Total Sham - Life as a Total Sham

Gear up for some com­plete­ly un­san­i­tized, garage-in­fest­ed old­school hard­core may­hem, just as rough as it's catchy and fun, on this EP by a Kansas City group that ap­pears to con­sist of the same folks oth­er­wise known as Dye. Fans of groups á la Fried E/​m and Mod­ern Needs are sure­ly gonna ap­prove of this, as will those of slight­ly more garage-lean­ing bands like Launch­er, Liq­uid As­sets or Mys­tic Inane.

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Feed - Western Fun /​/​ Djinn - Relapse /​/​ Zhoop - Top Shelf

I don't think i've ever giv­en this dude from Ham­mond, In­di­ana the full spot­light he de­serves here, al­though you might've en­coun­tered his shit on some Verspan­nungskas­sette mix­tapes, where his var­i­ous al­ter egos have been a reg­u­lar oc­cur­rence in re­cent months. Now here are three of his lat­est batch­es of min­i­mal­ist hard­core punk, each of his projects sound­ing pret­ty sim­i­lar if you ac­count for some slight vari­a­tion in tem­po and in­ten­si­ty… as well as some added bot­tom-of-the-bar­rel-end elec­tron­ic reen­force­ment in the case of Feed, which should've right­ful­ly earned him the ti­tle of great­est sty­lo­phone play­er in hard­core punk by now.

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Unknown Liberty - Chain Of Madness

Cu­ri­ous mix­ture of hard­core-, an­ar­cho- and post punk on this Kingston, NY group’s de­but tape, as­sem­bling a dis­tinct style out of grit­ty KBD-drenched vibes à la Launch­er, a hint of UK82 en­er­gy, plen­ty of Rudi­men­ta­ry Peni and the oc­ca­sion­al bit of Crass.

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C-Krit - C-Krit

Fuck, that shit smells… but in a good way. Af­ter their mild­ly dis­turb­ing one-and-a-half tapes on Im­po­tent Fe­tus we fi­nal­ly get their first “full” length cas­sette from Tetry­on Tapes and once again this is some joy to be­hold. Ul­tra-sep­tic hard- and noisec­ore vague­ly rem­i­nis­cent of present-day acts like Soup­cans, Stink­hole or Vul­ture shit but al­so of old pi­o­neers of the Flip­per, No Trend, Bro­ken Tal­ent va­ri­ety. There was a time when, as a kid, folks from my church told me that lis­ten­ing to evil rock’n’roll mu­sic might give you a de­mon in­fes­ta­tion (thank­ful­ly, the fear­mon­ger­ing didn’t work for long…). I don’t know what lis­ten­ing to C-Krit is gonna leave you with but its side ef­fects in­clude vi­o­lent sar­casm, di­ar­rhea and not giv­ing a shit.

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Hippyfuckers - ????

A ver­i­ta­ble gut punch, the de­but tape of this St. Louis, Mis­souri group. Hard­core punk with elab­o­rate & flex­i­ble any­thing-goes song struc­tures, at times catchy and melod­ic, in oth­er parts show­ing a gloomy post punk /​ death rock un­der­cur­rent and al­so there’s some of that oh-so-fash­ion­able (don’t get me wrong, i to­tal­ly love that) garage edge to it. You might be re­mind­ed of hard­core-era Hüsker Dü at some points, as well as re­cent hard- and post­core stuff such as Nopes, Pink Gui­tars, Ce­ment Shoes or the col­or­ful yet night­mar­ish hard­core psy­che­delia of Mur­der­er.

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Animated Violence - Demo

A fun, smart high-en­er­gy blow of garage-in­fused hard­core punk de­liv­ered by a group that might or mightn’t be from Long Beach, Cal­i­for­nia, hold­ing a per­fect bal­ance be­tween dumb straight-ahead old­school en­er­gy and the var­i­ous quirks and ec­cen­tric­i­ties of more re­cent hard­core phe­nom­e­na, which sor­ta lo­cates them on the genre map some­where in the ex­cel­lent com­pa­ny of oth­er con­tem­po­rary trou­ble­mak­ers such as Mys­tic Inane, Launch­er, Fried E/​M, Mod­ern Needs or Liq­uid As­sets.

Soft Torture - Soft Torture

This Philadel­phia group's line-up brings to­geth­er gen­er­a­tions of punks, hav­ing Chuck Mee­han of hard­core di­nosaurs YDI among its ranks as well as mem­bers of more re­cent acts like Blank Spell, Hal­dol and De­Struc­tos. Their first EP ex­plodes right in­to your face with eight-and-a-half bursts of un­pre­dictable, chaot­ic and noise-in­fused hard-/post-/weird­core rough­ly in the ball­park of what you might've heard in re­cent years from bands like Kalei­do­scope, Day­dream or Fugi­tive Bub­ble.

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Septic - Septic

This L.A. group comes right out of the or­bit of Launch­er and Co-Ed. As you might al­ready ex­pect, this is an­oth­er ex­plo­sive charge of sim­ple, raw and en­er­getic noise made up to equal parts of garage- and catchy ear­ly 80s hard­core punk en­hanced with that cer­tain ragged KBD-style ad­di­tive we've come to know and love out of this par­tic­u­lar neigh­bor­hood.

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Final Fukker - Final Fukker

An ear­ly con­tender for the loud­est record of 2022, this burst of max­i­mal­ly abra­sive noise - record­ed some­time in 2016 and now fi­nal­ly re­leased via Run­state Tapes - tru­ly has what it takes to star­tle the dead and sounds like it crawled out of a dis­gust­ing brown pud­dle of pure de­spair, its hard­core punk foun­da­tion buried deep un­der thick lay­ers of white noise and feed­back… but lis­ten close­ly and you might al­so find many un­ex­pect­ed flash­es of melody em­bed­ded deep in there.

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Feeding Tube - Demo #1

…and here's yet an­oth­er short and sweet ar­ti­fact of vague­ly egg-re­lat­ed garage punk by some NJ per­son. This shit plays out like a mix of Alien Nose­job in HC 7" mode, S.B.F. and Con­nie Voltaire's hard­core-fo­cussed projects. Al­so, good call trans­form­ing two slow, bor­ing tracks in­to ex­cit­ing, fast tracks through the won­ders of cut­ting edge pitch ad­just­ment tech­nol­o­gy.

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