Razorblades & Aspirin #10

RAZORBLADES & ASPIRIN HARDCORE PUNK FANZINE • ISSUE NUMBER 10 • SUMMER 2020

HARAM

STRIKE ANYWHERE | ANTIMOB | ENZYME CHRIS BOARTS LARSON | MATTHEW KADI ALISON BRAUN & MUCH MORE

Gimmie

I’ve had a few conversations lately with people about missing punk.

Missing hardcore. Certainly, there are records to listen to and zines to read and vapid internet conversations to be had but what I truly miss is the sensation of being piled into a room full of strangers, that exchange of energy, that moment when the band and audience becomes one - for me, that is what I miss the most.

I’ll be 46 by the time this comes back from the printer. It is crazy to think about the trajectory my life has taken all thanks to someone handing me a mix tape back in 1986. I still remember that tape starting off with YOUTH BRIGADE’s “Sink With California” and it just feeling like my brain was going to explode. I think a lot about the kind of person I would have turned out to be had I not heard that song.

In this issue, Thomas from STRIKE ANYWHERE refers to the Lost Cause narrative and white supremacy as Prozac for poor whites and as the son of a long line of red clay Alabama farmers and Kentucky coal miners, nothing has ever rung truer. Living in Richmond, watching the monuments fall, the Daughters of the Confederacy burn, and the general feeling of solidarity has been a truly inspiring thing to witness - I hope Nick Hancock’s photo essay conveys not just that joy of having witnessed a thing but also inspires you to keep pushing. It should be a movement not moment.

Which brings me back to that mix tape - punk opened my eyes up to a world of thought and introduced me to ideas that I’m not sure I would have encountered if it hadn’t been for that tape. I shudder to think about what could have been and am forever thankful that it was not to be. It is part of the reason I do this - to help people know there is a bigger better world that is possible. There is another way.

Stay Punk M. Thorn Many thanks to Pranjal Tiwari for copy editing this issue, Carlos Ramirez for the interview with initiate interview, Nick Hancock for contributing the photo essay and all the bands/photographers featured for being an inspiration.

Extra special thanks and adoration to my partner Amanda Warren. I love you forever and always

Nausea

CHRIS BOARTS LARSON Richmond, VA

How did you get into punk?

I found my way to punk through via 80s new wave and then through artistic avenues. My interest in punk and photography go hand in hand. I got into both in the mid 80s when I was a teenager.

There was a pretty good active local scene in State College PA where I grew up. I was drawn to the artistic expression and individuality and the “I don’t want to be like everyone else” attitude. There were local bands that I started to pay attention to, which led me to reading zines and ordering zines in the mail. I started to write to people and had pen-pals.

Around 1986-1987 there were some folks at Penn State that started having regular shows at Finley Hall including the likes of Agnostic Front, Dr Know, Half Life, COC, Decendents to name just a few and that was pretty cool. By the time that season of shows came around, I had already started my zine and was already taking photos which was my way of participating “in the scene”.

How did you get into photography?

Both of my parents were amateur photographers.

My father had been a high-school year book type guy, and my mom was the one with a manual SLR camera taking photos my whole life. My Grandfather had a Leica and used to travel across the country with the family and take hundreds of photos. Decades later when I inherited the basement of slides, I realized that most of them were really not very good. But none the less, as long as I can remember my family was taking photos, documenting family and travel, sharing slide shows in the basement, and putting together photo albums. A cabinet with camera parts was just a part of my life. When I was really young I remember my dad giving me a 110 camera to use and I shot my first roll of film. In middle school I had a camera and photographed my friends and everything that I did. As an early teen I decided I wanted to take it a step further and I got my mom to teach me how

to use the Minolta 201 SLR. I got a roll of black and white film and went down to the wall where all the art kids, heshers and punks hung out and took photos of them. That’s how it all started. I started to take photos at shows. Early on a friend gave me the best advice: listen for the moment. In other words listen for when the action will come to take the shot. Sounds obvious enough, but it is at the heart of the crucial moment philosophy. Next thing I know I was taking photography classes at school, doing independent study classes in the darkroom in high school, and my dad ever the supporter and champion of my interests helped me build a darkroom at home in our basement and put to use all his knowledge and experience and I never stopped.

Do you should film, digital or a mix? Do you have a preference and why?

I was a film loyalist long past the beginning of the digital age. I LOVE film and I love the darkroom. I love the magic of photography and there is nothing like watching the images appear on the paper in a tray under red lights. I did that for a good 20 plus years, but I did eventually get a digital SLR and I can admit that once I fully transitioned, I have not gone back to film. I still LOVE the darkroom. But I do NOT love the chemicals. And I very much love the ease of editing and narrowing in on what I’m after that I can do digitally, both in the camera on the spot, and afterwards. It’s near impossible to imagine the expense of film, photo paper and darkroom supplies now. Man, it was so expensive.

I love that I can now shoot 500 photos without a care. And yet… AND YET — I am SOOOO very thankful that I learned the process of choosing my shots carefully with the scarcity and preciousness of film. I learned how to shoot with film and I learned how to print in a darkroom. For me, both of those foundations are very much a part of my process and I would not trade or change that for anything.

But now, today, I love to be able to shoot hundreds of shots and just shoot shoot shoot and then edit

and pick and choose what I like best. I was always much more of a documentary straight shooter photographer, in that I taught myself to compose the photo that I wanted in the camera and not to a lot of post editing cropping and manipulation.

That foundation still holds true, but I’m not opposed to some crops or tweets now, but I’m still a pretty straight forward shooter.

Why did you start shooting shows? Are you interested in photography beyond music?

I started shooting shows because it was what I was interested in and doing in my life at the time I got interested in photography. Like I said, photography and punk go hand in hand for me. They did in 1985 and they still do now in 2020. I could not have one without the other. But that said, yes, I’m very much interested in photography beyond music. I photography punk and live bands, but I also photography trees and bricks and flowers and crumbling structures and every interesting light pattern and greyscale detail or explosion of color or literally whatever passes in front of my eyes. I see the world in a series of still frames and captures moments. I gotta admit that I love my iPhone more than anything for the ability to take all the photos that I see all the time. It used to be absolutely painful to me to be caught without a camera. Likewise, I enjoy bands more when I photograph them. If I watch a band without a camera, I still see in still frames and caught (or missed) moments.

What do you look for when you are taking photographs? What are you trying to convey?

A moment in time. Something caught out of context. A detail that you would not see if you looked at it a different way. A distortion. Something beautiful or ugly or shocking. Yet my version of shocking is not that of a documentary war image or actual shock or horror. My shocking would be more like a baby’s shoe found in the mud or a nail sticking out

of the base of a plant. I like things out of context, seen in a new and unexpected way. I have always enjoyed an image through an alley that you were not really sure which way was up. Or a shot of a tree that looks like a monster, or a flower that looks other worldly. I enjoy light patterns and movement and things captured in such a way that you can feel something and sometimes not recognize it either. I like images that transcend what they are. Bark that doesn’t look like a part of a tree. Trees growing out of the foundation of a building. The unexpected found where you don’t expect it.

What is your edit process like? Do you prefer your final images to be in black & white or color or a mix and why? If a mix, how do you decide if an image should be in one or the other?

Now a days, I dump my files from a day, or a shoot, or a show, or a week, or whatever — I flag my favorites - then I “color correct” them - then I will again choose my favorites. Depending on what I’m doing or what the photos are of or for - my editing process is different. In other words if I am editing photos from a show — I will just flag everything that I like — then narrow it down again and again until I have a couple or a single favorite. Again in depends on my objective, or if there is an objective.

If I edit a day out shooting — I will again choose favorites — I try to keep the edits loose and include a few wild cards to explore further. Once I have a selection of edited choices that have been color corrected then I usually make some prints. Again, it all depends on whether this is my family photos, my personal work, bands, or trees or whatever. I have everything sorted by date, by months, by type. I have photos albums for the month by year. I have hard drives and archives and prints in albums, boxes and on and on. I find a system or a format that works and tend to stick with it. Uniformity not chaos. I like to keep a linear process — which is why I can easily go and pull a shot from a particular year, band, or place if needed.

Black and white or color? It depends. I started out as a black and white photographer. I shot black and white film. I did my “art” in black and white.

When I switched to digital, well that is in color, and then it depends what the final image will be. It depends on what the use is. Is it in print in a fanzine — well it’s black and white. Is the image itself about color — then it’s in color. Trees and stuff I stick with color. Buildings and bricks and decrepit decay I prefer black and white. Bands, shows and punk rock — it just depends. If the stage lights are colorful and it’s a good color photo — then I like color. sometimes the color is distracting and the image is clearer or more effective in black and white.

Sometimes the reds of stage lights annoy me and I prefer the clarity of black and white. Sometimes the bulb effect of the colored lights on a stage make a beautiful color image. Sometimes the color is the photo. Sometimes the colors are a distraction.

I do both. I honestly LOVE black and white the greyscale in between. I think that there is not much more beautiful that the and grey tones in the grain of film. But sometimes a burst of intense color is the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen and I could make a whole series just about the color green.

Which image of yours is your favorite and why?

What makes it a successful image?

I have a few photos that are favorites in different categories.

One of my favorite band photos is the one of Amy

from Nausea with her fist in the air on the stage in Tompkins Square Park. In many ways it’s one of the simplest photos, but I love it because it’s got so much strength and power. That fist in the air. A rad woman. A favorite band. A moment and time I experienced. It represents a lot for me. I’ve got plenty of other way more action pact wild photos where Jerry A’s blood drips down his face, or Daryl form cXa flies through the air. Likewise there are photos that I look in Fetus squat out of the 4th and 5th floor windows looking down on the willow tree in the community garden next door. I love those photos because I love the crumbling brick and the tree out of the window and I never tire of looking out that window. I also love those photos because I climbed up 5 flights of missing steps to get to that spot and it felt like magic when I got the end result.

There is a photo that says “free the land” on an empty billboard in La Plaza on 9th Street in NYC’s LES, There’s a community painting on the wall behind it and the garden and willow trees again.

I love that photo. It captures the squatters, the activists, the revolutionaries, the crumbling city, and the nature springing out of it all. Free the Land is a statement of taking back the land from land owners, but it’s also for me a statement about letting nature go and grow and take over. And then there are my more recent trees. My favorite is one of the photos of the Angel Tree in South Carolina. A 2,000 year old Live Oak that is massive and gorgeous and amazing and I just want to live in it, by it, near it, under it and I can stare through those mossy fern covers intertwining vines of branches forever. A successful image is one that i never tire of looking at. One that lures me in and holds me and keeps me forever. Whether it’s the moment captured, the movement stopped, or the window into the world or back inwards to myself…. the composition, the movement of the eye as it travels around the frame.

The grain, the color, the grey, the details, the quality, the feelings evoked and the memories of the moment captured.

My favorite photos are old because I’ve been with them for a long time and they still hold true. Much like my favorite books are the first imprints from years ago… but that doesn’t discount that i have new favorite photos and books from this month, this year, this decade, and yesterday. Thank goodness.

It’s ever going.

What photographers do you admire the most (not just music photographers)? What is it about their work that appeals to you?

I got really hung up on the documentary photographers of the Great Depression — Walker Evans, Dortohea Lange, Margaret Bourke White and then Mary Ellen Mark. I went to a talk once by Mary Ellen Mark and then a photo opening years later and when I saw her I cried, just cause i was so moved and so excited to be near her. I didn’t talk to her. But she was such a huge inspiration for me that simply being in the same room as her was life changing. Weird, but true.

But again, those are like my first favorites. Kinda like choosing favorite records or favorite bands — it’s like well, favorite from what period of my life, favorite from what genre favorite or favorite to what end. I love looking at good photos, period. I have studied photography my whole life. I went to the School of Visual art and got a BFA in photography and studied the history of photography. I like a lot of different photographers for different reasons and I’m thankful to have lots of peers who’s work I also

very much admire and am continually inspired by.

Have you had your work published (self or by others)? A photoshow?

Yep. A bunch.

I published my own zine for 20 years called Slug & Lettuce which essentially became a forum for me to print and share my band photography over the years. I was very involved in ABC NO RIO in NYC for many years and have done a lot of things photo related with that place - exhibits and in print. I’ve had stuff on records and zines and books and here and there. I’ve done lots of stuff for bands and with bands. I’ve had photo shows here and there as well — been part of group shows and I’ve done solo exhibits as well. In recent years I did several exhibits at Vinyl Conflict just focused on band photography from my time in Richmond (19972001 and 2005-2007). One of my Lunachicks photos was used for a Vans ad campaign in 2019 and was in the NYC subway and on the side of buildings in Brooklyn. Poison Idea has continued to use a few of my photos far and wide. I’ve got a few photos that keep popping up in the world within and without credit. The internet is crazy cause people find me and ask to use old photos and I likewise find my photos that have been used all over the place without my ever knowing. Currently I do a monthly photo column in the print zine Razorcake and also do a regular one line photo column for them as well. I love taking photos and I love sharing the photos and as with anything you do long enough, the stuff gets around.

What would be your top three goals with your work?

I WANT TO PUBLISH A BOOK or 3.

I want to do a Slug & Lettuce photo book.

I want to do a book that focused on my NY years in the early 90s punk scene in the LES. I’d like to do a photo book that just focused on my Richmond years - 1997—now.

And I could put together a few other collections as well.

Books Books Books.

Asptects of War

Lebenden Toten

Occultist

Aus-Rotten

Look Back & Laugh

Buzzoven

Battalion of Saints

ALISON BRAUN Seattle, WA

How did you get into punk?

As a kid I loved loud music. Black Sabbath and Deep Purple were two of my early favorite bands. I was also a big fan of Kiss when some of my older friends played me The Sex Pistols and Ramones, I was drawn into the sound. When I learned more about the ethos and messaging of punk, it deeply connected with me. I was always an independent kid who didn’t like to follow rules. My parents were older and deeply believed in toxic gender stereotypes. I was supposed to act “ladylike” and “marry well.” Punk helped me completely rebel against those retro-patriarchal boundaries.

How did you get into photography?

My father was an amateur photographer. He taught me photography and bought me my first camera.

Do you shoot film, digital or a mix? Do you have a preference and why?

In the 1980s digital photography did not exist. I shot with a 35mm film camera (Pentax and later Nikon) using a combination of Plus-x and Tri-X film.

I had my own darkroom and developed the film I shot as well as made prints.

Why did you start shooting shows? Are you interested in photography beyond music?

I liked to photograph people. Bands afforded me the option of preferred subject matter and a way to get into shows for free. It also provided me a vehicle in which I could contribute to the DIY ethos of the scene. In the 1990s I started shooting portraiture professionally out of a studio I had in Seattle.

What do you look for when you are taking photographs? What are you trying to convey?

Since I considered myself a portraitist, I try to convey the emotion and energy of a given subject.

To this end I almost always sat directly on the stage with the band, shooting as close as possible with a wide angle lens. Each image represents 125th of a

second of history and I wanted to be able to tell a story in a single frame.

What is your edit process like? Do you prefer your final images to be in black & white or color or a mix and why? If a mix, how do you decide if an image should be in one or the other?

The vast majority of my archive is Black and white. I have some color slides that I usually end up editing into greyscale, because I think it looks letter. Over the last 38 years my aesthetic has matured substantially. I have a library of prints I created years ago and when I look at them now, I scratch my head wondering why I liked that image to begin with.

I have now gone back through my collection and reexamined images I would have not considered originally. For instance. There is an image of Mike Ness from Social Distortion in mid-air and his head was cut off. I was angry at myself at the time for missing the shot. Years later, I was looking at the proof sheet and rediscovered the image. I thought the composition was exceptional in its anonymity.

Which image of yours is your favorite and why?

What makes it a successful image?

That is a difficult question because I have over 10,000 images. My favorites seem to change over the years there are two images however that I consistently use for exhibitions though: an image of Chris Smith (Battalion of Saints) that appears on the cover of my book, In the Pit and a photo of Chris Cornell (Soundgarden). These images are successful because they completely evoke the intensity of both the subject and the subject matter. In both cases there was a lot going on around me but I had to stay focused on the image.

What photographers do you admire the most (not just music photographers)? What is it about their work that appeals to you?

I really like the work of Vivian Meier - she was at capturing the sublime reality of the candid shot.

As for punk photography – hands Down Ed Colver Have you had your work published (self or by others)? A photo show?

Over the years, I have had a number of shows and my work had been published worldwide.

I have 2 current exhibitions. One at the Carnegie Center for Art and History in Louisville, Kentucky and the other at the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle, WA I also have a book I published available via www. alisonbraun.com also omeone also compiled a list of my work here: www.discogs.com/artist/2278430-Alison-Braun What would be your top three goals with your work?

For the entire archive to be seen and protected so future generations of fans can view it. I am in preliminary talks with MoPop to find a way to conserve the collection after I am dead.

For people to continue to discover mywork via exhibitions or social media Continue to exhibit and sell prints of the work Anything to add?

I need to continue to thank my father – who completely supported my photography. He not only bought me my first camera, he drove me to shows in Hollywood and often accompanied me. He could be found at the bar regaling my friends with WW2 stories. I wrote an essay about him for a Brenda Perlin’s book Punk Rocker: Punk stories of Billy Idol, Sid Vicious, Iggy Pop from New York City, Los Angeles, Minnesota, United Kingdom and Austria. My Dad was a good sport and I miss him dearly.

45 Grave

Bad Religion

Black Flag

Bad Brains

Soundgarden

TSOL

Misfits

Synthetic ID

MATTHEW KADI Sacramento, CA

How did you get into punk?

My parents were, and are, heavily into music. I recall watching MTV as young as first grade (1988 or so) after climbing trees, digging holes (I loved to dig holes with a shovel in the sand park. No idea why!) and skateboarding outside. Lots of Rush, Led Zeppelin, G’n’R, Genesis in our household growing up. So, there was always rock music around. Fifth grade was a big one for me. After asking for two years, I got my first drum kit. Metallica entered my ear drums - though an older friend showed me the Garage Days tape around third or fourth grade when we lived on Oahu, it didn’t settle in until fifth grade, and I was hooked on the heavier stuff.

Early ‘90’s hit, I’m rolling to junior high with my Metallica, Primus, Sonic Youth, Nirvana shirts - I begin taking art classes and our art teacher, Ms. Brasher, would let me listen to her Zeppelin, Doors and Elvis Costello LPs in class. I should mention that I had her class two to three periods each day. I took all art classes. She is the coolest. And one day she walks up and says, “I probably shouldn’t show you these, but I think you’ll really like them.” It was: DK, Fresh Fruit..., DK Kill the Poor EP, DK Too Drunk to Fuck EP, Sex Pistols Never Mind the Bollocks, Pariah Youths of Age, Pariah s/t ep, and Social Unrest Making Room for Youth EP. My head exploded and I punished every class I was in by listening to those daily, over and over and over. Then she took me and a couple friends to Telegraph Ave and Haight St to go record shopping. The coolest teacher ever.

I mail ordered The Pist - Ideas are Bulletproof and Los Crudos/Spitboy split from Ebullition and continued to punish my very tolerant classmates.

That was that. I was hooked. Unfortunately, I got rid of all my “non punk” music/shirts/posters at a garage sale sometime in late eighth grade. Probably right after I got my first DK shirt, which I still have. Ugh. Hashtag regrets! Sometime later in high school, I bought most of that stuff back. Yes, even Primus. Sailing the Seas of Cheese is unfuckwithable.

How did you get into photography?

High school hit and I was starting to get over my illustrations sometime in early 11th grade. Throughout elementary school and junior high, I always carried around my sketchbook. Typically comic drawings, weird renditions of Dalì or Escher, many Beavis and Butthead drawings, and of course punks breaking 40’s over Nazi faces.

Looking back, I was insecure about my art, even though I had a few folks around me telling me I was good at drawing. Family life and personal matters brought me down a bit and perhaps drained any inspiration I once had. Growing up, mentally, went into ludicrous speed…

I decided to take Photo 1 with Mr. (Tom) Ray. I think I had class with my best bud, Marty Steiner who played in DFA, The Abuse, Enemy Fire. I forget how I decided to take that class. I wouldn’t be surprised if he suggested we take it together, and so I did. I was all about Mr. Ray’s teaching style.

We got along great and, like Ms. Brasher, we’re still friends. I recently sent him an online gallery of pics to critique. I’ll never forget how he explained

what aperture does. He repeated this for about five minutes and we had to do it with him: “The bigger the number, the more that’s in focus.

The bigger the number, the more that’s in focus” - I put this quote on the back of my first zine as a little nod to Mr. Ray. My great-grandma gave me her AE-1 which was used to document many family photos from the late ‘70s and throughout the ‘80s. I felt honored to use her camera. I still have it.

Mr. Ray definitely saw something in my work.

“You have a unique group of friends (acne/brace faced teenage punks/skins) you should really be documenting your lifestyle.” I did to a degree, but I didn’t feel we were as unique as someone outside of the punk scene would. It was normal to me. I did shoot a lot, but I do wish I had done more back then. Photos from 1998 or so until about 2003 just sat in a binder (same one since highschool), then I got off my ass and scanned them all and put out my first zine in 2017 called I Look Stupid: The First Film Years - 6”x9”, 68 pages of black and white photography. Primarily early Monster Squad and friends hanging out being teenagers. Gilman shows from the late ‘90s and early 2000s.

I’ve been aware of these pics since they were taken, but some friends had never seen these old photos of themselves. It was extremely fulfilling to see the response from my friends. I did two “pressings” of 75.

Do you shoot film, digital, or a mix? Do you have a

preference and why?

I started on film in the late ‘90s. Mr. Ray was discussing that photography is going towards digital and how we should adapt at some point. My response was basically, “well that’s stupid,” and he responds: “You of all people, Mr. Kadi, should shut your mouth.” It was great and I did shut said mouth.

I used that AE-1 up until Monster Squad started touring the U.S. in August of 2003, with The Escaped from Portland. Then one day the shutter reversed on me. I was super bummed. No money + no camera = sad Matt. I saved my pennies and bought my first digital camera, the Canon Rebel. It was convenient, but looking back, I did not grow as a photographer with that thing. I wasn’t into what I was using.

Sometime around 2011 or so, I’m in San Francisco now and working for Apple retail, surrounded by many great photographers (all with fancy gear) and I’m turned on to Fuji by fellow photographer/ crazy world traveler Geoff Mau. Fuji x100S did it all for me. Super inspiring digital cam that felt like a film camera and gave results fantastic results. I was back in the game and re-inspired.

I suppose my preference just depends on what I’m shooting. I tend to shoot digital when I want to guarantee myself that the shots will come out.

I understand the fun and the risk/reward of film photography - I’m just not always down to take that chance. Creatively, film wins for me, always.

It just all depends on the headspace I’m in and the environment I plan to shoot in.

When did you start shooting shows?

I’d say in 1998, when I first got into photo. I can’t recall the first show I photographed but it’s either, Aus Rotten/Resist and Exist at Gilman, Black Fork/ Old Man Homo in Sacramento, or one of many local shows in Vacaville (where I lived from 94-07) with Papa Roach, when they were much much smaller, obviously. I did shoot Dropkick Murphys/ Oxymoron at Gilman, Citizen Fish at Gilman back then. I heavily regret not bringing my camera to Los Crudos sometime around ‘98 or so. Same with my first Gilman show which was FYP and who knows, in ‘97-ish.

What do you look for when you are taking photographs?

Ideally that weird angle with blown out content in the fore/background that someone else is not shooting. I hope the moment happens naturally.

The element of waiting comes in. Photography (and maybe drumming) are two of the few areas when I can be patient and in the moment. If I can capture that natural moment and have my frame be visually appealing with what I deem interesting, I’m pumped.

What are you trying to convey? What is your edit process like?

Ugh. Great question. I don’t have a specific goal or vision for photography. Photos are a reflection of my environment and a helpful guide for my memory bank.

Editing is pretty quick. For some reason, it took me years to discover Lightroom. I used to edit pics in Photoshop until about 2010. Once I started shooting more, luckily someone wised me up to Lightroom and how the editing workflow makes way more sense vs. Photoshop. I don’t do anything

fancy in my edits. I do not want to spend much time on a single image and almost never edit objects out. Ideally, I don’t crop. If so, it’s usually a small amount. Using a show as an example, it should take an hour tops to delete the garbage and edit the keepers.

Which image of yours is your favorite and why?

What makes it a successful image?

Emiyah at BLM protest for George Floyd (prints available from Destroyartinc.bigcartel.com. Profits to go Anti Police Terror Project) King Woman - Kristina being fully immersed in the moment Smoke bomb at Manic Relapse - sunny out + fast shutter = frozen smoke. The camera rarely leaves these shows without sticky beer all over them. Big ups to Fuji for being fairly beer proof.

Aus-Rotten at Gilman - one of the early shots that gave me confidence as a photographer. Plus, I love this band. We drove to Reno the next day to see them at a record shop. I think I ran outta film after we took a photo with John Wayne Bobbit. Yeah, that happened.

Quaaludes at 1234 Go - I’m biased because I lovvvvve this band but - Peggy (drummer) being totally still and focusing while Aimee (singer) rocks the motion blur is what got me.

Jack at Alioto Park in SF (one of the first times I approached a stranger, had a conversation and snapped a bunch of pics. Also, he loves Snickers just as I do) Priests at Starline Social Club - the lighting and that pose just did it for me. That was a great show.

Oh Sees at Potrero Del Sol - I had a tip that John Dwyer was going to say “fuck this barricade, move up” and so I moved in just before the crowd did and was ‘on stage’ with them. Many shots from this show. Honestly, shooting on stage, buried between the floor tom and a stack of speakers is 100% my favorite place to be. If ya don’t get bonked on the head with the headstock of a guitar, you probably aren’t close enough. ;) What photographers do you admire the most (not just music photographers)? What is it about their work that appeals to you?

This is always a tricky one because naturally, I’m going to forget someone…. Nina Robinson, Karoline Collins, Jay Unidos, Christina Iveli, Moses Isaac, Bob Price, Angela Boatwright, Suitcase Joe, Kevin Angel Hair Pasta.

Have you had your work published (self or by others)? A photoshow?

Jay Unidos of UGZ: Urban Guerrilla Zine has been super supportive. After releasing my first zine, I Look Stupid, The First Film Years (Film Photography from 1998-2003 by) UGZ released Let’s Dance You Peace of Shit, a collection of digital and film work taken by between 2014-2017, whilst living in Oakland. Since then, UGZ has used many of my photos in their zines. I’m super stoked every time Jay hits me up, or, when a zine just shows up in the mailbox and has some of my work in it. Once the zine showed up and the mail person says, “umm, you have to pay me $1.90 (or something like that) because postage was not fully covered.” I thought

he was fucking with me or Jay did it on purpose to play a joke. Turns out, this can happen. The original mail person did not get enough and so the recipient (me) had to cover the remaining balance. It was interesting handing the mail person $1.90.

Farida (Free) and Craig Vincent at Destroy Art Inc. worked with me on a big show in SF with Murray Bowles (sadly, he passed shortly before the show.

It’s sad not seeing Murray at shows anymore...), Winston Smith, Karoline Collins, Ed Colver, Dick Lucas, Rikk Agnew, Jason Ruggles/Addicted to Chaos and many, many more. Holy crap! I still can’t believe I had works next to such legends in the art/ photo/music world. Since then, they’ve created a site to purchase works from all these punk artists. All media and original works to prints: destroyartinc. bigcartel.com Beautiful Bizarre Magazine did a cool feature on the show with Winston Smith, Ed Colver and myself. (Queue up Wayne’s World “we’re not worthy” scene), Manic Relapse in Oakland always supports local artists. There we did an awesome photo show with Karoline Collins and Rob Coons. Punk Rock and Paintbrushes, Punk Rock Bowling alongside Winston Smith, which is still nuts to me. A perk of being in the Fallout Crew. The PRB folks used a portrait of Winston for marketing I wasn’t able to attend, but Winston sent me a some iPhone photos of his face up on the big Jumbotron screens all over Las Vegas. Pretty damn cool. I should stress that I’ve been obsessed with DK and Winstons art since punk inception in the 7th grade.

Arnol Zevallos (who’m I met when Monster Squad was playing Gilman regularly) put together Counter Culture at 1090 Gallery in SF with you, our fearless zine putter togetherer person. That show was great!

What would be your top three goals with your work?

1. Use photography to make a positive impact anywhere I can 2. Stay confident in the work I create 3. If uninspired, get outta that shit and find something to shoot. Make a small project to keep that muscle going!

Anything to add?

Thanks for including me in the zine! Oh and more stuff at www.matthewkadi.com.

Musical endeavors: holehogpunx.bandcamp.com monstersquad.bandcamp.com greatapessf.com buildusairplanes.bandcamp.com

Korrosive

Fy Fan

Generacion Suicida

Quailudes

Wartribe

Thee Oh Sees

INITIATE

Initiate is a SoCal-based band that cooks up hardcore that has a lot to love about it.

It’s moshy, fast, angry-sounding, and just when you least expect it to be, melodic. “The band’s sound is honestly difficult to sum up in simply one description,” guitarist Alec tells me. “I think there are many differing aspects of music that embody Initiate, but I guess the one underlying theme is that there’s always a sense of melody despite whether it’s fast or heavy. We all love lots of different varied music that I think adds to an interesting conglomerate for our sound.” Interview by Carlos Ramirez

Lavender is the newest release from the band, and it’s easily their strongest batch of material to date.

As I stated in the intro to this piece, the California group check off many of the boxes you want out of this kind of music, but they’ve clearly spent focused time on making everything flow in a powerful way: “The inspiration for the new record stemmed from a lot of different things,” Alec explains. “The band was evolving musically as a whole therefore it felt right for the next release to be congruent with that. I drew inspiration from a lot of different things for the record, a lot of them being early ‘90s NYHC bands and also CAHC staples like Carry On. There’s also a big metal influence as well with the idea of the instrumental break near the end of the record as well as different riffs that pay homage to old ‘80s/’90s metal, which I love.

“Ultimately, I tried to write music that fit with Crystal’s evolving vocal style which definitely presented a product that was faster, more aggressive, and ultimately a more cohesive sound as a whole.”

I ask Initiate vocalist Crystal about some of the lyrics on the new EP. “The record’s title track, ‘Lavender,’ was inspired by Alice Walker’s book, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens,” the singer reveals.

“There’s some other play on words in that song that I’ll leave for people to find on their own. I was introduced to the book by my professor, Dr. Anne Marie Mingo. She encouraged the class to make most of our academic sources by works of women.

Read about the authors of our books and articles.

Pay attention to what they’re doing. I had never intentionally taken my academics to that level and I became so in love with learning in a way I had never done so.

“I started talking to my grandmother and mother about their lives. I found a lot of comfort in the strength of my ancestors. So lyrically, the EP is all about building resilience. Drawing energy and strength from our past, the present and the future.

Being okay with anger and love at the same time.

There’s so much fluidity in emotion and I wanted to make it clear that’s not a sign of weakness.”

Since I have Crystal’s attention, I want to get her thoughts on a op-ed Madison Watkins from Year of the Knife wrote in 2019 for No Echo called “Female-Fronted Is Not a Fucking Genre.”

“This is funny because if I remember correctly, the Twitter argument discussed was myself and Emma Boster from Dying Wish expressing that we didn’t like being lumped under the identifier ‘female-fronted hardcore.’ That’s why I liked a lot of points that Madison made in her op-ed. I think it opened up a corridor of doors to walk through for further discussion that we could all benefit from.”

She continues “Through one door is the discussion of self identification. Bands should have the power to identify themselves. That’s not to say that there aren’t identifiers that can be used by others, but if someone doesn’t want you to use an identifier, we should be mindful of that. I personally don’t want Initiate to be labeled as ‘female fronted’ because I hate having any more focus on myself than is

already present, but it’s not the end of the world for me either. There’s much more important shit that I’d rather spend my time arguing over.”

“Another is the discussion of available space.

Space is a privilege. Physical and metaphorical.

Having the space to identify yourself can be hard to find. While we had a lot of support with being against the primary identifier of our bands as ‘female fronted,’ that energy is not used equally with others. For bands that want to be classified as femme, I know they face resistance. Those ideas should exist in the same space and they don’t. We should be empowering of self identification in all of its forms. I think that energy can be harnessed by people who book shows and fests. It doesn’t rest on their shoulders, but there can be a conscious effort to make space for marginalized people. There is a fine line between tokenization and allyship. Couple that with the subjectivity of what is classifiably ‘good’ to one in the position to book a show and you’ve got yourself a real head scratcher.”

In closing, Crystal leaves us with this thought: “I hope that those who book shows and fests realize their positions of power and challenge themselves to almost a sort of affirmative action for music.

And for those who are fed up, find inspiration from Sophie Hendry (Firewalker) and Senia Iñiquez (Mala Racha) who made a weekend banger titled Book Your Own Fest, which was made up entirely of bands who absolutely rocked and representative across the board.”

This interview originally appeared on NoEcho.com

STRIKE ANYWHERE

I first encountered Strike Anywhere back in 2000 when I booked a show for them in Ohio with Scumbrigade & Dillinger Four purely on the pedigree that it was Thomas from Inquisition’s new band. I actually ended up being out of town for that show and it would take me until 2003 to finally see them playing in a basement in West Philadelphia & was blown away - combining speed & anthemic melody they were a total powerhouse that reminded me of the first time I saw Propaghandi. Like those Canadians, they have lyrical approach rooted in a hope for a better & more just world.

Given that they just dropped their first new material in nearly a decade, I figured a conversation with my old friend was in order - so here’s my chat with Thomas Barnett.

My first trip to Richmond was in 1993, when you booked a show for my band at Taylor Steele’s old house, 805 Cary, and he ended up being our realtor 25 years later...

I think Taylor was in a dream that I had last night, and we’re just wandering around Richmond, and it’s a timeless spot in the landscape of my subconscious, where Taylor Steele always emerges. [laughter] So he came to the garage where Inquisition had their first practices, back when I was 18, in ‘91, I guess. And he just sat in and watched us, and it was awesome, and we’d all been friends with him, he had always been a very public supporter of the young local kids.

Because Richmond also, half of the punks, and hardcore, and art scene at least were always, at least in the first two generations, in the ‘80s, from out of town. And most of the punters, just a random audience, and skate rats, and other folk, were locals. And so you could almost see that kind of cliche divide start to think about happening, but it never did, because we had Taylor and he was local. Really, the rules were that kids would come down from Virginia, get a punk house, shit was awesome, and we all needed that in a way, as townies. And it was just new ideas, lifeblood. Probably a lot of the parts of Richmond’s punk culture that, in a weird way, are an impressionistic mirror of D.C., came from that cross-pollination.

Are you the only person who doesn’t live in Richmond, or are other people spread out as well?

So, Eric and Mark and Garth are all Richmond guys, I mean they live there now, and Matt Smith lives in Carolina Beach, which is south of Wilmington, on the coast. And then I live here. So yeah.

Garth grew up in Canada till he was 12, but then he moved to Richmond and was in the same Henrico County Public School world that I was dropping out of at the time. And then Mark and Eric are from Fairfax, in the middle of Virginia, so they were teenagers in different incarnations of a D.C. scene.

And Matt Smith is from Williamsburg, but he came to go to school in D.C. So anyway, that’s how we all met.

But yes, three of us are in Richmond right now. I moved there back in ‘11 for a whole year to take care of my dad when he had cancer, and that was really interesting ‘cause I hadn’t lived there in eight years, but I passed through the city many, many times a year. I’d do all kinds of walks through Church Hill, go by the old house, see a lot of the changes that you’re living in now. That’s something

I’m super interested in. Were there any of the protests that went through Church Hill or did it stay in the Fan? Most of that stuff that’s happened, it’s been concentrated in the Fan. It’s weird because the way things are communicated now, I didn’t even know about it until Amanda and I were just taking a walk with the dogs and then we were like, “Oh, there’s a march.” But yeah, it hasn’t really happened that much here. There was a big crowd the other day when they took down the Soldiers and Sailors monument on Libby Hill. And that was cool. And the thing is, it’s a really interesting experience watching these changes, knowing about Richmond’s history and just seeing it happen in real time. I can only imagine, you grew up in the shadow of these monuments like a lot of people, so...

Maybe ‘92 through ‘94, we had these punk meetings on top of the Lee monument. We would all get on the plinth and sit down, maybe a couple, maybe 100, or a solid 80, every other Sunday, or every Sunday and it was really cool. Obviously the Avail house was crushing it. All the bands were blooming. We were talking about everything that’s mundane and technical, “This is a new suck, let’s boycott it.” “Okay, cool.” You know? Or older punks, “I’m on the board of these art galleries, and we can do shows on Thursdays. What bands are coming through, how can we organize bookings?”

All the DIY culture of Richmond, all the protest culture. These meetings were fun and strange. And Riot Grrrl was happening, so we’d have a lot of that, we’d have anti-racist workshops, and it was all weird and ad-hoc and fun.

And then rockabilly skins from the ‘80s would drive around in their convertibles and moon us, but everybody was friendly, it was really interesting. So the Lee monument was this place where we’d all litter essentially, and obviously we were there on purpose and to make a Sunday afternoon for regular Richmond folks. You’d have an eye popping gathering, but the police never fucked with us, and it was just this thing that somehow just they let happen. We would try and organize Food Not Bombs, all the things that you do.

So I think a lot of the punks of my era remember the Monument Avenue as this thing that we dealt with and tried to recontextualize with our bodies.

I just don’t know if we ever thought this was possible, which maybe shows a lack of imagination or a level of conditioning that is a part of this painful awakening, which is so beautiful, seeing all this

shit has always been possible. And it just took each grain of sand being put on the scale, one by one, year by year. And all of this, it’s beautiful. It just shows you direct action gets the goods. People that aren’t just in an ideological niche. You can have just some pissed off people who are card-carrying Democratic party, liberals, join these protests, and you need them, ‘cause if you just have red and black radicals and people of color building that movement, the demographics aren’t in your favor until you get to this certain point. And maybe it’s youth, maybe it’s the young generation. And so I’m interested, do you just see everyone in Richmond at these marches, isn’t it beautiful?

It’s pretty amazing to see it. Because it does feel like you see young folks, you see older white folks, you see older African-American folks, you see a lot of young kids. I’ve been going out in the morning and shooting the monuments and trying to shoot activity around the monuments, in the morning, seeing the aftermath, but also noticing who’s there. You see families coming there, and then the most moving thing for me, honestly has been going to the Lee monument and this series of memorial cards about people who were murdered by the police.

God damn.

And it’s their story, and each one of them has turned into these shrines with flowers and candles.

And then watching people with their kids go around and reading this stuff. It’s really, really impactful, and it’s a thing where a lot of people, they see the chaos and riot porn on TV or whatever. But the aftermath, to me that is what is actually interesting.

And like you said, there are all these grains of sand, or the quip someone I heard say was like, “why was the George Floyd thing the straw that broke the camel’s back?” And it’s like, well, it’s all the other straws that were beneath it.

Oh, for sure. And this time, obviously, the burner’s turned up because of the presidency, the time in American history. There’s so much exposure now and ways to communicate about these injustices, it’s harder and harder to turn away or to not know that it happened ‘cause it didn’t happen in front of you.

But there’s something about it where all these movements, all these people and all these tiny little moments like, “God damnit, why is it still like this?”

Or people spend lifetimes feeling powerless and doing what they think they can do, and then you see what’s possible, and I think it’s ‘cause of that innate creativity pushes us towards justice. Because if all these people are suffering, and now I know it, and now I can’t look away, this is not sustainable. I’m not safe, everyone I care about, and by extension people I will never meet and never know, if none of us are safe, none of us are free. That is a basic moral arithmetic that is now accessible to everyone in a new and lightning fast way.

I was thinking something you said earlier, this notion of not having vision of the possibility that these statues could be removed. You’re conditioned to being like, “Well, it’s just how it is,” that whole lost cause mythos is so ingrained in people in the South, and even people who resist that, you don’t think it’s possible that you could ever overcome that.

But then watching the Stonewall Jackson monument removal, which was the first one to go. I didn’t even know it was gonna happen. I was in the middle of work and I get this text and was like “What?” And I immediately got online, I found a live stream and it was just this beautiful moment.

I know. our roadie Josh was there live streaming it and I was just... I had to remind myself to breathe, it was like that intense, and it’s strange ‘cause the necessity of knowing you can change, knowing things can actually be improved. These traditions were imposed on us. There is no context. It’s just this vision of this lost cause meant to separate people, divide, and then for working class Whites and middle class Whites in the South, it was their Prozac, they could use that to justify every loss, every imagined slight. All of that terrible pathology. And then in pop culture, we’re assigning that to baby boomers, and that’s not a terrible thing, I don’t think that’s untruthful, but I think it’s more like the way that those cultural conditions are weaponized toward people to keep the racial divide there and to keep the moving target of who’s actually at fault, what is actually at fault, obscured. And so, once these monuments fall, we’re actually in the present for the first time, and it was the context of people and not this 40-year period in the past that was then exploded and expanded to Jim Crow and Karen’s Daughters of the Confederacy.

But can you imagine that stuff is now finally in the past? Instead of this... this hydra where you strike off one head and two grow back?

It took this insane loss of human life, and police brutality, and white nationalism giving a wink inside of law enforcement, inside of city politics forever. And it’s just like, they’re finally reaping what they sowed. You’re attached to this, this precious nonsense, this completely decontextualized and weaponized view. This is what you get. [chuckles] Molotov cocktails. And it’s definitely a sense of like, “Hey, we could have avoided all this if there was a great deal more honesty and justice.” But the thing is, it’s not even the resentment and the bitterness and the grief of the actual war. This is something built out of whole cloth to manipulate and exploit and de-power everybody, 40 years later, that’s the same for 100 years after. That’s the crazy shit and that’s an easy thing to learn and understand.

Why would you want to be manipulated like that?

It’s kind of like Trump. It’s kind of like all the other issues, like the pathologies of white people feeling like they’re losing some ground, and people who want to elevate that agenda and build a mass psychosis so they can have political capital. That’s been going on for a long-ass time.

The thing you said about it being Prozac for working class white folks…

And I think it’s been like that. There was something about post-Vietnam too, in the South. There was another turbocharge of this feeling, this weird equating of American hyper-patriotism with the Confederacy in some insane way. And I see that, Mike, ‘cause that’s my background, I’m Scots-Irish working-class white. My dad’s folks are from the Appalachians, my mom folks are from Tidewater and Norfolk. My mom grew up in an orphanage.

I see that shit 1000%. And luckily, my immediate family are all weird politically, but there’s nobody, that I know of, that this white nationalism resonates with. In fact 50% of my cousins married into black families, of course, as you do. And also I grew up. There was a Caribbean population boom in Richmond in the ‘70s, that informed how I grew up, with some accident of history, with a lot of Jamaican families. The soccer coach was a Jamaican dad, there were jerk barbeque pits in the backyard of the particular suburb that I grew up in. Weird shit like that. Also, that got really influenced into punk and reggae, the Richmond scene had a lot of... I would say curation, by the Caribbean population.

The Richmond that I grew up in had these tiny details to it that weren’t just about, “My legacy is being a redneck. Here I go.” There were these things that were happening, and transformations and culture, and I think Richmond’s art scene and punk, and all of the things that were happening in the ‘80s really captured it. Just almost have the sense of, “God, this is something we can build together, that is more truthful, more honest, and includes all of us.”

I think that’s something definitely I get out of your career as a lyricist and vocalist, that feeling of hope.

Between Strike Anywhere and Inquisition, in your lyrics, there’s this notion of being able to overcome things. One of the things I wanna talk about a little bit is this notion of entertainment as inspiration.

I mean, for me, punk is more than just the music, more than just the lyrics, but about creating this alternative culture and making these strides for a better way of living.

Oh yeah, that’s exactly how I feel about it. Not even being in bands but in the tiny spaces between being in bands, I was still... it didn’t feel that different, because you’re participating. The whole idea that everyone’s the band. It’s just “Hey, we found this little door that we all share inside of us. We’re going to put the door here, and then we’re gonna walk through it together, and then everyone gets to show us what that room is like.” That sounds kinda crazy and new-agey, but I mean it. Any art can do this, but the enthusiasm for everyone to partake and to make it something is so woven into punk DNA. And that’s why it’s naturally anti-capitalistic, that’s why it’s naturally unraveling the pathology of culture and nationalism, and all the things that punk is just always driven to do. You’ve got punk that talks about pervert nurses and fun, weird stuff. There’s a lot of stuff in punk, I’m not saying it’s all... it’s not all political. It all needs to be there, for sure.

I mean, I am just as much a fan of stupid bands as I am of...

Right, and I think of that humility part of punk too is important. And obviously there’s been different moments. For a while there when Ebullition was just running shit in the ‘90s, I was like, “Oh God, I have to go back to school to figure some of this shit out. What are we talking about?” But I think that was necessary. There’s definitely this beautiful... I don’t know, democracy has almost been destroyed, but there’s this level of, if we need something, the culture’s gonna find it. If we need a better nuance, if we need to figure out what this adaptation of third-wave feminism is, and we need to understand gender as a construct, like, “Oh shit, here are some bands that are gonna talk about that.” Right on time, and every time. That’s the weird thing, I feel like it is a gigantic collective project of creativity that naturally empowers the politics behind it.

One of the bands I think is so perfect is X-Ray Spex.

Because they took incredibly beautiful intersectional feminism and racial politics and also just the consumerism and the horrific psychology that young women are put through, that queer women of color are put through. And then they also made this strangely bittersweet, melancholy punk music that was really catchy. And they also had these really funny, funny scathing critiques. And I feel like this is one of the lost bands I really respect. And I loved them even before I knew words like intersectional feminism and racial politics, and that’s what we’re talking about I think.

We’re not gonna have very many people left in a

movement if you just have to have a Master’s degree in Social Sciences to enjoy a record. But also, it’s good to be skeptical of what we call politics too.

I think that there’s a tendency, it’s always just about this, the tidal pool that kills all life that is power. So we consolidate things into a political platform and damn it, it’s just already on it’s way to dying. And it’s also not. It becomes a thing that drives people, instead of people driving it. Again, people’s needs, what the community really needs. That’s always the thing that’s ahead of politics. Politics is almost just the snapshot of the thing that’s moving.

I’m gonna try remember that, so that’s one of the songs on the record, “Dress The Wounds,” is trying to be about. But that was another thing that came up in the past ten years, probably. There’s that idea that, “Shit, everything that was wrong is still wrong, and somehow even more wrong.” A lot of punk lyrics have that, and some of ours do, but there’s specific things about the changes in the past decade that we try to address on Nightmares of the West. Probably including, we probably wouldn’t have titled the record that until now. Yeah, I actually was thinking we would just call it Self-titled, and then the rhythm section was like, “No, this lyric, this line”, and I was like, “Okay.” So they found it before I did, and they were like, “Here’s why.” And that’s the fun thing about the collective experience of being in a band where everyone has a voice and has four editors for all the lyrics and it’s good.

It’s been eight eight years since Strike Anywhere has released a record, right?

Yeah. Eight years ago was with that period that I was in Richmond, that I was referencing. And we did an acoustic, we did two different acoustic shows that were recorded, and we made them into a record. The show in Richmond was a benefit for the Anarchist Black Cross, they were doing CopWatch filming and the police didn’t like that, and so several of our friends went to jail. So, it was a prison fund for those guys. And anyway, yeah, so that wasn’t a studio record, obviously, that was just a weird collection of acoustic songs. We just thought it was a weird idea, but we did it, and it was cool.

But yeah, before that, Iron Front came out in ‘09, so that was the last record. So a full decade.

In doing my research, there was an article from 2016 when you were talking about working on a new record... [laughter] It’s true. Well, before the pandemic, we were just doing four, six weeks a year max, just distributed out across continents, countries and hometown shows, and things like that. For example, we haven’t been to the West Coast since 2011, but we’ve been through the East Coast and down to Florida almost every other year. So that’s just kind of where we’re concentrated in, what’s been happening. But we had these little tiny song fragments and maybe riffs, and lyrics, and things that were in orbit. And bandmates had kids and some of them were doing what you would do, play guitar to put your 2-yearold to sleep, or just to amuse your 2-year-old, and hit record and sent it to me just as a funny little, “Hello, this is what I’m doing.”

And then my friend’s son was making some vocalizations, some kind of sing-song gibberish stuff, like kids, the old, primordial language before English.

And they were in particular spots, so I just used that as a fun call-and-response, a way to mark the phrasing, and that’s the song that became “Dress The Wounds.” So that’s one example of how these things happen. And then we’d take these pieces and ideas, and then workshop the fuck out of them during those long soundchecks in Europe, when there’s no one awake back at home and you’re jet lagged, and you’re just loaded into this venue, and 10 hours later you’re gonna play, so what are you gonna do with that time? But also setting up in Richmond, at the bike lot practice space with the boys, and blasting through ideas and songs, and then other little groups would get together too, just the Richmond guys would work on some structures.

But yeah, we also definitely have a thing where we’re not trying to make verbal plans with each other, like, “Hey, we gotta do a record, right?” “Yeah.”

That conversation never happens. We never think we’re gonna do another thing. We don’t wanna put that expectation and that pressure. That’s not how we would do it. And so anyway, yeah, it’s probably since ‘16, certain ideas and riffs and songs have been floating around, and then we’ve been working

on them very slowly, but with purpose to get to this point. That’s just ‘cause we’re old and the band’s 20 years old. We need to figure out if it’s even important for, you know what I mean? To have another Strike Anywhere record or whatever, for us at least. Is this worthwhile? Is it saying something new? Do we believe in it? Does it feel like it needs to feel? Just that stuff, building something where you want to look at it clear-eyed and then make sure that it’s what you wanna say, and it adds to the other 50 songs you already have that you torture people with.

For me, as you get older, I think that there is an editing process for making things a little bit more fine-tuned, and you’re doing these kinds of projects where there’s not that stress of, “We have to put out a record, we have to tour. We have to put out a record, we have to tour.”

Yeah, yeah. There’s another part of this that cuts the other way, which is we need this more than ever.

And this is who we’ve been for our whole adult lives and the end-part of teenage lives too, and this is how we communicate to the world, this is how we know who we are. It sounds weird and sad, and I don’t mean that in a way that’s sad. There’s tons of other roles that we have, careers, lives, projects, even bands. But this is more like...

It’s just like tapping into and adding to something that is still alive, and then being cut, being removed from it is painful and all that. So yeah, and I think also ‘cause your times are fucking crucial and they were also crucial... And the past four years have been horrible, right?

But it’s nothing directly about the president, and I think culturally, and the administration, and the moves of the law, and the separations of people, and all of the terrible, heartbreaking, mind-breaking stuff. It’s on 11 now, and during Obama’s presidency it was only nine. There’s these general contours that would drive anyone to make a record worthy or anything to mentally survive the time and to feel like you’re not crazy, and to communicate with all the other people that also need to not feel like they’re crazy or alone. That’s a huge part of it. I mean, music is the place that you go while you’re by yourself. It soothes you and connects

“It’s good to be skeptical of what we call politics... I think that there’s a tendency, it’s always just about this, the tidal pool that kills all life that is power. So, we consolidate things into a political platform and damn it, it’s just already on it’s way to dying... It becomes a thing that drives people, instead of people driving it. Again, people’s needs, what the community really needs. That’s always the thing that’s ahead of politics. Politics is almost just the snapshot of the thing that’s moving.” you. It soothes loneliness. It makes you feel even those things are endurable and everyone else is going through it. So, with the psychological part of hardcore and punk, it is even more important and resonant as you become middle-aged. Maybe more even than as a teenager, when you were surrounded by people in your little sub-societies.

There is a snippet from an interview that you did where you talked about the songs on the new record. I’m gonna quote it back to you: “The conversations that we want to have and the feelings we really need to share.” And there’s an interview you said something to that effect. And I think that as you get older, it’s harder to have those same conversations with people your same age. In my working life, it’s hard for me to let on about how just fucking pissed I am all the time. [laughter] Yeah. Fuck yeah.

You know what I mean? I’m 46 years old and just as angry as I was before, but it’s more honed than it was, it’s not just primal rage anymore. And sometimes for me, these songs, this being involved with punk still... it becomes a thing for me where it is that conversation that you’re talking about.

This is so good. And it’s also because this is a missing element of how we relate to each other, that we always have to fight to keep. It’s like another channel, another frequency that we have to communicate on. I think it’s biological. I think it’s our species, this is that creativity that naturally destabilizes power, that calls for honesty, that calls for unity. It does sound just like a political choice, that is something in our bones and our blood, and this is a place where the art isn’t commodified. Sure there are consumer aspects to it, sure there is a give-and-take, there’s all kinds of levels that people do punk and hardcore at. And I think, “Oh, that’s fascinating too,” and we do several of those levels at once, but I think the necessity of it is to communicate. In fact, as we get into the digital age and the immediacy of it, the pathology of how superficial it always is in every way. There’s even more of a need to have these kinds of connections where like, “You’re not alone in your anger. Got your back. I

don’t understand myself, I don’t understand you, but we are the same.” Those kinds of emotions, those kinds of feelings are not in the world, except right in our culture. And as we get older, we can articulate that better.

I think we’re in an experimental generation because we’re the ones really carrying this all the way to the end. I mean, I keep up with the folks 10 years older than us, just to see how they’re holding up the totality of punk and hardcore, the ability for it to encompass these ideas. The toolbox, right?

We have access to the entirety of it because of the previous generations, no doubt, we’re standing on the shoulders of some giants and goddesses. But yeah, I think just to keep sustaining this and understanding why we need to is part of our particular role as we carry this into the future. And yeah, I guess I just feel like the need to communicate, the need to discuss these ideas. There’s an emotional payload of catharsis, and then there is some truth, some social and some human truth that stand outside of like, “Vote for these idiots this election season.” Holding contradictions in your hands is something we don’t do very well in America, especially, that fucks people up, causes all kinds of problems. Punk and hardcore have that, that we are all about that, reminding ourselves that we can do that, and that we can find what’s good and make it last.

All the other quotes by better bands that I always go back to. Having these songs out the world and desperately wanting to play them and not being able to is really painful. [chuckle] It’s almost like people are missing that connection of being... we talked about it earlier. One of the big ways of being able to make those initial connections with people is through going to shows, and then those going to shows turn into you are having dinner together, or you’re having weird meetings underneath the [chuckle] monument. But that catalyst to be able to start making connections.

Yeah. When I see the photos of the plinths, just all covered in graffiti and the layers of graffiti and memorials, it’s just... I can’t even... Like, it’s crazy ‘cause there’s a song on Nightmares of the West

called “The Bells,” and it is about me living in Richmond, walking around the city, nothing’s ever gonna be honest. Nothing’s ever gonna be new.

Until the monuments fall. And I had hoped that these discussions were blooming on that, after ‘17, basically. It’s like you write these songs that are aspirational and they’re also just like, this is the only way we’re gonna get to the root of some of these problems, like changing the landscape that people are in every day and removing these falsehoods. It’s just crucial. It’s just so important. And anyway, seeing that stuff moves me in a way I can’t articulate, probably spend the rest of my life trying to describe the feeling, knowing that, “Oh my God, this is possible,” and this is what was needed, it’s just... it’s incredible...

I think having those monuments fall is a great thing and a needed thing, but it almost feels like... at times it feels like that’s the state being like, “Okay, here’s your token gesture…”

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You wanna make sure that this is not just this placating moment, this is the beginning of something, this is the beginning of something where we sustain the actual visible community.

Deciding what their world is like. Deciding what we can all do together. I guess that’s what I mean, it signifies that this entire structure has been burned down and now we’re just growing, flowers are growing up in the ashes, and it’s all of us and it’s beautiful and yeah, but you’re right, it can definitely be co-opted and taken away for sure.

Yeah, and that’s the thing, to kinda keep eyes on the prize, so to speak. You don’t stop pushing. I hope people don’t go, “Okay, well, the monuments are gone now, it’s fine.” I hope it keeps going, it’s always kind of a push towards a better and more just world. Right?

Right. I think, in a way, this is a moment that’s beyond symbolism, but it definitely is a touchstone for that. “This can happen, they can’t take that back.”

And now, we can continue to have this space that gets ever bigger and more empowered for everybody. That’s kind of what it looks like to me. It’s like a lightning strike on the Robert E. Lee statue, and then everybody else gets the power from it, while that dissolves and melts.

ENZYME

I know that it might sound crazy but, the first time I saw Australia’s Enzyme, they reminded me of the first time I saw Youth Of Today.

From the first note they were a wall of speed, energy, and adrenaline whipping the crowd into this swirling mass of manic fury. Now, don’t get me wrong the two bands sound nothing alike as these Aussies take inspiration more from DISORDER than SSD but, it’s that ability to manufacture a feeling of pure energy and cathartic release that binds them in forever in my brain.

Enzyme was formed in 2016, yes? Was there a plan as to what the band was to be/sound like or was it more an organic

Stu: If I remember right, we released the secondnd EP almost straight after because the first ep sold so well.

Stu: The band was formed in 2016 when I was still living in Sydney. Yeap pitched me the idea of Enzyme - Kyushu noise core meets UK82. Initially we had a different bass player Mikey who ended up leaving as he was over committed to other bands and we were the last band he joined. Early days we were very influenced by Confuse, Chaos U.K, Disorder and early Gloom.

Yeap: Both record labels we worked with have been my friends for years. We love the releases they put out and trust they will do a good job.

Personally, these two record labels are some of my all-time favourite labels, so it’s an honour. The Crust War EPs happened when I sent Habi (Crust War/ Gloom) advance recordings and he dug it.

With some communication help from Kazu (Punk and Destroy), we discussed doing a Crust War/ Hardcore Victim co-release so the records will be easily available in both continents. This worked out because we toured Japan the following year and our music was already well circulated. Regarding the Howling Mind LP, 2018/2019 HCV had most of our funds tied up in funding tours and numerous local releases. To release an additional LP would have put a lot of stress on the label and we wouldn’t have done it justice the way LVEUM did.

We demoed the album and made 30 tapes that we circulated amongst friends. Paco was keen on the demo and the rest is history.

Jake: The band quickly evolved from being just that as soon as we started writing the LP. There’s inspiration from a lot of different styles of punk and hardcore going on in there.

How would you describe what Enzyme sounds like to someone who has never heard the band before?

Jake: Aggro Hardcore with an underlying sense of boogie.

Ry: Pop in disguise Yeap: Punk for Punx Stu: I actually like the way you described us in Razorblades and Aspirin number 6 You released your first two singles at almost the same time - what was the reason for that, was it just happenstance or was it by design? If the latter, why? How did you end up doing records with Crust War & La Vida Es un Mus? Why not release everything on Hardcore Victim?

Jake: I had plans to tour Europe with Scab Eater and was planning to stick around for a year after the tour, so we figured it was a good idea to record enough songs for two releases to be released at different times whilst I was gone. I ended up back in Australia after about four months though, so they’re stuck with me.

Yeap: We are glad you are back. Don’t leave us again.

I know you’ve toured extensively in South East Asia - what would be some of your highlights? What would be some of the lowlights? As you’ve been to the US and of course Australia - how do the shows and touring differ from the US/AUS vs SE Asia?

Jake: We’ve toured there pretty hard in other bands, but Enzyme SouthEast Asiea tour was short, three shows in four days, Jakarta, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. If you can handle the heat, it’s an incredible part of the world to tour. I don’t really find it too different to play anywhere else in the world because at the end of the day everyone’s just involved for the love of it. Same as here, same as there. You meet like-minded people, you play in great spaces with ripping bands, the drives are long and hard, and you come out the other end with lifelong mates. Lowlights? Only one, the arctic tundra busses of Malaysia. The air cons are stuck on deep freeze. The only time you’ll ever need a hoodie in this region is if you catch the bus and

need to stop the hypothermia. The locals hate it too, so this isn’t some strange Bule (Indonesian colloquial term for Western outsider) whinge either.

Stu: SouthEast Asia is somewhere I would have liked to tour more extensively. All the punks there took really good care of us, and it was nice to visit some of the people we’ve met and who have been to Australia! It was really comfortable if that makes any sense... I guess what I’m trying to say is that all the interactions where so genuine it’s really easy to feel at ease. I can say there have been no lowlights with Enzyme, I feel very fortunate to have these guys as part of my support network.

Ry: On a flight from Jakarta to Singapore, I’d lost all the money I’d had exchanged for the tour. It was all in an envelope to keep it together and I guess it must’ve fell out of my back pocket while I was passed out or something. Basically, I didn’t organise my shit properly before getting on the plane. And I was too embarrassed to tell anyone for most of the tour. Stupid. Haha. Other than that, I had a great time. All the shows were great! Highlights were bumping into old mates from Ponti and also old mates from EU who were in Indo for Libertad. Making new mates in general. Also, Yu (SKZ) showed up in Singapore to hang out which was cool. Eating tour in KL. Bands that stuck out for me were Gaze Dread, Kontrasosial Braincell, Lifelock, Sial.

Yeap: Coming from the region, it was great to reconnect with old/ childhood friends. Low point was in Singapore, after days of no sleep and drinking, I blacked out drunk, terrorized a dance hall full of elderly folks, almost got killed by Triads, lost my beret and pissed on Yu (in my sleep) whilst he

was asleep next to me. So sorry to our host Hafiz, Vanessa and Wan. Do you think more bands from the US/Europe should tour places like Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, etc? Yeap, being originally from Malaysia - how much has it changed there since you were in Mass Separation?

Jake: Don’t forget the Philippines. They have amazing scenes in a lot of cities and have had banger punk records coming out of there since the mid 80s. Third World Chaos, George Imbecile & the Idiots and Betrayed are some sick ones to check out from that era. They were completely left out of this documentary some Australian guy made about the SEA tour circuit, it’s a shame because they’ve had punk and hardcore coming out of there for over 30 years!

Yeap: I think more Western bands should tour South East Asia. It would be a very different cultural experience and perspective for them. Despite the lack of resources, exposure, government and cultural restrictions, the punks seem to pull off amazing efforts with lots of heart. Every kid seems to be doing their part for the scene, running a gig collective, info shop, distro, bootleg T-Shirt/ liquor etc. Very inspiring stuff.

A lot has changed since I lived in Malaysia. It’s a more mature and established scene now. This can be seen in a big network of people working in congruent for the punk agenda. (not just in Malaysia but the whole SE Asian region) Back in the 90s, there was no punk show spaces. We had to hire out discos, halls, theatres etc for shows. In a year,

there probably be only one to three shows because it was hard to get permit for shows because of strict government censorship laws. Nowadays, there are shows every week happening in punk run venues up and down the coast of West Malaysia and Borneo. I’m so proud off what’s been achieved there.

Ry: More bands in SE Asia could use the support from our scenes in ways of exposure/touring US/ EU/AU. It’s (has been) really easy for us to tour and be heard because we have that privilege, while there are a lot of great bands there that don’t get these opportunities. It was fucking cool seeing bands like Braincell and Lifelock playing shows in Australia last year.

My understanding is that distances between cities in Australia are quite long making touring difficult to outright impossible - how do you cope with the long drives? Do you tour a lot in Australia? What are your favourite oversized roadside attractions and snacks?

Stu: Yes, on the East coast the drives are long, minimum 8 hours. We do an East Coast tour once a year. Perth is harder to get to. There is an awesome crew of people and we were lucky enough to go, it was a wild weekend. We got to go to Bon Scott’s grave and memorial statue so that was cool.

Landmarks... I quite like stopping at a town a few hours out of Melbourne called Holbrook. There is a decommissioned submarine in the middle of the town that you can climb on and get a photo with.

Jake: The drives are something we’re used to. It only hinders where you can play if you have a

really short window to tour here. With Skizophrenia and Ferocious X it had to be two shows in Melbourne and one in Sydney because they could only do a weekend. An ideal Australian tour you want two weeks minimum. Give yourself enough time to go to Perth in the west, play some weird hippy towns up the east coast, swim at a good beach as soon as you’re out of Melbourne. Favourite oversized attraction? Would have to be the Big Dexie out in Western Australia, tour there and you’ll find it.

Yeap: Life did three cities in a weekend covering 1174.8km on the road. Perth, Lismore, Brisbane are great places to play. Still need to go play Adelaide. The Big Merino in Goulburn. Truck stops snacks in Australia are shit. Cardboard sandwiches, pies and sausage rolls. All dry as a dead dingo’s donga! I love the long drives personally.

Ry: Favourite towns to play on tour for me are Newcastle, Ipswich, and Lismore. Favorited roadside attractions for me are the Big Banana, Dog on the Tuckerbox, and the huge Koala on the way to Adelaide.

Some of you organize the Hardcore Victim festival my understanding it is an outgrowth of the label, yes? Sadly it appears it won’t happen this year but I’d love to hear more about its history and what you think its future will look like.

Yeap: Hardcore Victim started in 2009. It was an idea of my girlfriend Bernie. She thought I should use my “know how” to help get Australasian band’s music out to the wider world. Our favourite band and dear friends Teargas had been slaying it for

a few years at that point but have no record. We decided to start a label to correct this injustice thus our first love child was born. As we progressed with releases and experience, we thought that it be a good idea to use HCV as a vehicle to bring oversea bands we love to Australia. With the arrival of our son Levi, things were slowing down. But with the addition of Stu into the HCV family in 2016, it has injected new life and a different perspective into the organisation.

Stu: I’d started helping out Yeap on tours by booking shows when I was living in Sydney. When I moved to Melbourne and started playing in Enzyme, I became more involved in the label side of things, but I guess the first HCV fest was with Isterismo maybe 2013? But it’s kind of grown in recent years. 2019 was the 10-year anniversary show so it was special and really great to be a part of! I think the immediate future will be doing for interstate bands and touring locally.

Yeap: Bringing four bands (Zyanose, Scumraid, Braincell, Lifelock) from different regions of Asia to Melbourne was something close to my heart.

Watching kids lose their shit to Scumraid made me quite emotional. Braincell and Lifelock kids were my hometown/ childhood buddies. So, it was extra special to have them in my new home. (Note.

Syamsir from Lifelock was the guy who introduced me to Japanese hc punk like Disclose, Gloom, Crust War in the 90s. Thank you) Part of what has always made the international punk scene ‘work’ is the ease of communication and travel - the global COVID19 pandemic has had dramatic impacts on both, what do you feel the

future of punk will look like?

Stu: Yeah, in recent years it has ben very easy to travel and tour globally. I think post pandemic it will strengthen local networks and hopefully allow us to explore towns that we hadn’t in the past, I think it will make people appreciate what they have in their own backyards a little more maybe Jake: I don’t think there’ll be any international travel for anyone until there’s a vaccine. For Australian bands, I think if they want to tour it’s going to have to be nationally for the next couple of years. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Apart from the two or three fests that happen here, Australian bands forget about heading up or down the coast just for the hell of it. It’s getting really rare, so hopefully that will change. All the pubs and venues, like everywhere else, are struggling hard. Many will probably close for good, but a choice of venue never stopped a punk show from happening. Shows under bridges, in drains, in parks and in back yards happen all the time here so there is just going to have to be more of them. Everyone’s gonna have to put in more effort and step out of their comfort zones but at the end of the day DIY will survive.

Lyrically, it feels like the focus is around depression, sanity/mental illness and addiction - would you care to expound a bit on if this is accurate (maybe referencing specific lyrics) and if so, why do you feel it’s important to address? Are these topics personal - is this something some/all of you deal with? As someone who has struggled specifically with depression, I’m always curious as to others’ experiences...

Stu: These are all topics that are very close to me. I’ve struggled with addiction my whole life really, and the symptoms that go with it like self-loathing and a sense of worthlessness. It’s like having a hole in your being that is always empty no matter how much you fill it. This gap disappears just as fast as you attempt to fill it. As we were writing the Howling Mind LP I was very fresh in my recovery and I needed to get this off my chest. I feel it’s important to address, so we as a punk community can draw from our own strengths and experiences and create networks of support for ourselves. I think just by having these topics out there makes it easier to start a dialogue about them.

Australia is known for its unique fauna - what is the best Australian animal and the worst animal and why?

Stu: The best, a Huntsman Spider, I like how they just watch from the walls or the car ceiling. The bats that live in the trees in Yarra Bend Park are pretty cool too when they all wake up. There are hundreds of them. Worst I don’t know, salt-water crocodiles are pretty scary, not that they are in the area we live Yeap: Yup! The bats! When bands come through Melbourne, we take them to see the colony for shits and giggles to watch their minds get blown. At dusk the bats wake up to feed and it’s just bat rush hour. Imagine thousands and thousands of bats with wingspan of one and half meters flying over your head. My favourite Oz animal is the wombat (so cute) and the scariest is the Drop Bear. Watch Out!!

Jake: Let me tell you a story. A story of survival. A few years ago, we were playing a couple of shows in Perth. I find myself at a party after the gig.

We’re partaking in the local traditions, standing around, revving dirt bikes, all the good stuff. The sun comes up and I realise my band mates are nowhere to be seen, gotta get to the airport, time to hit the road. The Emu Exports messed with my sense of direction and it wasn’t long before I found myself in the bush.

My phone was dead, and I have no idea where I am, so I figured my best bet is to climb a tree to try and work out how to get back to civilization. Now, you probably already know that Drop Bears are ruthless, vicious creatures.

They get even a hint that you’re in their territory and they’ll jump down and tear your face apart. I should have known I was in a Drop Bear hot zone. All the signs were there, and I should have noticed, we’re taught it from an early age here - if you see signs of Drop Bears, you get the fuck out. So here I am climbing to the top of this tree and what do I see? The biggest Drop Bear I’ve ever seen in my life. I freeze. My heart is pounding. I’m sweating bullets. This thing is staring right into my eyes, my soul, and I’m staring into his. He raises his stubby little arm and his humongous claw to give me the first smack, but instead, points to the east, and what’s in that direction? The highway. My ticket to freedom. We share an ocular handshake, and I climb down and head east.

I make it to the airport just in time. So, you know, they’re not all bad. A drop bear saved this tackers life that day.

What does the future hold for Enzyme? Anything else you care to add?

Ry: We were going to be at Varning in Montreal this September and then playing some shows on the East Coast but this pandemic has ruined that...

Yeap: Hopefully we can do that in the future. Slowly working on a record.

Jake: Expect more tambourine and maracas that the others insisted on having mixed too quiet on Howling Mind, but this time mixed appropriately high now I’ve had a tantrum about drummers not being treated like real artists.

Enzyme: Cheers for the questions. Thanks for having us! Hope to see you again soon Mike.

HARAM There are a handful of bands and artists in punk history which help to define the genre, shape its ideals and push the narrative forward. Ramones, Sex Pistols, Minor Threat, Black Flag, Discharge, Youth of Today, Bikini Kill, Los Crudos, Gauze, etc - bands which planted a flag and challenged your conception of what music, lyrics, and an alternative culture could be. For me, Haram are one of those bands. Musically they are this masterful mix of swirling melody and raw aggro backing up lyrics, in Arabic, addressing the experience of having grown up Muslim in a post 9/11 world, while, at the same time, questioning the very tenants of Islamic beliefs. Live they are a raw and utterly confrontational, holding nothing back and expecting the same the audience. They want to challenge you, to make you feel discomforted in your own beliefs and perspective. What follows is a long overdue discussion with vocalist Nader...

How did you come to punk? ‘Cause it means so many things to many different people, what does it mean to you?

I grew up in a city that’s right outside of New York City called Yonkers. It’s about 30 minutes outside of New York City, and, you know, I was bullied a lot as a kid. I wasn’t the most attractive teenager, I was kind of short and chubby, and I was very insecure and stuff. But, I had my group of friends that I would hang out with and they started taking me around. We would go to the city, and there was one time my friend called me, maybe I was like 16 or 17. My friend called me and was like, “Hey, there’s a show happening in Brooklyn tonight with a band that you might like. I showed you them last week.”

And I forget what the band was, honestly, but I was scared and I was like, “I don’t know.” I was still living at home and my parents are very strict people. But, I made up a lie and I was kind of excited. So I sneaked out late at night, went to the show.

The first thing I noticed going to the show was these beautiful people dressed up, beautiful hair, great skin, piercings. I just fell in love with the aesthetics off the bat. I just saw true freedom at play in front of me, and that’s something that I identify as the most attractive feature of punk to me, that freedom of expression, period.

After that show, I went home and I got in big trouble, and that was the start of my downhill battle with my family. But I was very grateful just to be a part of the New York punk scene specifically, because I was exposed to a lot of cultures and bands singing in different languages, and different types of people, and people into different types of music.

The more I looked into the bands, the more I started sneaking out, I started getting into a lot of trouble. I started acting up just like teenagers do, and I started experimenting with drugs and alcohol, and shit like that. I started going through all that and being exposed to all this stuff. I just, like, fell in love with it.

I started getting infatuated with vocalists, just looking at vocalists doing their thing, and wondering, what is their life like? They have all these people listening to them. What do they do?

And I started to realize that it’s something that’s feasible, something that maybe I could do. And then in 2015, I met the members of Haram, and we ended up slowly forming the band. Eventually I had the idea, ‘cause Arabic was my first language, and I know how to read and write it, so, I was like, you know what? Let me try singing in Arabic, ‘cause I’ve never heard of that before.

It would make me just proud to try that. This identity that I’ve had a problem with my whole life.

The things I’ve got bullied for, things I’ve gotten ridiculed for, things that I’ve been scared to tell people, like having a foreign name and all these things, like, encapsulated in this one medium of expression that I could just channel it all into.

With Haram, is it a conscious thing to fit the music with the way your vocals in Arabic sound, or is it just so happens that the other people in your band are writing music that just happens to fit really well?

We’ve never sat down and consciously said, like, “Okay this is my line in Arabic. Can you write a melody that matches that?” Not once.

To me, if I listen to a Haram song, I’m listening to what I’m saying, I can interpret it that way. If an Arabic-speaking person could hear that, they’re

probably gonna take the meaning of the words and interpret them. But someone that’s a non-Arabic speaker will probably hear the words also as music, because it is this very unique-sounding language that they don’t understand. So they’re hearing different things than I would hear or an Arabic speaker would hear.

That’s really interesting. A lot of Islamic art is based on shapes, right? Because you can’t have representations of humans, is that correct?

Right. I will say, a lot of people are surprised when I say that, ‘cause I guess they just assume that the Arabic would come from me. The Arabic itself does, but the design comes from James. And when he’s doing it, like I said, it breaks traditional rules of Islamic calligraphy. If you take the design of our first seven inch, that in itself, as a concept, as a design is Haram, technically. You know what I mean? That breaks Islamic rules. So I think just aesthetically, it kinda also fits with the theme of the band.

With what you’re doing in the band, have you encountered a lot of people who are culturally Islamic, who have reached out to you because of the band?

I mean, I know there’s that whole “Taqwacore” thing, the Muslim punk thing that happened in the early 2000s, but I’m not even talking about that.

I’m talking more like people you were like, “Oh, I didn’t even realize that there were this many other people who were kind of in the same boat as me, or feeling the same way as me in the punk scene.”

For me, personally, I was exposed to that a little late, but even when listening to that, I didn’t feel like it really spoke for me. The Taqwacore scene, I really didn’t really identify with it at all. There wasn’t really inner criticism of Islam at all. It was kinda just like, “We’re Muslim, and we’re gonna live the way we want. We just wanna be practicing Muslim, then do what we want to do.” And I don’t come from that.

I was a practising Muslim for 17 years of my life, and I have a lot of problems with the religion and culture, and the way it works in Western society, especially. I think there’s a lot of learning to do.

There’s a lot of things that need to change so children don’t lose their fucking minds here. There’s real suffering that happens, and I went through it as well. That happens with immigrant kids period, but especially with Muslim-American, Arab-American kids. You’re trying to assimilate into a culture that you’re told that you’re not supposed to fit into, that you shouldn’t fit into. You just wanna go in there and pick what you want and come back home and use it for the family, use it for your own culture, use it for your own benefit.

For me, I just fundamentally disagreed with Taqwacore. I appreciate it for what it did, but I feel like it just became fetishized in a way. When Haram first started they were like holy shit, a new Taqwacore band, and I was very, very vocal about, I’m supportive of it, but that is not what I consider myself, to let people know. That is not something that I identify with.

these bands. For example, the Kominas. I’m really good friends with the Kominas. I think they are like the staple Taqwacore band. I have nothing against playing with those bands. I would love to play with them.

Just to say a few things about the way I present myself and the way I am as a performer and as an artist for me, I do like to be controversial. I do like to be confrontational. I’ve never really had the courage to be that type of person. And it’s only through my experiences that I feel justified in doing any of those things, and I really don’t give a fuck. You know what I mean? I am a wild person. I will do things that put me in danger just to make a point.

I always try to tell people, “Look, don’t make any sudden moves towards me. If you wanna get up on stage and dance, that’s fine. But know that if you come at me, I’m ready for anything.”

And it only takes one person to read into something the wrong way. If you come at me on the offensive, with a certain tone, it’s gonna be a problem. And it’s been a problem before. And I just wanted to mention that because that’s something that I think that bands of our nature worry about a lot. And it’s something that I worry about in my own skin, that I’ve worried about my whole life. Being in danger just for who I am and who I want to be. On the flip side, I’m grateful that I could represent that and represent that type of controversy, and get that out of people. I like getting that out of people.

A reaction.

Yeah, any type of reaction. Even a non-reaction.

My first reaction the first time I saw you is like, “I think it’s cool to sing in Arabic, but why isn’t he saying anything about these songs in English?” And then I was like, “Oh, well, that’s not the point.”And it’s interesting because I feel like there’s a confrontational element to that. Where it basically forces you to think about your assumptions. Think about your assumptions of why you’re there.

That actually is a very conscious thing that I decided. I don’t sing in English, I don’t say anything in English during the show at all. I feel like in our generation of people in today’s time, we are so used to getting everything explained to us. We are so used to just opening our fucking device or whatever the hell it is, typing it in and getting the answer. There’s no work you have to do, you just insert and then you take, you just extract. And then you walk away and you don’t think about it because you’ve got the answer, you don’t engage with it at all. And that’s really the primary reason that I don’t sing anything in English because if I did, you would have nothing to ask me.

I think that’s really interesting, like at that show in Florida. Your song that has the rhythmic chanting of “Jihadi” over and over?

The name of the song is “Jihad, Jihadi,” yeah.

One thing that’s appealing about your performance is you’re a confrontational and challenging singer in a lot of ways. Would you play with those kinds of bands?

Yeah, yeah, so that part, it was interesting because that was the first time that I saw people they picked up on that at the show. And there’s people around me singing that and I was like, “Huh? I wonder if they’ve ever had that before?”

Sure. We have gotten offers to play with some of

That’s cool and I noticed that. There’s a lot of words

in Arabic that are phonetically pronounceable to people that speak English. Those are the words that I try to use. But I think that’s maybe my favorite song to perform, because it means so much to me lyrically. It is a power, it is a big power to be able to say that word on stage and feel like that people are understanding what I’m saying.

Could you talk about what that song’s about?

Sure, to me, Jihad to me growing up was a concept. And Islam was always taught to me as like a personal war. An inner-war against oneself, to discipline oneself into warding away from sinning and anything harmful to oneself. And obviously, the word Jihad is misconstrued through politics and media. And what most people see it as is a holy proclamation of war and Islamic agenda and Islamic terrorist agenda, and it is seen as this harmful thing.

And to me it’s always been this beautiful system of discipline that I’ve used my whole life to control myself and to keep myself thinking and adapt to situations and something that means a lot to me.

But then the word Jihadi, in Arabic, isn’t even a word. The word Jihadi is a anglicized word, it’s a word that comes from the English term Jihad, Jihadi is someone that enacts Jihad as a violent action.

And to me... I never, never, never not once heard that word Jihadi in a mosque, from my family, from growing up, I never ever heard that word before.

To me that song just encapsulates my feelings on both of those lifestyles, you know? And to me it is the struggle between understanding Jihad as something that is special to me, and Jihadi as something that scares and put fear in people’s hearts and causes Islamophobia and causes xenophobia, you know? So, that song is really, really, really important to me, and it really describes a huge portion of my life struggling with my identity.

I want to shift gears a little and talk about Haram’s Southeast Asia tour, did you have any anxiety about going there? What was your favorite experience?

We’ve always had trouble traveling, even just within the States, across to Canada, to Europe.

There’s always been some sort of trouble that we’ve had, so I assumed that Southeast Asia would be a nightmare, you know? On top of just, for the first time we were playing in a Muslim-majority country, playing to what I could assume to be a Muslim-majority crowd. People that would understand what I’m saying. I was worried about how people would take it. All these things are running through my head, so I was a wreck.

Going to Southeast Asia on the plane, our first stop was Singapore. I was cold-sweating on the plane.

And I’m a very brave person, I have been through it. And this broke me. I was like, “I don’t know what the fuck to expect.” I’ve never been to these countries, period, you know what I mean? There’s not many bands that get to go out there. So, it was a huge privilege, but it was a scary one.

After we played the first show in Singapore, I was gonna pass out, you know? It was a very cramped show. Fifty people in a practice space meant for ten people in a mini-mall. It was a crazy experience.

Our drummer was falling off the side, there was sweat on the walls, it was actually a dangerous show. Just temperature-wise and shit. So that was a

great introduction, but then I wasn’t really worried about Singapore. Singapore is an American ally, it’s very westernized. They have a huge punk scene, they’re very familiar with bands. It’s a very normal thing, so I wasn’t really too worried about it.

Had to see what it was about. And came, and what I assume, didn’t have a good time or had something to say, so...

The next country we played was Malaysia. Now Malaysia is a Muslim majority country, Singapore is not. We played Malaysia, in Kuala Lumpur, we’re playing in this 18-storey building on the 13th floor or some shit. And we’re in the elevator, and in the elevator there’s a list of what each floor has. And on one of the floors, I’ll never forget this, it was the eighth floor, it said like, “Sharia Family Court.”

And that was fine, but that was a really intense moment for me. I’d never really been confronted like that, so that was like, “Holy shit.” And then we played Indonesia. Indonesia was probably my favorite part of the tour. The punks in Indonesia, they are practicing Muslims, you know what I mean?

They are punk, they wear the shit, they look the part, they play in bands, but they go home and they pray five times a day, they fast during Ramadan, they go to Mosque every Friday, you know what I mean? That is just a part of their lifestyle. And I was curious, when we were in Indonesia, since that’s very intense in their life, I was curious as to what they see in Haram. Because so many people came up to me after the show and they were like, “Your band means the world to me. Your band means so much to me, it helps me live. It helps me understand myself.” And I was like, “Why?” Because I’m talking from an Arab-American perspective, that’s the only perspective I know. I don’t know the perspective of someone that is growing up in a Muslim majority country with Sharia law and Sharia police.

And you have your religion on your identity card and all this crazy shit.

What?!

So I asked the guy that booked our show, Hafiz, I was like, “Hey, Hafiz what is that? Who booked this show? Who would book Haram literally above a Sharia Family Court?” And he’s like, “What’s more Haram than that?” And I was like, “Fuck.”

We just went in there and we played the show, and we had to leave immediately because people were saying that there were cops coming and shit, so we just dipped, we just left.

Wow. That show was really exciting. But again that fear of getting harmed and getting in trouble was real, we’re playing in places where we’re at risk. So what I explained before, being ready for that type of shit was on the 100th level, you know what I mean?

And I’ll tell you the scariest moment at any of these shows actually was in Penang, Malaysia. We played in Penang, Malaysia, and while we’re playing the show, there’s a person dressed in Muslim garb. And I was kind of happy to see that ‘cause I was like, “Holy shit. This is like a whole Muslim,” you know what I mean? They practice every day.

And I went outside after the show and this person comes up to me, and with a really aggressive tone, he’s like, “Hey! Are you a fucking Jihadi?” And I was like, “Holy shit.” I was like, “Calm the fuck down, who the fuck are you? Relax.” And he was like, “Are you a Jihadi? Because what you’re saying is fucked up.” And it was a big problem right outside the venue. That kid, we ended up talking for 10 minutes and he calmed down a little bit. And we talked, but he disagreed with me fundamentally, and he thought what I was doing was kind of toxic.

And didn’t agree with what I was doing, didn’t understand the perspective I was coming from. And we disagreed and that was fine, we shook hands, it was fine, you know what I mean? I was really, really happy that it didn’t escalate. But we were able to talk objectively and really see eye to eye from each other’s perspective, but we didn’t agree with each other’s perspective, which is fine.

So that person who came to the show, were they someone who was involved in the punk scene thing there? Or do you think just a random person who saw a band called Haram and decided to check it out?

It was a young kid. What I gathered is, they come to shows sometimes, they had heard of Haram and had to check it out.

Okay. Got it.

Yeah, interesting.

I don’t know that upbringing. I didn’t live through that. Usually when we play shows, I’m like, “Okay.

I’m prepared. I’m ready to explain myself. I’m ready to answer any questions.” Going to Southeast Asia, specifically Indonesia, I had so much I wanted to learn. I asked these people like, “What does it mean to be Muslim? What does it mean to be a punk in this type of country? What happens? What happens? How do you live? Is it scary?” Blah, blah, blah.

I think, a week before, or the month before our show in Jakarta, Framtid had played there with Dianos. And that was the same venue, a lot of people were telling me, “Oh, that show was great,” blah, blah, blah. And then we played our show and they were like “That was the craziest show we’ve ever seen.” And the whole room was singing songs with me and I was crying on stage, I was like a mess.

That was the first time that it opened my eyes to the impact that it has on other people. And I would ask them, like I said before like, “What does it mean to you? This perspective is completely different. I don’t understand it.” They’ll be like, “Look, the amount of bands that we see, the amount of music that we’ve heard, there’s not one band that makes me feel like you are speaking for my culture or my religion, or whatever, my lifestyle, period. I’ve never felt like any band has done that for me.”

It’s a really crazy thing when you first have that realization that your art is affecting other people.

It’s crazy.

Actually the mic was taken from me, like I was singing then all of a sudden I realized that the crowd was singing. I just immediately, I can’t control it, I just immediately started breaking down. I got on my knees and started crying.

I just didn’t know what the hell was happening. I was like, “Holy fuck, is this real?” This is it, I never knew, I never thought I could experience that.

It was a major eye-opener to realize that kids cared about it on that level. There’s some kid in Jakarta listening to the record and realizing that it’s something that means something to them. What an amazing privilege to be able to do that, you know? I’m just so grateful that I’m in that position to do this. It’s extremely hard. Like, I really struggled just to make the band work. Everything was out of pocket. We don’t have that much money. I really wish I could just focus on the message that I wanna give to people all the time.

So, are you a ‘wear fishnets and booty shorts every day’ kind of person? (laughter) Yeah, I mean generally. I’m not like...

What I mean is more... you dress like that all the time, it’s not just your stage gear...

I just didn’t understand, I never thought that that was something I’d be able to do, be on there like sing a song with the crowd and stuff. I thought that was something I’d never be able to experience in the band that’s performing the way we do. So this was the first time this has ever happened where I walked out of a show, like I said, I like to go outside after our set, and I went outside and I sat down, and the whole show, I’m not exaggerating, you could ask my bandmates. The whole crowd came outside of the venue and sat around me, like I was Jesus with his disciples. [Laughter]

Yeah. I mean, I honestly started dressing that way because I would get really hot, it’s a very practical thing. Like I get so hot, I can’t explain it. I have moisture dripping off my body, I have to shed clothing. You’ve seen us play, you said, I like to perform, I like to move my body a lot. I like to push my body to the brink and for me, the easiest way to do that is wearing shorts and fishnets have always looked cool to me. So for me, my style isn’t like you said, it’s not uniform, it’s something that’s always changing. You might see me in a du-rag with a fitted hat and a long t-shirt one day, you know what I mean? I like doing that, I like fucking with people like that, I like really changing shit up because at the end of the day, that’s just clothing. If you wanna make a statement with your clothing, I implore you to do that.

It’s me against a fence and there’s about 30 kids just sitting on the ground in front of me. And I’m asking them questions and they’re asking me questions. We’re smoking cigarettes, we’re laughing. It was one of the most impactful moments in my life, where I realized that this is something I can never give up. My life is now focused. It’s tunneled. It is for these people. I finally realized that there are people that need this. You know what I mean? I’m not doing this just for myself anymore.

I really think that, that is what punk is missing today is.... just taking this fashion as not putting it on Instagram or whatever, putting it out there in the world.

Make people feel like you are unique, putting it in their face and being like, “No, I dress the way I fucking want every fucking day, I don’t care.” Even if you wanna wear a denim jacket with a whatever shirt on at a show, that’s punk in itself, but you’re doing something out of the norm and isn’t that weird?

People are like, “Wait what?”

People are like, “Huh, you look weird.” And that’s crazy to me, that that’s become the thing that’s out of the norm. Looking normal is now going against normal in the punk scene. Which is fucking nuts, and I don’t wanna linger too much on that, but that’s something that I’ve been thinking about recently. It’s like, how do I use my style to weaponize it even further, to make people even more uncomfortable? And the people I make the most uncomfortable seriously, it’s not the people out in the streets. It’s usually other punks that get the most uncomfortable from that, you know what I mean?

Yeah and with booty shorts… I think that my experience in punk has always been that punks are not as comfortable with their sexuality, as they should be or as they could be?

Big time. Oh man, big time.

I know it’s a lot of awkward nerd stuff where there’s a lot of people that fall into punk because they weren’t comfortable in normal society in the first place, so there’s a lot of things they never learned at that kind of level of comfort or whatever but, have you seen people projecting and being like, “Oh, Nader wears fishnets and booty shorts” and kinda projecting that sexuality into it?

You know who was the man that opened my eyes to that? Martin, when we played Chicago was the first person to tell me, “You look sexy as hell, and you should keep doing this. You should always focus on your style, because you look awesome and you should be... “ Like when I first saw Limp Wrist, I was in love, ‘cause it really throws it in your fucking

face. “I don’t give a shit about what you think about me. I’m so proud of who I am. It’s scary to be who I am, but I’m taking it to the 100th level.” And that’s something that just opened my eyes to that.

I think for a lot of people, sexuality is a huge element of style. And a lot of us have issues showing that, I certainly did for the first 18 years of my life growing up Muslim. Sexuality in Islam is non-existent. It’s very monogamous and between a man and a woman. Of course, as you know, many religions are like that, but especially in Islam, it’s suppressed to a certain degree. It’s like a burka, or hijab, you’re supposed to hide your beauty always, you’re supposed to reserve your beauty for your loved ones, you know what I mean?

And for me I take that conceptually, and working into my own style as well, that’s kind of why I wear the headband, you know what I mean? A lot of people are like, “Oh you have beautiful eyes, and beautiful eyebrows, why do you wear that shit? Just take it off,” whatever, I wanna see how angry you get whatever. For me, I like to hide my features. I like to hide my beauty. I’ll only reveal to people that actually deserve it. And if you wanna see my face, if you wanna come see my body, then you have to be a special certain someone. Because you don’t deserve it all.

Today is the end of Ramadan, right? Do you still observe those sorts of things, even just from a cultural standpoint?

I do. For me, Ramadan is a very important time for me. I don’t fast, for health reasons, but I try to keep in mind what Ramadan means to me, it has always been about cleansing yourself physically

and spiritually, and it’s always been about humbling yourself and realizing that there’s people that live this way every day, there’s people that don’t get to get a piece of food or a cup of water for hours, and hours, and hours. The richest Muslim that’s fasting during Ramadan can now understand what the poorest Muslim is going through. It’s conceptually supposed to be that bridging of class and stuff like that.

I kinda formed this new type of Islam, I wanna say, for myself. Where I spiritually kind of identify with certain things. Jihad still means a lot to me, like I was saying before. I still practice those things like disciplinary thought processes. I still use those things that I’ve learned. I still write in Arabic, I draw in Arabic. All these things that I grew up with are still a part of me.

I’m not a practicing Muslim, I don’t agree with Islam on everything, I don’t agree with religion, period.

But I think I finally understand the importance of having something to identify with, it does help people. In the end, if you wanna do what you wanna do, and you’re not harming anyone, there should be no harm done to you, period.

I think what it comes down to for me is that I’m able to speak to people about it and people are interested in what I have to say. And I try to use that as much as I can to really get my point across and to make other people feel like they’re spoken for.

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ANTIMOB

Made up of long time Greek scene veterans, Antimob play a ripping take on the classic hardcore form - filled with speed, ferocity and oozing with passion, their songs ripple through your ears and infect your brain with their raw power. There is an overt consciousness of presentation that they display which I find missing in a world where it feels like so many bands are constantly just looking to crank out as much material as possible. With beautifully and carefully presented records they drive home the point that the lyrics and message are just as important as the music, if not more so. What follows is a conversation over email I had with Panos, who plays guitar and is one of the publishers of zine Mountza.

Let’s talk basics - Antimob formed in 2007, yes?

What was the initial reason for the band forming?

Has the line up remained the same?

Actually the band formed a couple of years earlier, in the summer of 2005. At the time Stathis and myself and Vasilis and Christos were in different bands that were both rehearsing at the studio of the Villa Amalias squat. We were stuck in a bit of a rut and since we were friends we decided to join forces and start a new band, which morphed to Antimob.

In 2007 our initial bassist left and was replaced by Stavros, and that was that. Since then the line up has remained the same. We formed the band for the same reason all bands do: we were young and had the urge to express ourselves, play aggressive music and have some fun. Rather than a band, we’ve always seen ourselves as a bunch of close friends, otherwise we wouldn’t have managed to last for so long.

Looking at your records, the design feels very purposeful - is there a plan or design to the presentation of your band? If so, why is that important?

Starting with our second demo cassette in 2012, we decided to apply a specific artistic concept to our releases, one that would project more clearly the identity and character of the band. Ideologically, this centers on manifestations of political dissent in Greece; aesthetically, on the juxtaposition of forceful images and minimal, clean layouts. Cover art is an integral part of any release, it’s stupid to work your ass off to get the best sound possible during recordings and then use generic images or shitty artwork for the cover. I’m also trying to stick to a similar concept for anything I release through my record label ΕξωτικόςΠαροξυσμός (if you can call it a label, that

is). We are quite happy with the artwork of all our releases, so I can’t see us modifying our approach in the future, though we’ll make an extra effort not to get boring or repetitive. Having said that, nothing could have been possible without the valuable help of our good friend Kostas (and Mountza fanzine co-conspirator too), who’s handled the layout and printing of our record covers, booklets, posters right from the start.

The time between your releases is quite long - is there a reason for this? Is the band just not that active, or is it something else?

The band’s always been active, at least in the studio (or in our minds), but it’s fair to say we took the occasional hiatus for a variety of reasons, both individual and collective. However, even during some longer than usual breaks, we never really considered packing it in. Annoying as they were, these periods of inactivity taught us to be more tolerant towards each other’s personal choices, working schedules and responsibilities. Our sole motivation has been our need to keep the band going, so we never put much pressure on ourselves to release new songs, play gigs or go on tour.

The most recent LP features images from the island of Gyaros - what is the significance of that island and why did you choose to include them? How does it relate to the lyrics?

Not just on the LP, but on our latest EP and promo cassette as well. Gyaros is an island that the Greek state used as a place of exile for political dissidents, in particular leftists, from 1947 until 1974. The building shown is the main prison complex that throughout the years housed more than 20,000 political

prisoners. Today Gyaros remains a powerful symbol of the long history of political oppression in Greece as well as a powerful monument to our dissident tradition, which may explain our fascination with the place. On a more personal note, Christos’ grandfather had been jailed there, so that may have been an extra incentive.

they punk or otherwise) should sing in their mother tongue. Leave English to those who are fluent in it.

It’s not just the lyrics, language is also essential in building the sound of a band. It provides identity and originality. I really have no time for bands singing in English with impenetrable accents and thousands of mistakes.

Ourselves and a photographer friend of ours took the photos during our trip to Gyaros in May 2017.

We had long contemplated a trip there, but making it happen was tricky. It took us two years to finally make it, as the place is off limits to the public and we had to fight all sorts of red tape to finally be allowed to get there. Not mentioning the financial costs involved. However, this turned out to be a very powerful experience, I simply can’t describe the overwhelming feeling when approaching this prison complex. Gyaros is a place of calvary and desolation, and its oppressive nature still hits you in the face.

Musically, how would you describe your band?

The late ‘80s / early ‘90s Greek hardcore scene is an obvious influence, as well as all the classic international hardcore acts (European, American and Japanese). There are strong metal elements too, since some of us have always been into metal, from proto-heavy metal and NWOBHM to early ‘90s black and death metal. Anyway, I can only describe us as a hardcore band.

Our lyrics do not relate to the island or to what happened there directly. As I mentioned before, Gyaros is a powerful symbol of political oppression, of enforced conformity and widespread state repression, things that we deal with in our lyrics.

You sing in Greek - which to me, feels like the obvious thing to do since you are Greek, but for most of punk’s history bands have sung in English rather than their native language. Why is it important for you to sing in Greek?

Initially we sang in English, just check our debut demo cassette and EP that were recorded in 2007.

Then we shifted to Greek and that was the best decision the band has ever made. Every band (be

The Greek has seemingly exploded as of late, at least from the outside - can you talk about some of your favorite recent bands? Is it actually exploding, or is it just that people are finally paying attention?

The late ‘80s/early ‘90s bands were undeniably the most authentic, creative and influential. This, I think, stands true not just for the Greek scene.

Following a long period of stagnation and boredom, things started shaking again roughly from the late ‘00s onwards. These days, when it comes to fine, hard working bands we’re spoiled for choice: Χωρίς Οίκτο (Without Mercy), Παροξυσμός (Paroxysm) Obsessio (a Greek band with a Spanish singer and not a Spanish band), Αρχή του Τέλους (Beginning of the End), Cold I, Chain Cult, Ξέρα (Xera), Kolonaki SS, Era of Fear, Black Trinity, Dirty Wombs, lifewreck, Ruined Families, Gay Anniversary to name but a few. Πανδημία (Pandemic), Gutter and Rajahtaa were slightly older but worth checking

out. Rajahtaa, when not covering songs from classic Finnish bands, penned some absolute killers of their own! They only recorded a demo CD and some compilation tracks though. Plenty of other bands as well, but in all honesty I don’t follow the scene as much as used to, so I can’t really say. A personal fave of mine is Οδός 55 (Odos 55), a dark but aggressive synth punk act. I rate everything Ειρκτή records has released (new or reissue) as well as most of the stuff Scarecrow records put out in the last ten years. Darek from Scarecrow records has helped almost every Greek band, either by releasing or distributing their stuff. Big respect and love to our brother Darek! If ever in Athens, make sure to visit his new physical shop at Exarcheia.

Are there older Greek bands you feel people should check out?

There were, roughly, two waves of early Greek punk/hardcore bands: The first one (early to mid ‘80s) consisted of bands like Stress, Αδιέξοδο (Adiexodo/Dead End), Ex Humans, Γενιά του Χάρους (Chaos Generation), Panx Romana, Birthward 82 etc. These were the pioneers that most of us grew up listening to. The second wave (late ‘80s to early ‘90s) was more organized, had a pronounced anarchist outlook and DIY ethic and left us the best records ever released in Greece. Bands like Αντίδραση (Antidrasi/Reaction), Αρνητική Στάση (Negative Stance), Ναυτία (Nausea), Γκούλαγκ (Gulag), Χαοτικό Τέλος (Chaotic End), Χαοτική Απειλή (Chaotic Threat), Πανικός (Panikos), Death Courier, Χαοτική Διάσταση (Chaotic Dimension), Ξεχασμένη Προφητεία (Forgotten Prophecy), Μάστιγα, Ανάσα Στάχτη (Breath Ash), Nuclear Winter, Hibernation just to name a few. Not forgetting Vandaloup and Εκτός Ελέγχου (Out of order), solid Greek

punk bands as well. Anyone interested in classic hardcore/punk flavours should give those bands a listen. It was a thriving scene with bands popping up almost everywhere, pity most of them never went beyond the stage of recording a demo. Obviously, releasing a record was much more complicated then than now.

There have been numerous articles about the Greek anarchist movement stepping into the breech and filling in the void left by the Greek state - I’m wondering if you have involvement or contact with these groups and what your experiences have been?

That is true. The band grew while the debt crisis was crippling the most productive elements of our generation. Austerity led to widespread pauperization, unemployment rose to 28% (youth unemployment reached 60% in January 2013), there were huge cuts in pensions and wages, poverty and social exclusion reached their highest levels since WWII, public healthcare and education systems were left to rot and social security benefits just vanished. All of us, including our families and friends, have been affected, either experiencing long streaks of unemployment (without any sort of unemployment benefit to fall to) or having to work in undeclared jobs. Even those of us who are employed in “regular” jobs are caught in a cycle of high precarity and low wages.

I think that the aim of any anarchist is not to fill the void left by the state but to create such a void. Ha ha! Both as individuals and as a band, we’ve been active within this specific political environment.

Antimob were created in the Villa Amalias squat, at a time when we were members of its concert collective. Some members of the band used to live in the squat and contributed to its manifold activities. When Villa Amalias was forcibly evicted in 2012, some Antimob were arrested and charged with various offences. Our political involvement continues to the present day. Therefore, both in our beliefs and in our actions we’re anchored solidly in the wider anarchist and non aligned radical left end of the spectrum. I’m saying this despite our deeply rooted aversion towards all political labels, which we consider mere restrictions of our individual freedom of thought and consciousness. And we’re fully aware that narrow mindedness, arrogance and even hypocrisy are not unknown in the so called libertarian circles.

Depressingly enough, we’re discussing this while we’re in the grips of the coronavirus epidemic. The debt crisis’ remedies dismantled public health care systems, then the pandemic ran riot and it may well trigger a new (bigger and better!!) financial crisis in a never ending vicious circle. The nightmare continues indeed!

Undoubtedly, issues like immigration, racism, state violence, prisoners’ rights, labour rights etc have always been the main fields of engagement and action for anarchists and radical leftists. These struggles have provided a much needed counterbalance to the ongoing barbarity of organized society and the State. But this is a totally one sided battle

Your existence as a band has almost paralleled the Greek debt crisis and the imposition of austerity by the EU - what effect has this had on you personally?

that we can’t win. Furthermore I believe the aim of anarchists is to abolish the State, not substitute it in some of its functions or replace it with some sort of benevolent workers state. Syriza (Coalition of Radical Left) attempted the latter when they came to power in 2015. Predictably, it ended in tears.

Their four years in power were an abject failure, a strange mix of good intentions, self delusion and ineptitude. Their sole achievement was that they prevented the total meltdown of Greece’s social and financial order, not exactly something a leftist party (and a radical one at that) should brag about.

I ain’t gloating about it, nor am I mourning Syriza’s demise, although I have to grudgingly admit that punx, anarchists and other assorted dregs of society never had it so good. It just provided another proof (as if it was needed) of the irrelevance of the Left’s strategy.

Can you talk about Exarcheia? For those who don’t know what it is, can you describe it? I’ve heard that it is currently threatened by both the forces of the state and capitalism, can you talk a little bit about that?

There seems to be widespread hype regarding Exarcheia abroad, some sort of idealization of the place which, as far as I’m concerned, has little bearing on reality. Exarcheia is a neighborhood in the Athens city center, which up until the ‘70s was solidly middle class. As the main Athens Universities were situated in or around it, it has always had this rebel character, which from the ‘70s onwards became more pronounced due to a combination of various factors, such as the growth of the student population, the radicalization of the youth in the

‘60s and ‘70s, or the exodus of the middle class towards the suburbs.

During the years of the fascist military dictatorship (1967-1974), resistance was centered in the universities, culminating in the Polytechnic School Uprising of 1973. Not surprisingly, Exarcheia started attracting the restless, radical and the creative, not to mention the odd nutcase, who began to supplement the departing middle classes. This was a process that lasted for more than two decades, with Exarcheia becoming the de facto capital of Greek counter culture, attracting artists, musicians, cinematographers, independent publishing houses, bookstores, clubs, bars etc. Following the fall of the military dictatorship, Exarcheia also became the cradle of the emerging Greek anarchist movement as well as that of various youth trends, like punk in the ‘80s.

Moreover, for decades the cops were prohibited by law from entering campuses, which of course made universities the obvious base for any radical demonstration or meeting. With Exarcheia being surrounded by universities it was only natural that most violent confrontations with the riot police would take place within that neighborhood. Thus, it’s not surprising that in the mind of many, Exarcheia came to be identified with anarchism and political or artistic radicalization and alternative lifestyles.

However, for a variety of reasons too numerous to analyse (increasing consumerism of the Greek society, dilapidation of the Athens city center, relocation of the Athens University Schools in the suburbs, the effect of regular rioting, the credit boom of the ‘00s

and the financial crisis of the 2010s etc), Exarcheia gradually became some sort of libertarian ghetto in a limbo. Some chose to interpret the retreat of the State (and in particular of the police) from the area as an anarchist victory, others as a temporary respite prior to the next plan for the integration of the wider city center in the financial system that would emerge post-crisis. During the years that the State chose to ignore Exarcheia, yeah, dozens of squats sprung up in the area, but also the life of the locals became increasingly difficult, and worst of all, organized crime stepped in. I’m persuaded this was a move orchestrated by the Greek security agencies, which turned out to be so successful that within a few years, Exarcheia had turned from a hub of libertarian ideas to a metropolis of drug dealing, smuggled cig trafficking, petty rackets and street crime.

And of course, now that the powers that be feel confident the worst of the crisis is behind them (thanks Syriza for that), they’ve kickstarted their new plan to shut the whole show down: New harsh laws, heavy handed evictions, constant police presence and a new property boom fueled by foreign investment (mainly Chinese). And you know what? Exarcheia was exposed for the paper tiger it had become, with only a handful of activists bothering to show some spirit of resistance. Yeah, gentrification is the name of the game these days.

Glory days belong to the past, namely the ‘80s and the ‘90s.

On the flip side, the same time period has seen the rise of the Golden Dawn - a fascist party which has seen great gains in elections. What effect has this

had on Greece in general, and specifically on your lives? Is the threat overblown? Why do you think they were able to rise in power? I know they’ve been knocked back a bit thanks to court cases around assaults members committed but do they remain a threat?

Golden Dawn was founded in the mid ‘80s. Its leader, Michaloliakos, was a well-known face of the Greek fascist microcosm, his main claim to infamy being his trial for bombing a cinema that was showing a Soviet film, and his beating up of journalists in a far right rally. His name had appeared in a list of secret services informants that a paper had published in the day. He was handpicked by Papadopoulos, the jailed leader of the military dictatorship, to head the youth organization of the fascist party he (Papadopoulos) founded in 1983 but was expelled for being too much of a Nazi! (Interestingly Michaloliakos successor following his expulsion was a certain Voridis, who is currently Minister of Agriculture in the respected so called center-right ND government).

Right up until the end of the last decade, Golden Dawn remained a marginal groupuscule of street thugs, police informants and wannabe WP skinheads. Its electoral results remained pathetic throughout, and when not used by the cops as auxiliaries in their clashes with anarchists, Golden Dawn hit the front pages only on the rare occasion of a trademark cowardly attack on anarchists or other similar “targets.”

At the end of the ‘00s, however, there occurred two events that would propel the scum to the forefront:

The youth uprising of December 2008, following the murder of 15-year old Grigoropoulos by a cop, and the onset of the financial crisis in 2010. To cut a long story short, Golden Dawn provided the State with a handy tool to reclaim the streets and channel public rage in a direction it could control. From its part, Golden Dawn was looking at benefiting from a level of financing, backing and media exposure it could not have dared to even dream of. Sadly, the plan worked to perfection. Although there’s a long tradition of cooperation between State security mechanisms and far right groups in Greece, this was a level of collusion not seen since the dark days of the anti communist parastate of the Cold War. Backed by sections of the police, supported by established media and financed by top businessmen, Golden Dawn posed as a radical anti-system alternative promoting aggressive nationalism, racism and violent xenophobia.

And they got away with it. Actually, judging by their electoral results, they were very successful: by 2015, they had established themselves as the third biggest political party in Greece, surpassing the once mighty Social Democrats. Think of Aryan Nations scoring higher than the Democrats nationwide!

Anyway, for a group so deeply compromised by the secret state apparatus, it was always touch and go if they’d manage to grow really strong before the powers to be decided to draw the carpet from under their feet. So, when the State decided to clamp down on them, following one murder too many (that of antifascist musician Pavlos Fyssas) Golden Dawn all but disintegrated. The stormtroopers ran for cover, while the leadership was charged with a multitude of crimes in a trial that’s been dragging for the last five years, believe it or not.

Whatever though, I’m glad things turned out that way and I hope Michaloliakos and his henchmen end up behind bars, though I know that secret service informants of that caliber rarely get locked away. Not surprisingly, what’s left today of the once fearsome Golden Dawn are petty squabbles between former members.

During Golden Dawn’s quite recent heyday, though, the local antifa didn’t back away from the fight. I remember that during the two years prior to the Villa Amalia eviction, the streets around the squat had become a battle zone with clashes occurring almost daily. It was eye for an eye antifa style, gone as far as the drive by shooting of two nazi stewards shortly after Fyssas’ murder.

Something that laid to rest nazi ambitions of street domination.

Golden Dawn may never become a threat again. However, a sizeable section of Greek society has been contaminated by their primitivistic points of view and I’m pretty certain some new fascist group or organization, probably one more modern and sophisticated, is planning on tapping the Golden Dawn legacy.

The story ain’t over yet.

Some of you are involved with Mountza zine? Can you describe the zine? It’s been awhile since an issue came out - is it dead?

Mountza was myself, George and Kostas, who are not members of the band but good friends of all at Antimob. From 2004 to 2006, we were involved in another fanzine called Immigrant that produced three issues. Mountza started in 2007 and managed six issues, missing #7 by an inch. Anyway, we put Mountza on ice in 2014, for the usual reasons, lack of time, marriage, kids etc. Mountza was written in English and it covered the international hardcore punk scene, bands and individuals we happened to be fond of, as well as other forms of music and art. We haven’t given up on a new issue but if it eventually materializes it won’t focus on punk like in the previous six issues. These days we’ve expanded our musical horizons and/or are exploring other forms of art as well, not mentioning a certain disillusionment with the current hardcore/ punk scene. I used to conduct most of the interviews and write a large chunk of the reviews that featured in Mountza, and frankly I don’t feel like taking that all up again. I definitely miss doing a fanzine, though, since I’d been interviewing bands, doing scene reports and exploring underground music scenes from a very young age, long before I started playing in an active band.

Anything else you would like to add?

I think we covered it all! Thanks a lot for interviewing Antimob and for producing such a brilliant fanzine. It was really fun to bump into you again almost 20 years after your Maximum Rocknroll coordinating days! Let’s hope we will still be around in 20 years’ time for another chat! I hope you and your family and friends remain safe from the Covid epidemic and let’s worry about the future abominations that are in store for us at a later stage!

BLACKDOTS This is a capsule version of noted Halifax musician, writer, and DJ Chris Murdoch’s Black Dots presentation originally given at the 2017 OBEY convention. All words (c) Chris Murdoch, all illustrations (c) Raymond Biesinger. See pentagon.black for more information.

If there is one thing someone with even the most marginal understanding of what punk rock is seems to know about it, it’s the element of being seen. Images of leather jackets and spiky dyed hair enter the minds of a lot of people when they first hear the term “punk”, and while many can’t wrap their heads around the reasons for participation in such a music scene, they know that those within it have a desire to be noticed. At least, to some extent.

This whole notion is turned on its head a bit when you consider the integration of people of colour into the world of punk. So many of us people of colour have been noticed by white people within our lives, ever since we can remember, and a lot of the attention isn’t positive. I could recount many stories of the times I’ve been mocked, verbally harassed, insulted and physically threatened as a direct result of my skin colour, but I won’t right now.

What I would rather do is examine the way in which white people started to see me after I fell in love with punk rock.

After gaining a reputation as a rock music lover in my pre-teen years, there was a definite shift in the way I was treated by my peers. I became branded as a “safe” Black person; one that my white friends could feel especially comfortable around, and as you might imagine this manifested itself in some pretty nasty ways. Everything from being told that I’m “afraid of my culture” or “don’t count as Black” to being in rooms with friends complaining about “greasy niggers” or calling each other “niggers” as they prepare to fight. After an especially unpleasant incident about 15 years ago when a friend kept screaming “You fucking nigger!” at his car when it wouldn’t start (it was just him and I in there) I began to reflect more seriously on

why these things kept happening to me and whether or not this was a common experience for other people like me. I truly believe that it was the status afforded to me as some sort of “outlier” Black person that has cultivated a level of comfort in my friend groups over the years and has therefore led to these types of instances. In other words, the identity I sought by embracing the world of punk and hardcore had a direct and extremely detrimental effect on my identity as a Black man, in the eyes of the world. I don’t believe that’s fair.

The people featured in this pamphlet were all instrumental to me grappling with that loss of identity. While I’ve purposely left out more well-known groups like the Bad Brains and Death, there are one or two individuals herein that I would expect some people to know (I also feel the need for a disclaimer—there is more writing dedicated to these folks simply because there is more information about them available). However, I made a concerted effort to focus on people who I would not expect even my closest friends (or your average record collector or punk/hardcore fan) to be familiar with. I would encourage anyone reading this to look up more about these people online, and listen to their music.

I should also mention the regional limitations of those I’ve chosen to write about—they are all either English or American. I am beyond certain that there are numerous examples of Black Canadian musicians from the same eras who need to have their stories told, but sadly I’m unaware of them and I’m doing my best to rectify this.

These are all folks whom I believe deserve more recognition for their contributions—not only for shaping the culture of what we understand punk to be, but for paving the way for people like me to (quite literally) become comfortable in our own skin. For me, it’s become the difference between a polite smile and nervous laughter to humourlessly looking a stranger dead in the eye and proclaiming the truth… “No. I don’t play basketball.”

TONI YOUNG Myself (and about a bazillion other people on the planet Earth) are big fans of a band called Minor Threat. I can still remember how excited I was when I bought the Minor Threat DVD in high school and brought it over to my friend Jon’s house—and how disappointed he was that the DVD in my backpack wasn’t an Adam Sandler movie or something.

Later on (and without Jon) I popped the DVD in the machine and began to watch. Obviously, it’s great—it has three consecutive performances of the band, each better than the last. During the final set, the band launches into the opening for “Filler,” likely my favourite song of theirs. After the initial chord rings out, you can hear Ian MacKaye calling for someone out in the audience. “Toni? Toni!” A young Black woman takes the stage and is handed the microphone just in time to sing the chorus: “Inside your head, inside your head, inside your head… filler!”

I was blown away. That introduction to Toni Young was more exciting than the DVD itself. I knew that Washington, DC, had an exceptionally large Black population, and was well aware of the Bad Brains at that point, but this was happening at a time where I was pretty starved for clear video documentation of Black people performing punk rock. I was determined to find out who this woman was, and stunned to eventually learn of her accomplishments, music, and that she would die of complications from pneumonia only a few short years after that video was shot. Not to be melodramatic, but the clip still gets me a little emotional sometimes—look it up for yourself.

Toni Young proved invaluable to the DC punk and hardcore community as a scene supporter, taking a cue from other Black figures in punk before her.

For example, Don Letts filmed some of the first punk shows and spun records from his collection between bands, fostering a love of reggae in suburban white showgoers. Also, the mighty Bad Brains booked punk shows in DC prior to Toni’s involvement, while also helping their peers get better at their instruments and encouraging friends and audiences to start their own bands.

Despite this, Toni is probably best remembered as the bassist of the band Red C, who are in turn best remembered for the punk anthem “Pressure’s On.” The band’s catalogue (unfortunately) consists of only a small handful of songs, most of which are featured on Dischord Records’ Flex Your Head compilation. Among these is the song “Jimi,” which is essentially just the band’s take on “Hey Joe” by Jimi Hendrix—someone instrumental to my own personal quest for identity, and I would imagine,

Toni’s as well.

DC was an especially violent and macho scene in the early eighties, and Toni should be commended for making her mark within it and beyond. She paved the way for so many Black women who have participated since, most notably Nicky Thomas of the band Fire Party (ostensibly the only Black female scene participant in DC after Toni’s passing). There are few photos of Toni that exist and in the public realm (and the image of her singing with Minor Threat will always be with me), but my favourite way to preserve her memory is anecdotally: In 1981 the Bad Brains held a punk showcase in DC to capture a lot of the relatively new bands that were popping up at the time. Minor Threat played one of their very first sets as part of the gig, and it also featured a performance by S.O.A. (Henry Rollins’ band prior to joining Black Flag). All told, 15 or 16 bands played the show. There was only one woman who performed music that night. It was Toni.

BUBBA DUPREE A very common complaint from critics of hardcore music is that it all sounds the same: the common elements that prove exciting for some can be boring and predictable for others—short, fast, loud. Void was a band who implemented the “loud, fast rules” formula to perfection, but remain distinguishable above the cacophony of many other like-minded bands, largely due to one specific member: Bubba Dupree.

Fondly remembered by some as “the band that made noise beautiful,” Void’s chaotic musical output was accentuated by Bubba’s frenetic, menacing guitar playing. Fans of the band know that feedback and bizarre guitar experimentation are just as instrumental to Void’s songs as the actual guitar playing. Bubba introduced a sense of innovation to the band’s music that has helped the energy and urgency of their catalogue stand the test of time.

CHUCK TREECE Skateboarding has reached almost every conceivable corner of the planet in 2020. People from varying cultures, socioeconomic backgrounds, races, and genders have had their lives changed by skateboarding, but this hasn’t always been the case—in the ‘70s skateboarding was mostly a fun outlet for long-haired, blonde, white Californian boys and not many others. Only once punk music adopted skateboarding (or was it the other way around?) did this began to change, and the band most involved in this crossover is JFA from Phoenix, Arizona. And while they (and their AfricanAmerican bassist and skater Mike Cornelius)

convinced many white punk and hardcore fans to take skateboarding a bit more seriously, it was a musician named Chuck Treece who proved to be one of the ultimate ambassadors for skateboarding to people of colour.

A proud Philadelphian, Chuck started the band McRad in the early eighties and it was one of the first punks bands (along with JFA) to make skateboarding a focal point of their music. Chuck— an avid skater himself—was sponsored as early as 1982, and is almost certainly one of the very few Black skateboarders to do so. After a few more years with McRad, Chuck played guitar in New York hardcore band Underdog before making a solo album. He has since become a highly sought after session musician, honing his talents as a virtuosic multi-instrumentalist. And somehow he still finds the time to get on a board and rip.

Chuck’s influence within the world of skating cannot be overestimated. He has maintained a decadeslong friendship with Ray Barbee (one of the most well-known and celebrated African American skaters), who also has plenty of his own stories about being told that the thing he loved most in the world was “for white people.” McRad’s most wellknown song (“My Weakness”) was also used in one of Ray’s most prominent skate parts in Plan B’s influential Public Domain video.

The list of popular and legendary Black skaters has grown exponentially since Chuck first stepped on a board, and includes some of my all-time favourite skateboarders: Kareem Campbell, Jovontae Turner, Stevie Williams, and Gershon Mosley, just to name a few. However, it was just a few years ago—shortly after African-American Ishod Wair won the coveted “Skater of the Year” title awarded

by Thrasher magazine—that a profile video for Ishod shot by skate company the Berrics detailed how neighbourhood kids used to ridicule him for skating. His sister tearfully reflects on what he had to go through to get where he is now, which to me makes Chuck’s legacy all the more important and establishes the need for others like him.

POLY STYRENE Navigating the late ’70s English punk scene as a person of colour can be an especially scary experience. There are swastikas all over the place, worn by both the fans and the bands (most notoriously by the Sex Pistols), and things intended to shock the older English generation can be easily lost on a young kid. Especially, one with the inability to thoroughly research, who lives on a different continent, and who is getting into these bands decades after their initial formation.

I’d like you to try to find the Black people in that scene, but without using the internet.

of the (English) Beat, and Simone Thomas of the Bromley Contingent (a Black woman who is ostensibly one of the first ever punks!). However, not long ago those taking their first foray into the world of punk rock were left with little more than liner notes and the occasional music documentary from which to absorb information. If that was all you had to go on, one of the few—if not only—Black people in the scene was Poly Styrene. And I can’t say enough about her. Poly (real name Marianne Joan Elliot-Said) isn’t just noteworthy because she’s the only Black face in the crowd. She deserves much praise and recognition for having the guts to participate in a whitewashed, male-dominated scene—that alone solidifies her as courageous in my books—but it is the way in which she chose to participate that’s impressive. And all that fascist racist bullshit? At least it provided an interesting landscape and catalyst for her band, X-Ray Spex.

In modern times, all you have to do is log and do a little research in order to learn about Black figures of considerable influence who existed within that music scene. Don Letts (who I’ve already mentioned), has a long list of accomplishments: he’s the man responsible for the still-flourishing relationship between punk and reggae, he shot the majority of late ‘70s concert footage of the Clash, Pistols, Buzzcocks, etc., and originally sang for the first English punk band to feature Black members (Basement Five). He also has quite a substantial presence online, mostly in the form of articles and interviews that are there for those willing to look for them.

The internet also has a reasonable amount of information about folks like Neville Staple and Lynval Golding of the Specials, Ranking Roger

After being inspired by an early performance by the Pistols (you don’t need a fucking time machine to confirm the many swastikas and white men in attendance, and the almost complete absence of women and people of colour), Poly became interested in fronting a band. Once the lineup of X-Ray Spex was completed and the band began writing music, they quickly challenged several norm after norm. Poly had an extremely distinctive singing voice and did not hold back the yelps, growls, and shrieks as many of her male contemporaries did—Debbie Harry, she isn’t! Poly also maintained a ferocious and engaging stage presence throughout the duration of X-Ray Spex; so much so that Johnny Rotten himself (one of the era’s most vicious and confrontational performers) has commented that he was frightened of her when he

Then there are plenty of other road blocks to consider: songs like “Belsen Was A Gas” (Sex Pistols) and “I Feel Like A Wog” (the Stranglers) are obviously problematic and devoid of the same knowing, sarcastic sneer and elbow-to-the-ribs in similar songs by bands like the Dead Kennedys.

This, as well as the absence of black or brown faces in prevalent bands of the period (or their audiences in show footage) and the well-documented activity of the racist National Front within England at that time, leaves a first-time listener of colour feeling alienated and defeated by the scene. It’s worth noting that this is all particularly confusing when you consider the intertwining of punk and reggae that existed in the exact same scene (ie. the Clash, the Specials).

first watched the band perform.

Along with abandoning any sense of what a “traditional” or “feminine” singing voice should, supposedly, sound like, the band also introduced another element to their sound that immediately set them apart: the saxophone. Initially perceived as a novelty or gimmick by early X-Ray Spex audiences, the inclusion of the sax significantly impacted the depth and feel of the band’s music. Leads played by the saxophone in X-Ray Spex songs would absolutely not feel right if played by guitar, and audiences quickly realized the importance of that musical element.

While several of the band’s peers steered toward the political (war in gulfs and ditches overseas, in Parliament, etc.), Poly instead chose to focus more on things confronted by all of us in our-day-to-day lives. X-Ray Spex tackled crass consumerism long before it became a trope for punk bands, and also openly challenged society’s obsession with cleanliness. Poly is also often recognized for taking the misogyny prevalent within her scene (and English society… scratch that… global society at large) to task through songs like “Oh Bondage Up Yours!” and the diabolically catchy “I Can’t Do Anything.” When reflecting on the way in which punk can provide a home for the socially fractured and true outcasts of the world, X-Ray Spex is one of the first bands that comes to my mind. Freedom of expression is paramount throughout their work, and weirdness isn’t just integral to their approach, but celebrated within it.

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WHAT ABOUT TOMORROW? Alexander Herbert’s book What about Tomorrow?: An Oral History of Russian Punk from the Soviet Era to Pussy Riot is something I basically just stumbled across and I’m glad I did. Over it’s nearly 300 pages Alexander weaves the tale of the history of punk rock in Russia through a focus around the people and places that made it happen. I was lucky to catch him the morning after a reading at a book store here in Richmond for an hour or so of conversation over coffee.

We talked a bit last night about how you initially got into doing the book because you were studying Russian in Russia. It’s kind of an unusual thing for someone to get into it. What was your initial interest in Russian as a language, as a culture?

My grandfather was Polish. And he owned a marine upholstery business in Warwick, Rhode Island.

And so I would skip school all the time to go work for him. And he had a big truck that he worked out of, like one of those large U-Haul trucks that he converted into a mobile upholstery room. And he would just talk to me about history, all the time, Polish history, American history, anything. So it got me really interested in history. So when I started my undergraduate degree, I really wanted to learn Polish because I wanted to be able to speak to him in Polish.

Yeah. It’s a hard language.

It’s a super hard language, but the college that I studied at didn’t offer Polish. They offered Russian.

And so my grandfather was like, “Yeah, fuck it, just whatever. Just do Russian, it’s kind of the same.” And it was similar enough that when you’re learning vocabulary words at that stage, you can compare them. And then after a year of studying at the college, I had a study abroad opportunity, and so I took it, and living in Russia is what got me into Russian culture more specifically.

So it all happened kind of by accident. I still don’t know Polish. It’s too hard now, I think, to go back, it’s too late.

I once had a failed attempt to learn Polish ‘cause I’m super into Polish punk and then about a month into doing courses online, I was like, “I’m not gonna learn Polish.” [laughter]

It’s tough. The good thing is that the alphabet is the same as ours. At least they have the Latin alphabet.

Russian uses Cyrillic but, there were other pockets of Russian culture that I would get exposed to that made me even deeper, got me even deeper into the culture study. There’s a film called Ivan the Terrible, Ivan Grozny, it’s by Sergei Eisenstein, and that movie, I watched it, and I was so smitten by the storyline, the cinematography of it, the history of that film - Stalin’s favourite film, the first one. Little things like that would come up, like learning about Alexander Pavlovich I, who defeated Napoleon and then marched into Paris, all those little things got me more and more fascinated with Russia...

You said you went to a school in a town outside of Moscow?

Yeah, way outside of Moscow. But for them, it’s not way outside, it’s like 200 miles east. But for them, it’s like next door.

That was what, like 2011?

Yeah.

What was your first encounter with Russian punk, I’m guessing you’re living in a dorm kind of, feeling a little bit isolated from people, how did you end up at a show - I’m guessing these things are still a little clandestine…

I was really not good at Russian at that point, so I was feeling super isolated but I had music, so I would just blast like Boston Strangler or something from my room. Inevitably, one day, I was cooking in the communal kitchen, this dude came in and was like, “Hey, do you listen to punk?” And I was like, “Yeah, totally” And he goes, “I don’t listen to punk,

but I know people who do listen to punk - do you wanna go to a show?” Of course, I was like,”Yeah, I’d love that. What venue?” And he explains that, “It’s just some building out in the suburbs.” And so he took me. And it was this completely dilapidated abandoned factory building with like nails sticking out of the floor and the walls, and the rafters, like hanging horizontally, half vertically, half horizontally. I was legitimately worried that when the band started, people were gonna get hurt ‘cause all the nails that were sticking out - anyway, the band started. It was a band called Partybreaker. And they’re from Moscow now, but they’re originally from Nizhny Novgorod. And people just went absolutely nuts. It was so cool to see because it looked like, for me at least, for the first time in a long time...

Like at that point, I had gone to basement shows in Boston and Providence. So I had been to those DIY spots before. But this space was still dangerous, you know what I mean? Like those places, they’re not really dangerous. If the cops come they just say, “Everyone leave. Just go home.” Right? But this was like, people could get hurt there. You know? And it was more about the enthusiasm of the kids that struck me. So that night, I just had the idea of like, “Man, I should document this stuff. Because I feel like this is a special moment for Russian youth that nobody knows about.” It was 2011. And so, I just took an interview with the band at that point. And then it happened at every other show I went to. I just kept interviewing people. Somebody would hand me a fanzine and I would ask them, “Can I interview you about this fanzine?” So it just ballooned from there.

Sonically speaking, was the stuff that you were first encountering was it Western and familiar in sound or...

That first band, Partybreaker, is absolutely influ-

Grazhdanskya Oborona

enced by Have Heart, you know that sorta straightedge sound?

The cool thing is that in the provincial cities, to this day, we still have mixed genre shows. And so you’ll have like that band, then you’ll have a d-beat band come on, and then a crossover band or a pop punk band will play. Whereas now in Moscow, it’s one genre shows, because it’s so big there. But, I mean, I like every genre of punk. The first show I went to in Moscow was this band called Comatose from St. Petersburg. And they’re like a crossover, Motörhead-type, like d-beat crossover type thing. They were really good.

As people have returned to singing more in Russian, as you mentioned last night, it’s affected the sound of the bands. Was there a more unique Russian sound at one point?

In the Soviet Union when it first starts, there’s some originality to the sound. There was not so much originality in the presentation because the outward expression of this stuff is only so limited. But there’s also the phenomenon of Siberian punk, which comes out of like Omsk and Novosibirsk in the Soviet Union. And that is really original to not only Russia, but Siberia because the lyrics are political.

And if they’re not political, they’re expressing this sense of isolation that these kids have living in these remote parts of Siberia. And some of the lyrics are just borderline depressing to listen to. When you go see them play, the energy is still there, but the lyrics can be extremely sad.

The first punk, more or less the first punk band in

Вос ма Марта

Zhenya Fedorav, Richochet

St. Petersburg, The Automatic Satisfiers, it’s just a Russian version of the name Sex Pistols. Svin who is considered the first punk, he looks like Johnny Rotten. The influence is absolutely there. The Siberian scene that comes more or less in 1985, ‘86, that’s the one that is really, really... As a first scene.

Because like I said, they’re more isolated, they’re more bored, they have less exposure to what’s going on in the West, and they’re further from power.

By the 90s when bands are allowed to play pretty much whatever, you get the massive commercialization of punk, then the influx of Western bands.

So that’s when you start seeing the copy-cat bands especially in Moscow. Where, like I said, the lyrics are really corny, it’s all tropes, like scene unity and fuck the police, and all that stuff. Sure it might be relevant to Russia, but it’s very much just using the tropes and punks to make easy English lyrics. It’s only recently now that people are starting to play with the Russian language as a way of composing songs. So a good band to listen to for that is Mraz from Moscow, they’re a good example of it.

With your book you focus less on the bands and more about the spaces and people - the things that surround and make up that culture. Why did you make this choice?

In the book I talk about the bands, almost every band that I could think of is mentioned at least once, but it’s more focused on the spaces that are coddling the scene and bringing it to where it is today. I grew up reading Maximum Rocknroll, Razorcake, essentially, reading band interview after band interview after band interview, but when you go

to like DIY spaces or even big venues you see the variety of ways that people are involved in punk.

It’s not just doing a fanzine or being in a band or promoting bands or booking bands, it’s also people who are making connections to people across space and time. The people who are creating the spaces themselves. The people who are enforcing those spaces. Not only all that stuff, people who are on the front lines of straight edge culture or veganism or recovery initiative, outreach initiatives. Food Not Bombs stuff. All these things that are so central to punk. That I just felt like the bands are definitely important for bringing these things together in those spaces, but those things themselves are also really important. I really want to capture those aspects.

For example, in the vegan issue of my zine Punks Around, I interviewed Bob Otis from Dropdead.

But I didn’t ask him about Dropdead at all, I just asked him about his veganism. So it’s like more about, “Let’s get a conversation going about these important things.” The recent issue is about drug use, recovery, and outreach. These are the topics that anybody that grew up in punk experiences in some way or another in their life. Either a friend becomes addicted to something, or you yourself become addicted, or you recover...

In Russian punk, what are those key moments, spaces, etc which help define that story?

Paradoxically, the first space, the Leningrad Rock Club, is a state-controlled space. It only exists because the KGB wanted a way to control what the kids were doing, the expression that they were having. When the Soviet Union disappears, those

Party Breaker

Unbroken Bones

state-owned spaces disappear with it. And you get the proliferation of DIY venues for the first time.

So in St. Petersburg, formerly Leningrad, it’s club Tom Tom, in Moscow it’s the Jerry Rubin’s Club.

Where all the bands that go on to either be those big commercial bands or even just famous for their city scenes, they’re nestled there in those spaces.

At that time in the 90s, it’s completely apolitical until the late 90s. Nobody’s talking about politics at all. The songs aren’t about politics, or it could be about local governance, or something like that, but nothing national.

Why do you think that was?

Because the Soviet union was such an ideologically-laden country. You were indoctrinated then, from the second you started school every Soviet citizen was taught a version of Marxism, had to read certain excerpts of Marxism. The whole country was based on an ideology. And when it disappears, this vacuum just opens up. Not only do all these countries disappear. Not only does your passport become useless, but you also lose your understanding of the world, right? And you’re introduced to this new, oligarchical capitalist state. It dislocates a lot of people.

A lot of the people that I interviewed were coming up in the ‘90s, the poorest time for Russia economically. They had fathers who were engineers because in the Soviet Union being an engineer was akin to our being a lawyer. It’s like the top job that you get. And when the Soviet Union disappears, all those engineers lost their jobs, and so all these people that we’re interviewing said, “Yeah, my dad

Spory

Pincher

lost his job when the Soviet Union collapsed and we were homeless for a really long time.” So you can imagine that at that point with so much politics affecting their life, they just don’t wanna talk about it when they’re going to these spaces where they don’t have to talk. Of course, that becomes a problem and towards the end of the 90s you get blatant displays of Neo-Nazism and bands are then forced to take a stance and say, “We’re not ok with that.

You have to leave.”

The irony of Russians being Nazis given World War Two...

Russia is and has always been a multi-ethnic country. So, you have Tatars, you have Asian-looking Russians that are equally Russian, but it’s definitely Russian nationalism. It’s Russians speaking and living within the territory that is Russia, whether it’s Vladivostok or Moscow. That being said, of course, there’s racism there… not so much in the punk scene anymore...

And correct me if I’m wrong, but the perception I got was, “Yeah, we’re anti-racist, but women have their ‘place,’” or ad in a little bit of homophobia, that kind of thing. In the time you’ve spent there and interacted with people, have you seen that change at all? Or...

Very, very slowly. Which is part of the reason why the book is called What About Tomorrow because if one of the... Not necessarily the goals but one of the long-term effects of punk has been introducing these progressive ideas, whether it’s veganism, straight edge, harm reduction, things like that.

Those things have to continue under the expectation or the hope that it will just keep progressing, so that those spaces that punks have now, as a new generation comes in, it just gets more and more progressive, and not regressive. And it’s through looking at, my opinion, the totality of this history that you can see that progress actually moving. So, like I said last night, I think I have friends in Russia that when I told them I was working on the book, they were like, “Why? We don’t have a punk history, why are you researching it?” And then when I was done and I shared it with them, and I did my book talks, they were all like, “Wow, we didn’t even realize that any of this all mattered. But now when you put it all together, we see that we do have a history of this sort.”

You were talking about how the efforts of the KGB, to co-opt, rock music, you mentioned the venues, is there anything like that at all that the state was doing? Did they release records for these people, or did they... For any of the rock bands? Records.

Tapes or...

They didn’t release records. They had a state record label, Melodiya Records, where they wouldn’t release “amateur” bands and they just branded all these bands as amateur. So they didn’t record them.

But by Perestroika, as I was telling the story of Fetty last night, you do get people who get little tape recorders as they can record themselves in their apartments. That means that the quality, especially now, 30, 40 years later, is barely recognizable.

Yeah, it’s there, but there’s no state encouragement of it. Essentially the KGB is just trying to make it so that if these kids are going to do this, let’s just get

Taranky!

them in one place, so that we can make sure that they’re not getting into any trouble.

Tell me about Feddy...

Fetty was a little bit younger than the progenitors of punk in Leningrad. He played music with them and everything and he had the means of recording and stuff. He had a little recorder and he had some instruments. So he created tapes, demo tapes for a band called Self-Eradication Department, Otdel Samoiskoreneniya and the lyrics for the first time in Leningrad and really probably, anywhere even before Siberia, were absolutely really political. And it’s amazing to think... He told me he was 17 or 18 when he wrote this stuff. It sounds really good. To this day, he’s remastered it too, so he pressed some vinyl like a couple of years ago to redistribute it.

It sounds really good, but he made five tapes originally and distributed them out to friends. The Leningrad Rock Club wouldn’t let him play there because they didn’t like the lyrics and because they thought he was too amateurish. And somehow a KGB guy got a hold of one of the tapes. He thinks that it might’ve been somebody who was at his friend’s apartment who just sniped it, or possibly that somebody gave them the tape. But anyway, they arrested him, they had the tape and the lyrics all there, and they said, “Hey, can you tell us about this?” And he was caught red-handed. So, they made him sign an affidavit that said he would never write or record, or compose music again in the Soviet Union. And then they sent him to the military where he did a terrible job as in the military, and so they sent him to a mental hospital instead. And he didn’t write music again until the disappearance of the Soviet Union. And it’s only in the 90s where he started recording again, making music, but it wasn’t punk music at that point, it was like Indie music.

I think that that entire experience didn’t necessarily scare him away, but it just made him feel outside of the punk scene that was by that time developing.

But do you think that he was doing, when he did any stuff lyrically, was it the same kind of topics?

No. It was really poppy. He just didn’t want anything to do with that anymore, and he was more about the music at that point. One of the lyrics for the anarcho band is “Reagan and Andropov, fuck all bureaus from grime”. So it’s really political, is not just aimed at the Soviet Union. It’s aimed at the whole Cold War debacle. Yeah, but after that, after he’s arrested, and he goes through all those experiences, he doesn’t want anything to do with punk anymore. To this day, I’m really close to him, actually. I consider him my Russian father. And I still show him bands and sometimes he’ll come with me to punk shows, and people know him and respect him, but he’s kind of really dismissive of it. What he does now, but now it’s like ambient pop stuff that he mixes himself. So, yeah...

Thinking about what we were talking about earlier with the lyrics - do you think some of the use tropes and cliches could be part of trying to figure out ways to express yourselves without getting nailed by the state?

Now they’re starting to do it. And this is where Pussy Riot is relevant because... Well, Pussy Riot was never part of the scene, never went to shows.

Nobody has seen those girls before. They at least demonstrated, I guess, to Russian musicians or Russians in general, that you can be dissident. It might land you in jail for a couple of years, but you can still say something. And so now I’m starting to see more bands be more political. There’s a band from Nizhny Novgorod called Criminal State, that, I mean, in the name, Criminal State... And they now also have a song I believe that’s “Fuck Putin.”

Making the whole crowd saying, “Fuck Putin.” But they only play really underground. They’re like the street punk band with the colorful, spiky hair.

But that kind of dissidence doesn’t leave those venues. It stays there, as far as our expression of it. And I think that it’s true, it’s legitimate that you would get beat up if you wore a shirt that said, “Fuck Trump.” But it is a cliche to wear a shirt that says, “Fuck Obama,” or, “Fuck Trump,” or something like that. It’s a sign of just political dissidence broadly conceived because it doesn’t matter who the American president is, fuck them. And I understand that, but I also hope that Russians, at least some day, have the ability to wear outwardly political dissident shirts that aren’t just about the United States ‘cause a lot of that kind of simple thinking leads to simple thinking about people like you and I, the nationals of these countries that like, “I don’t give a fuck about Trump. I don’t like him.” But that doesn’t mean that because he’s my president that it’s a reflection of me at all, you know what I mean?

So, yeah.

Average Russians love America and American culture. Absolutely. 100%. So, even American bands they like... A lot of them like American bands more than they like Russian bands. They’re just interested in them. It’s just that the politics of their country, the state of their country right now, it’s hard to be concerned with the politics of other countries with everything that’s going on there. So what I always say, and part of the reason for researching the book, is exactly what you said, it’s that punk rock and all the different aspects of punk rock are things that connect people across space and time. And so once you read a book about the history of Russian punk, you realize that these people are just like me.

They live in a different country, they speak a different language, the music sounds a little funky, but they’re the exact same thing as me. They all grew up like me, they toured like me, they had the same ideals as me, and I think that that’s why it’s important. Because there’s so many scene histories written about American scenes, the East Bay, New York, and DC, wherever, that for us, we’re not surprised that everyone is kind of the same. That the band interviews are roughly always the same. But we are surprised when we read about a Polish scene in Warsaw or a Russian scene. That we’re surprised to know that these peoples who we’ve been told, they’re the evil empire, the enemy. They’re actually not. They’re just like you and I.

At this moment the phrase “police reform” has come into vogue, and the actions of our publicly appointed guardians have attracted attention presidential and pedestrian. You may have heard the talk of diversity, sensitivity training, and body cameras. These are all fine and applicable, but they understate the task and allow the citizens of this country to pretend that there is real distance between their own attitudes and those of the ones appointed to protect them. The truth is that the police reflect America in all of its will and fear, and whatever we might make of this country’s criminal justice policy, it cannot be said that it was imposed by a repressive minority. The abuses that have followed from these policies—the sprawling carceral state, the random detention of black people, the torture of suspects—are the product of democratic will. And so to challenge the police is to challenge the American people who send them into the ghettos armed with the same self-generated fears that compelled the people who think they are white to flee the cities and into the Dream. The problem with the police is not that they are fascist pigs but that our country is ruled by majoritarian pigs.

- Ta-Nehisi Coates Between The World & Me All images from recent protests in Richmond, Virginia by Nick Hancock.

NOT LIKE YOU RECORDS OUT NOW! LOCKED INSIDE “Your Thoughts. Your Own” 7” NYC Straight Edge brought to you by members of Search, Mouthpiece, Vinny & The Hooligans, On the Rise and Others. 2nd Press now available on Green Vinyl.

TOO MANY VOICES “Catch Me If You Can” LP NY’s answer to Revolution Summer if it had taken place at a skatepark or the Brooklyn Banks. Dag Nasty, Verbal Assault and 7 Seconds all come to mind, yet originality still shines thru.

GHOUL SQUAD “Necrodoll” LP Originally slated to be released by Pushead on his Pusmort imprint, the project was aborted after test presses…..until now.

Horror Punk finally released after 30+ years.

UP NEXT. . . .

Minus One LP, Dana Alberts (Minus One) 7”, Rabid Assault 7”, Defbox LP, The Faction “Pegged” Box set, Issue 8 of the Zine, and much more!!

Check out www.notlikeyourecords.com for more info and to order.

Drain

SOUNDS.

ACID BLOOD - S/T 12”

BAD CRUSH - S/T EP

C-4 - Goes To War Demo CS

Sizzling rock’n’punk’nroll from Umeå featuring former members of AC4, VECTORS etc - akin to bands like NASHVILLE PUSSY, ZEKE or Blood Guts & Pussy-era DWARVES, it›s a rip roaring gut punch of riff heavy rocknroll that takes the MOTÖRHEAD recipe and cranks up the velocity.

I love this type of snotty, snarky and totally pissed off punk - its bass driven and a bit simplistic musically, more garagey with vocals that remind me of Alison from BRATMOBILE, though this is much better than BRATMOBILE. My favorite song is the one about stabbing dudes in a pool, it›s called “Dead Man’s Pool.”

Six short blasts of no frills, straightforward hardcore - reminds me a lot of something that would have been on Teamwork Records in like 1998.

Remember the first RANCOR EP? It›s like that, sorta.

Blasts of speed mostly designed to set up the moshy bits.

AFTER - S/T EP Super thick slabs of burly crust with a d-beat tinge that reminds me a great deal of the classic 90s style promoted by legends like STATE OF FEAR or EUCHARIST. Monstrous riffs, snarling vocals - total and complete quality.

ALTAR OF EDEN - The Grotto Screams CS Supremely spooky, modern darkwave - its icey cold in its presentation with a lo-fi production adding to its effectiveness. Think SIOUXSIE SIOUX, think BAUHAUS, think THE CHAMELEONS but more punk. This is really cool.

ASBESTOS - Demo CS No, not the classic Japanese ASBESTOS but the more recent one from Denver, though they both play a similar style of distorted, crusty, pukka-pukka punk rock. These Coloradians deliver five tracks of noisey, snarly, and messy hardcore that sounds like it was recorded by putting a microphone in the middle of a practice space and turning everything up to ten. Even the interlude, which sounds like something playing at the Bang Bang bar, is just crackley phasey sonic goop.

ANTIBODIES - 2018 + 2019 LP Garage rock played with hardcore velocites?

Hardcore played with garage rock sensibilites? I mean it›s fast, filled with hooks, a little messy and the production is a completely blown out noisey mess in the best possible way. If this came out in 1983 y’all would all be like “Oh shit! I’m gonna slam spit and dive to this shit” but, its 2020 and everyone has their own cliques and… just get this and crank the volume until your ears bleed.

AUS - S/T LP Icey Icey cold Germany goth - a dreary synth and drums presentation with haunting vocals and occasional guitars. In some ways, this feels like the JOY DIVISION song “Atrocity Exhibition” come to life as a full fledged band. Not an everyday listen but, certainly worth the visit on a winter stormy night with the house only lit by candles.

BARCELONA - Residuos Del Ultrasonido EP BARCELONA is a sonic car crash - a cacophonous barrage of notes, rhythm, and noise careening across your cerebral cortex. Eight tracks that in one moment flirt with purposeful tunefulness then quickly descending into confused chaotic madness - like playing a WRETCHED record and an ORNETTE COLEMEN record at the same time.

A lot of folx blather on about “noise not music” but BARCELONA delivers on the promise.

B.E.A.S.T. - Demo 2020 Blown-out, rocknroll punk in that Motocharge meets Randy Uchida’s riffs on Deathly Fighter with Jeff Clayton from ANTISEEN laying down the vocal tracks sorta way.

BIG LAUGH - Manic Revision EP Hard riffing, thick necked, mid-paced hardcore plenty of swaggering mosh parts but it lacks the overwhelming velocity I would expect given the references to INFEST, SSD and HERESY on the bio.

For me, this feels less like Boston 82 and more the Anthrax in 88 wedged between BOLD and ALONE IN A CROWD. Super solid.

BLOODY HEAD - Total Flaming Yin Yang EP Dirgy, arty anti-hardcore - super lo-fi recording that makes the instrumentation sound like NIRVANA’s Bleach being played down the hallway in someone else’s room while some dude rants. Think JIM JONES AND THE KOOL AID KIDS, NO TREND, FLIPPER but less melodic and slower.

BOMBARDMENT - EP Like their recent LP, this doesn’t deviant too much from the classic DIS-formula though the energy on this is cranked all the way up making it a much more compelling listen. Riffs galore and rather than hyper blown out, distortion-til-deafness, guitar sound they go for a more classic 70s rock guitar sound making this all the more powerful. Just brilliant stuff.

C.H.E.W. - In Due Time EP Chicago’s C.H.E.W. are just outstanding - its frantic, urgent and frenzied punk rock that is disquieting yet totally compelling. Five tracks soaked with tense terror ala early DIE KREUZEN melded with intensity of IN/HUMANITY’s 1st LP. Just outstanding.

CADENAXO - Lenguas Podridas 12” Manic, noisey, viscous hardcore punk that blasts, twists and tuns away - in some ways this has that same sort of sidewindery feel of bands like GAUZE & MURO, though not really sounding like them.

Its more the feeling of tension, aggression and slightly of control careening take on hardcore. Lo-fi production on this which adds to the loose feel in a great way. Great great great! The 11PM hit machine chugs right along!

CEMENT SHOES - A Love Story Of Drugs & Rock & Roll & Drugs EP Richmond’s CEMENT SHOES should get a lot more props than they do - brilliantly snotty, abrasive and just fucking weird at times, they project an genuine outsider vibe in a sea of bands trying to sound like DISCLOSE or YOUTH OF TODAY or TURNSTILE or whatever… On this three track platter, the winner for me is the closing track “Going Off the Grid” which is equal parts Process of Weeding Out-era BLACK FLAG and RADIO BIRDMAN - drug addled jamming meeting 70s style Aussie hook laden rocknroll sensibilities. Great, great, great.

THE CHISEL - Deconstructive Surgery EP Solid, put the fucking-boots-in, lager and chips, ultro aggro, UK punk. It puts a modern spin on the more hardcore side of BLITZ and the lads out to cause trouble, have a few pints and smash them in the cars feel of COCKNEY REJECTS hooliganism but with a bit more sense of class consciousness. Hools, yeah?

CHRON TURBINE - Yoga Injury-discomfort In Seven Movements CS Total weirdo “destructo-pop” of the sorts that I feel used to be a bit more common in the late 80s and

early 90s. Smidge of KING MISSILE or BUTTHOLE SURFERS artsiness, with a rhythm section that reminds me of that sort of lockstep attack found on the SCRATCH ACID/JESUS LIZARD records. More “alternative” than “punk” to my old ears but in this way that’s more “total weirdo rock by and for mutants” than “alternative music: let’s sell this shit to teenagers.” Total quality.

COLD CALLERS - Dressed To Die LP Super infectious punk with a power pop tinge from the UK - its got that same feeling of sardonic sugary sweetness you find in classic UK bands like THE BOYS or THE ADICTS. It›s incredibly infectious to the point where I find the title track’s chorus getting constantly stuck in my head.

COLLISION - Immortels EP Melodic French punk dripping with CLASH style bombast and STIFF LITTLE FINGERS riffing, though the vocals aren’t as rough and tumble. More “Stay Free” than “Incendiary Device.” It›s only three songs but each is worth the price of admission, especially if you like punk played with a solid pop sensibility.

CONCRETE LAWN - Aggregate LP Hailing from the land down under, CONCRETE LAWN churn out nine tracks of thudding, midtempo, bass driven punk rock that takes a lot of cues from RUDIMENTARY PENI - its a beautiful cacophony creepy, sludey riffing backing up a wailing banshee of a vocalist. It›s a powerful and utterly engaging record for me that I can’t stop listening to.

No Heads

CONFETTI - Demo CS This is fucking great - unhinged, raging hardcore taking cues from VOID, KORO and maybe a less noisy NOSFERATU. Weird times changes, off kilter riffing, vocals just barely keeping pace… more more more more.

CORIKY - S/T LP What I’ve always liked and admired about Ian Mackaye is that he doesn’t give a shit what you think of his projects, he does what he likes and creates the music he creates because it is the music that he wants/needs to create. CORIKY, in case you don’t know, is his new project with drummer Amy Farina (ex-WARMERS etc) and bassist Joe Lally (FUGAZI). It is a spooky, moody record that, for me, feels like it has a lot of its sonic roots in 60s garage bands as interpreted through the same series of filters that lead to the later period of FUGAZI’s riffing. Dissonant layers of clean repetitive guitarwork layered over a lockstep rhythm section that at times could make you feel like you are listening to missing FUGAZI demos - Ian’s guitarwork is so signature, especially when paired with Joe’s basswork, that it’s hard to escape that feeling. What makes it even more appealing is the interplay of Amy & Ian’s vocals - hers more sweet and tuneful while his alternate between a whisper and a bark, it helps to enforce the moodiness and drives home the impact of the songs. This record probably isn’t for everyone - which I certainly get but, for me beyond the songs themselves, it remains a testament to living life on your own terms and expressing yourself, for yourself. Art because you need to not just because others like it - so the real

question, the words of the BIG BOYS is: What are you doing to participate?

COVID SS - Demo CS Primitive and raw d-beat hardcore from Mexico soaked in reverb this sounds like it was recorded on a boombox in a basement. It›s sloppy, simple, moderately inept and kinda perfect. The second track “Mundo Corrosivo” is the winner for me.

CULEBRA - S/T LP Jangly guitars, solid hooks, and a vocalist that at times feels like a dead ringer for Teresa from THE BRAT, Spain’s CULERBRA present twelve well crafted pop songs on this LP, none lasting much more than two minutes. In someways this feels like a slightly more New Wave MASSHYSTERI as its missing some of the overt aggression of those Swedes especially with the Spaniards use of layers of synths in the background. This feels a lot like something Almodovar would use as the soundtrack for a scene where a fleet of scooter punks fill the streets of Madrid in 1981. I love it.

CUERO - Cabezabota 12” Powerful, driving street punk from the Basque country. There’s a lot about its syncopated, stomping approach that reminds me of RIXE, especially when paired against the vocals. Just four tracks but each one of them ooze with power.

Would love to hear more from these folx.

DEADREAM - Demo CS Short bursts of straightforward hardcore - no songs

over 45 seconds, simple riffs, no grooved out lengthy breakdowns, just simple to the point all go minimal slow goodness. I’m down.

DEATH CULT - Spiritual Conundrum CS I love this - total weirdo, raucous punk rock that careens and bounces with tons of energy. The vocals on this are this real stand out - rather than the cliche snarl or monster vocals, they are snotty, strained, desperate and utterly perfect.

DEMON IN GRASSROOTS - Demo Primitive pukka-pukka punk from Indonesia that sounds like it could be and missing ADK flexi. Think like ZOUO or the Japanese SODOM but you know a little different - same vibe.

DISGARCHE - Sin Salir Sin Coger Sin Dormir LP Guess what these Argentines sound like? Slower, less noisy and a more guttural vocal style (sorta sounds like Max Calavera). They cover ANTICIMEX, ESKORBUTO & DISCHARGE. They have a song called “Sexo Virtual.”

DISSEKERAD / EARTH CRUST DISPLACEMENT - Split EP I love DISSEKERAD - sure it helps that it›s the singer of TOTALITÄR and it sounds similar to the faster bits of Sin Egan-era TOTALITÄR and I LOVE TOTALITÄR but they do it really really really well. Look, if you love the traditional Swedish style with bits of stomping grooves mixed in occasionally, then this will be your jam too. On the flip, Germany’s EARTH CRUST DISPLACEMENT… well they do a similar take on the classic d-beat stylings of our Swedish heroes, albeit a little messier and imprecise in execution, though still totally effective.

DITCHES - S/T LP It says they are are from Sweden but this power pop with a decidedly punk edge sounds so much like RADIOACTIVITY/MARKED MEN that I had to check several times to be sure. Much like the crew from Denton, TX they churn out track after track of incredibly infectious rock n roll.

DÖMESTICRUST - Apparatus Burning In Hell EP Heavy duty, thick as shit 90s style crust - think STATE OF FEAR or HELLKRUSHER but with even thicker production and total monster emerging from deep in the mist style vocals. This would sit well in the Profane Existence catalog of yore.

DRAIN - California Cursed LP NorCal hawdkaw from Santa Cruz that owes more to METALLICA than MINOR THREAT for sonic inspiration. This is incredibly executed, energetic, modern metallic hardcore that stomps and grooves all over your face.

DRILL SERGEANT - The Cosmic Leash CS Punchy, primal hardcore from Philadelphia - its alternates between this marching, mid-paced stomp and CROSSED OUT style blasts of relentless fury.

Super raw, stripped down production gives even more of that early power violence vibe - though the vocalist sounds more like Ray of Today than an actual monster coming to kill you.

DROPDEAD - Demos 1991 LP

EXECUTORS/MALE PATTERNS - Split EP

It can be difficult to fully convey in 2020 just how insane a band like DROPDEAD sounded in the hardcore landscape of 1991. The first time I ever heard them was on their split 5” with CROSSED OUT and it was just such a vital blend of crushing velocity emphasizing a powerful message of animal rights and resistance. It just roared out of my speakers and in so many ways forever changed the way i looked at music - a blend of blistering speed and heaviness that was just jaw dropping.

Here we sit nearly 30 years later and listening to these remastered demos we find these tracks just as powerful as the first time I heard them. When listened to back to back with their new LP you can see the evolution of the concept without an abandonment of the initial idea - primitive ferocious music where the lyric sheet matters. A push towards standing in defiance of a world filled with assholes who just don’t fucking get it. Completely and totally essential.

New Jersey’s EXECUTORS contribute rocking, mid-paced punk jams - I can’t over how much the bass sounds like LIFES BLOOD, backing up guitars that noodle away little melodic leads and relatively clean vocals with a smidge of gravel. MALE PATTERNS sounds like SHEER TERROR outtakes but, the more straightforward punk side of SHEER TERROR.

DRUG TOILET - MMXX Demo The first thing that grabs me about this are the vocals - have you ever listened to the CROMAGS demo? You know how raw and primal Bloodclot’s vocals are on that? Now imagine them soaked in reverb, distortion and then layered over some primitive, metallic hardcore punk that is a bit like Humanity is The Devil-era INTEGRITY meets some fuzzed out, Japanee style hardcore but played by robots. The more I listen, the more I like.

DUCKIS - Lick It Up CS Snotty, sassy punk rock from Florida that sounds a bit like it could have come out from the East Bay in the 90s - it›s got that same hella punk oomph that BLACK FORK or BLATZ had - its got speed, it›s got hooks, this is really cool.

ECOSTRIKE - A Truth We Still Believe LP Florida straight edge kings are back. It’s got that early 90s production style down perfect - scooped out guitars, vocals sorta buried and that snare sound that just punctuates through it all. Musically it is straight up, unashamed worship of early STRIFE fast paced, lots of singalongs, and seemingly every song works its way towards a moshing breakdown.

Another one of those bands where if you told me this was from some long lost demo from 1992 found in the recesses of the New Age Records warehouse, I’d totally believe you.

ELVIS STRAUS - S/T EP Guitar driven synth punk from Spain - it›s an incredibly infectious pop journey though still aggro and lo-fi enough to keep my interest despite how robotic it can feel at times. One of the vocalists reminds me a lot of LA POLLA RECORDS. ERIK NERVOUS - Bugs EP This is fucking great - it starts out with this 30 second burst of manic, frantic, and utterly hectic hardcore punk that makes “Pay to Cum’ sound like reggae then it flips to keyboard driven DEVO meets SCREAMERS inspired pop then back to more angular weirdness - I think this may be a one person project. Its great.

EXPLOATÖR - Avgrundens Brant LP With a band member pedigree that reads members of WARCOLLAPSE, SLUTET, TOTALITÄR, DISCHANGE, KRIGSHOT, MAKABERT FYND, DISSEKERAD, KRIG I HUDIK, KATASTROF, INSTITUTION, BRAINBOMBS, NAPALM A.D., DESPERATE FIX, KVOTERINGEN, MEANWHILE, DISFEAR, NO SECURITY and ÄÄRITILA it was surprising to me that this sounded like SUPERCHUNK - just kidding. It sounds exactly how you would expect it to sound. It›s just absolutely perfect Swedish hardcore in the traditonal style. We’re probably never going to get a new TOTALITÄR release so this is gonna have to satiate you. Total ripper.

EXIL - 2020 Demo I’m really excited about this new Swedish band featuring 50% of the crew that made up DEMON SYSTEM 13 and do not fear, they haven’t downshifted into playing mid tempo indie pop.

Their demo is two tracks of ripping American style hardcore crammed through a Swedish filter.

Its powerful quick paced stuff geared towards singalongs, stage dives and thrashing mayhem. A great promise of exciting things to come.

FACTION S - Noyau Dur EP Ultra aggro and menacing sounding French Oi. Vocals snarl, guitars slash, drums pound, and honestly I imagine this is what plays in your head when it›s getting kicked in by Paris Saint-Germain FC hools. It›s fairly straight forward street punk with occasional metallic riffing and breakdowns.

FADING SIGNAL - Demo North Carolina hardcore alternating between quick blasts of furious hardcore which occasionally descends into two stepping breakdowns. There is a lot of promise here and I’d love to hear more than these three tracks.

FALSE BROTHER - Uncanny Valley LP Broodingly bleak post-punk that sends a chill down your spine. This sounds like clove cigarettes, dried roses hung upside down on a black wall and an adrogynous photo spread shot in a graveyard in a well worn copy of Propaganda magazine.

THE FIGHT/RULE THEM ALL - Fight Them All Flexi Split flexi from these two East Coast powerhouses designed as a benefit for the ACLU and the NYSCASA (New York State Coalition Against Sexual Assaullt). For their side, THE FIGHT put the hammer down on a perfect and absolutely punchy cover of DISCHARGE’s “Fight Back,” while RULE THEM ALL rip through a version of DAG NASTY’S “Values Here” that is so perfect that it almost sounds

like they found the original tape and just put new vocals on it. Fun release for a great cause.

FRACTURE - Demo No, not the FRACTURE from the Philly that played delightful melodic punk rock and featured a baby ATOM from ATOM & HIS PACKAGE - this is the FRACTURE from Philly that exists now and plays viscous, burly hardcore punk that is an intense mixture of Libero di Vivere-era WRETCHED with a stomping thudding UK82 hardcore sounds. I’m super into this and apologize for getting them confused with a band that was around when they were probably still in diapers. I hate getting old.

FRACTURED - Demo Metallic hardcore punk in that post-UK82 style from the catacombs of Montreal - think BROKEN BONES, think ENGLISH DOGS. think later VARUKERS. Etc. Really well played with lots of energy and wanky guitars - it’s got more of a crossover feel to it than a “noise not music” one.

FRANKIE STUBBS - Blood Orange Moon EP No, not a band called Frankie Stubbs but the man Frankie Stubbs playing acoustically. If you know anything about me, you know how much I adore LEATHERFACE and consider Frankie Stubbs to be one of the finest songwriters to not just arise out of punk but over the last 40 years, period. On this EP we find Mr. Stubbs working his way through three new songs, as well as an acoustic take on LEATHERFACE’s “Shipyards.” One of the things about LEATHERFACE which always appealed to me was the sense of melancholy and fragility buried in the layers of amps cranked to 11 and drumming straight out of the Phil Taylor aka MOTORHEAD school of though providing a powerful foundation.

When stripped of that wailing juggernaut of power, the angst and frustration of living in the current state of the UK just becomes all the more pronounced.

Sure, I’d love to hear “Blood Orange Moon” cranked through full stacks but there is something about when he snarls “They own this country, the whole fucking thing” against a sparse, acoustic backdrop which makes the bite sink in all the more.

FRISK - Promo CS Thick slabs of distorted noise propelled at a steady pummelling beat that occasionally downshifts into a swaggerin, moshable strut. The vocals come off like scraping metal run through a distortion box. I’m into this.

FUSE - This Segregation Will End EP Straightforward, stripped down hardcore punk from Singapore. Nine tracks done in the classic style with plenty of swagger and strut but devoid of the macho tough guy vibe that can sometimes permeate the style.

FYZICAL - Demo CS Mid-tempo hardcore with occasional breakdowns and hoarse sounding vocals. There is a heavy early 90s hardcore a la OUTSPOKEN or TRANSCEND to be found here.

GELD - Beyond the Floor LP

HARD SKIN - South East Enders LP

It›s absurd how good this - just this massive, absolutely blistering juggernaut of hardcore soaked in ferocity. It pummels at high speed velocity, twisting itself into this acid soaked auditory nightmare before collapsing into a heap of skull crushing angst. Its records like this and the new GULCH LP which take bits and pieces from the long history of punk and then use them to formulate something original which gives me hope for the future. For me, this is like the first time I heard RORSCHACH, or BLACK FLAG, or HIS HERO IS GONE. Just brilliant.

I wanted to start this review with some quip about the joke not being funny anymore but, honestly, is there a better Oi/skinhead band than these old geezers? From starting out as a self-proclaimed comedy band they have transformed themselves into the finest skinhead rocknroll unit on the planet - razor sharp hooks, anthemic singalongs, lyrics about the lads, drinking, football and all the other important things in life. Just brilliant.

GIMIC - Demo CS There’s a lot about this Bristol band’s demo which reminds me of DEAD & GONE’s latter work - not so much hardcore left on the menu but plenty of spooky, ominous vibes without being totally goth or anything. You know how GUN CLUB marries that heroin soaked early death rock vibe of CHRISTIAN DEATH with surf rock and country to create something that sounds a bit like the soundtrack to the Gidget beach movie that David Lynch always meant to make? That›s what this sounds like but with a vocalist wailing through a transistor radio.

It›s great.

GOLDIE DAWN - S/T EP A delightfully fun slab of rollicking garage rock rooted in a steady diet of SUZI QUATRO, THE RUNAWAYS and a tall stack of Rip Off Records singles and misc tracks from the Back From the Grave comps. The production is punchy and polished but not in such a manner to remove its guts.

GOLPE DE GRACIA/ BLESSURE - Split EP Two Spanish bands - for their side GOLPE DE GRACIA present two tracks mid-paced hardcore punk which doesn’t devieate too far from the roadmap drawn up by early spanish bands like LARSEN or ESKORBUTO - all in all great stuff.

On the flip we have BLESSURE, who honestly also sound like they could have appeared on Bloodstains Across Spain - but maybe more along the lines of VULPE SS meets LA’s THE BRAT. GULCH - Impenetrable Cerebral Fortress LP There has been a lot of hype churning around Santa Cruz’s GULCH - I’ve heard tales of insane live sets, marked by blistering speed and the flagellation of the vocalist by his friends as well as the tales of their merch being sold for exorbitant prices online but honestly I’ve never really had someone try to describe them beyond “good” or “great” or “intense.” Given I never saw them when I was in the Bay Area, I arrive at their LP without much to go on so, here’s what I found - intricately metallic, modern hardcore which feels like it takes a lot of cues from the last 30 years of the genre, blends them and serves them up for your eardrums.

Throughout the record I hear moments of stomping beatdown, brutal 90s Germanic metallic hardcore like ACME or MORSER, that sweeping plaintive Montreal thing like UNION OF URANUS and just jackhammer fast California-style powerviolence.

It sounds a bit all over the place when described like that but it comes together for this cohesive and powerful sound.

HATS & CAPS - S/T EP Solid boots’n’braces, anthemic skinhead punk’n’roll.

Solid clean production and the songwriting chops remind me of their fellow Finnish street punks, WASTED. It›s a funny band name, right?

HELLRIEGEL - Demo CS Two tracks of thudding stomping punk rock that makes me think ANTISEEN or HAMMERLOCK biker punk? It›s got a bit of that late 70s rocking Aussie KBD punk meets pub rock vibe, yeah? This is what would be playing in a fight scene in a biker brawl in a 70s biker movie.

HELTER SKATER - Three Songs About Skateboarding & Love CS I adore this - three wonderfully lo-fi pop songs that sound like something found in the backroom of Merge or K Records offices in an envelope stamped 1991. Strained out of tune singing, great melodic leads - it›s just absolutely perfect.

HUMANT BLOD - Flykten Från Verkligheten EP Man oh man, do I love TOTALITÄR - for me, they are the quintessential Swedish hardcore band, an utter juggernaut of velocity and riffs. A relentless barraging steamroller of hardcore fury backing up Poffen’s searing vocal onslaught - now what does that have to do with this? Sadly, as TOTALITÄR is seemingly no more its projects like this we have to lean on to fill the void - a project featuring members of EXTENDED HELL and SUBVERSIVE RITE teaming up with Poffen (TOTALITÄR) & Mattias (DISSEKERAD) to crank out five pulverizing tracks of ripping and rollicking Swedish hardcore. For me, this is a total contender for my top records of the year.

INFERNA - Facing A Future Of Terror EP Crust d-beaty hardcore crammed through blast beat filled, black metal filter - the recording is fairly lo-fi and I can’t help but feel that if they had a fuller more metal sounding recording it would sound massive and fairly epic.

INTERNAL - S/T 3” They only made 33 of these which is unfortunate because this in phenomenal CROSSED OUT worship. Like so many have tried to do this style and failed but this is just absolutely beautiful, skull crushing steamroller hardcore alternating between 1000mph blasts and oozing molasses slow sludge.

IRADEI - Demo Everything I can find about this band indicates they are from Brighton in the UK, though all the songs

are in Italian. Musically it›s fairly straight forward, melodic punk - the rough and tumble, raw recording really helps to keep it interesting for me. I think a lot of bands of this ilk tend to get too clean and it ruins the punch of the songs.

JAD - Wstręt E​P The production on this makes everything sound like a wall of molasses bearing down on you - it’s by no means slow, instead these Polish punks take on the same the same sort of mechanical hammering approach of Eastern European legends SIEKIERA (pre-new wave demo-era) occasionally shifting into these dirging onslaughts of density and power.

Solid stuff.

JADED EYES - Call of The Void LP I mean if you are going to a band that sounds like later GOVERNMENT ISSUE, naming yourself after a later emo-era GI track is probably a good idea.

It›s definitely the more aggro side of the mid-80s DC/Dischord thing, you know like DAG NASTY or ADMIRAL. While it might be ex-VOORHEES, don’t expect a whirlwind of knives or anything.

JOHNNY MARACA AND THE MAROCKERS - No Ma›am, I›m a Rocker LP Quality pop music from the drummer of Oakland’s creepy punx, FALSE FIGURE. The cover screams RICK SPRINGFIELD or TOM PETTY or BRUCE SPRINGFIELD while the music inside reminds my brain of some of the finer moments of JAY REATARD’s work on Blood Visions. I’m really feeling this, despite the mechanical drum machine beats.

LSG - Demo

LITIGE - En Eaux Troubles LP

Seven blasts of frenetic, almost out of control hardcore punk from the VOID takes KORO out on the town school. Its swerves and thrashes along feeling like it may fall apart at any moment but somehow the glue stays stuck. I look forward to more of this.

When I first put this on it was making me crazy - I couldn’t figure out what it was but this sounded so familiar I was obsessing over if this was a reissue of something I heard 20 years ago but forgot or what.

Then it clicked, BURNING KITCHEN, this French band is a perfect take on the driving mid-tempo and tuneful punk rock layered under feminine vocals that those Swedes presented all those decades ago.

It is really well done and some of these tracks are total earworms that I’m just unable to get out of my head.

LIFE - Ossification Of Coral LP The third LP from these Tokyo peace punky crasher crusties - thirteen raw blasts of burly distortion till deafness hardcore punk taking their riffing cues from classics like ANTISECT or NAUSEA churned through a sonic filter inspired by the likes of noisemasters GLOOM. It›s a powerful and crushing aural assault backing up a lyrical approach geared towards a promotion of consciousness around our shared global ecological system, in particular man’s destruction and exploitation of the ocean’s coral resources. Simply ferocious protest music for the modern age.

LIFE›S QUESTION - A Tale Of Sudden Love And Unforgettable Heartache 12” Bouncing, hook filled hardcore soaked in fretboard dynamics that takes its cues from the sort of stuff that filled VFW halls up and down the East Coast in the 90s turning them into a frothing frenzy of moshing maniacs. It doesn’t sound like SNAPCASE or BROTHERS KEEPER, per se, but if this was 1994 it wouldn’t surprise me to see them opening for those bands. This compiles previous cassette only releases.

LOCKED UP - S/T EP More hammering the nails, brutal power violence madness from Ohio’s Blind Rage records - stupidly limited, this is a blinding torrent of blast beats with occasional pauses of sludge which just makes everything all the more intense. Just five tracks, including a RUDIMENTARY PENI cover.

LONG KNIFE - Night of the Hunter/Rough Liver 45 Does this even require a review? Two more perfect slappers from this Portland crew that does War All The Time-era POISON IDEA almost better than POISON IDEA. Mid-tempo rockers with massive guitars and that beautiful snarl. Perfect record here.

LOOSE NUKES - Cult Leaders LP Not the Pittsburgh LOOSE NUKES but instead, the Houston LOOSE NUKES. These rages punks blast and thrash away at 200 MPH ala their Texas forefathers DRI had they not fully committed to

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RASH Hivemind 12”

PUNITIVE DAMAGE We Don’t Forget 7”

YAMBAG Posthumous Pounce! 12”

GOON Natural Evil 12”

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the crossover. Eighteen tracks of jackhammering hardcore with thick, full and moderately metal production.

LOSS PREVENTION - Shoot To Kill EP Breakneck hardcore punk that just rips and roars at a monstrous clip without ever shifting into blast beat land. Think JEZUS & THE GOSPELFUCKERS/ AGENT ORANGE slammed straight into the veins of KORO. Just relentless and beautiful take on the classic hardcore sound.

MALE PATTERNS- Headaches LP Burly as shit straight-forward hardcore punk somewhere else in this issue I reference SHEER TERROR in regards to them and I stand by that but I’d also throw in SUBMACHINE as well. Grimey, rough and tumble punk rock.

MALLWALKERS - Dial ‘M’ For… LP I dropped the needle on this with the expectation of maybe something mod-ish, you maybe something along the early JAM stuff - instead what I find is something more akin what would happen if BLATZ, the STYLE COUNCIL & the BIG BOYS got in car crash and all their members got mixed up. Super fun, danceable punk with horns with vocals that go from sweet and melodious to shouted commands to just DANCE DANCE DANCE. I’m really into this.

MASS ARREST - Black Liberation Hardcore LP A powerful uppercut of BRUISERS style hardcore punk melded with tinges of danceable, hook laden, 60s style garage backing up a rough’n’tumble vocal delivery which paints a poignant lyrical tale of being Black in America. It›s a brilliant release on all levels. Pure street fighting music.

MAUFRAIS - Luxury of Complaint CS Do they know how much they sound like MOSS ICON? God, this sounds so much like MOSS ICON - meandering, slightly inept yet purposeful sounding - its great!. If you told me this was some long lost recording of a band that used to play with THE HATED or BELLS OF or RITES OF SPRING I would believe you…

THE MOB - Rise Up 45 Two tracks from these dour English, peace punk legends - The A-side is more of an amped up stomper with an assertive bark of “Rise up!” for a chorus while the flip is a longer, sparser and downtempo tune that makes you want to wear all black and sit in the pouring rain.

MORTSAFE - Anti-Social Distancing CS Heavy, dark and spooky British punk that gives off a heavy vibe of Word As Law-era NEUROSIS meets the more bouncy, demented circus music vibe of some RUDIMENTARY PENI. It creeps, crawls and lurches in all the right ways.

MORWAN - Зола​-​Земля Dark and foreboding synth punk from Kiev, Ukraine.

This reminds me so much of the later SIEKIERA stuff but is more menacing in its approach.

NSA - NSA Is Watching CS

PIECE OF MIND - Unfulfilled LP

Rough and tumble punk that sounds tough without being macho from South Florida. love this style of slightly garagey hardcore that could be from 1982 or 2002 - maybe its from Flex Your Head, maybe its from København I Ruiner. Solid stuff.

Its crazy how a band presents themselves visually effects how you pigeonhole them in your brain - if you played this record for me and showed me a photo of a bunch dreadlocked crusties, I would totally believe you and talk about how much this reminds me of FROM ASHES RISE and other stadium crust bands from the early 2000s. Its got massive production and riffs for days, alternating between full throttle tempos and dense heaviness. If you were to present me an images of this band all clean cut, wearing basketball jerseys I’d be inclined to paint a picture of them as the descendents of moshtastic hardcore heros BURIED ALIVE and talk about how they played a thick yet speedy metallic take on heavy hardcore with plenty of breakdowns gauranteed to ignite the pit. I’ve no idea what this band looks like but I feel like the truth of them lies somewhere between those two takes.

NANI//SS - Smoke For Fucker EP Mid-paced and at times plodding pogo punk from Fresno, California - self described as music meant to fight cops and pogo to while thinking about how much everything sucks. I wish there was a little more velocity on this one.

NECROT - Mortal LP I am probably the worst person to write about a band like NECROT - the extent of my metal interest and knowledge is like the first couple METALLICA records, a couple of SLAYER records, and IRON MAIDEN’s radio hits - but, I’ve always found NECROT quite appealing. They play a rather relentless steamroller approach to the classic death metal sound - it’s raw and gutteral in its approach and never gets bogged down in masturbatory fretboard dynamics for the sake of jerking off the instrument.

Instead, there is a level of focus towards driving the song forward which just cause this unrelenting tidal wave of sonic brutality to wash over your cerebral cortex. What was that bit about walking together, rocking together?

NOTHING BUT ENEMIES - Killing Machine LP Mid-paced Boston street p-u-n-k. Its fairly plodding, just sorta chugging along at the same pace as say the SEX PISTOLS LP. The attitude screams FILTH though the sound is snottier and cleaner in production. This is one of those bands I think would translate better live.

OILY BOYS - Cro Memory Grin 12” In one moment this just bulldozes ahead like a juggernaut of primal hardcore fury - then it will just snap into these CRASS meets BAUHAUS sorta messy pysch freak outs. It sounds like it shouldn’t work but the overarching sense of foreboding and tension which permeates the whole of this record makes it work. Just awesome.

OTAGE - S/T EP French hardcore punk which alternates from moments of crusty fury to mad blasts of 625 style fastcore with the occasional grooved out breakdown.

PERSECUTOR - Demo CS Brutal hardcore from Australia that alternates between NO TOLERANCE/INFEST style go for the throat speed and the more boot to the throat stomp of THE FLEX. The dirgey second track “Vicarious” reminds me of an outtake from an IMPACT UNIT recording session.

PHLEGM - Qualified Immunity EP Dripping with energy, these Boston punks take a lot of cues from Earthball-era PAINTBOX - careening, rapid-fire riffing, walking basslines, snarling vocals - just a level above what a lot of other folx are cranking out these days.

PISSBABY - Demo This sounds like a one person quarantine project - jangly guitars played at hardcore velocity with mechanical, repetative drums that sound artificial packaged in garage style lo-fi production. There is a NEGATIVE APPROACH cover, so that’s cool.

POISON RUIN - S/T CS The artwork says TEMPLARS, the music says morose witchy gothic punk. I’ve read some call this dungeon synth, I’ve heard others call it medieval post-punk. Honestly if you told me this was from 1982, they were from Brighton and regularly gigged with SOUTHERN DEATH CULT, FLUX OF PINK INDIANS and CRASS, I would totally believe you. I love this shit.

POWER FACE - Promo CS This is fucking great - total NECROS style ripping hardocre punk from Stockholm. Four tracks of snotty USHC worship rammed through a Sweidish filter.

Outstanding.

PUNITIVE DAMAGE - We Don’t Forget EP Straight forward hardcore punk which trashes and struts in spasmic fits of fury. The production on this is fairly stripped down subduing the metallic riffing that pops up here and there. A cool release.

PRIMITIVE BLAST - Animalistic 12” Ugly, primitive and burly Australian hardcore punk - its stomps and struts through six tracks of midpaced aggro. A totally pummelling slab of ferocity that echoes of NY’s PYSCHOS meet’s the likes of HOAX. A snarly slamma!

RAGING NATHANS – Oppositional Defiance LP Below this review, you’ll see another where I reference WEEZER in regards to Dayton’s RAGING NATHANS and while there is that hint of that in the tracks on their LP this is missing some of that sheen and comes across decidedly more punk in its delivery, if that makes sense. It›s a little more aggressive, a little punchier, a little more raw and for me, that›s a good thing. It›s still incredibly catchy pop punk in the vein of DILLINGER FOUR, with a hint of the emotive breakdowns of SMALL BROWN BIKE, and at times, the sass of My Brain Hurts-era of SCREECHING WEASEL.

RAGING NATHANS/STARTER JACKETS - Split EP If the RAGING NATHANS are Ohio’s version the early WEEZER then the STARTER JACKETS are it’s JIMMY EAT WORLD. Really well done pop with just enough dirt in the mix to keep it punk sounding. Both bands contribute two tracks that are the perfect thing to slap on a summer road trip mix.

MUSIC

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REPEAT OFFENDER - Demo EP Total early 80s, Midwestern US hardcore vibe here - its got that brutish Oi meets blazing speed style that bands like THE STATE and NEGATIVE APPROACH channeled. Six tracks in total of pure aggro - just utterly viscous.

ROTTING OUT - Ronin LP There are moments on this where vocalist Walter Delgado sounds so much like Brian Johnson that almost want to be like “imagine AC/DC as a modern hardcore band from Los Angeles” and leave it at that… In a lot of ways, for me, ROTTING OUT is the current embodiment of LAHC - its got super clean and thick production values, tons of breakdowns and sing-alongs broken up with snippets of speed to accentuate the mosh even more.

What really gets me is the lyrics which convey a feeling of a life lived hard, one soaked with abuse (external and internal) but with an emphasis on self reflection and striving for betterment. Not my normal cup of tea but I can party with this for sure.

ROTURA - Demo I know that a lot of people don’t even bother with physical releases anymore but, sometimes it astounds me what is just “demo” these days. This Barcelona trio plays really great melodic punk rock - plenty of catchy riffs and melody lines and the production on this is just outstanding. Its sorta like the better J CHURCH/CRINGER stuff sung in Spanish.

THE ROYAL HOUNDS NYC/CHUBBY AND THE GANG - Nothing But Trouble CS

B L A C K H O U S E I N C . S T O R E N V Y.C O M

A limited two song tape (that I think is gonna end up as a split 45 at some point) from two of the finest punk rocknroll units going these days - for their side THE ROYAL HOUNDS push out a three minute ripper that brings to mind some SLADE’s finest moments while CHUBBY AND THE GANG contribute a scorching rave up that could easily serve as the soundtrack to a bar fight between a bunch of pissed up geezers, herberts, and associated bootboys.

SCHEME - CS This is one of those things that… like how isn’t this already preseed to vinyl?

Outstanding, full speed ahead hardcore punk hardcore attack that just batters away at a galloping pace - great riffs, raspy and snarly vocals… just a solid mix of classic USHC and UK82 sounds. I love love love love this - for me, they’re one of those bands that, sonically, would fit in at United Blood as well as Manic Relapse.

SIGNAL - Love Without Moisture CS This is wonderful - layers of discordant, angular, lo-fi post-punk soaked in angsty tension that sounds like some sorta hybrid of early Rough Trade record output mixed with something CRASS would have cranked out - its sorta like RUDIMENTARY PENI playing SLITS songs.

SIMON LEBRON​-​MONSTER MANUAL - S/T LP One of the things I like about Peterwalkee Records is just how all over the place they are with their releases - one its goofy pop-punk, the other brutal hardcore and the other something in between those two. Musically, SIMON LEBRON​-​MONSTER MANUAL reminds me a bit of early DEAD MILKMEN or even a bit of MOTO - short goofy but really well constructed songs, with jangly guitars and a loose garage punk production style. Lyrically, all the songs are about the various creatures and scenarios one might find oneself in while playing Dungeons & Dragons. As someone who spent a good portion of his early teen years staring down the barrel of some loaded dice, I’m really into this.

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SLAVE - Punk Police CS Malaysian hardcore that takes a lot of cues from NWOBHC heroes THE FLEX. Its mostly mid-tempo stompers with occasional bursts of speed - the track “Web of Lies” is a sizzler.

SOUL BLIND - Greatest Hits Vol 1 Something different that I’m glad I stumbled upon - rather than the 1000mph ear candy I typically consume, SOUL BLIND serves up thick slabs of distortion and acid soaked shoegazer inspired pop. Ethereal and massive all in one moment - it’s a great take on the roadmap MY BLOODY VALENTINE, SLOWDIVE etc layed out.

STRAY BULLET - S/T EP Well then, this is fucking brilliant, right? Utterly ferocious hardcore from the UK that channels those spirits that gave us Cleveland bands like UPSTAB, H100s, INMATES etc. Gritty but full production, snarly vocals - this just rips.

STRIKE ANYWHERE - Nightmares Of The West 12” I love STRIKE ANYWHERE - from their earliest records through the current release they’ve continued to crank out blistering melodic hardcore punk with lyrics filled with hope and passion for a better and more just world. Despite it being a decade since their last record of new material, their latest record doesn’t miss a beat in continuing in that theme. Nightmares Of The West is an anthemic and powerful record. And though the velocity has dropped a little bit it is still dripping with passion and a sense of sincerity that feels missing in a lot of punk. Sure, it›s got a really slick, clean, modern sounding recording and yeah, I’ll agree that i wish they had rubbed a little dirt into the mix but I also don’t think everything needs to sound like DISCLOSE. I mean most things should but you know what I mean...

SUBDUED - Over The Hills & Far Away LP SUBDUED are a brilliant take on the classic anarcho punk sound that dominated the jackets and eardrums of dour, black clad youth of Thatcher’s England circa 1984. Even the production on this maintains that thin midrange sound of the time with just enough reverb and the vocals pushed to the front that it sounds sorta off kilter. Like, for real if you told me this was some long lost demo of some band that would regularly gig with EXIT STANCE, ICONS OF FILTH and CONFLICT, I would totally believe you - had I not seen them play two years ago. It›s moody, heavy and utterly brilliant.

SUB-LEGALS - Bastard Beat CS This fucking rips - more ripping, raw, hardcore from the crew of Florida maniacs that bring you ARMOR, PROTOCOL, etc. Hammering beats, rough guitars and maniacal gravelly vocals. This rules. More please.

SUCK LORDS - Songs The Lord›s Taught Us Flexi Five songs, six-ish minutes - its sloppy, disjointed and absurdly fast hardcore ala the NEOS. More of this please.

SUPPRESSION - Fractured Landscape EP I love SUPPRESSION and I’m happy they are still around after what, 25 years? This is pure unadulterated noise not music - blinding blender-esque speed wrapped in cascading sheets of oscillating distortion punctuated by hyper stacato blasts of drum. This isn’t easy listening - I think if an army of mutant reptillian hummingbirds assaulted a city this would be their soundtrack.

SYNKKYYS - Hellish View CS Five tracks of classic Swedish hardcore worship from Malaysia - thing TOTALITÄR, think SKITKIDS. Going for a thinner, raw, garage style of production which really helps to amp up the energetic feel - really well done.

TASSOTTIS - Órdago EP Four tracks of mid-tempo mildly anthemic street punk’n’roll from Spain. Super clean and kinda jangly guitars with vocal driven melody lines that sound fairly melancholic. Sad skins of the world unite and take over.

TCHERNOBYL - Consumé Par le Feu EP More thick throated stomping big boot Oi from deep in the factories of France - you know UK bands like BLITZ & 4-SKINS came up with this style but lately it feels like the French have truly perfected it. Plenty of virile aggro but it›s tempered with a consciousness towards melody and hooks. Viscous.

TOTALITÄR – Heydays Revisited EP When I first heard about a new TOTALITÄR record I was filled with this overarching feeling of complete and total bliss. It was like finally, something really good and life affirming is happening in the year 2020. And while I was a little let down when I learned that it is just different recordings and mixes of classic TOTALITÄR tracks from the Multinationella Mördare-era, it is technically a new TOTALITÄR record. I dare say I like these versions a bit better - they feel like they have a bit more punch to them and certainly easier and cheaper to track down this EP than to hunt down the original takes.

TOWER 7 - Entrance To A Living Organism CS Equal parts UNITED MUTATION and some missing Bullshit Detector submission.

The drums progress along in this staccato, almost militaristic fashion while the vocalist has this cool gargling glass approach and the guitars swirl around the bass, which sorta keeps it all together.

TUNING - Defining The Purpose LP It›s great to see this Bay Area band come into their own - made up of former members of DEAD HEARTS, SPIRITS, etc they carve out a path that takes snippets of influence from LIFETIME, UNIFORM CHOICE, and even a smidge of DAG NASTY to churn out an emotive, passionate blast of melodic hardcore punk fury. I love this style when it’s done right and this is just excellent.

ULTIMO GOBIERNO/WARWOUND - Split EP Two old bands back again - for their side, Spaniards ULTIMO GOBIERNO rip through three tracks (including a WARWOUND cover) of metallic d-beat hardcore, less primal and raw than their 1987 split with RUDIO DE RUBIO - it reminds me more of those RATOS DE PARAO records from the early 00s in how metal it sounds. On the flip we have WARWOUND rerecording a track from the early 80s as well as doing a metal version of the VARUKERS “Another Religion Another War” which is basically them coverving themselves.

UNIFORM OPERATOR​- k ​ inds Of Light CS This is outstanding - aggressive melodic punk in that way the more assertive SUGAR or BOB MOULD solo stuff comes off. The production just nails that fine line between polished and retaining a rough edge which allows you to hear everything but it does vaporize the power. Honestly, it›s insane to me how good this is - the song writing, the production, the riffing, just everything is so perfect.

How is this just a tape?

THE UPPERS - Get Down With The… EP This is a really fun record - four tracks of catchy punk rock from St Louis that reminds me a great deal of that wave of late 70s Belfast punk bands that floated around the Good Vibrations imprint - PROTEX, RUDI, UNDERTONES, etc. Highly danceable party jams with a hint of melancholy. Great.

URBAN VOID - Demo CS Four thick and burly blasts of USHC in the traditional mold - gutteral snarly vocals arc over driving hardcore punk that would fit in well on a mix tape wedged between NEGATIVE APPROACH and URBAN WASTE. Members of COKE BUST, CHRONIC ABUSE, etc for those keeping score. This is killer.

VENENO - Justicia Argentina EP Snarling, brutal Argentinian hardcore that alternates between thudding d-beat and mad blasts of high speed velocity. The vocals, which sound like sheet metal being run through a distortion pedal, really sells this for me.

VILE REALITY - Detached Demo CS This rips - six slamming cuts of vicious, angry hardcore. Are you into the 00s

output of Tankcrimes, or No Way - hardcore that is decidely punk, taking cues from a smorgasbord of early 80s hardcore but from a modern perspective?

Then this is your jam - you lke BAD POSTURE or STRUNG UP? Get into this.

VILE SPIRIT - Scorched Earth LP This sounds very mid 90s to me - heavy, violent hardcore that takes the more traditional form and marries it with disparate influences for something more unique. Think Remain Sedate-era RORSCHACH, COLEMAN if they had a bassist, HATCHETFACE, etc. Snarling, desperate vocals wailing over a dissonant, intense soundscape. Super into this.

WHIPPING POST - Cheating The War Game LP Total BL’AST meets SWIZ meets early ROLLINS BAND worship here. Riffs upon riffs upon riffs with a nihilistic, creepy vibe permeating it all.

WITCH WARD - Sacrificial Monolith CS Black metal influenced, spooky punk - blown out production, guitars that sweep in that epic sort of manner and a vocalist that sounds like a snarling demon.

Fairly mid-tempo overall and primitive enough that it›s not annoying. You like DEVIL MASTER? You enjoy spiderwebs and capes? Get in there cowboy!

YOUTH CRUSHER - Έμπα στον Κήπο EP Ripping, straightforward hardcore from Greece - musically, if you told me this was released by Youngblood in the early 00s I would beleive you. Lots of speed intersected with mid tempo breakdowns and sing-a-longs in Greek. Think NO REPLY, think LIFES HALT, think fun.

ZENOMORPH - Demo CS Robotic, one person band from LA - it›s like an angrier DEVO mix with the snot of JAY REATARD or THE SPITS. The choruses and hooks keep getting embedded in my cranium and I find myself walking around singing “ZENOMORPH I’M A ZENOMPORH” while cleaning the house a lot.

ZYFILIS - Alla Ska Ha LP REVIEWS: Basically I review what I want. In general, I want this zine to cover only punk and hardcore so -you see much in the wayonslaught of metal, of Totally ripping Swedish hardcore justwon’t a galloping, thunderous indie rock, noise, new wave, goth, etc. unless I like it. I’m know that most of relentless käng punk fury. Sure, it›s formulaic in a lot of ways but when the the reviews aren’t really critical. Instead, I’ve made the conscious choice to recipe works out well, why not? This is fucking great. describe the music or publication as best as I can - opinions are like assholes and everyone has one. In an age where everything is available with a few key strokes, my goal is to make you curious enough to seek out these releases.

That said, you’ll know if I love something.

If you’d like me to review your release, please feel free to send it to me - I’m just one person and will do the best I can to make sure it is covered. There is no need to send a physical copy of your record, postage is a nightmare and pressing records is expensive. That said, thank you in advance if you do.

ADVERTISING: I can’t do this without you. I’m still floored by the amount of accolades and support I recieved after the last issue. Razorblades & Aspirin will continue as a quarterly publication for as long as I feel inspired to keep publishing. That said here’s the advertising rates and deadlines for issue eleven: Full Page: $100 - 8 x 10.75 (bleed out to 8.625 x 11.25) 1/2 Page (Vertical or Horizontal): $50 - V: 4 x 10.5 H: 8 x 5.25 1/4 Page: $25 - 4 x 5.25 All ads should be delivered CMYK as a high-res PDF or TIFF file Reservation deadline July 15 Artwork/Payment deadline July 31 I like mail: Razorblades & Aspirin PO Box 23173 Richmond, VA 23223 USA razorbladesandaspirin@gmail.com razorbladesandaspirin.com