’ve seen it), though.

Now get happy. And here you get PERSONALITY CRISIS.

Leaders.mp3
White Lightning.mp3
Thinking naturally.mp3

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One of the lesser known italian Hardcore Punk bands of the first wave were REIG. Both tracks are simple, if not simplistic, but not without charme. The Brit Punk influence is more than obvious, but hey, it’s the punx!
Wonderful cheesy cover too.
REIG were featured in one of the earliest postings on this blog, the excerpts from the second RAPTUS comp.

Okay, okay, I’m maybe only posting this because it’s a two tracker and I’m tired, and because of the incredible cover art.

Disarm.mp3
Violent Change.mp3

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Got a package in the mail today and it came from Niels! One (if not the) high points in European Hardcore saw the light of day when all was almost over: The incredibly catchy and tense EP by Holland’s GEPOPEL. I will never forget how blown away I was over the power of “Paracide”. I had known the tracks from the “The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing” comp LP, but this EP just left me speechless. And it still does: You know, music in it’s best moments can be a container of memories. It’s not clear pictures or events that I associate with GEPOPEL’s pounding drum beat, desperate and youthful singing and the clean riffs – it’s more of an emotional setting, a mood, a moment. The song “Paracide” would forever be on any “Best of Hardcore” – compilation I might be assembling (although since iTunes, mp3 and all that, I’ve never compiled much no more. Man, I loved sitting in front of my records, pulling everything out, trying if the particular band would hit the right mood needed for the comp and then started recording the songs onto tape, trying to deliver a good cutting job. Here’s another for you re-enactment guys: It was all about the lack of hi-tech!). “Dogs” starts off with one helluva roar and all the other songs on “Paracide” breath the same fresh air. This is Hardcore: No Metal, no more Punk audible. It was something new, somthing unique and in all its limited glory, something ephemeral.

This photo shows an installation entitled «Re-Enactment. The three layers of history.»

This discography contains all (at least this is what it says) of the band’s recording history (Niels: I think there’s plenty of unused stuff from the FUNERAL ORATION / GEPOPEL split demo, isn’t there?). It’s nice to ride through the album and hear how the band developped and changed. The liner notes of Niels are a good and interesting read, very personal and reflected, just like what he always achieved with his greatly missed blog. Yet I must say that this LP has its flaws: First off, it’s the really cheap cover. I mean, Photoshop doesn’t make you a graphic designer and worse yet – if you can’t properly handle it for a prestage printing production, it totally fucks things up. The sound reproduction is okay: Unfortunately the level is extremely low and the EP sound has been “pushed” a little with adding some bass frequencies (or taking out the middle frequencies by accident). Nothing dramatic, but if you have listened to the EP regularly over the past 23 years like I did, you immediately hear a difference. I couldn’t resist it and ripped the EP version of “Paracide” with the same settings for you to compare.
Anyway – if you don’t have the original EP and even if you do, you must get this from noiseanddistortion.com or you might wanna try and ask Niels directly.

Original EP track:
Paracide.mp3

Assorted tracks from the Discography LP:
Paracide.mp3
Dogs.mp3
Blind Faith.mp3
Beuke Hakke.mp3
Almost grew my Hair.mp3

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Haha, yeah, yeah, I know – what is this doing here? Cross my heart – I love this record! UNITY managed to achieve what all these posi bands tried in vain: This is one of the records that really, really make me wanna go out and be nice to everybody. So full of joy, the boys rip through their songs and each and every one of them tracks is memorable and a true hit. Wonderful! The equivalent to chinese diet or whichever one that is, where you eat stuff from the summer in winter time – UNITY is summer music, just like the almost equally great follow-up, the UNIFORM CHOICE Lp.
Now, after this outing, I feel better. Yes, I love Uniform Choice and Unity and Chain of Strength. I admit. Though I’d also admit, that STIKKY’s pisstake of these pathetic spoken words outros is hillarious (on the LP or demos, don’t remember). Yes, not even I am perfect.

From what I heard, the reissues of this are re-recorded or remixed versions. The first 500 (?) were on blue vinyl, the subsequent pressings on black. When I had this in my distro, it was one of the fastest sellers. No wonder. Be positive, folks.

Straight on View.mp3
Positive Mental Attitude.mp3
The Game.mp3
Explanation for Action.mp3
Breaking through.mp3
Love.mp3 / You are one.mp3
To risk.mp3

The EP has been reissued on Indecision Records, mastered directly from the original 1/4″ tapes. Make sure you buy one of those and make culture happen!

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