CRIMINAL DAMAGE - Call Of Death - lp - 2013

Though the innersleeve picture of the band hanging out on some nice park steps, as opposed to the more traditional "leaning against a shitty brick wall", could have been taking in the quiet East Sussex town known for it's high proportion of pensioners, this is not the same band who appeared on the 2nd A Country Fit For Heroes compilation. This is very much Portland Not Eastbourne. Though sharing the same name and many of the same influences, this Oregon-based band with the His Hero Is Gone/Tragedy connection have been a little bit more productive during their time as a band. On this, their third lp, they once again proudly display a very heavy debt to No Future era Blitz, packing it with the kind of top tier proper punk tunes which would have had their 80s namesakes drunkenly dance around to it in approval. Released by the mighty Feral Ward, always a mark of quality, this is definitely one you don't want to miss.
CRIMINAL DAMAGE

BURIAL - Renegade - 12" - 2013

BURIAL's new (2013) record might have only been released a few weeks ago, but it already has spent a lot of time on my recordplayer. I struggle being concise at the best of time, uttering the phrase "I like the sound of my own voice" at least a few times a week by way of apologyy, so will just quote you the extremely 

apt describtion I just read in a distro list so I can go back to watching the football; "minimal artwork bearing maximum power. BURIAL's best recordings to date developing their very own brand of mayhemic brutality!". Summs it up. I did a gig for them in Brighton the other year, foolishly thinking the punks wouldn't care about the consumer holidays like "valentine's day". I was wrong and turn-out was much too low for what they deserved. They still gave their all. Great band, good people, amazing record.

 BURIAL

LAS OTRAS - 7" - 2012

...one more quick one for the night. Las Otras are a truly brilliant band from Barcelona, featuring at least one member of the equally amazing Crosta (who toured the UK some time ago and played a blinding set when we put them on with Absurdo at the Cowley Club in Brighton....but I digress). I just finished reading the Las Otras interview in issue #363 of MRR (August 2013) on my commute to work this morning and was very inspired to see a punk band, despite some of them being relatively young, proudly, unashamedly, sincerely and intelligently proclaim to be anarchists. That might not always have been that rare, but in a day and age where the wider scene seems to be somewhat overflowing with "punks" who are either already "jaded" despite not even having left their teenage years behind or with those who have not (yet) grasped there was once a community with radical ideas underpinning that noise they proclaim to love....I am hopeful proper punk bands like Las Otras can help shift the balance back a little. 
Intelectual (sic) punks?! Yes, please. 

LAS OTRAS

UUTUUS - Everything Is Shit - 7" - 1997

...for a while there in the 00s some punk revisionists were propagating the myth there was no good fast hardcore in the 90s, "until the "Y2K thrash revival" kicked off"... Although it's definitely true hardcore punk veered off in a variety of directions in the 2nd half of the 80s and continued to do so in the following decade, it is a somewhat US-centred version of events...and even then still widely inaccurate at that. Following the coming of age of the internet, and a generation that can't remember a time without it, punk history is quietly being rewritten again, with downloading helping to fill in the blanks and bringing to the fore bands and scenes in parts of the world which some overlooked to their peril previously. 

Though Uutuus were (or seemed to be to me at least) actually relatively well known when they were around, releasing records which were traded and sold across the known punk world they don't yet appear to be all over the radar of the newer generation of punks. Somewhat surprising especially given the fact they play the kind of '82 Finnish hardcore punk which is all the rage right now and who's originators are household names even in the previously notoriously inward looking US punk scene.

Uutuus were one of those bands that helped keep their country's traditional sound alive by bringing it into the new, at times very different, decade. They are now rightly revered by many of my Finnish punk friends as hugely important. I loved hearing Markku Hirvelä from Toinen Vaihtoehto zine talk so enthusiastically about them on a recent MRR radio show. Hopefully it inspired some kids to check them out and pick up their records. If you're one of them; both their eps can be easily found for little money, especially in the US where I regularly come across copies, and though the lp is a little more difficult to locate at a very cheap price, it should still not prove too difficult. All of their stuff rules. I've been playing this specific 7" since first picking it up in the 90s, digging it out of the collection every so many weeks, and it never ever gets tired....not sure my neighbours necessarily agree mind.

UUTUUS

PERDITION - 7" - 2010

 

The old joke, popular in an embarrassingly high number of European countries, used to be that the average American had so little knowledge of the world beyond their nation's borders most thought "Denmark was the capital of Amsterdam". Ignoring the fact this assertion usually said as much about the superiority complex of many of our continent's inhabitans, most of whom who'd struggle to pinpoint even the biggest US cities on a map themselves, as it did about some of our friends across the ocean, I would wager NY based PERDITION would definitely be able to point out Sweden and Japan at least. In fact, I bet they would be able to even name, and have a good humored crack at the pronouncation of, a few of it's cities, then proceed to educate the locals on some of the 80s bands that hailed from there they themselves might have missed. This, Perdition's 2nd 7" pays musical homage to the spikey haired Swedish and Japanese punks that took the early 80s UK sounds of Discharge, Chaos UK and Disorder (who Perdition might just have heard of as well...) and perfected it into something much harsher, much rawer and much more aggressive. It's another total winner on the ever consistent Distort Reality label, with actual proper tunes as opposed to noise for the sake of it...and to top it off sporting what must be one of the best record covers in recent history.
PERDITION

PEROXIDE - Can You Hear The Sound Of Peace - 7" - 2012

Portland-based Distort Reality has consistently been releasing high quality punk since the early 00s. PEROXIDE's debut ep is no exception. The record cover will be enough for most to decide whether they're going to be into this or not and this 7" most definitely delivers on what it visually already promises on the metaphorical 'tin'; raw fuzzed out hardcore punk by folks who will surely own more than one Disorder or Atrocious Madness record between them. If you've been digging the re-awakening of the US scene to the distortion drenched punk sounds of Europe and Japan in recent years, via the like of Bloodkrow Butcher, Perdition and Nomand for instance, have a listen to this.

PEROXIDE

RUBBISH HEAP - lp - 1999

Rubbish Heap are often overlooked, probably not helped by the somewhat infantile name they gave themselves when they were young pups and just started out. Over the years they outgrew both said name ,and no doubt their own initial expectations, and turned into something quite special. Due to living close to the Belgium border, I got to see them a lot in the mid to late 90s, and especially in their final stages of being a band, they were noticeably improving all the time. Rubbish Heap did a fine 7" and a split 7" with their German friends Upset, but this lp remains their true masterpiece. I actually remember it coming out after or just when they were already breaking up, with somewhat surprisingly vivid memories of people passing it around excitedly at a gig in my old stomping ground of Horst rushing back just now. I have no idea what I did last week, but that I remember? Ah, the legendary priorities of punks...
Anyway, if you enjoy walks along the path carved out by Econochrist, Born Against, Eucharist and Hail Mary...have a wander down this lesser known, somewhat overgrown and unkempt, side-trail. I guarantee you won't be disappointed by what you find there.
RUBBISH HEAP