All Things to All People Vol. 28

Midnite Snaxxx: Greedy Little Thing 7” (Goodbye Boozy) Latest 7” from this Bay Area band, and I think that at this point we can start affixing adjectives like “long-running” and “veteran” to their name. Midnite Snaxxx have a lot of records out at this point, and they are all absolutely killer… in my opinion you should own every single one of them. They don’t really sound like much else that’s around these days, crafting short and snappy garage-punk songs that recall the glory days of Rip Off Records (and indeed the singer Dulcinea was in the Loudmouths, who were connected to that scene), but really these songs could have been made at any point between the early 60s and now. Midnite Snaxxx effortlessly combines the adrenaline rush of classic rock and roll (think the Beatles doing “Twist and Shout”) with the big melodies of 60s girl groups and the explosiveness of vintage 70s punk, and the result is just perfect. I kind of doubt they’ll ever be a big hype band because they aren’t “on trend,” but if you like this kind of straightforward, poppy garage-punk you should simply buy every single record that they put out. I know I’m going to.

C. Memi: Heavenly Peace 12” (Bitter Lake) Official reissue of this delightful 7” as a great-sounding 45RPM 12” courtesy of the archival label Bitter Lake Recordings. While the foundation here is what we’d now call minimal synth—which I can’t imagine was a framework that C. Memi was working with at the time this was created—there’s also a distinct element of French “chanson” music, which the label description notes was kind of a “thing” in Japan at the time. Regardless, I just love the unpretentious playfulness of the record. Judging by the label’s description as well as this piece on the BandCamp blog, this recording was essentially an experiment, and that sense of discovery shines through every moment of the EP. In other words, you’ll come for tracks like “Hitojichi” that recall the post-industrial synth-punk of Metal Urbain or SPK, but you’ll stay for the overall vibe, which is infectious and singular. I have to admit that I was a bit puzzled by this record the first time I listened to it, but it reveals itself a little more with each spin and despite the relatively minimal aesthetic I continue to find more to love each time I listen.

End Time: S/T 12” (Fullyintercoastal) Debut record from this Bay Area, California band. I probably wouldn’t have paid much attention to this record, but something about the label’s description stuck out… maybe it’s the fact that the band took two years to put together a 6-track EP, or maybe it’s the waist-deep sarcasm in said description, but something told me to check this record out and I’m glad that I did. I don’t know for sure, but I would guess that the members of End Time are a little older as their music betrays a wealth of influences… I hear the motorik propulsion of Neu!, the catchy, angular guitar lines of early Joy Division, the slightly shambolic feel of Pavement’s early records, and the way that the songs build up, calm down, and build up again even recalls Drive Like Jehu or Fugazi. That probably sounds like a big mishmash, but it comes together really well here. I also love that the recording is extremely warm and somewhat raw and analog-sounding, like it could have been painstakingly recorded on a cassette 4-track. There’s no denying that End Time have a real 90s vibe—they remind me a lot of what was called “emo” before that word came to signify emotional pop-punk—but if you regularly listen to Dischord releases past #25 or so I imagine you’ll like End Time quite a bit.

Rixe: Cassette Promo cassette (La Vida Es Un Mus) Limited 3-song cassette by Rixe… what is it promoting? Perhaps they’re finally going to make the jump to 12” vinyl? Who knows! All that I can confirm is that these three songs are the Rixe you have come to know and love with little in the way of left turns or surprises. Since they started releasing 7”s on LVEUM, Rixe’s aesthetic—sonically and visually—has been completely airtight, and all three tracks here stay very much within that framework. One would think that that framework would be constricting, but now that Rixe has a substantial number of tracks out in the world it’s kind of amazing that they’ve managed to stick to such a consistent sound without sounding like they’re just rewriting the same song over and over. Anyway, enough of the pontificating… the point I’m trying to make is that Rixe keep doing their thing and it still doesn’t feel played out or redundant, so incorporate these three burners into your playlist and get pumped for whatever it is that they’re promoting.

Mint: demo cassette (self-released) Demo cassette from this Philadelphia band. The recording is super raw and DIY, but the music is well-written and catchy. Even though I don’t think this is what they’re going for (if, indeed, they’re going for anything at all), but I’m reminded of the early, raw demo recordings by Zounds or the poppier Crisis songs. Like that stuff, there’s pop music at the core of what Mint is doing, but they wholeheartedly embrace punk’s raw, primal, and aggressive posture and also (in places at least) adopt some of the more sophisticated arrangements of post-punk. I have a feeling that fans of bands like Good Throb, Frau, and Priests’ early material will also like this quite a bit.

Snob: S/T 12” (La Vida Es Un Mus) After a couple of outstanding 7”s, here’s the debut 12”er from London punks Snob. It’s funny, I generally expect bands to get more complex and spread out a little when they move from small vinyl to large, but Snob seem instead to have streamlined things, making their music even more direct and concise. The lyrics remain a highlight and they’re as confrontational as ever. Lyrically, the most intriguing songs (at least in my opinion) take buzzwords like “consent” and “ally” and examine how the concepts behind them play out in an actual person’s life. In both of those cases, the enlightened political attitudes that are supposed to be part and parcel of using these buzzwords is just a fiction that allows people to continue to disrespect and dehumanize one another behind the shield of political correctness… or at least that’s how I read it. Musically, the noisiness and looseness of Snob’s 7” recordings is largely gone, replaced by a locked-in, metronome-steady rhythm that significantly changes the overall character of the band’s music. While Snob sounded animalistic and uncontained on the 7”s, here they sound disciplined, even mechanical, an impression that is accentuated by the much clearer recording. It’s a slightly different Snob, for sure, they remain just as worthy of your attention.

Absolut: Hell’s Highest Power 12” (D-Takt & Rapunk) After numerous splits and 7”s, here’s the debut full-length from Montreal’s Absolut and it RIIIIIPS! I feel like an idiot because I let a whole week go by between when this thing arrived in the store and when I listened to it, and a week without Hell’s Highest Power in my life is a week wasted! It’s fitting that one of the splits I mentioned above is with Sweden’s Paranoid, because Absolut seem, along with Paranoid, to be part of a trend of crusty punk bands rediscovering their metal influences (see Paranoid’s covers LP, where they took on metal classics by bands like Sepultura and Celtic Frost). Absolut have done more than just superficially add a guitar solo here and there, though. Hell’s Highest Power is a complex hybrid of crust, death metal, and thrash metal (with a few touches of black metal here and there, particularly on the epic closing track “Last Corpse”), all wrapped up in the magically raw production favored by death and proto-death metal bands like Hellhammer, Master, and Mantas. Indeed, at times Hell’s Highest Powerseems more like a metal record with some heavy crust influences than vice versa, and I’m fine with that because when they’re in “metal mode” Absolut are never cheesy… if they dropped the crust influences entirely I’m pretty sure they would still be the most exciting metal band I’ve heard in years. I’ll leave it there and just say that if you’re a crusty or a metalhead you need to hear this record… highly recommended.

Cadaver Dog: Dying Breed 12” (Youth Attack) After a flexi and a couple of tapes, here’s the proper debut vinyl from Denver’s Cadaver Dog. It’s funny, Youth Attack’s description does its best not only to locate Cadaver Dog’s debut in the long arc of hardcore’s history, but also to self-consciously bill it as some kind of a culmination or conclusion of hardcore’s existence. Not only do they call it “the most negative hardcore album of all time,” but they also note that this record “can be considered the end conclusion to hardcore's aim.” Honestly, I think that’s complete hogwash, and even if you agree with the author’s premise that Cadaver Dog has “out-negative’d” every other band in the entire history of hardcore, the argument that Cadaver Dog is the “end conclusion” of hardcore only really works if your conception of what hardcore is is only about an inch wide. All of that being said, my gripe is really with the record’s description, not the record itself, which I must say is excellent. Basically, it’s Negative FX filtered through the Youth Attack aesthetic. In other words, these are a bunch of short (many hover around the 30-second mark), fast, and punchy hardcore songs with the raw, nasty, black metal-influenced style of recording and slightly unhinged looseness that are perhaps the most consistent sonic aspects of Youth Attack’s brand identity. It’s a thrilling listen, and feels authentically angry and explosive in a way that many of the more mannered and composed hardcore records coming out in this day and age don’t. I’m sure that Youth Attack’s whole aesthetic will continue to be divisive within the punk scene, but if you can’t get down with a hardcore record that rages this hard I feel bad for you.

Vile Gash: Nightmare in a Damaged Brain 12” (Youth Attack) Long-awaited new record (seriously, I think they’ve been talking about / working on this thing for several years) by this flagship Youth Attack band. While it’s somewhat overshadowed by the Cadaver Dog LP released at the same time (which is just a hair meaner and more explosive than this), this is still a blistering slice of hardcore that’s well worth the wait. While Cadaver Dog is Negative FX filtered through the Youth Attack aesthetic, Vile Gash are pretty much the epitome of the Youth Attack aesthetic, perhaps even more than the bands that Mark McCoy is actually in. Like a lot of Youth Attack’s best bands, Vile Gash transcend their influences and sound like wholly their own thing. Even if you can make comparisons across elements of their sound (I’d put them at something like 50% furious Scandinavian d-beat, 30% USHC, 15% black metal and 5% sludge), it all adds up to something that doesn’t sound quite like anything you’ve ever heard before. It’s also—again, like a lot of Youth Attack bands—overwhelmingly negative and nihilistic. Whether you’re coming at this because you like to hear hardcore bands that are original, innovative, and exciting, or just because you want to find the grimiest, ugliest music possible Nightmare in a Damaged Brain will absolutely satisfy you.

Profoss: S/T 7” (Adult Crash) Debut 7” from this Swedish band that features members of a bunch of other bands… I’m not really good at keeping track of that sort of thing, but I’m pretty sure Jeff said that there were members of Herätys and Fy Fan here? I could very well be wrong about that, so don’t quote me! At any rate, this record sounds to me like the guitar player from Totalitär gave a bunch of riffs to Anti-Cimex, who recorded them all with the lineup and production from Victims of a Bombraid. Whether you want to call that a catchier version of Cimex or a meaner, noisier version of Totalitär is up to you, but regardless it’s an extremely potent combination. It seems like Sweden has been spitting out records of this flavor (with relatively minor variations in sound and style) at an absolutely furious pace lately, and if you’ve been having fun picking up records by the likes of Katastrof, Exploatör, and the bands mentioned above then you’ll be stoked to pump your fist along to this one as well.

Snor: Scandinavian Heartbreaker 7” (Adult Crash) Second EP from this group out of Malmö, Sweden. As on their earlier EP, Snor seem to walk the line between noisy pogo-punk in the Gai / Swankys tradition and noisier d-beat, fusing the two styles in a really effective way and adding in some nice little touches like reverbed-to-hell vocals (that still carry a little bit of melody) and complex arrangements with a lot of starts and stops and cool little changes that gives it a slight USHC flavor as well. Like the Profoss EP released at the same time on Adult Crash, this has an absolutely perfect recording with exactly the right balance of fuzz/noise, heaviness, and clarity. I feel like this is one of those records that, when you put it on, you think it’s going to be kind of a one track pony, but when you listen closely you realize there’s actually quite a lot going on and plenty to love. Because of that complexity it’s not likely to become the flavor of the week (people tend to prefer things that are simpler and immediately graspable), but if you seek out the interesting, innovative and strange in your hardcore I highly recommend this one.

Ubik: S/T 7” (Aaarght!) Debut vinyl from this Australian band that plays a kind of catchy anarcho punk style a la Crisis or Zounds. I remember listening to their demo tape quite a lot when that came out, and this is even better than that! There are a couple of familiar tracks from that session, but the production is clearer and more powerful, and the whole thing just feels more articulate and fully realized. This is a very difficult sound to pull off because it requires the perfect balance of pop songwriting chops and the ability to generate that sense of atmosphere that is peculiar to this particular strain of anarcho, but Ubik totally nails it while also sounding like their own band and not just a tribute act. If you’re a fan of this style this one is highly recommended.