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So much has happened since I wrote my last staff pick that I hardly know where to start. I guess the big news is that I got to spend a couple weeks in Europe. I bought tickets to this year’s K-Town Hardcore Fest hoping that I could actually make it, and in the end I not only went to the fest, but extended it into a little (mostly) solo vacation where I spent a few days each in Helsinki and Stockholm. I’d only been to those cities on tour, and anyone who has been on a tour knows you rarely get to see much of the cities you visit. I planned the dates so that I would intersect with the Public Acid / Kriegshög shows in both cities, and the days when I wasn’t hanging with that crew I spent sightseeing and record shopping. I was nervous about doing a solo vacation, but it turned out great. I saw some amazing sights like Suomenlinna in Helsinki and the Vasa Museum in Stockholm, ate as much good food as my delicate stomach would allow, spent a good amount of time just sitting in parks and other green spaces reading and relaxing, walked a ridiculous number of miles, and of course bought a ton of records. I’m sure I’ll be talking about those in my staff picks for some time to come.
The Public Acid / Kriegshög shows I got to see were totally epic. The Scandinavian leg of Public Acid’s European tour was virtually identical to the tour Scarecrow did last summer, so there was a persistent feeling of déjà vu as I found myself in the same spaces and (happily!) catching up with many of the same people. The Helsinki and Stockholm shows were in the same venues Scarecrow played, but fortunately I got to see some bands I hadn’t seen before: Ignorance in Helsinki and Prisão in Stockholm. The Helsinki show was great, but I was distracted with catching up with people, so I didn’t get to pay as much attention to the bands as I would have liked, though I made sure to watch Kohti Tuhoa closely as they played a bunch of new, as-yet-unrecorded music they’ve been working on. The after-gig karaoke was ace too. The Stockholm show was one I’d put near the top of my all-time favorite shows I’ve ever seen. The venue, Kafe 44, is just perfect, a little rectangular-shaped sweatbox that immediately gets over-filled with people and sound. Prisão kicked things off, and they were awesome. Lucas, Vidro’s guitarist, is the singer, and untethered from the guitar he’s able to lean into his acrobatic antics. Public Acid was next, and they just leveled the place. I’ve seen Public Acid dozens of times and I always say they’re my favorite current band, but tonight’s show was really special. They were tour-tight and exploding with energy, and while the rough moshing usually keeps me near the back of the room when I see them in the US (particularly in Richmond), tonight I planted myself right in front of the stage, pumping my fist and singing along the whole time. Marty even handed me the mic a couple of times, though for one of those I blanked on the words and just made a ridiculous attempt at a Marty-esque noise in the mic. After Public Acid’s set, Kriegshög took the stage and made it their own. Whereas Public Acid was wild and kinetic, Kriegshög rode a wave of simmering tension for their entire set, only occasionally and briefly erupting into full pandemonium. By the time it ended I was a spent, sweat-soaked mess. It’s been years since I had that much fun at a show I didn’t play.
As for K-Town Fest… man, what an amazing experience that was. People kept asking me if I was back this year because I was playing, but I was just attending because I had such a great time the year before. I can’t stress enough what a well-run festival it is. The collective that runs Ungdomshuset and the Fest is the most effective and organized punk collective I’ve ever seen, and it seems like they’ve thought through every aspect of the fest ahead of time to make sure everyone has as much fun as possible. Once you’re inside the festival area, you’re in a punk utopia where all the bands are great, the people are cool, and everyone is there to have fun. (Not to get too political or sanctimonious, but I put a lot of this down to K-Town’s anti-hard drugs policy… it seems like cocaine is as common as beer at many fests, and it would be hard to argue that doesn’t influence the vibe.) People come from all over Europe (and even further) for the fest, so the first day is kind of overwhelming as you say hi to a million different people, some of whom you know pretty well and are excited to see, and many others whom you may have only met briefly in some far-away city. By the second day, you’ve locked in and found the people you’re hanging hard with, though as late as Sunday I was still running into people who I hadn’t seen at all for the first two days.
As for the bands, it would be overkill for me to report on every set I watched, but I can hit a few highlights. First, I should say that K-Town is one of the best environments in which you can see a hardcore punk band. The venue’s sound is excellent, with top-notch house equipment and a staff who are very experienced at making hardcore punk bands sound great, and the crowd is just so welcoming. I’ve played places where it feels like the audience is giving off a vibe of “show us what you got,” but at K-Town it seems like everyone is just excited and wants to see the bands rip. And the bands you would expect to rip definitely did… the Kriegshög and Public Acid headlining sets were insane, and Cicada and Necron 9 lived up to the much-deserved hype their recent recordings have gotten. The Sorry State bands that played—Golpe, Plasma, and Lasso—were all incredible, and I felt very proud to be involved with them.
There were a few surprises, though, mostly from bands who had put out good records, but whose live shows were even better. Poland’s Traüme really knocked me out on the first day. I had listened to their LP on Quality Control HQ quite a bit, but live they were something else. The singer had a ton of charisma, and I gained a new appreciation for the guitarist’s dense, complex, but catchy chords. (I believe Traüme’s guitarist also pulled double duty at the fest playing bass for Golpe.) The Netherlands’ Oust was the biggest surprise of the fest for me… I thought their record was cool, but they were on another level live. I walked in the venue just as their set started, and the band was playing a kind of hooky, bouncy brand of hardcore that reminded me of Golpe, and they had the entire room dancing… like 500 people, all the way to the back of the room, bouncing in time with the music. Eventually, I realized the singer wasn’t on the stage. They had one of those super long microphone cords that let them roam around the entire venue (they eventually even wandered into the courtyard outside), and while I usually hate when bands do that because you can’t see anything, in this case it really worked. It felt like I was in Children of the Corn or something, trapped in a field of tall, writhing bodies, then at random times a crazed Dutch singer would leap out of nowhere and be screaming in my face. And as if that weren’t exciting enough, when Oust’s singer explained the lyrics between songs, they had this wild, fire-and-brimstone delivery that reminded me of a Pentecostal preacher. There was this one moment when they were explaining a song about the “manosphere” (look it up if you want to get depressed), and everyone was so fired up that if you had lowered Joe Rogan from the ceiling, I feel confident the crowd would have ripped him to shreds within seconds. The other big surprise of the weekend was the Greek band Plektani (ΠΛΕΚΤΑΝΗ). It feels weird characterizing them as a surprise because we were huge fans of their LP here at Sorry State and I have played that record a ton, but, as good as that record is, it pales compared to how insanely powerful this band was live. They were just so fast, so heavy… no frills, no antics, no gimmicks, just hardcore punk played with maximum power, precision, and energy. I’m extremely thankful I got to see their set.
Unfortunately, by Sunday night I was coming down with a nasty illness. I hadn’t been taking care of myself all weekend, skipping eating and resting in favor of watching more bands and chatting with friends. I could feel a fever coming on Sunday afternoon, and by the time Public Acid played their encore I was spent… I bolted out of the room and back to my hostel, where I alternated sweating and freezing all night, my throat too raw and sore to let me fall asleep. I was in a similar condition for the entire flight home (four hours from Copenhagen to Reykjavík, 6 more from Reykjavík to Raleigh) and the first thing I did when I woke up the morning after getting home was go to the doctor (a viral infection, so they couldn’t do anything for me aside from suggesting Nyquil and breathing steam). It was nearly a week before the congestion cleared enough for me to hear out of both ears, so I couldn’t even listen to my records. Eventually I got around to that, though.
Since this is my staff pick, I should pick one of those records to highlight. I’m going with this single by the Helsinki band Problems? from 1979. I picked this one up at Stupido Records in Helsinki. I actually stopped in Stupido the day arrived in Helsinki since it was just down the street from my hostel, but I stopped in a second time on the afternoon of the Public Acid / Kriegshög show, where I was surprised to run into my friend Markku. I was bummed because I didn’t think I’d see Markku on this trip since he lives in Turkku, but thankfully he came down to Helsinki for the gig and we got in a little hang time. I always joke that Markku is like a magical record fairy, and his magic definitely worked this time. I already had a big stack of LPs that I was buying, but when Markku went to the counter, suddenly a box of rare 7”s emerged that I had no idea existed. There were a few things I knew and grabbed right away, and a few things Markku told me I should get, including this 7”. I knew about Problems? from the Pohjalla compilation and I actually grabbed a few of their albums on this trip, but these two songs are the cream of the crop. The a-side, “Tapan Aikaa,” sounds like something that could have come out on Good Vibrations Records with its big pop hooks and kind of plaintive delivery, while the b-side, “Tahdomme Tilaa,” is a nastier one in a kind of Euro-punk style with a very memorable guitar hook.
The packaging is cool on this one too, and very indicative of its time and place. Like a lot of my Finnish punk singles, the same image is printed on both sides of the picture sleeve. It’s also somewhat small… from what Usman told me, the main Finnish pressing plant delivered 7”s in clear (but slightly hazy) plastic bags rather than in paper sleeves or on a spindle like many other plants. The bag was just meant to cover the vinyl, but Finnish bands and labels handmade picture sleeves at a slightly smaller than usual size so they fit in this bag. Well, now that I’ve bored everyone by writing about how Finnish vinyl manufacturers shipped records in the 80s, I think it’s time to wrap this up. See you next time!