Featured Releases: June 9, 2022

The Hazmats: Empty Rooms 7” (Static Shock Records) Static Shock Records brings us the debut single by the Hazmats, a new UK band featuring a bunch of people who play in hardcore and punk bands doing something more melodic. The Hazmats nail the late 80s / early 90s UK indie vibe here, with a sound that’s pure pop at its core but drenched in the boisterous fuzz that was so popular at that time. These two songs sound like something I would have stayed up late to catch on 120 Minutes circa 1990. While there are many people who live and die for this style, I’m not one of them. There are some bands in this vein / from this era that I like a lot (Lush, My Bloody Valentine, the Jesus and Mary Chain, etc.), but it’s not like hardcore punk where I’m going to be interested just because of the aesthetic… a band like this needs good songs to catch my ear. And thankfully, the Hazmats have them! The simple guitar hook in “Empty Rooms” is an instant classic, but rather than resting on their laurels and padding out the rest of the song with filler, the Hazmats frame that brilliant hook with some classic pop tension and release. “Today,” on the other hand, emphasizes the vocals with its big chorus hook of “today will wear me out.” Like a lot of great singles, it feels like peeking through a keyhole into a much larger room. What I can make out is very intriguing, so let’s hope the Hazmats open the door for us.

Uranium Club: Two Things at Once (Again) 7” (Strange Lords LLC) Is there another band anything like Uranium Club? During a time when so many bands reiterate the same idea (and often that idea isn’t even their own), Uranium Club seems like the embodiment of idiosyncrasy and originality. Whether you love or hate their records, you must admit the band is on their own trip, and that continues with this latest single. Two Things at Once (Again) is billed as “retooled” or “reimagined” version of Uranium Club’s contribution to the Sub Pop singles club in 2019, but not being part of said club, I’m not able to go into detail about the differences between the two records. The a-side track has vocals and sounds of a piece with Uranium Club’s previous material, while the b-side is an instrumental that goes off in a spacey direction that sounds like Uranium Club meets Miles Davis’s 70s fusion records. It’s not unprecedented for Uranium Club, but not what I think of as their signature style. I love it, possibly even more than the a-side. The packaging, though, is where you can dive down the rabbit hole. As you can see from the product photo, the layout is heavy on text. It’s written in the second person, parts of it like instructions, but the logic dissolves more or less immediately. If you surrender your rational impulse and follow the text where it leads, it brings you into a similar headspace as Uranium Club’s music (particularly the more spread-out music on their full-lengths), but in a totally different way. Many people—punks especially—won’t enjoy being confounded in this way, but I find Uranium Club’s labyrinthine, Pynchon-esque aesthetic irresistible.

Heart Attack: God Is Dead 7” (Velvet Elk Records) Reissue of this 3-song ripper from 1981, one of the first New York Hardcore records and a legendary grip for punk vinyl collectors. With only 300 copies of the original pressing, it’s been hard to find and expensive since it came out. I guess the band didn’t think it was that strong and didn’t want to keep it in print, and while it may not be on the same level as the Bad Brains and Minor Threat records that were coming out around the same time (what is?), it’s still a scorcher in my book. The title track (which is actually the b-side) is a stop-start masterpiece that sets up the framework Agnostic Front would expand on for United Blood, and it would be a NYHC classic even if it didn’t have the historical distinction of being the first example of it. On the other side, “You” is in a similar vein, but my favorite has always been “Shotgun,” a more tuneful track that also appeared on the New York Thrash compilation, where it fit in next to punkier bands like Kraut and the Mad. Velvet Elk’s reissue expands the minimalist layout of the original pressing, adding a cool photo of the band in front of CBGB on the back cover and an essay about the EP from Lyle Hysen, whose label Damaged Goods Records originally released God Is Dead. Whether you’re coming at God Is Dead as a historical artifact or just a ripping hardcore punk record, you’ll leave satisfied.

Seems Twice: Non-Plussed 12” (Pass Without Trace Records) Pass Without Trace Records brings us a reissue of this rare Australian 7” from 1980 on a 45RPM, one-sided 12”. I’d never heard of Seems Twice before this reissue dropped, and I see the EP’s original pressing is up there with some of the other Australian punk classics in terms of price tag and rarity… one of those will set you back several hundred dollars if you can find an opportunity to buy one. After listening to it, I can see why. Seems Twice has a minimalist art-punk sound, their songs very short and primarily fast, but not hardcore. Seems Twice must have taken a lot of influence from the short songs on Wire’s Pink Flag, but since this came out in 1980, it was too early to be influenced by bands like the early Minutemen and the Urinals who were doing something very similar in the US. I find this style magical because if you played short and fast songs at any point after 1981 or so, you would almost certainly be triangulating your sound off of hardcore, either conforming to it or reacting against it. But Seems Twice, like the other bands I mentioned above, sound like a musical version of minimalist visual artists like Frank Stella. Just as those artists dispensed with so many of painting’s extraneous elements to focus on color and pattern, Seems Twice abandon conventional songwriting structures, distilling their music down to these elemental bursts of rhythm and melody. If that sounds like something you’d be interested in, I highly recommend Non-Plussed… there are only so many examples of this style, and this is a prime one.

Sindrome De Abstinencia / Nino Viejo:  Ruido Vivo en Da Skatepark cassette (Open Palm Tapes) Chicago’s Open Palm Tapes brings us this split cassette featuring live recordings from two current Chilean hardcore punk bands. Like many people, I avoided live recordings for years, mostly because I thought I was supposed to. Anyone who listens to raw hardcore should know that fidelity shouldn’t be your chief concern with a recording, and live recordings often capture something that’s much harder to find in the studio… so who cares if you can’t distinctly hear each hit of the kick drum? Sindrome De Abstinencia’s tracks here are a case in point… they are exploding with energy. Their style of fast hardcore (they cover Los Crudos, Infest, and Spazz during their set if that gives you any indication) might be something I’d gloss over based on a genre description, but there’s no denying the wild intensity of what they capture on this recording. Nino Viejo’s style is less chaotic, more in the fist-pumping vein of Poison Idea, and while their recording doesn’t have the same magic as Sindrome De Abstinencia, it’s still an interesting listen. I know record collectors get all worked up over raw South American hardcore from the 80s, but these two bands prove there’s still great stuff happening in that part of the world.

People’s Temple: demo cassette (Roach Leg Records) People’s Temple’s demo cassette on Roach Leg Records made the rounds last November, but the initial pressing sold out even more quickly than your typical Roach Leg release (which is saying something!) and we missed out on that batch. Fortunately, Roach Leg pressed up more copies, and we got in on the action. While People’s Temple has the raw hardcore sound that you associate with Roach Leg Records if you’ve been following the label, it doesn’t fall into the d-beat or noise-punk categories that many of Roach Leg’s other releases do. To me, they sound like a band that could have come from early 80s California with their sprightly tempos, hint of melody, and nihilistic sensibility. People’s Temple makes me think of bands like Circle One, Sick Pleasure, or Wasted Youth… like those bands, there’s a hint of tuneful UK punk in People’s Temple’s sound, but it’s so raw and thuggish that it’s its own thing. Tracks like “Dead Soldiers” and “LSD & Anarchy” (which sounds to me like the hit song of the tape) have big choruses that might remind you of UK82 punk bands, but then a track like “Human Livestock” has a garage-y feel that reminds me of Formaldehyde Junkies. People’s Temple is as dirty, raw, and nasty as anything on Roach Leg, but the subtle tunesmithery makes this tape stand out from the pack.

Corrupted Morals: Think About It 12” (Lavasocks Records) Lavasocks Records, who gave us a 12” expansion of Corrupted Morals’ Chet 7” a while back, give us another CM treat, this time a vinyl reissue of the band’s 1986 demo. Wow, what a scorcher! I heard rips of these tracks online years ago, but nothing approaching the fidelity on this 12”, which is clear, crisp, and powerful. This earlier material is more straightforwardly hardcore than the Chet era of the band that I’m more familiar with, but I like it even better. The songs are even faster, but they still have that crossover edge to the riffing and those great snotty vocals that are bathed in California surfer dude accident that hooked me on Chet. Think About It is a relentless barrage of 12 tracks coming one right after the other with no letup, and is bound to tickle the fancy of anyone who loves Attitude Adjustment, Life Sentence, and other super-fast mid-80s US hardcore in this vein. Since all of Think About It fits on one side of a 12”, Lavasocks pads out the b-side with a live set recorded a few months after the demo. The fidelity on this set isn’t as strong, but it’s listenable and it includes all five tracks that later appeared on Chet as well as a bunch of demo-era material. This is an essential pickup for anyone who loves Corrupted Morals and/or anyone whose interest in US hardcore extends deeper and further into the 80s.