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No Security / Crocodile Skink: Split 7” (1995, D.I.Y. Records)

Last week work was kind of getting me down… too much to do, too little time, which meant that every night when I got home I was exhausted and grumpy. Sometimes when I feel like that, I try to pull my mood in the other direction with music that’s on the gentler side (for me, at least), but often I just want to blast hardcore, having it overwhelm me to the point where I can’t think about anything else. I was on one of those kicks the other night, and pulling 7”s to listen to, I ended up spinning a whole bunch of Swedish stuff. I thought about writing about several of the records I played, but this is the one I landed on, both because it rips and because I think it’s a little more under-the-radar than some of the other slabs I jammed.

Even though it’s side B according to the labels, I’ll start with No Security, since their side is the reason I bought this record. None of No Security’s records have been in print for many years (as far as I know), so I’m not sure how well-known they are nowadays. They started in 1985, and I’m not clear on when they split up. Discogs says this EP came out in 1995, but No Security’s tracks were recorded in 1990. I wonder if perhaps the record just took a long time to come out, because on the insert No Security refer to themselves in the present and even tease an upcoming LP on which these three tracks were slated to appear. Unfortunately, that LP never happened. I haven’t heard it, but it looks like No Security recorded six songs for this session and the other three are available on the Lost and Found Records compilation CD When The Gist Is Sucked From The Fruit Of Welfare (The Ugly Faces Of Truth Show). I may have to track that down.

As for the music, No Security contributes three rippers that any fan of early Totalitär is bound to love. No Security featured Jallo on drums, who went on to play for Totalitär on Sin Egen Motståndare and all the records after that. It’s interesting that these tracks, while they have a similar grooviness to that Totalitär stuff (which makes sense as it’s the same drummer), they’re also rougher-sounding, with a loose, chaotic edge to them that makes them even more exciting.

It would be cool if there were an easily-available No Security collection (aside from the Lost and Found CD, there was also a 2019 collection CD on a Peruvian label), but I think there’s something cool about the way their discography is spread across all these split records. I could be wrong, but I think an EP’s dose of No Security is the right amount. Plus, if you track down all these splits, you get to hear a bunch of other interesting bands. Case in point, Japan’s Crocodile Skink.

While they slightly interrupted the flow of my Swedish hardcore night, Crocodile Skink is a great match for No Security, as their two contributions here are similarly blazing and riff-oriented, but with a crustier, more bottom-heavy sound. The vocalist is great too, with a mean-ass bark that sounds a little like Tokurow from Bastard, but with a freer (or maybe just worse) sense of rhythm. The lyrics are in English and they’re inscrutable in a really interesting way, though the animal rights message behind the line “you wear the steak” certainly comes through. Oh, and like No Security (and a lot of 90s bands, I suppose), Crocodile Skink has a very split-forward discography.

So yeah, pretty cool record if you can find it. If anyone has a spare complete collection of No Security and Crocodile Skink splits, get at me.

The Red Crayola: Soldier-Talk 12” (Radar Records, 1979)

Back in October, my friend Mike invited me and a handful of our friends to spend his birthday weekend at his family’s beach house in Carolina Beach. Pretty much everyone on the trip is a music fanatic, so of course we visited the one record store in town. If I had been there on my own, I doubt I would have bothered… my appetite for visiting record stores has decreased considerably since the days when I would hit every single shop I could when I went out of town. There are so many shops now, and I already buy more records than I actually have time to listen to. However, the entire group wanted to go to this one, so of course I was game.

When I walked in, my first thought was that this would be an awkward shopping experience. The store was tiny and most of the bins were only half full. It seemed like one of those situations where I’d try to leave quickly, interacting with the owner as little as possible lest they realize I’m thinking to myself that their store totally sucks. However, once I started flipping through those half-full bins, I kept finding things that interested me. I ended up buying 5 or 6 LPs, more than anyone else in our group. A couple of those were Soft Machine albums that, upon returning home, I realized I already had. The one I was most excited about, though, was this 1979 album by the Red Crayola.

The Red Crayola has a wild history. The brainchild of Texas musician Mayo Thompson, the band started in the 60s and operated in the same world as the 13th Floor Elevators. The Red Crayola’s two 60s LPs came out on International Artists Records, the same label as the Elevators and another notable 60s Texas psych group, Bubble Puppy. The Red Crayola was the most fiercely experimental of all these groups, their music reflecting Thompson’s interest in the avant garde. As the Red Crayola’s music moved away from psychedelic and toward more experimental horizons, interest in the group waned among their fans and their record label. Eventually Thompson left Texas, first for New York, where he served as a studio assistant to the artist Robert Rauschenberg, then moving to London as he started collaborating with the avant garde art collective Art & Language.

While in London, Thompson fell in with the post-punk world of Geoff Travis and Rough Trade Records, the second landmark underground scene with which he was involved. With Travis nervous about his lack of studio experience, Thompson became the de facto in-house producer for Rough Trade, producing sessions by post-punk legends like the Fall, the Raincoats, Stiff Little Fingers, Cabaret Voltaire, and countless others.

My interest in the Red Crayola stems mostly from their work on Lora Logic from X-Ray Spex’s 1982 solo album, Pedigree Charm. I’ve mentioned Pedigree Charm in previous staff picks, as it’s one of my most-listened to records of the past several years. While I don’t hear other people mention it too often, it’s become one of my favorite records, and one that never gets old for me. When a record is so interesting to me, I can’t help but pull all the threads that connect to it to see what I find. The first and most obvious was Lora Logic’s work with her band, Essential Logic, and I’ve covered my exploration of their discography in previous staff picks. But while Logic was presumably the driving creative force behind Pedigree Charm, it stands apart from the rest of her work. Given that I hear a very similar sound on the Red Crayola’s 1980 single “Born in Flames” (again, covered in a previous staff pick, LOL), I knew the Red Crayola material from this period was worth exploring.

Which brings me back to Soldier-Talk. I was excited to drop the needle on this album, but as soon as it started, I knew it wasn’t precisely what I was looking for… it didn’t have that bright, bubbly sound of Pedigree Charm and “Born in Flames.” It turns out that, even though Soldier-Talk came out only one year before “Born in Flames,” it’s a completely different iteration of the Red Crayola. Mayo Thompson is still there, but aside from drummer Jesse Chamberlain and Lora Logic, the rest of the band for this album is made up of members of Pere Ubu, including Dave Thomas on lead vocals for many of its tracks. I think fans of Pere Ubu’s records from this period will get the most out of Soldier-Talk, as (even with Mayo Thompson writing all the material) it has much of the darkness and density of The Modern Dance and Dub Housing, both of which Pere Ubu had released a year earlier in 1978. Those are great records, and while Soldier-Talk is even more difficult than those albums (which plenty of people already find abstruse), it’s still very interesting.

While I like Soldier-Talk, I’m still left jonesing for more of what I hear on Pedigree Charm. After doing more research to write this piece, I think my next stop should probably be the Red Crayola’s 1981 album (in collaboration with Art & Language), Kangaroo?. The Discogs credits on that one show that Pedigree Charm bassist Ben Annesley appears on the record, and since the bass lines are one of my favorite parts of Pedigree Charm, I’m definitely intrigued. Should that exploration bear fruit, the Red Crayola has several more collaborative releases with Art & Language over the next few years, though it appears most of those don’t feature Annesley.

Checking out these albums should be pretty easy, as Drag City re-released most of these recordings in the 2000s, and they’re all available on streaming services. Along with those reissues, Drag City also released a spate of new Red Crayola material in the 2000s and 2010s, when Thompson connected with another vital underground scene—the Chicago post-rock world—and added another act to his life story. But that’s a tale for another time.

Mary Gabriel: Madonna: A Rebel Life book (2023, Little, Brown and Company)

Smithereens (1982, Susan Seidelman)

One downside of reading most books digitally these days is that the format erases some of the distinctions between short and long books. Usually, this is a good thing. I always hated reading a book so thick I couldn’t hold it up with one hand, but my ebook reader is the same weight no matter what I’m reading. Also, when you’re buying a book, you have to look into the metadata to notice whether you’re picking up a pamphlet or a tome, and sometimes I don’t think about doing that. That’s what happened with the book I’m reading now. The book I just finished was pretty heady and dense (William Egginton’s The Rigor of Angels, which drew parallels between the lives and work of philosopher Immanuel Kant, physicist Werner Heisenberg, and writer Jorge Luis Borges), so I wanted something lighter. I chose this recently-published biography of Madonna by Mary Gabriel, which weighs in at about 900 pages. I guess I’ll be reading it for a minute.

The length of Madonna: A Rebel Life is kind of nice, really, because it allows Gabriel to go into the kind of detail I want from a biography. I’ve only made it up to the final years of the 80s so far, but Gabriel does a really great job of immersing you in the settings that shaped Madonna’s early life: her childhood in suburban Michigan, the cocoon of late 80s LA, and most of all the deeply troubled artistic playground that was late 70s / early 80s New York. Obviously, being super into punk, that’s a time and place that I’m interested in. Whenever I see movies made or set in that period of New York, they always suck me right in. I wonder if, had I been of age at that time, would I have been drawn to it enough to move there? I certainly would have loved all the art that was happening, but I can’t imagine how exhausting it must have been to live in such a tough, uncompromising environment.

Having read so much about the punk scene, it’s nice that Gabriel’s biography focuses largely on a different corner of that world. That corner certainly abutted the punk world, and figures like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Richard Hell, Fab 5 Freddy, and Madonna drift between them (Madonna briefly played drums for a band that played at CBGB). However, in Madonna’s New York of that period, the gay dance clubs like Paradise Garage and the modern dance scene figure more prominently. Gabriel’s book pulls you into that world and gives you a taste of how it operated.

In addition to detail, another luxury afforded the very long book is the ability to digress. One digression in Gabriel’s book that interested me was about the work of director Susan Seidelman, who made Desperately Seeking Susan, the 1985 film starring Madonna and Rosanna Arquette. In contextualizing Seidelman’s work, Gabriel also mentioned her feature-length directorial debut, 1982’s Smithereens. Gabriel mentioned the film was set in the New York punk scene and featured a number of scenesters as actors and extras, including Richard Hell as one of the main characters. I looked it up, found where I could stream it, and checked it out.

As soon as the film started, I was pulled in. It has that distinctive color palette of New York movies of the period and plenty of establishing shots of a city with pockets of decadence sprouting up in a vast landscape of decay and neglect. As for the plot, IMBD summarizes it as “a talent-challenged girl tries to promote herself to stardom in New York’s waning punk music world,” which isn’t exactly right. There’s no indication of whether the lead character Wren has any talent or not… she never sings or plays because none of the other characters have any interest in whether she has talent or not. And there isn’t really as much punk as I’d hoped there would be either. The Feelies song “The Boy with the Perpetual Nervousness” serves as a kind of theme song, there are a lot of cool punk fashions, a couple of scene shot at the Peppermint Lounge, and of course Hell plays a punk musician for a group called the Smithereens, but that’s about it. The movie isn’t really about punk, because the character Wren isn’t really in the punk world… she’s basically a poseur trying to gain entree.

What stuck with me more than the punk content was the sexual politics of Smithereens. Every man in this film, to a person, is a total fucking creep, and Wren barely has a moment on-screen when she isn’t the object of a man’s sexual interest, with these situations taking on a threatening, violent air more often than not. Richard Hell’s character is an obvious creep using her for what he can get, but even the apparently wholesome young portrait artist from Montana makes physical advances Wren clearly has no interest in. In the film’s enigmatic closing scene, a defeated Wren walks, dead-eyed and defeated, along the highway, apparently toward the Holland Tunnel and her childhood home in New Jersey, where she’d vowed several times over the course of the film she’d never go. As she walks, a creep slows down his car to proposition her, refusing to acknowledge her complete lack of interest in him.

I’m too soft for the New York of 2023, much less 1982. But to be a young woman in that time and place… I can’t even imagine the kind of resolve and toughness it would have taken to exist in that world day in and day out. I guess that’s why so many women who came from that world—Madonna included—were so extraordinary. They would have had to be, just to exist.

After I read Jeff’s staff pick last week, I had to listen to the Briefs’ Hit After Hit. I loved that album when it came out, and Jeff’s pick reminded me how great it is. The way he went through the tracks in his staff pick is part of what made me so hyped on it… every time he’d mention another track I’d think, “oh yeah, I forgot about that song!” It really is hit after hit, and kudos to Jeff for an excellent staff pick and to Wanda Records, who has reissued the record on vinyl (currently out of stock at Sorry State, but we’ll do our best to get more in ASAP).

After I listened to the Briefs, my mind went to another of my favorite bands from that period: The Stitches. I was a fanatic about the Stitches in my late teens and early 20s. I can’t remember when or how I discovered them, but 8x12 got constant play in the late 90s. What a fucking record! Its eight tracks blaze by in 18 minutes, all energy with no letup. Each side features three original tracks dripping with hooks and played at blazing, Dickies-esque tempos, then ends with a cover. On the a-side it’s a snottier version of “Better Off Dead” by La Peste (for me, better than the original), and on the b-side an unexpected choice, “That Woman’s Got Me Drinking” by Shane MacGowan (of the Pogues, but this was a track he released in 1994 with his later band the Popes). “That Woman’s Got Me Drinking” is one of those cover versions where the band nails it so hard it feels like it becomes their song.

After hearing 8x12, I worked hard to pick up all the Stitches’ singles. This was no easy feat. That first era of the Stitches—until at least 1997—existed fully offline, and I don’t think the records were well-distributed, particularly on the east coast. It took years of off and online digging to turn up what I have. I never came across a copy of their first single, “Sixteen,” and it remains a hole in my collection. Fortunately for you, Wanda Records has not only reissued 8x12 but also Unzip My Baby, collecting all the Stitches’ 7”s up to 2010.

Unzip My Baby is laid out like Singles Going Steady, with all the a-sides on the LP’s a-side and all the b-sides on the LP’s b-side. So listening to both sides in a row is sort of like taking the same trip twice. You start with the pre-8x12 single “Sixteen,” which isn’t the band’s best work. It sounds like an average 90s garage/retro punk single, which is what it was I guess. Then you get the 8x12-era stuff. The band had perfected their cocktail here, a speedball of amphetamine-rattled, Thunders-influenced junkie punk. Songs like “Talk Sick” and “Second Chance” are strong, but I think the Stitches’ best songs and performances of the period went to 8x12.

Around 2000, the Stitches returned with a new batch of songs and a refined image that smoothed some of the rough edges of their Thunders-influenced aesthetic and replaced it with more approachable new wave polka dots. The first salvo from this period was “Cars of Today,” which appeared on 2000’s split 7” with Le Shok. “Cars of Today” might be the best song the Stitches ever wrote, built around a mammoth guitar hook and with a classic vocal in the chorus. The artwork looks cool as fuck too, carrying forward the aesthetic of the earlier releases into something just a little more refined.

This was a very exciting time to be a Stitches fan, as each record they put out felt like a game-changer. In my memory, the records in this era trickled out at a snail’s pace, but according to Discogs, most everything came out in 2002. Four More Songs from the Stitches featured, inside its next-level-for-the-time faux-Japanese packaging, another refinement of the formula, slowing things down to Sex Pistols-esque tempos and leaning into the big guitar hooks. Two of these four tracks ended up on the next LP, but for me the version of “Pick Me Up” on Four More Songs is far superior, its creeping tempo (more Spunk than Never Mind the Bollocks) carrying an air of menace the LP version lacks. The “Automatic” single and the live picture disc-only You Better Shut Up and Listen followed and further whetted my appetite.

Then, just as 8x12 captured the best version of that era of the band, Twelve Imaginary Inches wrapped everything up into a neat little package. By this time, the image was more Buzzcocks than Thunders, and the music had evolved to match. The album’s mix is a little slicker and more even, the guitar no longer way up front and in the red, and the songs feel more considered and sophisticated. Were the Stitches trying to make it big? Honestly, I wish they had, because I love this era of the band. The album-only track “Foreign Currency” might be my favorite Stitches song, though it doesn’t sound like any of their others. Like 8x12, Twelve Imaginary Inches is a 100% no-skips listening experience, though rather than 8x12’s full frontal assault, this time there are a few more peaks and valleys, and the record is all the better for it. I remember being so excited to get this record, which I pre-ordered to get the cool limited edition version. It’s on clear vinyl with the artwork printed in spot-varnish, in keeping with the title. When it finally showed up, I played it into the ground. I still remember every word of every song.

After Twelve Imaginary Inches, the Stitches went into a long period of inactivity, at least on the record front. They finally came east in the late 00s, and I went up to Richmond to see them. Government Warning opened up for them, and if I remember correctly, that was the first show for the “European tour” version of Government Warning with Alex playing guitar. I remember seeing the Stitches guys singing along when GW covered Reagan Youth (callback to last week’s staff pick). The era when I was a huge Stitches fan seems like a totally different time of my life than the No Way Years, and it’s weird they overlapped in that way. Certainly neither scene was at its peak, though I thought the Stitches played an excellent set.

The last time I checked in with the Stitches was the 2010 single “Monday Morning Ornaments.” That single appears on Unzip My Baby, and it sounds like a coda to the earlier singles. I’m pretty sure that’s how I felt about it at the time, too. Both songs are cool, but lack the spark of the earlier stuff. Or maybe it’s still just as great and I’m the one who has moved on. There are several releases after that on the band’s Discogs page, but it looks like they’re archival releases, including what looks to be some very early rehearsal recordings. I can’t find a place to hear those online, but I’m curious if “Television Addict” is a cover of the Victims song. I’d love to hear all those records.

Anyway, that’s my take on the Stitches. Great fucking band, and I’m stoked to have them on the shelves at Sorry State.

The other day, John Scott and I were talking about how difficult it is to formulate our staff picks lately. Right now things are pedal-to-the-metal busy at Sorry State, and while I always have music playing, I haven’t felt immersed in anything, so it’s difficult to answer the question “what have you been listening to?” While putting up flyers for the Anniversary Weekend all around North Carolina, I picked up a few bits and bobs at the record stores I visited, and I’ve played those, but I’m not ready to write about them yet. So, this week I thought I’d write about an old favorite that I’ve spun a few times lately: the Fall.

I consider myself an introvert, by which I mean social interactions tire me out, while time alone energizes me. It’s not an all-or-nothing thing… I love people, but without regular doses of solitary time, I feel like I’m losing my mind. I know plenty of people for whom the exact opposite is the case, and they go stir-crazy when they’re alone too much. My wife, Jet, is one of those people, but the older we get, the more we learn how to support one another. Case in point, my friend Mike’s birthday party at the beach that I wrote about in my staff pick last week. We left for the beach Friday evening after work, and while some of my work days at Sorry State consist almost entirely of sitting alone in my office staring at a computer screen, this wasn’t one of those. I had gone out to Durham to put up flyers that morning, stopping at all the local record stores and chit-chatting with my colleagues. I raced from there to a meeting with Amanda from RUMAH to go over details about the punk market and day show for the Anniversary Weekend, then went straight into a long Zoom meeting with the vendor for Sorry State’s new inventory and order management system. (Did I mention our Anniversary Weekend is coinciding with a major technology overhaul? GREAT TIMING!)

By the time we got on the road to the beach, I was already spent. Jet is in the middle of applying for a new job she’s excited about, and she really wanted to talk about that on the drive down. However, my nerves were fried after a day filled with social interaction (so much small talk!) and I needed to spend some time in my head, especially since we were driving right into a full-on party situation. In the past, our conflicting desires might have resulted in a huge fight, but Jet was supportive, and even suggested we listen to an album I like to relax. She suggested the Fall’s second album, Dragnet.

I hadn’t listened to Dragnet in ages; in fact, when I went to play it, I realized it wasn’t even in my Apple Music library. Crazy! Thankfully, it was easy enough to dial up, and it was just what the doctor ordered. Maybe one reason I don’t listen to Dragnet very often is that it’s just so good that it’s tough to do anything but pay attention to it while it’s playing. It grabs you by the throat, leading off with the classic “Psychic Dance Hall,” then the hits just keep coming... “A Figure Walks,” “Dice Man,” “Before the Moon Falls...” fuck, what a record! For me, those tracks represent the apogee of the early Fall sound... naïve melodies, rickety execution, the 3 R’s... they’ve totally figured it out here. Then there’s “Spectre vs Rector,” which points the way toward the more stretched-out and artier sound they would hone over their next few records, particularly Slates and Hex Enduction Hour. By the end of the drive, as the “deluxe edition” submerged us in a sea of bonus tracks (five separate takes of “Rowche Rumble!”), I felt like a new man.

Incidentally, Dragnet is one of only a handful of records I own redundant copies of. My first copy was a slightly battered first pressing that was a gift from my friend Tom Ellis. This is ages ago, when Static Shock Records was but a glimmer in Tom’s eye, and I was driving his old band the Shitty Limits on their second US tour. Tom asked me if I needed him to punk post anything over for me. I jokingly said “an original pressing of Dragnet,” and he made it happen! Then, some years later, I was browsing at Bull City Records in Durham and I found a pristine UK second pressing priced attractively, as everything at Bull City is. I had to upgrade, but since my starter copy has so much sentimental value, I don’t think I can get rid of it.

The Fall came up again this weekend while I was doing a bunch of repetitive work. A lack of foresight on my part resulted in a colossal stack of print material that needed to be scored and cut by hand... I’m talking dozens of hours of work, which would be tough to pawn off on SSR’s staff since we’re all slammed at the moment. I’ve been spending every spare moment at my kitchen table plowing through that, with records, podcasts, and movies to keep me company. Not that I’m complaining! My hands being busy and my mind and ears being free is my ideal state of affairs. Yesterday afternoon I listened to the new episode of my favorite show on BBC 6 Music, Stuart Maconie’s The Freak Zone, and Hex Enduction Hour was their featured album this week. I was happy to hear the tracks they played, though I got this weird impression that Maconie was holding back on giving any praise to the album. Maybe it’s because his BBC6 colleague Mark Riley plays on it?

I’m in trouble if Mark E. Smith is my guardian angel, but I appreciate the Fall swooping in to carry me away to my happy place twice in the past couple of weeks. If you’re familiar with Sorry State at all, you know my drive to hear and learn about new (and new-to-me) music is massive, but it’s nice to remember how soothing your favorite band / song / album can be, even when it’s as knotty and abrasive as the Fall.

Phew: S/T 12” (1981, Pass Records / 2021, P-Vine Records)

Newsletter readers and Japanese punk aficionados already know the 1979 album by Aunt Sally; I chose the Aunt Sally album as my staff pick in February 2022, and once we stocked copies of Mesh Key’s domestic reissue of that album at Sorry State, I wrote about it again as a featured release. Phew was Aunt Sally’s singer, and her first solo album from 1981 picks up the Aunt Sally story where we left off.

To get you back up to speed, here’s a quick refresher on Phew’s impossibly cool backstory. Intrigued by what she read about the Sex Pistols in the music press, she traveled to London in 1977 to see the band live. Inspired, she returned to Osaka, Japan, and started what must have been one of the first punk-influenced bands in Japan. However, like the first generation of post-Pistols bands in the UK, Aunt Sally didn’t imitate the Pistols but expanded on their sound, resulting in an album that sounds a lot more like post-punk.

After the Aunt Sally project ran out of steam, Phew began working under her own (stage) name, signing to Pass Records and recording her debut single with Ryuichi Sakamoto of Yellow Magic Orchestra. I hadn’t heard that single before I started researching this piece, but it was an immediate “add to wantlist.” Rich, dense, and experimental, it expands on the more interesting experimental aspects of the Aunt Sally album and sets the stage for the album I’m writing about today. Hopefully I can pick up a physical copy at some point and write about it in more detail for a future staff pick.

So this brings us to Phew. How do you follow up a first act as incredible as the Aunt Sally album? Flying to Germany and recording with famed producer Conny Plank and having Jaki Liebezeit and Holger Czukay of Can play on your album is a pretty good start. I’ve looked for information about how this group of musicians came together, but I haven’t turned up much in English. It just seems amazing to me. Even listening to both the Sex Pistols and Can circa 1980 was a notable achievement in coolness, but how did these musicians come to work together? I would love to know if anyone can offer more insight.

Circa 1981, Can was in a state of inactivity, the creative spark behind the project having largely gone out for their last few (mediocre) albums of the 1970s. Thus, it’s surprising they play with so much fire on Phew. Admittedly, though, if Jaki Liebezeit is playing drums on your album, it’s going to sound good, and he sounds great here. He’s one of those musicians who, if I see their name on a release, I am automatically interested, and his trademark style is on full display here. The album doesn’t list who played which instruments, but the rest of the sounds are full of rich, exciting textures, rhythms, and melodies. It’s tough to tell how they’re making these sounds, but there are synthesizers in play and perhaps some electronically treated sounds created from other (perhaps unconventional?) sources, which was consistent with Czukay’s m.o. at the time. This isn’t just soundscapes, though. Liebezeit’s drums always hold a steady groove, and Plank’s production is heavy to the point of being dub-ish, giving the tracks significant heft. That combination of deep grooves, dub heaviness, and bold experimentation resembles the first couple Public Image Ltd albums, and if you’re a fan of those, this is well worth checking out.

There isn’t a track on Phew that I skip, but I think it has a particularly strong ending. The third from the last song, “P-Adic,” is the most aggressive on the album, an uptempo synth-punk tune with driving drums and stabbing sequencer rhythms that recall Neu Deutsche Welle groups like D.A.F. If you liked the recent Die Letzten Ecken album we raved about earlier this year, this might be your favorite track on Phew. They follow that with “Doze,” a moody, atmospheric track with an eerie synth melody that might make you think of John Carpenter’s film music. The album then closes with “Circuit,” a short and futuristic, new age-ish instrumental that could have fit on an After Dinner or Kate Bush album.

If you’re intrigued, it shouldn’t be too difficult to lay your hands on a copy of Phew. The original pressing isn’t insanely expensive… you can get a copy in your hands for under a hundred dollars, though you’ll probably have to get it from Japan. This reissue on P-Vine Records seems to have gotten worldwide distribution, but like most of P-Vine’s releases, its price is steep, usually in the $40-$50 range. However, if you’re willing to plonk that down (I think Phewis worth every penny), you shouldn’t have too much trouble locating a copy from a seller in your country.

I’ve had the Replacements on my brain for the past couple days thanks to that new Let It Bleed edition of Tim. I heard about the release ahead of time, but didn’t know much about it. I didn’t even order any copies for the store. Box sets are a tough sell for a store like ours… my theory is that if you’re spending $100+ on something like that, you’re probably going to shop around for the best deal, and thanks to the way the major label distribution network works, Sorry State is never going to be your best deal on a major label box set. However, the release came up on Friday’s episode of What Are You Listening To? when Sorry State’s own Eric Chubb chose the Replacements’ All Shook Down as one of his picks. The panelists had favorable things to say about it, then the next day I came across Pitchfork’s review. Not only did that review better explain what was on the release than anywhere else, but it was over the top in its praise, giving the reissue a perfect score (something they rarely do at Pitchfork) and claiming that the new Ed Stasium mix of Tim bumped it up to being the best Replacements album. Color me intrigued.

I had some time Saturday evening, so I dipped into the reissue digitally, but before I get into that, I should give you some background on my relationship to the Replacements so you know where I’m coming from. I went through a period in my early 20s (which would have been around the turn of the millennium) when I liked the Replacements a lot, but I confined my attention mostly to the Twin/Tone albums. Let It Be and Stink were my go-to’s. I had assumed, as one did in those days, that the Replacements’ major label years were uninteresting, so when I heard the best of compilation Don’t You Know Who I Think I Was?, later tracks like “Bastards of Young” and “Alex Chilton” knocked me on my ass. I played that best-of to death, and while I still prefer the loose and punky delivery of the band’s early catalog, it’s hard to deny Paul Westerberg matured as a songwriter and that the later albums contained his best work. I still haven’t spent much time with Don’t Tell a Soul and All Shook Down as at some point I just stopped listening to the Replacements, but I spent a good amount of time with Tim and Pleased to Meet Me and learned to like those albums too.

Now, back to this new Let It Bleed edition of Tim. I dialed it up on Apple Music, and when “Hold My Life” started, it took me aback. This really sounds different from the version of Tim we all knew (and many of us loved)! Before listening to this new version, I doubt I would have described Tim’s sound as cool and distant, but Ed Stasium’s new mix makes it feel like they’re playing right in front of your face, even inside your skull. The drums sound more driving (the original version, like so many records from the 80s, had reverb on the drums, while this version’s drums sound super dry) and the bass has a rich, lush bottom end that sounds modern and hi-fi. The focal points of the mix, though, are Westerberg’s vocals and rhythm guitar. The sculpted tones of every instrument and the strong separation between them mean you can turn your attention toward what any player is doing, but the lead vocals and rhythm guitars are un-ignorable.

The new mix changes my sense of perspective as a listener. It makes the sound so much more intimate, like Westerberg is singing and playing directly into my ear. There was always something detached and cooler-than-thou about the Replacements, and while that may have been one of their many achilles heels as far as appealing to a wider audience, it’s a huge part of their charm for people who like them. That sense is gone from this new mix. It’s like the band is trying… you can hear the effort and the feeling in Westerberg’s voice, and you can hear how much technicality was in the rest of the band’s playing, too. It’s great in some respects, but it feels kind of wrong to me.

Aside from the general sound of the mix, I have a few other nits to pick too. The Pitchfork review gushes about how “Little Mascara” extends for a full extra minute, making room for a Bob Stinson guitar solo on the outro that was trimmed from the final version of Tim. Tim is the last Replacements record Bob played on, though he only lent leads to a handful of tracks. The thing is, though, I don’t think his leads on the album are that good. I love his playing on the earlier albums, but they sound out of sync with the songs on Tim, lacking the sense of reckless abandon that made his earlier leads so great… he’s clearly aiming for a more precise playing style here, and that along with the harsher glare of the clearer studio production highlights their awkwardness. Aside from laying Bob’s faults more bare, I think Ed Stasium’s mix also loses some of the original’s dynamics. All of it sounds the same, and it makes me appreciate how the original mix had more of a sense of ebb and flow.

Pitchfork’s review also points out the version of “Can’t Hardly Wait” on this collection (an updated version of the previously released “Tim version” of that song, whose supposedly canonical version appeared on Pleased to Meet Me), saying it’s the single that would / should have been a hit and made the Replacements cross over to a mainstream audience. I don’t hear it, though. That version has all the pluses and minuses of the rest of Ed Stasium’s remixes, and it’s hard to imagine this super dry recording penetrating mainstream radio playlists in 1985. If there were some alternate universe where it got released in 1992 or 93, when recordings were sounding a lot more like this mix, perhaps something like that might have happened.

All that being said, some songs really benefit from this approach. “Little Mascara” sticks out for me in a way it didn’t before, and the more rocking tracks like “Dose of Thunder” and “Lay it Down Clown” get a boost from the beefier sound, channeling as they do the big gestures of classic rock. When I listen to a track like “Hold My Life,” though, I’m so transfixed by the drums, which never waver in their rhythm or dynamics, that it draws my attention away from the song’s emotional dynamics. Maybe it’s just that the new mix is more jarring on the tracks I’ve listened to more, and that effect will fade with time. It’s hard to say. It’s like watching an old movie remastered in high definition. It’s great to see and hear all kinds of new details in the background, but noticing those details pulls your attention away from what made you love it in the first place. It’s a double-edged sword.

The next time I want to hear Tim, I wonder whether I’ll go to the original version or this new mix. I honestly don’t know. There’s no telling what’s on the other side of this acclimation period, but if nothing else I’m impressed with how completely Stasium could reimagine this album. It appears these expanded reissues of the Replacements catalog are working their way through the band’s discography in reverse chronological order, so I’m curious to see if they do something with the Twin/Tone albums next.

Ian Glasper: Silence Is No Reaction: Forty Years of Subhumans book (2023, PM Press)

As a decades-long fan of the Subhumans, I was super excited when I heard the band was getting an official biography. They’re one of my favorite groups ever, and while I know their music very well, I didn’t know much about the Subhumans’ history and backstory. Weighing in at nearly 600 pages, Ian Glasper’s monster tome offers a treasure trove of information. Maybe it’s a fans-only affair, but Subhumans fans like me—and I know there are many—will love it.

I first heard Subhumans when I was a teenager in the mid-90s. A pen pal included a couple of songs from The Day the Country Died on a mix tape and I loved them, their subtle tunefulness standing out from the gnarlier sounds from most of the other bands on the tape. I don’t think I found any of the Subhumans’ records until I saw their first reunion tour in 1998, when I picked up The Day the Country Died at the gig. That show was incredible, and it left a big mark on me. As I picked up the band’s other records in subsequent years, my love for them only deepened. As much as I loved The Day the Country Died, the way they leaned into their adventurous side without compromising the punk intensity was also very important to me, showing me you could be ambitious and follow your own path without compromising your principles.

I developed that understanding of the Subhumans almost exclusively through listening to their music, but Silence Is No Reaction confirms Subhumans are the good guys I thought they were. The book goes into the nuts and bolts of how the band functioned (and continues to function!) on an almost day-to-day basis, walking us through their decision-making at every stage of their development. You learn all about how they formed, signed to Spiderleg, started the Bluurg Records label, why they chose the recording studios they used, the sequencing, creating the artwork… everything. If you’ve ever read a music biography and thought to yourself, “I can’t believe they glossed over x,” this is not that book.

That can be for better or for worse. The book can get a little tedious, for instance, as it traces each of the band’s tours (particularly during their reformed era, when the members lived in different countries and did little as a band aside from tour). Ian Glasper has written several books on 80s UK punk, and if you’ve read Burning Britain (his book on UK82), The Day the Country Died (anarcho punk), or any of his others, you know what you’re getting into. I love it, but I am also a full-on nerd who does things like listen to 3-hour-plus episodes of the You Don’t Know Mojack podcast about SST Records releases I have never heard and will never hear. I want to know it all, and Silence Is No Reaction delivers.

Silence Is No Reaction is also packed with photos and scans of flyers, lyric sheets, set lists, press clippings, and other artifacts. Every third or fourth page is filled with images, and while the heroic live shots are cool, I love the candid shots of the band just hanging out. Sometimes they might be out of focus or awkwardly composed, but many of them are so evocative of their time and place, offering windows into worlds that seem so different from my experiences. Reading the book made me feel embedded in the band’s world, and its intimacy made me feel even more connected to a band I already counted as one of my favorites. I also felt that connection when I browsed the detailed listing of of the band’s gigs, which not only lists the dates and cities, but usually the venue, opening bands, and number of attendees as well. Of course, the first thing I did was look up the gigs I saw, remembering who played, who I went with, and everything else that comes flooding back. The book makes me feel like those aren’t just my isolated memories, they’re times I shared with the Subhumans and all their other fans.

We had some copies of Silence Is No Reaction in stock at Sorry State, but we’re sold out at the moment. I’ll do my best to get a restock in soon!

This was a long week for me, with a busy workweek leading into a grueling weekend spent helping at the store during the day and catching shows at Hopscotch in the evenings. I’m not sure how many people outside Raleigh know about Hopscotch, but I enjoy going every year. It’s a corporate music festival, but one with a reputation for booking more interesting indie and underground bands. Hopscotch takes over every venue in downtown Raleigh, and I’m pretty sure hundreds of bands play over the course of the weekend. This year I saw a lot of different stuff, including Pavement, the spiritual jazz ensemble Irreversible Entanglements, and the classic New York dance-punk group ESG. There was a stand-up comedy show this year, and Sarah Sherman’s set had me doubled over. And, in something of a Hopscotch tradition, there was a punk show at the tiny dive bar Slim’s, this year featuring scorching sets from locals DE()T and Paranoid Maniac alongside headliners Cro-Mags. The Cro-Mags set was crazy, but they only played like 4 songs from Age of Quarrel. It was a fun weekend, but it wore me out.

None of that has anything to do with my staff pick this week, which is a formative record from my youth just reissued on Vinyl Conflict Records.

4 Walls Falling: Culture Shock 12” (Vinyl Conflict Records)

I grew up in Virginia, and 4 Walls Falling was one of the first local hardcore bands I heard about. I think my high school girlfriend’s older sister had dated someone who played bass for the band… whether or not that was true, said girlfriend had a CD of Food for Worms that she played to death. I’m not sure how I felt about Food for Worms at the time, but when I started going to shows in 1995, 4 Walls t-shirts were everywhere, probably the second most common shirt at any show after Avail, whose shirts were ubiquitous. I understood they were an important band, which led me to pick up Culture Shock. I remember I was at the Outer Banks on vacation with my family, and I looked in the yellow pages for record stores. I found one and went there, and surprisingly they had a great selection of punk. Browsing the CDs, I came across Culture Shock, having no idea it existed until I saw it in front of me. I remember playing the CD on the tiny boom box I had brought to the beach, and I know immediately this record was the reason people were still wearing 4 Walls shirts several years after the band had broken up.

I played Culture Shock to death over the next few years, and even now I can sing along with all of Taylor Steele’s rapid-fire lyrics. I responded right away to 4 Walls’ brisk tempos, big riffs, and sometimes quirky, always interesting rhythmic changes. While 4 Walls were often viewed as part of the youth crew scene, their music didn’t fit that template comfortably. Unlike the comparatively primitive Revelation bands, 4 Walls’ music sounded progressive, even adventurous. I had little point of reference for their style at the time, but listening to it now, I wonder if Bad Brains’ I Against I was a big influence, particularly its groovy metallic rhythms. 4 Walls also differed from the youth crew world in their lyrical approach, which had more in common with bands like Crucifix and Subhumans. Lyrics often came from a personal perspective, like “Filled” and “Price of Silence,” whose subject of struggling with how to respond to racism had particular resonance for this southern teenager. But more often, Steele wrote about a bigger picture where powerful institutions control and exploit the public and the environment, as in “Culture Shock” and “Greed.” I soaked up Taylor’s message like a sponge, and it helped to prime me for the anarcho-punk I was discovering at the same time. 30-something years later, the lyrics on Culture Shock still sound on point to me.

Familiarizing myself with the rest of 4 Walls Falling’s discography in the pre-Discogs / YouTube age was a slow process. When I was still in high school, a friend put the Burn It b/w Happy Face single on a mix tape and I loved those tracks. Even today, I think this single might be 4 Walls’ shining moment, sounding a little more intense and punk rock than Culture Shock’s more staid production, and with songs that hint at the progressive character of their later work, but keeping, even topping, the intensity of their earlier recordings. Once I got online in 1997 and discovered eBay shortly after that, “4 Walls Falling” was one of my first saved searches. Their shirts turned up way more than their recordings, and at one time I had a pretty gnarly collection of original 4 Walls Falling t-shirts. Eventually I picked up the two EPs that came between Culture Shock and Food for Worms. I remember being blown away when I bought a copy of the Burn It / Happy Face CD single for completion’s sake and it had an extra track! I even reassessed Food for Worms every once in a while. I don’t think I got a copy of their first EP until the late 2000s, and while I think some people consider that their best record, after being weaned on the later stuff, it didn’t do much for me. That record sounds to me like they’re still trying to figure it out.

Another highlight of my 4 Walls fandom was when they played a reunion show in Washington, DC in June 2000. I had missed the band’s original era by a couple of years, so I was super excited to see them live. I thought they played a great set. The show was also a stacked bill with Rain on the Parade, a very early Strike Anywhere, No Justice, and a demo-era American Nightmare.

Vinyl Conflict’s new issue of Culture Shock was a great opportunity for me to revisit this record, and I enjoyed the improved mastering job and the additional inserts, which offer archival material alongside testimonials about the band’s impact. It always intrigued me that Culture Shock was the first release on Jade Tree Records, and there’s an essay from Darren Walters that fleshes out that story. I’m curious to see if younger people respond to 4 Walls Falling’s music. I feel very close to it, and while it evokes a particular time and place for me, it’s also oblivious to the musical trends of its time in a way that makes it kind of timeless, and hence ripe for rediscovery. Check it out and, if it moves you, we have you covered on your very own copy.

Savageheads: Summer Demo MMXXIII cassette (Active-8)
The Massacred: A Look into the Bowels of Hell cassette (Active-8)

I didn’t buy a single record on the Scarecrow / Vidro tour. I used to come back from any tour I did—even a short one—with boxes of records, but not this time. Mainly, this was because we didn’t really go to any record stores. Besides a short trip to a stereotypically grungy Cleveland beach (there was literally a dead rat on the shore), we didn’t do much of anything aside from hang on the tour. Not that I’m complaining! The good thing about two bands touring together is that it’s way more fun… maybe it’s because if the two bands don’t know each other super well everyone is kind of on their best behavior. Maybe it’s that you’re in that exciting period of getting to know one another when you’re digging past surface-level interactions but comparatively blind to things that might, in the long-term, coagulate into annoyances. Who knows, really? One thing I can tell you about large touring parties, is that they’re a fucking logistical nightmare. Getting from one place to another always takes ages. Someone has always wandered away, the driver has gotten lost in conversation with a local, someone is hungover and puking… actually, I don’t think anyone puked on this tour. But yeah, with such a large touring party, it was a struggle just to keep everyone fed and make it to the gigs on time.

While I didn’t buy any records, I did buy a handful of tapes. I don’t particularly love tapes, but there are things I love about them. A lot of them sound really good. A lot of them sound really bad. You can’t really tell until you pop it in the deck, and that’s part of the fun I guess. It’s really fun to see a band live as your first impression, then pick up the tape at the gig and see how the musicians translated their ideas to recordings. I used to experience that all the time, but it rarely happens these days, when most bands try to get some kind of music online before they play any gigs. It’s a shame, because I think for most young bands their live set is going to be way stronger than anything they record.

Enough pontificating about tapes… let’s get to these two releases I want to write about this week. Both of them are on Active 8, and I picked up both directly from Mark of Active 8 at Scarecrow and Vidro’s Boston show. It’s cool that both of these releases are from established bands who have already put out vinyl, but are teasing or working out newer material. I’m not sure if the goal is to get some of the tracks out there and see what people think, or just to have something to sell at gigs while their new releases percolate (Boston bands always seem to take forever!), but I’m happy to hear both of them.

Savageheads’ tape is three new songs and an Insane cover; the insert says “this tape includes demo versions of some new songs for an upcoming record.” To me, the three new tracks sound a little more pulled back than their recent LP, which moves the focus from the charging rhythms to the strength of the songwriting. That relentless, Partisans-esque rhythm is still there, but the drums aren’t quite so pounding (maybe because these are just demo versions). The songs also seem to have a little more to them… it’s hard to put my finger on exactly why, but they sound a little more “musical” to me, particularly the mid-paced track “They Follow,” which might be Savageheads’ slowest song, but is so fucking anthemic and catchy.

The Massacred’s tape is much longer, with eight tracks: four demo tracks for an upcoming LP, two tracks from their upcoming second EP, and two songs recorded live at a gig in Boston. While the Massacred’s 7” was pretty lean and mean, there’s a lot of variation in tempos and riffing styles on these eight tracks. The seething mid-tempo songs, which remind me of Exploited songs like “War,” are an immediate highlight, but there isn’t a dud here in my opinion. It’s clear the Massacred has a lot of gas in the tank, creatively speaking.

It’s really cool how Active 8 has managed to carve out a non-internet space for these tapes. Part of that might be a supply bottleneck… Mark told me he dubs each copy one by one on a home stereo (they sound great to me, by the way). However, the label and bands have done a great job of not leaking digital versions of the recordings online. There are a few bits and bobs on the Active 8 YouTube channel, but if you really want to experience these releases, you’ll probably have to buy them in person at a gig. I think that’s fucking punk. One advantage of the lack of online distribution for these tracks is that it forces you to engage with it on a much deeper level. Rather than my first experience of these tracks getting half my attention (at best) while I was driving or working, I didn’t listen to these tapes until I could sit down with them in my living room, listen to them on my main stereo, and look at the inserts while I played them. First impressions matter! Speaking of which, both tapes also look great. While the packaging is simple, it has that classic feel of Active 8’s vinyl releases, with a lot of attention to detail in making everything look just so. These straight up look like tapes from the 80s, which is very cool.

So yeah, pick these up if you can make it out to a gig in New England.

Kinetic Oribtal Strike photo by Razorblades & Aspirin

While the newsletter has been quiet over the past couple of months, it’s been a very busy summer for me. I’ve logged several thousand highway miles traveling up and down the east coast playing and attending shows. In fact, it’s only in the past day or two that things have calmed down for me. After the Scarecrow / Vidro tour ended on August 12 I stayed out on the road to catch a few dates of Appendix’s US tour, then I had two nights in my bed before Scarecrow was once again on the road playing a gig with Tozcos and Violencia in Charlotte. Then after that I hit the Sheer Mag gig in Durham this past Monday and drove up to Richmond for the Enzyme gig on Tuesday. When I woke up on Wednesday, my body was screaming “STOP!” Thankfully September looks quieter on the gig front. I’m looking forward to spending lots of time with the turntable spinning and my dog Patti sitting on my lap.

Since my mind is still in gig mode rather than record mode, I thought I’d use this staff pick to tell you about a few of my favorite bands I saw this summer. I saw a lot of incredible sets this summer, so if I don’t mention your / your favorite band, that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it… in fact, I’d say I’ve enjoyed every set I saw this summer. However, here are the ones I hold in particularly high regard:

Phantom I didn’t have time to give Phantom’s demo tape a close listen before I embarked on my crazy summer of gigging, but we had packed up so many copies in your orders that I knew I should pay attention. They were the first band on the after-show on night 1 of Something to Talk About, which is a great time slot… the crowd was warmed up, but not yet exhausted. Phantom slayed that night, an explosion of unhinged energy with insane drumming. They were the first band of the day at Another Lost Weekend and while they sounded great, the crowd didn’t quite match their energy. However, when I they played at Cousin Danny’s with Scarecrow and Vidro, they were once again blazing. Phantom is right up my alley, musically dense and adventurous hardcore punk with inhuman tempos.

Kinetic Orbital Strike I knew going in that KOS was going to be great, but I wasn’t prepared for how thoroughly they leveled everything the two times I saw them. We know from their demo and their newly released 7” that KOS’s songs are lethal, but they clearly put a great deal of thought into their live show’s sound and presentation. In DC, Chris played out of a full stack that could peel the paint off the walls, and I’m pretty sure he played out of three speaker cabinets in Richmond the other night. Trish’s bass tone is also godly, so loud and full and furious. Other bands might try to sound like Disclose and Framtid, but experiencing KOS live feels like Disclose and Framtid have colonized your brain and taken it over from the inside. The one-two punch of Destruct and KOS in Richmond the other night was one of the most explosive pairings I have witnessed in my 20+ years going to gigs.

Appendix I went into Appendix with zero expectations… we all know things can go either way with bands from 80s. However, when they hit their first note at the Richmond gig, I was sold. These old guys scored zero points for style, wearing shorts and New York City t-shirts from Chinatown while they guzzled beer, ripped cigs, and laid down note-perfect renditions of the early catalog. I love this band, and the two sets I saw left huge smiles on my face.

Tozcos This was my first time seeing Tozcos, and they did not disappoint! It’s been five long years since their last record, Sueños Deceptivos, but the band’s m.o. sounds the same as ever… blistering hardcore punk that is as catchy as it is intense, drawing as much from classic punk as it does ripping hardcore. I love all the big guitar hooks, the walking bass lines, the explosive drumming, and the singer’s commanding vocals and stage presence. They mentioned they have a new album coming out in September, and I can’t wait to hear it.

Vidro I gotta give a HUGE shout-out to Scarecrow’s tour buddies in Vidro, whom we got to see annihilate every night. We were all blown away when we played with Vidro in Hamburg last summer, and in the flurry of activity leading up to tour I didn’t have time to build anticipation for seeing them again. However, as soon as they hit the first note at our first gig in Philly I was just like, “oh yeah… this band fucking brings it.” Vidro is an explosive ball of energy, and the members’ constant pogoing makes it seem like they’re riding the waves of pummeling sound emanating from their instruments. It seems like not too many people had heard them before they played, but every night there was a huge line at the merch table full of freshly blown away new fans.

Cicada The Richmond stop on the Scarecrow / Vidro tour featured Invertebrates and Cicada in the opening slots… if there was an award for the gig with the highest average Beats Per Minute this summer, this would have gotten it. Cicada’s sound was loose and explosive, with an unhinged energy that made me think of Koro, Deep Wound, or the most furious early 80s Italian hardcore. I am eagerly anticipating the 3-song tape they said is coming soon. And I’ll also give a quick shout-out to Hominid, who played our DC show share a guitarist with Cicada. Their vibe was similarly gnarly… they played about 5 minutes of explosive hardcore that reminded me of Siege and ended with a Negative Approach cover.

Snarling Dogs Snarling Dogs played our Pittsburgh show, and when I saw the band included Tom and Scud from innumerable great Pittsburgh bands of the past decade or two, I knew they would be good. I was not wrong. All their projects have a different vibe, and Snarling Dogs brings a little rock and roll into the mix, fast and furious but with catchy, pub rock-inspired guitar flourishes. Speaking of which…

Puffer Montreal’s Puffer blew me away at Something To Talk About. I had heard their recordings, but seeing them live was something different altogether. They write great songs, which comes across on record (“Sister Marie,” from their latest 7” on Roach Leg, is one of my favorite songs of 2023), but the wildness of the guitarist’s style gets muted by their lo-fi recordings. My eyes were fixated on his playing for their entire set. I wish I could rewind my brain and watch it again right now.

Alienator Alienator was one of the bands I was most looking forward to seeing this summer, and they delivered both times I caught them. The members’ physical presence is intimidating. I’m pretty sure the non-drumming members are all well over six feet tall, all of them with shaved heads, big muscles, and tons of tattoos… it’s like someone beamed in 4 copies of Al Barile circa 1982 and made them start a band together. The sound is just as burly as the visuals too, and watching them felt like being crushed by a bulldozer.

Personal Damage Personal Damage is one of my favorite bands of the past several years, and I finally got to see them live at Another Lost Weekend. It’s tough for a 3-piece hardcore band to bring the same energy as groups with an untethered frontperson, but Personal Damage leveled the place. Live, they were even faster and meaner than on their records, blasting through their short but catchy songs one right after the other, nailing the manic vocal trade-offs that are such a big part of their sound. This was Personal Damage’s first appearance on the east coast and I think many people didn’t know about them, but after their set everyone was buzzing about how great they were.

Public Acid I’ve seen many Public Acid sets over the years—including a few this summer—but I can’t go without mentioning their set with Appendix in Richmond last week. Heavy on new material from their upcoming 12”, the band sounded as vital and explosive as ever, and the new tracks’ metallic edge felt fresh and exciting. I hope I get to see more sets that lean on this new material in the coming months.

Damn, this is already long as hell, but there are still so many great bands I didn’t mention… Chainsaw, Laughing Corpse, Self Checkout… and of course impressive sets from veterans like Electric Chair and Warthog. If you didn’t see some of these great bands this summer, you fucked up!

No Allegiance: Mad 12” (Destiny Records, 1986)

One of my favorite moments of 2023 so far is when Scarecrow played with Lasso in Norfolk, Virginia a few months ago. The bands all stayed at the newly opened Not for the Weak Records, and after the gig everyone hung out at the shop late into the night, sipping beers and listening to music. Eventually things degenerated (as they tend to do) into drunken OpIvy and Specials singalongs (with Greenough displaying an impressively deep command of even the densest OpIvy verses), but for most of the night Chris from Bato was spinning hardcore deep cuts from his collection. There were jams galore, including a handful of things I didn’t know… how had I never checked out the Special Forces LP? My want list definitely grew by a few items that night.

Another band Chris played for us that night that I didn’t know was Germany’s No Allegiance. Actually, after some subsequent research I realized I did know No Allegiance, at least kind of. The band’s original name was Porno Patrol, whose underrated 1984 7” I was familiar with. However, Porno Patrol (wisely?) changed their name to No Allegiance in 1985 and released two LPs, Mad and No Cash Value, on the singer’s label Destiny Records. Destiny Records has a long history, including at least a few cool records like the Porno Patrol 7”, the Combat Not Conform LP, Cheetah Chrome Motherfuckers’ Live in SO.36 LP (which I still need a copy of!), and Squandered Message’s Getting Blunt LP. It appears the label’s tour booking arm also helped to bring a bunch of American bands to Europe in the 80s… I’m guessing the label’s releases from US bands like Capitol Punishment, R.K.L., M.D.C., and Verbal Abuse coincided with those bands’ tours. I bet there are a lot of stories to be told about all that.

Back to No Allegiance. I was in New York for Another Lost Weekend, and of course I hit a bunch of record stores while I was there. I hadn’t been to Generation Records in probably 15 years. The last time I went, I’m pretty sure the store sucked… if I remember correctly, the upstairs was all CDs and merch and all the vinyl was downstairs, but I don’t remember buying a single thing. This time around, it was a different story. There were lots of crazy records on the wall (for crazy prices, of course), and while I didn’t buy any of that stuff, I found a lot of cool, more reasonably priced records in the used LP bins. (Side note: every record store I went to in New York just calls their entire used section “new arrivals,” which is probably a good way to get people to look through everything.) There were a bunch of 80s German hardcore LPs, which I have to assume came from the same collection. One of them was No Allegiance’s first album, Mad, which I eagerly nabbed.

Sometimes when you hear a band at a party after a few beers, add it to your wantlist, and track down a copy weeks, months, or years later, it doesn’t hold up as well as you remember. While Chris had played No Cash Value, No Allegiance’s second album, Mad was no disappointment. In fact, I think it’s pretty killer. It reminds me of better-produced US hardcore records from the mid-80s, when bands started getting stronger recordings… I’m thinking of records like the FU’s Do We Really Want to Hurt You and DRI’s Dealing With It… bigger-budget records from bands that still played loud and fast. RKL might be another good comparison. Basically, if you like the bands that were still riding for hardcore in the mid-80s without going melodic or metal, you’re probably going to dig this.

It looks like both of No Allegiance’s records fly so far under the radar that they barely sell for anything on Discogs. (I paid the New York City premium price for my copy, but I’m OK with it.) So, if you can track down these records, they shouldn’t cost you much at all. And if you ask me, they punch way above their weight.