Good bad Music for bad, bad Times!

ACID from Belgium were among the pioneers of the Speed and Thrash Metal wave that was initiated by the NWOBHM. In fact, the band’s debut LP was definitely one of the fastest records of the time. And then there was Kate, the front woman, one of the few of her kind. Like every band who ever recorded 15 seconds or more in the 80s, ACID have become a cult band in the 2000s, with a live LP recorded in 1984 being released recently.

In 1983, it was especially the 2nd album which I loved, “Maniac”, with its great simplistic cover. I remember having had endless debates about this with everybody, but I loved the second LP more than the first one. But then, when the U.S. bands kicked in, ACID were quickly forgotten. The third LP, “Black Car”, was regarded a bit inconsistent and by the time the LP “Engine Beast” came out, it was all over. ACID much like their contemporaries from the NWOBHM got pushed back in the underground or got lost in time.

Before the 80s were over, I sold all my ACID records and it wasn’t until a few years later when I found a copy of “Maniac” for a bargain, so I bought it for nostalgic reasons. I spun it every now and then, loved the riffs and the vocals but got quickly tired of the song writing and the rather lengthy numbers. But I too am not immune to nostalgia and the older I got, the more I learned to love bands like ACID for what they were and what they are today. That’s weird because many of my companions of the 80s experience the same: They come back to these old forgotten bands and realize that there was something about the music that somehow escaped us all back then. Today, I would say, I have a much fuller understanding of and a deeper passion for the music of a band like ACID.

This 2nd 7″ (after the great, raw, but slow “Hooked on Metal” Single) is maybe the band’s most perfect release. It came out inbetween the two first albums and features one song from the first and one song from the second LP. Fucking amazing! Simple, but driving as hell! “Lucifera” can easily be considered one of the best early (proto) Speed Metal songs ever recorded and “Ghostriders” comes close with its GIRLSCHOOL-ish vibe and the intense double bass drumming. “I am the devil’s daughter, Lucifera’s who I am” and what was the other one, “suck my juices” and stuff YEAH!!!!! What a smasher of a single!

Have you seen this incredible charming movie with Gérard Depardieu, «Quand j’étais chanteur» (a.k.a. «The singer»). If you did, follow this link and see what has become of Kate, ACID’s singer and shed a tear with me.

Lucifera.mp3
Ghostrider3.mp3
PS: ACID today (taken from the band’s myspace page). Can’t help it, but they look like a bunch of good guys (and gal).

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I promised TOTAL METAL and here it is, right from the boulevards of Beverly Hills: SAVAGE GRACE for many were one of the heaviest bands of the 83 Metal explosion. The band’s debut, the awesome and totally, criminally underrated “Dominatress” 12″EP was one of these pearls I couldn’t get off my turntable for weeks and weeks. For a 1983 record, it was as new and fresh as releases from bands that would get bigger and bigger, like Slayer or Metallica. Back then, I didn’t see a reason why SAVAGE GRACE’s legacy once in the future shouldn’t be acknowledged as enthusiastically as that of those of other bands. But history is cold and merciless, so today, SAVAGE GRACE are another one in the legion of groups who’re tagged with the not very flattering “cult band”-label.

This is the band’s first full length LP, released two years after the EP. When this came out, I wasn’t so deeply into Metal anymore, but I remember very well how blown away everybody was. From start to finish “Master of Disguise” hits you like a freight train, despite the rather dull production. The overall speed and overwroughtness of this LP is breathtaking. Whenever I play this through, I feel exhausted when it’s over, so tense, tight, fast and full of hooks and melodies it is. What a crazy, crazy record! It’s often labeled a Speed Metal album, but I don’t find this appropriate. It’s sped up Power Metal, that’s what it is (and now don’t ask me what the difference ‘tween sped up Power Metal and Speed Metal is, cause I really don’t know).

All rips of this album I heard so far sounded like shit. This should replace them all. In Germany, this LP was put on the index because of the cover, by the way. The rare and graphically more explicit picture disc version got confiscated by the customs when my record shop ordered a bunch from Important Records.

Download “Master of Disguise” here (.zip file). To my knowledge, it’s never been officially re-released since the euro license pressing on Black Dragon Records which came out shortly after the original version.

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And here it finally surfaces, the first demo tape by THE WARDS. Find more material by this totally underrated band here and here.

This rip was provided by Dave from Rocket Science, who received it from one of his regular visitors. Here’s what this friendly spirit writes:
«ripped by Blood Elf . Found this at a thrift shop on the East Side of Austin TX, there was another Wards tape, but in my haste, not really looking as i grabbed a few tapes, left that one behind.    the end»

I haven’t listened to the tape as of yet, I just came home from work when I found this in my mailbox and I thought I’d share it with you right away, cause I know many have been waiting for this to surface. I really hope it’s a good demo, but judging from the cover alone, it must be great.

Thanx a bunch to the Blood Elf and Dave!

Download THE WARDS’ “Armed to the Teeth” Demo here (.rar file)

How is it? Any good? Should I download it?

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Whilst the greatness of certain records is largely undisputed, some others play the role of under-underground classics still. The fabrication of a canon (i.e. a catalog of what is regarded to be “classic” and what not) is a violent process, but luckily not one that could not be distorted, transformed and eventually even destroyed (although I’m not yet sure whether or not I’d be into that, as you can see from the sheer existence of this blog).

Maybe it’s the overwhelming brutality of WRETCHED’s first EP. Maybe it’s the record’s and band’s different musical concept that did not rely so much on tightness or technical skills in general. This is one sloppy, hectic and emergent trip: The drums sound like the drummer’s falling down the stairs, the strings are chaotic and disharmonic and the singer, well, he sounds like a caged animal, violent and threatening. So intense! These were in fact the wild, the formative years. When did Hardcore die its well deserved death? Marked records like this a discontinuity already? Who could possibly claim that “Hardcore is alive”?

Fuckshitupism of the most relentless sort!

La Logica del Potere.mp3
Spero venga la Guerra.mp3
Combatti.mp3
Muori per la Patria, muori per niente.mp3
Solo Guerra.mp3
Nessun Diritto.mp3
Ti obbligano ad obbedire.mp3
Non posso sopportare.mp3

PS: More WRETCHED on this blog can be found here, here and here. And no, although it’s itching to write something about the band’s graphical and lyrical cacaphony, I won’t do it. But it’s really high time somebody starts to examine these concepts in a larger context. This could become a very interesting book, believe me. But enough with historian talk, haha. I guess you can always tell when my head actually is into different things than what I’m posting on this blog.

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This is the first time I’m posting a CD release and I’m posting this because it was released on CD only and seems to be pretty tough to come by and widely unknown outside of Sweden (where I happen to live) It’s pretty much an anthology of Swedish Punk and Hardcore, as excessive in number as the Swedish scene itself. I don’t even want to try and go into details about this monstrous compilation. If, before downloading, you want to know who and what is to be found among the 146 songs featured, go to this site. If you can play the three volumes in a row without getting a headache or terribly drunk, please get in touch and I will send you a free record.

You know, I totally love the fact that Martin (and Peter, of course) over at KBD RECORDS are posting a seemingly endless stream of Swedish Powerpop and (White Bread) Punk. Whether or not I like everything Martin posts, I totally dig the idea of documenting all that music of which I would have never heard, if it weren’t for the excellent work of these two geezers. VARNING FOR PUNK should be seen as an addition to their great work. For those of you into the rougher side of Swedish Punk, this is the thing to download. Being an anthology, it doesn’t compile recordings in their entity, it gives an overview. And what an overview it is – I love this 3 CD set. Now you do too.

If you think you heard everything in terms of Swedish Hardcore – start downloading now. Time to give more people the possibility the enjoy this, so they will buy the official repress which will come, one day or another.

Download Vol. 1 here

Download Vol. 2 here

Download Vol. 3 here

Encoded with 320 KB/S. Each folder contains the booklet scans.
Available for limited time only since these three folders are eating up a lot of space. Download while you can!

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It starts off with two snare beats – and then all hell breaks loose. Still makes me run shivers down my spine when “Sad to be” starts off on D.R.I.’s monstrous debut EP from 1983. And what a masterstroke to introduce a record full of short, fast songs with the longest and the one with the slowest middle part.

You all have heard this EP before because it’s been reissued so many times. I really wonder how many copies were sold of this all in all – must be quite a figure, I reckon. It’s pretty easy to see why this EP is so popular: It’s revolutionary. It doesn’t have the musical quality of POISON IDEA’s “Pick your King” EP, it’s not as emotionally diverse as URBAN WASTE, not as macho as NEGATIVE APPROACH or S.O.A.. It’s just pure teenangst, frustration, aggression and juvenile power. The music is reduced to the maximum, stripped down, until it’s almost naked. You have a manic singer, a high speed drummer and a distorted guitar all over. Period. It doesn’t need more. Niels once described the Poison Idea debut as a “Hardcore opera”, making it impossible to change the song order or anything about it. That’s the same here: You can’t just break out one song out of the structure. This EP is one entity, one solid chunk. How could you say this or that was the best song? Sure, sometimes I think “Blockhead” is the best, then again it’s “Who am I?” and so it goes on and on. For almost 18 minutes and that’s another detail that makes this EP a piece of art, if you want: D.R.I. just pushed everything up to the limit. They packed so many songs on a 7″ that the sound level got so low, you’d have to really crank up the volume on your stereo to even hear what’s going on. They tested the technical limits of the medium.

My first encounter with D.R.I. was when one of the “roadies” of HELLHAMMER (they never played live, you know, so being a roadie for Hellhammer must have been a rather easy job) passed a tape onto me. “Texas Punk” it simply said on a sticker attached to the cassette and the c-90 tape contained the likes of D.R.I., MDC, THE DICKS, REALLY RED and BIG BOYS. I remember that I first didn’t like it. What was that noise?! How could these bands dare and make my heroes VENOM, METALLICA, HELLHAMMER or SLAYER sound like the Mary Poppins soundtrack in terms of speed and aggression? Nah, not for me, I thought – only to buy the “Dirty Rotten EP” as soon as I could find it in my local record shop. That must have been in late 84 or early 85 and it was the 12″ version. I didn’t know until a few years later that this EP was originally released as a 7″.
Impossible to say how many times I heard this EP. It used to mean so much to me, it’s pathetic. For every problem in the world (or in my world), there was a D.R.I. song. How many kilometers have I passed with my walkman headphones on while this EP was blasting through my empty head? Somewhen in the 90s, when I became a die hard Marxist for a couple of years months weeks hours, it made me laugh out loud when I heard “Capitalists suck” – as if capitalists were the ones who’d buy goods all day long. And now, in 2009, I play this EP maybe four or five times a year. But it doesn’t really matter because whether I play it or not, it’s always there, as corny as it sounds.

One last thing: Have you seen this copy here? Despite the high price, judging by the label shown, I think this must be a bootleg. Or were there, which I doubt, two pressings? Anybody knows more?

Download the Dirty Rotten EP here.

PS: You can & should get the official re-release from Beercity Records. After the CD version, the label will release it in its original 7″ format in 2010. Don’t miss this!

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Enjoy this. It’s art!

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Here’s one for the Punx! This picture disc split LP contains demo material from two great Mexican Hardcore bands of the 80s: MASACRE 68 and HISTERIA. There’s no proper information on the when- and whereabouts of these recordings, but they may be from around 1986-87.
MASACRE 68 (named after a bloody massacre of Mexican police against anti-Olympics protesters in the year of 1968) were one of the most popular bands from Mexico although all their releases (a split 7″EP and an LP which I never heard, plus two or three demos) were hard to find even in the late 80s, early 90s. They play simple Thrash, reminiscent of OHLO SECO. One full LP side of theirs is maybe a bit too much for me, but still this is some really good stuff.
HISTERIA were the predecessor of MASACRE 68, from what I understand and shared guitarist and old time pen-pal of mine, Thrasher. And HISTERIA are the winners here with their fast, catchy and very “italian” sounding Hardcore assault (they even cover “Reprezione” by Italy’s 5. BRACCIO!). Right from start on (the classic “Liberacion”, which is a real hit!), they rip through 9 high energy low-fi hits that make you wanna dance around naked. This is one serious scorcher of a band, with a great obnoxious singer – had the band properly recorded an EP or album, I’m sure you’d have heard of them.

You’ll find very little information about this split LP. “Kill from the Heart” has that it was released in 2000, but that’s definitely not true. I received a whole bunch of these directly from Thrasher ca. mid 90s. A good portion of the 300 made were defective due to very poor manufacturing, so this babe should be pretty hard to come by. Enjoy this pearl!

Download the entire album here.

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Not one day passes without one of your silly emails.
So once again: I don’t give a shit about that exciting new band you’re trying to sell. I never cared enough to even download any of the promo shit you’re offering me. Your bands all stink, they’re all crap and they won’t get nowhere anyway, especially not with stupid wankers like you promoting them. When a band has won a contest or gets rave reviews, that means it sucks. Nobody cares whether or not the singer is a best selling author, the bassist used to be in some other loser band named blabla or the drummer is a renowned painter. No, you will not re-invent guitar music and neither will be heard of you in the near future. Go fuck yourselves, you stupid cunts.
I don’t want to recveive any other “special offer” or “pre-listening” shit. It all goes straight to the electronic trash can anyway, so save a tree or a frog or something by taking my name off your stinking mailing lists. Now.

Did you fucking get that?

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