lördag 14 januari 2012

Fuck your punk rock #2: Vinyl violence

Hungry Lungs - ST 7''
2011, Halo Of Flies

Here we have three short tracks of fast but heavy metallic hardcore with lots of Slayer-like hooks and lots of rushing midpaced speeds. There are tons of nice little twists of melody thrown into the carnage that lends everything a great sense of dynamic while the vocals are not so much driving the songs as they are just another instrument necessary to the mix. It almost feels like the vocals are secondary and that's not a bad thing actually because the music in itself is more than enough here. There's a crustiness going on here as well as that metallic thing. It's not unique in any way but it's very well done and the songs are all well-crafted and instantly memorable, my favourite being opener Koerperjuenger. I know next to nothing about these guys, but I do hope they keep this shit up because this is some stellar hardcore right here. Buy.


Long Pigs - ST 7''
2011, SMRT

Long Pigs are like some throwback to the early days of hardcore where everything was yet to be codified and noone really adhered to any specific idea of what hardcore meant or how it should sound, other than being noisy and really aggressive. These six tracks remind me so much of the eighties it's ridiculous, and I mean this in a really good way. There's a snottiness here that's rare these days and a feedback-addledness pervading everything that makes the music even dirtier than it already is. Long Pigs have that restless Damaged-era Black Flag feel to them where they do a lot of starts and stops with tons of winding, twisting, dissonant Greg Ginn-like guitar riffs and melodies. They also employ a fair amount of speed which makes me think of bands like early Government Issue, MDC, Bad Brains and early C.O.C. Vocally this is pure fucking snotty attitude and it fits the music so well. The recording is ok, it suits the style; it's sort of boxy in parts and with a sloppy feel to it, but music like this is'nt really supposed to sound particularly good any way. This could easily have been recorded 1983, which makes it ace in my opinion. Looking forward to hearing more from these guys. Buy.


Skin Like Iron + Nails- Split 7''
2012, Self-released

Skin Like Iron blaze through side A with two tracks of melodic yet abrasive hardcore with a slight dissonant edge. Their material is heavy and sharp yet hard to define as either this or that strain of hardcore. It isn't very metallic in nature and not really old school either. There's a definite 80's punk feel to the melodies that I really dig, while the brunt of the music feels like it owes more to the nineties than anything else. The vocals are strained harsh middle register yellings that leans towards the crusty side of things, which gives everything a slightly dirty feel. This isn't really my cup of tea ordinarily but these two tracks are really well done and they're memorable and distinctly different from each other so I've been enjoying them immenesely nonetheless. Since this is my first exposure to Skin Like Iron I didn't really know what to expect and I must say that I'm pleasantly surprised. I definately need to check these guys out further. Next up is Nails with two blistering, short tracks and, as expected, they totally destroy. They're exactly what I was hoping for, and more. This is almost the exact opposite of the music of their counterparts on this ep. This is brutal, devastating hardcore with huge doses of grindcore and old school death metal mixed in.There are no melodies here. At all. The song Annihilation is precisely that, annihilaton; an utterly devastating, rumbling midpaced metal/hardcore amalgamation, with an awesome sing-along chorus to boot. There's a definite Entombed vibe going on here that I love. Closing track Cry Wolf, clocking in at only 24 seconds, is the perfect end to this ep; a completely savage inferno of grinding speeds and shrieked vocals that doesn't let up for even a nanosecond. This is an ep that's been released by the bands themselves and I urge you to get it from, among other places, here.

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