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My staff pick for this week is a playlist of 80s Finnish punk and hardcore I made for the 185 Miles South podcast. I wrote an entire staff pick about 185 Miles South last year, a little after I first started listening. You can read the whole thing if you want, but the short version is that while my tastes don’t line up with theirs 100% of the time, I absolutely love the hosts’ thoughtful and considered approach to music as well as their dedication to following and promoting contemporary hardcore punk. The podcast is very well produced and every episode is a great listen from beginning to end. Occasionally their enthusiasm even turns me on to something cool I never would have checked out otherwise (you’ll see Scarab pop up on our website pretty soon). If you’re a podcast person, you should definitely have this show in your feed.
Zack from 185 and I have chatted a little bit over email, and a while back he asked if I knew anyone who would want to talk about international hardcore punk for the podcast. I not-so-humbly suggested myself, and the first installment aired on this week’s episode (check their site to links to listen on your platform of choice). Zack asked me to make a 5 band, 10-song playlist of 80s Finnish hardcore punk. I approached the playlist much like I do my year-end list each year. I created a shortlist of bands off the top of my head, then I did a bunch of research to make sure I didn’t miss anything obvious. This left me with a list of 6 bands: Kaaos, Terveet Kadet, Riistetyt, Rattus, Lama, and Appendix. I stressed for a long time about which one I should drop. Terveet Kadet is probably my least favorite of that bunch, but they are such an important and well-known band that it didn’t feel right to give them the boot. Eventually I thought of a cheat to let through all six bands, by taking one song from each side of the Kaaos / Cadgers split (in case you don’t know / remember, Cadgers changed their name to Riistetyt shortly after releasing this record) and counting that as one band. That meant I couldn’t use any tracks from Kaaos and Riistetyt’s excellent later records, but at least all my favorites got to come to the party.
After I decided on the bands, I listened through all the records to choose the tracks I thought would be the best mix tape bangers. A few, like Lama’s “Paskaa” and Appendix’s “Huora,” I knew had to go on there. For the others, I had ideas about which eras of the bands I wanted to touch. For Rattus, I wanted one raw track from Rajoitettu Ydinsota (recently reissued by Usman on his label Makitie 8) and another from Uskonto On Vaara, and I knew that I wanted one song from Terveet Kadet’s first two EPs and another from Ääretön Joulu. The latter EP is a real favorite and it was tough to choose just one song. Eventually I settled on a track list and listened to it a bunch to make sure I was happy with it. Since most of this stuff isn’t on streaming services, Zack made a YouTube playlist that you can listen to here.
When we recorded the segment for the show, for some reason I didn’t think about the fact that we’d be talking about the particular songs I chose… for some reason I thought we’d be talking more about the bands and Finnish hardcore in general. Fortunately I had listened to the tracks a bunch as part of the process of making the tape, but I wish I was a little more prepared to talk about the nuts and bolts of each song. All in all, though, I think it went pretty well. At the very least I don’t think I completely embarrassed myself. To borrow a phase from Zack, if you disagree, don’t get at me.
In addition to the episode, Zack also featured the playlist in his 185 Miles South Substack, and if you look at that he pulled a ton of pictures, reviews, and other ephemera about Finnish punk from old issues of Maximumrocknroll. It’s definitely worth a look.
I’m not sure when we’ll record it or when it’ll air, but the next installment will be on 80s Italian hardcore. I’ve only just started on that mix. I have my list of 5 bands and I’ve started listening to everything and choosing tracks. Wretched is already giving me trouble. My first thought was that I should include one track from one of their ultra raw first couple of records and another from La Tua Morte Non Aspetta, but when I listened through their discography, I felt like the song “Finirà Mai?” has to be on there, but that song kind of walks the line between their earlier, more hectic stuff and the gloomier later records. I guess stay tuned to see how I navigate that and any other roadblocks I encounter.