You may or may not want music which is upbeat, upfront, uncouth or any combination thereof, but that is what nearly all of September’s Straight Hedge delivers. So the best place to put the one exception to this rule, an LP of blaringly sullen gothic punk, is at the beginning of the column. As Human Trophy, Reuben Sawyer works alone, somewhere in California; though just one of his several musical projects, on Primary Instinct (Iron Lung) – the second HT album – he sounds to the manner born.
I’d had a faint line on Sawyer the experimental musician for some years but passed over Human Trophy debut, 2021’s Corpse Dream, until recently. It’s got a drum machine and sounds like some forgotten mid-80s band signed to Homestead or Fundamental, which I mean as a compliment. The new one isn’t a wild change of direction, but the beats are manmade (as far as my ear for these things can discern) and everything sounds a little sharper, as in eardrum-piercingly. ‘Devotion’ rocks at a kind of blackened Oi! canter, which is a new development for this project; vocally, Sawyer is more willing than before to add a few layers of ham to his voice, befitting someone holidaying in Gothsville and alluringly evident on ‘The Cabin’. Primary Instinct is at its most thrilling on ‘Only A Knife’ and (especially) ‘Bright Like Perspex’, where guitars are pickled in chorus pedal and vocals are intoned with sardonic menace: I possibly hear late-period Clockcleaner in more things than that band realistically influenced, but if it hasn’t had some bearing on Human Trophy then it’s a remarkable commonality of intent.
The debut EP by Irked from Newcastle has taken longer than ideal to manifest physically, after a label decided to vanish from the earth instead of releasing their record. Wrong Speed Records, who picked it up, managed to get it out in under two months, with a second run already on the go – quite the feelgood item. With all that out the way, it obviously helps that these five tracks are a blast – orbiting post hardcore, noise rock and garage punk but being under no obligation to commit to any style.
Irked vocalist Helen Walkinshaw is a known quantity to this column thanks to past bands Tough Tits and Blóm. This quintet, whose other members are less on my radar, echo those groups’ unquashable spirits but with relatively (relatively!) more refined arrangements. ‘Snakes’ is snappy and serrated like some lost mid-90s Dischord band, notwithstanding the garagey rattler it turns into for the final lap, and I’m very taken with the way ‘Lanzarote’, presented as a story about Walkinshaw’s family holidays of yore, divides its energies between the jerky, hardscrabble verses before kicking into ‘soaring’ mode for a couple of choruses. On the matter of lyrics, standout on the EP is ‘Backstreets’, whose point-by-point countdown of interactions with the proverbial “nice guy” takes us from plausible misunderstanding to opportunistic assault.
“Empathetic so pathetic / Acting like you should / Defends the local rapist ‘cos he’s misunderstood.” A self-evidently depressing theme continues in the fully exhilarating debut LP by Canadians White Collar, setto primal early-wave hardcore with a lean if not positively gawky recording aesthetic. Recorded as a duo – one singer, one instrumentalist – though four-strong for public appearances, White Collar were co-founded by Lewis Podlubny, a British Columbian HC perennial: if you like his most widely known band Bootlicker you’ll probably like White Collar (Static Shock), and if you like the slightly less known Headcheese you’ll even more probably like it, on account of that ‘speed, with a groove’ tempo and bone-dry clang of a guitar tone.
That leaves me to mention the previously unnamed singer, Loosey C, fronting her first band I believe and a voice of cackling scorn over 11 songs (track 12 ‘Government’s Baby’, which closes the album, is an instrumental, despite having the sort of title that suggests lyrics were written for it). ‘Petition Signer’, ‘Urban Homestead’, ‘Therapy Speak’ and ‘Diversity Hire’ each make hay with the unplumbable hypocrisy and grasping cynicism of fraudulent lefties, coin-eyed CEOs and everyone else who’s learned what the right phrases are.
Oslo’s Assistert Sjølmord are one of many bands brought into my world at London’s late lamented Static Shock Weekender, specifically the 2022 edition. I moved my limbs cloddishly to their perfectly perfunctory tuneful hardcore rattle and then bought their tape which you can’t find online so suck it (disregard if I was in fact not looking hard enough)! The band’s seven-song 7-inch vinyl debut, again on Static Shock, is more widely disseminated (though already sold out at source) and smokes – heavily, but healthily.
Assistert Sjølmord vocalist Sig makes our acquaintance ten seconds into ‘Klimabombe’ with a series of wordless exhortations, like someone in a contest of strength might do before lifting up a big rock, then a peal of manic laughter, like Roseanne in the opening titles of Roseanne. This will be reprised later on the EP amidst a brutally consistent all-Norwegian-language barrage – something also available via related bands Draümar (who Sig also sings in) and Indre Krig (featuring Assistert Sjølmord guitarist Erling Theodor). ‘Røndgtenblikk’ has a halfway melodic intro, not unlike Bootlicker actually, and this great screwy Zero Boys-y guitar part to close out; ‘Satan Eige Meg’, ‘Eget Gasskammer’ and others ride a brain-pummelling oompah beat as heard on more hardcore-literate UK82 releases and also Negative Approach’s ‘Tied Down’.
Cell Deth are another ‘vinyl debut following previous scarce demo’ band and Catholic Guilt (Sewercide) is way fiercer than anything featuring a song called ‘Mixed Tapes & Heartbreaks’ has a right to be. They’re from Prince Edward Island on Canada’s east coast and a couple of the four members had this cool avant-hardcore band, Antibodies, for a brief while. This project isn’t as lunched-out as Antibodies, but it’s top shelf tackle if you want stripped-to-the-bone early 80s hardcore with no slow parts and even less macho bullshit.
The other two members of Cell Deth, Story Thorburn and Matt Sheidow, have been doing bands since the early 2010s – as well as more recently having kids together – and bring equal measures of freshness and grizzliness to their hollers and riffs, respectively. Thorburn has an arrestingly high register and a compelling way of holding a note, as on ‘Non-Believer’; Sheidow whips out this one absurd flailing solo on ‘Violated’ that sounds right out of some possibly hypothetical 1983 flyover state HC demo, and Ryan Kirkpatrick briefly moves us into the future (the late 80s) on the title track with a bassline in the lineage of Swiz or someone of that nature.
This seven-song dispatch from Tokyo’s Kagamimaintains the approx tempo and (nods to the) era we’ve been discussing, though again with caveats. Self-titled, and yet another sophomore release (the hyperlink on their name takes you to their 2021 demo), for UK readers Kagami is most easily purchased on tape, via the Brainrotter label, but can also be had on vinyl from A-Z (Japan) or Advanced Perspective (US). Any version will hold much gold for fans of teen-spirited youth-club hardcore which sounds perpetually about to fall to pieces but achieves this sound with spectacular efficiency.
The Washington DC scene from 1980-83 is Kagami’s big thing, I’d guess, thinking about those Faith Subject To Change vocal melodies on ‘Recession’ or the race-everyone-to-the-finish-line bass on ‘Truth’ (or the Government Issue cover version on their demo, which is a bit more than a guess I suppose). The song titles are presented in English here but Kagami singer Teru’s vocals are not… until the final track ‘Tough Guy’, as in the Beastie Boys number off Ill Communication. Ever thought about how many people had never heard music that sounds like this until they played that album for the first time? Like, hundreds of thousands of people? Including me!
Guiding Light are from Austin and their self-titled cassette (Down South Tapes) has two songs in English and three in German. Following an exhaustive doxxing session to identify the linguistic reasons for this, my understanding is that frontperson Elise Cook has German family and also does cool haircuts if you’re in the area and need a trim. As for the tape, it begins with the whimsical sound of an Omnichord (credited to Cook) but quickly snaps into place with breakneck, babbling post punk the order of the day.
‘Lost In Voices’ is Minutemen-paced, with shrill guitar tunings like the Four Brothers or another of those Zimbabwean bands of yore; Cook’s vocals bounce between manic and sullen, even in the course of repeating the word “lost”. Charles Powell’s drum rolls are endemic to the propulsion of ‘Magpie’, which has a folky cadence as well as some of the get-this-on-tape urgency of early Sleater-Kinney. ‘Stimmen’ is the longest and most sonically expansive song, with John Morales (also of Austin HC band Heaven) adding spacerockin’ synth which is made to work by sheer audacity as much as anything.
Convulse Records are a pretty visible label in 2020s hardcore, getting the youth bouncing with releases by the likes of Gel and MSpaint. They’ve also played their part in the increasing absorption of indie rock into the genre, examples from the Convulse catalogue including Militarie Gun, American Culture and Painted On Smile – the first full album by Public Opinion, from Denver as Convulse are. These ten songs are steeped in 90s and 00s alt ‘vibes’, with hooky arrangements and production (from Militarie Gun main brain Ian Shelton) to match.
Kevin Hart, vocalist and lyricist, seems to be the ‘face’ of Public Opinion if there is one, but guitarists Kevin Johnson and Brent Liseth arguably shape Painted On Smile’s sound most profoundly, horking up giant post-Weezer riffgobs on ‘Drawn From Memory’, ‘Some Don’t’ and more. A quasi-shoegaze aesthetic looms over even the most powerpoppy moments, and though Hart cites his early-millennium memories of The Strokes and The Hives as an influence (‘No Fruit At All’ has some of the mugging-for-the-camera prance of the latter band), I reckon he caught a few Rival Schools videos on MTV2 rotation at the time too. With the proviso that I remember Ill Communication being released and am thus too old and decrepit to have a proper handle on what’s poppin’ in this sphere, I can definitely see Public Opinion reaching a wide listener base and maybe inspiring some absurdly OTT moshing at next year’s Outbreak festival.
Referenced artists
Blóm
Blóm
It’s a crazy messed-up world that’s got people going interminably on about the revival (sic) of ‘indie sleaze’, a thing that literally never existed until last year, while remaining blind to the possibility of the at least theoretically real ‘punk sleaze’ making a comeback. This has manifested to a terrifying degree in the form of a band from Chicagonamed Ejaculators and a debut tape titled Wank Generation (General Speech) which wads an entire could-be subgenre’s hormonal neuroses into a ten-minute release.
Ejaculators feature personnel from Chilean-origin purveyors of idiot savant pogopunk Ignorantes and Mock Execution, whose most recent EP mixed some garage punk drool into their crasher crust foundations. This may be germane to Wank Generation’s five songs, which lean hard into midpaced rocker-friendly Killed By Death ur-punk with added rinkydink garage organ a la The Mummies. Spawn Pun does a bit of a Johnny Rotten impression on ‘E.J.A.C.U.L.A.T.E.’, without dropping his own gruff register and with lines like “Are you a coward or a real man? Suck my dick I’ll shake your hand”. The sleeve design nudges the basic theme along, with nudity of various stripes and a composite photo of the four band members leafing through some jazzmags. You would be well within your rights to find this all rather tiresome! But the tunes, my goodness… I don’t know if anyone else in underground punk is writing ‘em to this calibre.
To finish, and to keep a fire unwisely burning ‘neath the GG Allin cauldron, here’s the debut album by The Stabbing Jabs, whose number includes William Weber – guitarist for the dung-hurling troublemaker in the years just before his death in 1993. Weber might not wish to be defined by that period in his life, of course, and this self-titled LP (Beast/Reptilian) finds him rejoining singer Peter Aaron, his old bandmate in garage rockers the Chrome Cranks – fans of whom should get a suitably fuzzy glow from the crude, meat-tenderizer riffs and general air of nihilistic triumphalism (which I’m declaring to be a thing).
Aaron and second guitarist Chris Donnelly share mid-80s hardcore grounding in Cincinnati obscurities Sluggo; drummer Andrew Jody also has 40 years of bands under his belt, albeit few if any I’ve heard, and bassist Jamie Morrison is the baby of the Stabbing Jabs, an erstwhile Swansea pop punker now ensconced in Ohio and reviewed a year or so back fronting the jovial Motorbike. Collectively, the quintet sound equally grizzled and sprightly across nine original songs supplemented by covers of two more Cincinnati punk obscurities, The Verbs and Dennis The Menace. They can swing a hobnailed club with industrial-via-Pussy Galore fervour, drown in a shallow pool of beer like prime Mudhoney, or fold in a lyrical crib from Black Flag’s ‘Police Story’ because, again, these lot are both down with the kids and (mostly) old enough to have been at ground zero. A real cool time can be had here, and to a greater extent than you might expect!
