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La Urss: Nuevo Testamento 12” (Discos MMM) Fourth album from this veteran punk band from Spain. I’ve always thought La Urss was great (especially live), and I remain confused why they aren’t bigger. Perhaps Nuevo Testamento will be the one that pushes them through to wherever they’re trying to go, because it’s a real step up. If you were watching their discography like a movie, Nuevo Testamento is when things transform from black and white into brilliant color. This isn’t to knock their other records (which were also excellent), but Nuevo Testamento adds another dimension to La Urss’s music. In particular, it seems like the band has transcended punk rock, at least to an extent. They still sound punk, but they’re also more than that, with a wider range of sounds incorporated into their sonic palette and their songwriting growing to accommodate a wider range of moods and textures. They’ve always been able to craft a great pop hook, but on Nuevo Testamento they deploy those hooks in the service of something greater, something more like art than just a bouncy, fun punk record. God bless labels like Discos MMM and Todo Destruido for making sure that there are great records like this in the world even if they won't move a bazillion units.

Vittna: 2 Songs + Live at the Hive cassette (self-released) After a scorching demo last year, Raleigh’s Vittna follow things up with this five-song cassette. The first two tracks are from an upcoming 7”, while the other three are recorded live in the band’s practice space (including the Sacrilege cover they’ve been playing live for a while now). If you missed the first Vittna cassette (shame on you!), the band features the creative core of Raleigh favorites Blackball, but to my ears they amplify the more haunting and unique aspects of that band’s sound, making their strengths the central focus rather than just an added spice in a main meal of meat and potatoes. Specifically, those interesting aspects are the quirky / surprising rhythms and the dark and melodic guitar work. Not that Vittna aren’t a hardcore band—they are—but they’re a densely layered, ambitious hardcore band in the vein of Articles of Faith or Everything Falls Apart-era Hüsker Dü, albeit with more Discharge influence than either of those two bands displayed on the surface. If you’re looking for a more modern reference point, Sickoids’ great No Home LP is a great point of reference as the balance between explosive gestalt and meticulous and subtle composition and performance is similar here. Fortunately there’s enough music on this tape to keep it close to the player for the next couple of months, but it really has me salivating for the full 7”, which is the point I guess. Highly recommended.

Forward: Another Dimension 7” (Farewell) You know, I’ve been buying Forward records for close to two decades now, and I think Another Dimension may be the first one I’ve listened to without secretly hoping that it was a Death Side record. I think that says a lot more about me than it does about the band… Forward has always been great and I’ve enjoyed their records a lot, but for all of their basic similarities (loud guitars, Ishiya’s vocals, etc.) they are a different band than Death Side. Now that their reunion shows are a semi-regular occurrence, I can get past the Death Side thing and appreciate Forward for what they are, which is a unique and powerful band. If you’ve followed Forward’s career there aren’t many surprises on this latest record. While they went through a period in the early 00s when they sounded quite poppy to my ears (they actually sounded similar to Paintbox, albeit without Chelsea’s trademark guitar heroics), on their last several releases Forward has sounded invigorated, with a faster and heavier sound that recalls their great While You Alive EP, but more fleshed-out and with heavier production. Like Motorhead (to whom they pay tribute here by dedicating a song to Lemmy), Forward knows who they are, and while they’re always growing and developing the core of the sound remains unchanged. And like so many strong records that came late in Motorhead’s catalog (like 2004’s blistering Inferno), Another Dimension probably won't draw in anyone who isn’t already onboard the Forward train, but the band's longtime followers will love it.

Apocalypse Now: 4 Track EP 7” (Distort Reality) Debut EP from this raw punk band out of Portland. Maybe it’s just because I don’t follow the scene closely, but I think it’s cool that there are all of these hardcore bands in Portland that I don’t know about, and then suddenly they’ll drop a record on a label like Distort Reality or Black Water. Sometimes those records disappear without much comment and other times the hype machine will catch on (usually belatedly), but they’re always an interesting listen because Portland is home to so many musicians who are master craftsmen of hardcore and d-beat. Speaking of which, Apocalypse Now features former members of Bog People and Deathcharge, and what little information about them exists online simply says they play in the style of Anti-Cimex. Anyone familiar with Anti-Cimex’s discography knows that can mean any number of things, but Apocalypse Now sound the most like Cimex circa their self-titled 12” EP, when they got a little more song-oriented but hadn’t rocked out to the point that they did on Absolut Country of Sweden. Even more, Apocalypse Now remind me of Deathcharge’s early stuff. Like their The Hangman single in particular, these four tracks are d-beat, but d-beat overlaid with a brooding, almost melancholy atmosphere. That atmosphere isn’t as prominent as it was in Deathcharge, but it’s still there, buried deep in the structures of Apocalypse Now’s riffs and arrangements. While this EP is unpretentious and straightforward in its presentation, that atmosphere elevates this well above the level of your typical 2010s d-beat revival band. If you like d-beat but you aren’t a purist and still believe bands can do something interesting with the format in this day and age I highly recommend checking this out.

La Misma: Negociacoes de Pas Continuae Como Fazemas Fabulas 7" (Toxic State) Has it really been three years since La Misma’s excellent debut LP? I guess it has… time flies! As one might expect given such a long gap between releases, Negaciacoes doesn’t sound exactly like La Misma’s older releases, though the sound is similar. The core is still based in the Toxic State sound, but what I like about La Misma—particularly on this release—is how loose and jammy they are. In my own bands, we compose everything meticulously… when we write songs we decide to play this riff four times, then that one six, and on and on until the end of the song, and we play it the same way every time. However, La Misma’s songs are more fluid and organic, like they’re based around grooves rather than composed as discrete sections and then welded together. Consequently, there’s something about La Misma’s music that reminds me more of Fun House-era Stooges or Can, although on the surface they sound nothing like either of those groups. What they have in common is that each song has a groove. The groove is the song's core and the rest of the band works around it. You might hear a catchy lead guitar melody pop out for a second or the vocals might come out front for a little bit, but the groove is persistent and keeps the songs chugging along with a motorik-esque hypnotic quality. The band foregrounds that unique aspect of their playing on this EP, and consequently it's more realized and original than La Misma’s previous releases, which were already outstanding. As always with Toxic State you also get cool packaging packed with artwork and information (including English translations of the lyrics, which is always helpful for those of us trapped in our monolingual bubbles), so here’s another one on Toxic State that gets the “highly recommended” tag.

Porvenir Oscuro: S/T 7” (Always Restrictions) Debut 7” from this punk band that has been kicking around New York for a minute; they released a demo last year and now they transition to wax. While Porvenir Oscuro are from New York, they remind me a lot more of a lot of Texas bands than the sound I associate with New York punk (and Toxic State-affiliated bands in particular). Like bands such as Vaaska and Criaturas, there’s a lot of classic punk lurking deep within Porvenir Oscuro’s raw punk aesthetic. The sound of the guitar and drums are indebted to Discharge, but they build songs around straightforward verse/chorus/verse structures more akin to what you’d find in UK82 punk like Vice Squad, albeit with melodies and riffing that are both more sophisticated than that comparison would seem to indicate. I also hear the propulsive but still poppy hardcore of Finnish bands like Appendix or Lama in PO’s sound, and as a sucker for punk that balances rawness and rage with structure and composition I can’t help but fall for this EP. If your tastes run in a similar direction, I don’t think you can go wrong with this record. 

S.H.I.T.: What Do You Stand For? 12” (Iron Lung) Coming hot on the heels of their recent discography-to-date LP on LVEUM, here’s the long-awaited debut LP from Toronto’s S.H.I.T. It’s funny, I might not have noticed it if I hadn’t spent so much time with the collection LP so recently, but S.H.I.T. has changed things up for this LP. A lot of that might be down to a change in the drummer position, as Ivan from Kremlin and School Jerks now mans the skins. The first thing you’ll hear is that S.H.I.T. is way faster on this release than they’ve ever been before. They blaze along at a scorching, Kremlin-esque tempo for the entire record, only slowing things down for the final track, “Losing in the Twenty-First Century.” Everything else is familiar—Ryan’s vocals still have a ton of reverb and the band remains an unfathomably deep wellspring of classic riffs—but the faster tempos change the overall vibe somewhat. Listening to earlier S.H.I.T. releases was like riding a rickety old wooden roller coaster, like the car could fly off the tracks at any moment, or maybe the entire structure would splinter and send everyone hurtling toward their deaths. They seemed unstable, and consequently dangerous and terrifying. However, on What Do You Stand For?, S.H.I.T. are in full-on battering ram mode. Rather than a rickety old wooden coaster that makes you fear for your life, this is one of those newfangled, heavily engineered coasters with wild top speeds and an impossible number of twists, turns, and loops. In other words, S.H.I.T. is now on the level of finely honed, razor sharp hardcore bands like Blood Pressure and Impalers. I’m sure some people will prefer one era of the band over the other, but even if their center of gravity has shifted, S.H.I.T. remains one of the most powerful and exciting hardcore bands in the world. 

Alexander Heir: Warrr2k book (Sacred Bones Books) Second collection of Alex Heir’s artwork on Sacred Bones Books. I must admit, while I’ve always been a fan of Alex Heir’s artwork I didn’t expect to be as blown away by this collection as I am. While I can see the influence of other punk/underground  artists (particularly Pettibon and Sakevi), pouring over four years of Heir’s work helps me to understand how he has developed his own aesthetic (or, more accurately, aesthetics). There’s a broad array of styles, themes, and tropes at play in this book, like his adaptation of imagery from Japanese ukiyo-e prints, his more graphic / cyberpunk kind of stuff, and his enigmatic and intriguing use of text. More than just noticing these patterns, though, what strikes me about Warrr2k is how transgressive and underground it is. Being a 38-year-old man I rarely get that feeling like I’m experiencing something I shouldn’t be, like a little kid sneaking one of his parents’ cigarettes or passing around a pilfered porn mag (which I guess is something that doesn’t happen anymore in the post-internet world). Heir’s work has that quality of seediness and subversion because he’s giving us the real shit, cutting right to the psychological quick. A lot of times it's cliche when artists use the kinds of imagery that Heir trades in (particularly graphic violence), but Heir isn’t just reshuffling familiar cliches. When I see slogans like “POWER THROUGH VIOLENCE. THEY HATE YOU” paired with one of his confrontationally graphic designs, I get this little twinge like a kid caught with my hand in the cookie jar, because these are thoughts and feelings that society teaches us to suppress. However, Heir dives head-first into these ideas, resurfacing to show us what he’s found through his artwork. This book reproduces Heir's work in beautiful full color (this isn’t a dinky zine but a proper, square-bound art book) and there’s a ton of work here, much of which you won’t have seen even if you follow Heir. I’ll be filing this on my bookshelf next to classics like Fucked Up and Photocopied and Fuck You Heroes, art books I flip through whenever I need a reminder of how artistically and intellectually vibrant punk rock culture can be.

This week's Record of the Week is the debut EP from Portland's Suck Lords! Here's what Jeff had to say about it:

Cold Meat: Pork Sword Fever 7” (Static Shock) Second 7” from this killer band out of Perth, Australia, though I'd forgive you for thinking Cold Meat are from London because they bear more than a passing resemblance to the almighty Good Throb. Like Good Throb (particularly on their LP), Cold Meat have a knack for making straightforward garage-punk sound as vital and as menacing as the genre has ever sounded. They’re not afraid to hang on a riff like Wire did early on, but the songs never get boring. That’s because the riffs themselves are as earworm-y as punk gets, and Cold Meat also has a notably powerful and charismatic singer. Most punk and hardcore vocalists these days yell and bark, but it’s rare to hear a vocalist who sounds like they mean it, like they’re the most terrifying drill sergeant ever and you’ve just stepped out of formation and have hell to pay. That’s what Ashley sounds like, and I imagine that if she gets in someone’s face with that voice the immediate response would be a wounded “yes ma’am” and a quick stop to whatever caused the confrontation. It resembles the power and authority that makes John Brannon one of the best hardcore vocalists ever, but this doesn’t sound like Negative Approach at all… it’s basically garage-punk, but with the meanness knob turned up to 11. If you like your punk loud and aggressive but still very catchy and minimal I can’t recommend this one highly enough.

Faux Depart: Au Pied Du Mur 12” (Doomtown) I thought it was a shame that Faux Depart’s excellent first tape didn't appear on vinyl, but this record is so much better it’s appropriate that this is their vinyl debut. That first tape was a great, upbeat garage-punk record in the vein of the Marked Men, but Au Pied Du Mur expands on that formula. There’s more variation in the songwriting, with moments of knotty rhythms, lots of different tempos (well, they’re all variations of “fast,” but they range from “pretty fast, dude” to “whoa!”), cool criss-crossing guitar and vocal melodies, and variations in timbre and texture. As much variation as there is, Faux Depart wrap all of it up in the same gratifying pop song structure and brilliant melodic sensibility they displayed on the first tape. Au Pied Du Mur reminds me of how dynamic Dillinger Four’s sound was on Midwestern Songs of the Americas, so if that crossed with the Ramones-based pop sensibilities of the Marked Men and Radioactivity sounds like it might be up your alley you should check out this record.

The Landlords: Hey! It’s a Teenage House Party! 12” (Feel It) Reissue of this 1984 hardcore LP. On the surface this LP wouldn’t seem like an obvious candidate for a reissue since the band is rather obscure, but Feel It has done an amazing job of putting together a package that presents the music in the best light and adds some much-needed context that helps you appreciate these tracks even more than if you stumbled across an original copy. The Landlords were from the sleepy little university town of Charlottesville, Virginia, and while Charlottesville is more or less off the punk rock map (this despite Feel It's has reissues of several cool records from that city), its proximity to DC and Richmond meant that bands like the Landlords could take advantage of those scenes’ fringe benefits, like being able to play with national touring bands and being able to record in Don Zientera’s legendary Inner Ear Studio. Indeed, Hey! It’s a Teenage House Party is a great sounding record, with the same bright and punchy sound of the early Dischord releases that Zientera also recorded (and thanks to quality remastering from the original tapes this reissue likely sounds even better than the original). Musically, on this LP the Landlords are very much a hardcore band and could fit right in on regional hardcore compilations like Flex Your Head or Why Are We Here?, but there are also hints of the more musically complex sound that the Landlords would develop on their later recordings (collected on the Fitzgerald’s Paris LP, also on Feel It). It’s like Articles of Faith’s early material in a way… the Landlords are trying very hard to be a hardcore band on this LP, but there are innumerable hints they’re so much more than just a hardcore band. As I mentioned before, the sound on this reissue is top-notch, and it also comes with a full-size zine jam-packed with liner notes and never-before-seen photos. If you’re in to the Radio Raheem school of hardcore archeology you’ll find a ton to love here, but any lover of early 80s US hardcore will get plenty of spins out of this one.

Protomartyr: Consolation 12” (Domino) I must admit that I’ve been hot and cold on Protomartyr lately. I’ve listened to their records as they came out (we even carried their early singles back when they were first released) and loved everything up to Under Color of Official Right, but then they started to lose me. The The Agent Intellect and Relatives in Descent are rather dour records… they were extremely dark, and I’m not sure if iall of that darkness was too much for me or if I was just not interested in hearing something so not punk, but those records never clicked with me like the earlier ones did. Further, while I’ve always loved the band’s ambition, parts of those latter two records may have crossed the line between ambitious and pretentious. That’s not meant to be a slight against those records… many of my favorite records of all time are so heady and such intense listening experiences I barely ever listen to them. I never put on Joy Division’s Closer or Wire’s 154 unless I’m in exactly the right mood, but I know that when I am in that mood they will hit me hard. Anyway, the four tracks on Consolation are something of a retreat from the depths of darkness probed on the last two LPs. There’s more of a spring in the band’s step, the tempos are sprightlier, and the arrangements are denser, without the vast, open spaces of their recent stuff (which is another thing that those records have in common with Closer). Adding Kelly Deal from the Breeders on backing vocals is also great. It’s like a trump card in the band’s back pocket… whenever Kelly’s voice pops into the mix my ears perk up and I stop whatever I’m doing and just listen. If you’ve also drifted away from Protomartyr this is a good place to jump back aboard, as these four tracks won’t overstay their welcome, and they’ll also remind you of why we all flipped for this band in the first place.

Headsplitters: Tomorrow 7” (Brain Solvent Propaganda) Debut EP from this New York band and it is a beast. While I know Brain Solvent Propaganda primarily for releasing raw punk and d-beat, Headsplitters combine aspects of that sound with more straightforward, even metallic hardcore. The production is beefy and noisy a la Pollen or Vägra, but the riffs and songwriting (and the vocals to an extent) remind me more of a band like Direct Control. In other words, the mix is roughly 85% classic US hardcore and 15% thrash/metal… if you like older, not-quite-crossover like Attitude Adjustment’s early stuff (particularly their pre-LP recordings), COC, or Final Conflict this will be right up your alley. The production and performances here are explosive, using the everything-in-the-red crust sound of the Shitlickers EP. If you like wild and noisy hardcore you will not do much better than this in 2018… highly recommended.

Bound: Lost Songs 7” (Warthog Speak) Compilation of three unreleased and/or hard to get songs from this 90s hardcore band out of Massachusetts. I remember seeing Bound’s name in zines around this time, but I never saw them and never laid hands on any of their records. They remind me of many bands I saw in the late 90s… the pictures on this record really bring me back to that time… big pants, two-sizes-too-large Quicksand t-shirts, baseball caps, shows in VFW halls… it looks like Bound’s experience of 90s hardcore was similar to mine. Anyway, like I said these tracks remind me of many bands I saw back then, but they’re so much better than I remember many bands of this ilk being. In particular, they remind me of early (i.e. Halo in a Haystack and earlier) Converge, but these tracks explode out of the speakers in a way that those records never did. I suppose that’s why Warthog Speak is getting these songs out there. Even though these tracks are outside of that label’s typical wheelhouse of 80s-inspired hardcore, these recordings are so explosive they deserve to be heard. I’m sure I lost many of you at “90s hardcore band,” but if you have a soft spot for this style I’d recommend checking this out. While it doesn’t have the technical complexity that bands like Converge and Cave In were exploring, what it lacks in finesse it makes up for in brute force.

Alienation: Bitter Reality 7” (Warthog Speak) Latest 7” from this great Canadian hardcore band, and the eleven songs crammed onto this 7” are proof they haven’t changed their habit of writing short, fast, and loud rippers. The comparisons are the same as what I made on their earlier records… Neos, Siege, Septic Death, Deep Wound, and other 80s bands that pushed the limits of how fast hardcore could get. Those bands existed in a pre-grindcore world, and Alienation are similarly oblivious to grind… they never use blastbeats and their songs are structurally straightforward hardcore songs in the vein of Negative Approach, only they’re played at the maximum speed they can reach before they disintegrate into an incoherent blur. The production is bright and punchy but still raw, the performances are tight, and the whole thing rips out of your speakers with the crazed force of a wounded lion. If that sounds like your idea of a great hardcore record then it’s obvious that you need to get this on your turntable post haste.

Insinuations: Prompt Critical 7” (Feel It) Feel It Records reissues another piece of punk ephemera from Virginia; while most of their earlier reissues are from the hardcore era, this one goes back to 1979. The band released the original in an impossibly rare edition of 100 copies, so you might as well give up on ever acquiring one of those and grab this reissue if you’re interested. Musically, Insinuations are a bit of a head-scratcher. Not punk by any current usage of the term, Insinuations come off like a group of artists and intellectuals excited by the possibilities of punk but not interested in “being” punk or following the scene’s rules and conventions. They smash together a number of sounds on these two tracks… I hear the music hall sounds of Tom Waits’ early stuff, the deconstructed rock of Pere Ubu, the home-made rhythms of no wave groups like DNA and the Theoretical Girls, and the robotic funk of early Devo. I don't know if Insinuations listened to any of those things, but those sounds were being made around the same time and it’s clear that Insinuations were breathing the same air. If you’re looking for fast and dumb KBD punk a la Freestone you’re barking up the wrong tree, but if you like the artsier sounds of bands like Pere Ubu, x_x, American bands similar to the UKDIY scene, or if you're into the history of punk in the mid-Atlantic and Virginia you should check this out.

Neurosis: Pain of Mind 12” (Neurot) Reissue of Neurosis’s first album from 1987. This one abandons the updated artwork featured on the Alternative Tentacles reissue from 1984 (which I never liked) and updates the original release’s cover illustration to fit Neurosis’s present aesthetic. I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether that was a wise choice, but I suppose it could have been worse. Many people only know Neurosis as the progressive metal band they’ve become, but this early stuff differs greatly from that. While it’s still metallic, it’s 100% a hardcore record. I’d put it in a similar category to what bands like Born Against, Nausea, and Rorschach were doing around the same time. These bands were rooted in the 80s hardcore aesthetic, but felt constrained by its limitations and were seduced, to a greater or lesser extent, by the artistic possibilities of metal. What emerges is a sound that’s very different from crossover—which prioritized the speed and heaviness that were metal and hardcore’s common language—and more like a prog-ified version of 80s hardcore. Imagine if King Crimson had grown up going to shows at the Vats and listening to records by Verbal Abuse and Agnostic Front and you’re in the ballpark. This was a real moment in time, and I'm not sure if there are still bands making music like this. This album is a classic of the era, bursting with ideas and innovations. Unless you’re one of those dullards who think hardcore died by the mid-80s this is an essential, classic album and I’m glad to see it’s back in print.

Regional Justice Center: World of Inconvenience 12” (Forever Never Ends) Debut 12” from this hardcore / power violence band. Honestly, I don’t listen to much of this stuff, but something about Regional Justice Center caught my eye. I checked it out, and I was pleasantly surprised. Stylistically, Regional Justice Center meld the power violence and Youth Attack aesthetics (Mark McCoy did the artwork as well) with tougher hardcore elements. Normally that mix doesn’t do it for me, but Regional Justice Center’s songs are Byzantine mazes of stops, starts, and tempo changes that keep you guessing as to what’s coming next. There’s a Celtic Frost-esque cut-and-paste aesthetic in how jagged and unexpected the transitions are. The riffs themselves are interesting, and they never hang around long enough to come off as trite or overplayed. On top of that foundation of jagged, proggy hardcore you also get powerful vocals and clear, heavy modern production. If you listen to power violence and/or you follow the world of Youth Attack Records this is a no-brainer, but this is original, exciting, and well-executed enough that Sorry State’s crowd can get down with it too.

Tarantula: The Very Best of Sex and Violence 7” (Deranged) We’re now at the third Tarantula 7” and I worry that my descriptions are getting redundant, but that’s no indication that the music is! That being said if you liked the first two Tarantula 7”s you’re guaranteed to like this one too. This 7” sounds a lot like the members’ old band Cülo, but it still has all the things that make Tarantula, in my opinion at least, the far superior band. There’s bass, which you wouldn’t think would make a huge difference but it does, and the songs are more fleshed out and well developed. Geza X once again has a hand in the production (though I’m not sure if he mixed it, mastered it, or both), and whatever process Tarantula used to come up with this 7” I hope they keep repeating again and again because this totally rules. The songs are all catchy and memorable, and each track seems to have at least one little quirk or move that makes it stand out from the pack, whether it’s a cool guitar lick, a catchy vocal line, or a memorable drum part. As on their previous 7”s, Tarantula are the masters of adding just enough melody and catchiness to their songs to make them stand out from the pack and stick to your ribs without ever sounding like they’re trying to hard or accidentally sliding into pop-punk. I’d be happy if Tarantula just kept these 7”s coming, but I wouldn’t be upset if someone comped them all onto one 12” for more convenient listening, and I’d be even more pleased if their next record is the mind-melting full-length that the world wants and needs. So let’s have it!

Geld: Demo 7” (No Patience) We were just raving about Geld’s 12” on Iron Lung, and now here’s a vinyl pressing of their demo (which we also carried back when it was a humble cassette). When I wrote my original description about this demo I noted that it sounded like hardcore with a streak of experimentalism, but it sounds a little different listening to it now in light of having heard where the band has gone after. Those experimental elements that don’t feel like the central focus here take the center stage on the LP, and while this demo is still a progressive hardcore record, at its core it's still a hardcore record. Specifically, it’s a hardcore record that’s very much in the tradition of Damaged with its dense layers of noise and overwhelming sense of claustrophobia and anxiety. Doubtless there are people out there who prefer this more straightforward recording, but I’m pleased that Geld seem to be moving in a direction that emphasizes and develops what’s unique about their sound. Still, this recording is an absolute rager, and there’s a reason that hardcore bands continue to articulate the emotions I mentioned above… they’re more or less universal and hardcore is uniquely positioned to articulate and explore these emotions, and Geld are far better than most at doing so.

Damagers: S/T 7” (Deranged) Debut 7” from this new Toronto band… actually, it’s their demo pressed to vinyl, but this is definitely a fully realized release and the actual demo didn't circulate widely. You might think from the imagery (bricks, baseball bats, etc.) that Damagers are a NYHC-type band, but they’re not at all… honestly, this 7” isn’t all that different from the new Tarantula EP that came out at the same time. While Damages are quite tough-sounding, they have a lot of catchiness and a lot of rock and roll in their sound, though the raw production recalls the legendary NYHC recordings from Don Fury’s studio. To me Damagers sound like an amped-up, hardcore-ified take on something like the Dead Boys or GBH… at their core they sound like a rock and roll band but the absolute meanest, heaviest, and ugliest rock and roll band they can possibly be. The recording here is raw and powerful, the songs are downright explosive… there’s nothing not to like here. If you like hardcore you’ll dig this.

Dirty & His Fists: Demo 2016 7” (Negative Jazz) Demo-on-vinyl from Californian punks Dirty & His Fists. We carried this back when it was a cassette, and I still stand by what I said about it then, so here it is again for your convenience: “Demo cassette from this new punk band out of California, and it's a real standout to me. While the effect on the vocals and the way some melodies are constructed and performed immediately recall the Spits, overall Dirty & His Fists fit in snugly in that magical little spot between punk and hardcore that I just can't get enough of. Some of their songs lean more toward hardcore and can start to sound a little like Sorry State favorites S.L.I.P., while other more mid-paced tracks can sound like a less Ramones-y Screeching Weasel at their toughest. I mean, the band comparisons are beside the point because it's clear that Dirty & His Fists aren't simply trying to sound like another band... their songs are too well thought out and their voice to singular and well developed for that. In a word, they just sound like a punk band, and a punk band with great songs, a great recording, and a powerful performance. I wouldn't be surprised to see this one get repressed on vinyl at some point because it's just that good. Highly recommended.”

Cold Meat / Ubik: Split 7” (Helta Skelta) Split 7” from these two Australian bands, both of whom we’ve heard from before. Cold Meat are up first and deliver two originals of their amped-up, garage-ish punk rock. If you’re a fan of their other stuff or similar bands like Helta Skelta or the Shitty Limits you won’t be disappointed as this is grade A, energetic, song-oriented punk rock. They close out their side with a cover of “Love in a Void” by Siouxsie and the Banshees. “Love in a Void” has never been one of my favorite Siouxsie songs, mostly because the band got so much better once they got a little more ambitious, but Cold Meat’s version tightens up the playing from the original version and reveals the great classic punk track lurking below the sloppiness of that early Banshees lineup. As for Ubik, they have one brief original and a cover of “Nausea” by X. While Ubik’s previous 7” had a Crisis-esque anarcho-punk vibe, their original here is a brief and blindingly fast pogo-punk number that has all the catchiness of their earlier stuff but way more energy. Most of their side of the split is devoted to the X cover, and while it’s solid and fun to listen to, I wouldn’t say their straightforward, stripped-down version does anything super exciting with the track. I would have preferred more original material over the covers, but the covers are still fun to listen to and I’m glad to get at least some new material from two bands I like a lot.

Von Gam: 1GenPunk 12” (Ken Rock) Don’t be fooled by the graffiti logo on the cover… this isn’t a Cold World side project, but rather some vintage 70s Swedish punk. Von Gam released a two-song single in 1980 (that’ll set you back $200-300 if you’re lucky enough to find one) and a (presumably) even rarer cassette in 1981, and from what I can tell from the not-very-Anglophone-friendly packaging this LP collects the single, a few of the songs from the cassette, and some other assorted tracks. It’s easy to see why the single goes for so much money, because Von Gam play great 70s European punk with a distinctly rock and roll flavor… fans of the Kids, Lost Kids, and Rude Kids (hell, maybe there are even some similar bands out there that don't have the word “kids” in their name!) will eat this up, as will fans of more modern bands in this vein like Finland’s Achtungs or Sweden’s Baddat for Trubbel. Von Gam dabble in some other sounds too… there’s some ska on this LP’s deeper tracks and more mid-paced, Clash-inspired songs, but the best songs here are absolute scorchers that will blow the wig off of anyone who has more than a few plays on their collection of Killed by Death compilations.

Denim & Leather: Sacred Autism 12” (Drunken Sailor) After a pair of standout 7”s, here’s the debut LP from Manchester’s Denim & Leather. I always feel the need to point out that the band’s name gives an incorrect impression… it makes me think they’ll sound like Motorhead or something, but Denim & Leather are one of the most progressive, artsiest hardcore bands around at the moment. In other words, if angular riffs, densely layered sounds, surprising rhythms, and thought-provoking lyrics are the things you want from a hardcore record you are really going to like this one. If you’re looking for some straightforward band comparisons, fans of Bad Breeding, No, Una Bestia Incontrolable, labels like Iron Lung and La Vida Es Un Mus, and bands who live in that fuzzy space between DIY hardcore and AmRep-style noise rock should be sure to check this out. I’m reluctant to describe this any further because it’s just something you have to listen to and appreciate for what it is. The record is jam-packed with ideas and Denim & Leather clearly have labored over its recording and presentation. It is a real feast for the ears, and if the above references have you intrigued I suggest you pick this one up with all due haste.