Our Favorite Hardcore: The YSI Thread

[rockmeamadeus]

'cause the hardcore thread was so awesome, let's hear some of this shit!!!

Firstly:
Blacklisted - 'Canonized' from the new album, Heavier than heaven, lonelier than God
Even though I feel a heavy fondness for Masachussets hardcore, having grown up with that scene, there's very few Deathwish bands I currently am way into. The two I am most fond of, Blacklisted and Modern Life is War (now defunct, damnit) weren't even from MA, (Philly and Iowa, respectively) but they had the sound and aesthetic... anyway it sounds to me like an early thrash singer fronting a hardcore band, the licks are heavy but when they hit they don't pummel you with them, they lay a huge riff and then move on, it's all so simple and straight-faced and lacking most of the bullshit I associate with hardcore bands nowadays (talking mainly of the ones on bigger labels, such as deathwish).
Also when I said my two favorite bands, I wasn't forgetting Converge but I am love/hate with them, they either turn me right the hell fucking on or they leave me colder than cold. Another story altogether!

Millions of Dead Cops - 'Corporate Deathburger'
Talked enough about them! For me, as good as '80s political hardcore gets! I know that is not a genre but I wanted to exclude Flag and Rites of Spring, so there!

Born Against - 'Mary & Child'
Greatest Hardcore Band of the 1990's. Maybe ever. They formed in the late 80's but let us call them a 90's hardcore band cause all their albums came out then.

oh yeah!

EDIT: NOW WITH NOTATION. Not nearly as good as Andrew's but I tried. God that dude knows stuff!

[jebreject]

fuck yeah, "mary & child" is one of my favorite born against songs!

[rockmeamadeus]

damn yes dude, damn yes

[Andrew_TSKS]

i'll post a whole bunch of stuff to this thread in the next day or so.

[rockmeamadeus]

atta boy

[Andrew_TSKS]

Here's some old school stuff just to get things rolling. The mp3s I post will have more to do with what's easiest to get to for me than anything, so I may not always post mp3s corresponding to my list (especially since I forgot a bunch of stuff I shoulda put on the list anyway). But rest assured, if I post it, I think it's awesome and important and well worth everyone's time.

Bad Brains - Pay To Cum (Their first single, from 1980. Often credited as the first hardcore single ever, though if you ask me, Black Flag's "Nervous Breakdown" and Middle Class's "Out Of Vogue", both from 1979, count as having predated it.)

Black Flag - Modern Man (This is the version from the unreleased 1982 demo session--the only recording session in which Black Flag ever had two guitars. Yes, I know "Damaged" credits Greg and Dez as both playing guitar, but Dez had only been on guitar for a month or so when they recorded it, and didn't have parts written for most of the songs. All he actually did on "Damaged" was backing vocals. But yeah, anyway, this song was later rerecorded on "Loose Nut". This version's better.)

7 Seconds - How Do You Think You'd Feel? (From "Walk Together, Rock Together".)

The Misfits - Spinal Remains (From "Static Age". This remastered version is easily 10 times as good as the shitty mix originally released on "Legacy Of Brutality". Before I heard this version, I didn't like this song--now it's one of my favorite Misfits songs.)

Skewbald - Sorry/Change For The Same (Skewbald was a brief Ian MacKaye/Jeff Nelson project that happened in 1982 while Lyle Preslar was at college and Minor Threat were on hiatus. Eddie Janney, later of Faith and Rites of Spring, played guitar. Sounds pretty much like Minor Threat to me, only angrier, if anything. This song was released on a 7 inch that came out in 1991 as a Dischord 10th anniversary celebration-themed reissue. It was originally released as a demo, along with one or two other songs.)

The Minutemen - Paranoid Chant (From their "Paranoid Time" 7 inch. I don't think of these guys as properly hardcore, as I explained in that other thread, but their early stuff was closer than the later stuff, and this song is one of their more agitated and intense tracks, so I think it fits pretty well.)

[Andrew_TSKS]

I'm not gonna make any future posts intentionally themed, but that said, this one ended up being a bunch of heavy stuff.

Acme - Blind (From "To Reduce the Choir To One Soloist", which contains all 9 of the songs Acme released [2 of which are just live versions of earlier songs]. This is brutal hardcore from Germany, obviously inspired by Rorschach, Groundwork, etc, and obviously an inspiration to bands that came later and led to metalcore.)

Coalesce - A Safe Place (Their third single; if you ask me, their early singles are the best stuff they ever did, although that's not to say that I don't love their later work. There are some fucking insane live performance videos of this song out there, and I believe I posted a youtube link to one of them somewhere on here at some point in the past.)

Botch - Stupid Me (Originally appeared on a comp that came with an issue of Inside Front--#10 if I remember correctly. Has thankfully been collected on the expanded reissue of their first LP, "American Nervoso". Another intense brutal flip-the-fuck-out song. I think all 5 of these fall under that category, really.)

Cave In - Terminal Deity (My favorite song from their second album, "Until Your Heart Stops." At this point, Steve Brodsky, who originally just played guitar and did the sung vocals [which only showed up for, say, a verse of every other song on the first Cave In LP, "Beyond Hypothermia"], was doing all of the vocals, and as a result of his being unable to handle screaming, Cave In turned into a space rock band after this album. More's the pity; "Until Your Heart Stops" was an important advance in what was being done with metallic hardcore in the late 90s. It included two different 8-minute long songs, which was unprecedented at the time. This song is pretty short, fast, heavy and straightforward, but you can nonetheless tell that it's something new and original. Too bad Cave In never explored this direction any further. [And don't any of you even think about bringing up "Perfect Pitch Black". God, I don't even want to discuss it.])

Deadguy - The Extremist (The second version of this song, from "Fixation On A Coworker". An earlier, somewhat inferior version appeared on their debut EP, "Work Ethic". Deadguy featured Rorschach guitarist Keith Huckins and No Escape vocalist Tim Singer, and got a lot of attention as a result. The attention was merited, as this song and the album from which it's taken both indicate. However, after "Fixation", both Huckins and Singer quit the band, forming Kiss It Goodbye. The EP released by Deadguy's second incarnation, "Screaming With The Deadguy Quintet", is generally considered crappy, but I have no truck with the majority opinion on this one. It's very different, yes, but it's also very GOOD, and considering that Huckins' replacement was Jim Baglino of Human Remains, an amazing band in their own right, how could it be bad? Maybe I'll post a song from that EP later.)

[rockmeamadeus]

love that Deadguy song. one of my favorites.

that Black Flag version is kick-ass! better than the one I was familiar with!

[Andrew_TSKS]

It's from an 11 song demo recorded in 1982 when they were barred from releasing new records. The lineup on it is Rollins/Ginn/Cadena/Dukowski/Biscuits, a lineup that never recorded, and they do a whole bunch of songs that later appeared on "My War", "Slip It In", and "Loose Nut", as well as 2 songs that were never released at all! You really should try and hunt it down. It's probably on the internet somewhere in downloadable form, if you know how to use Google. If you can't find it on your own pm me and we'll figure something out.

OK, one more post of songs in a second, then I'm gonna go eat dinner.

[Andrew_TSKS]

Hah, I said no themes, but then I keep on coming up with themes anyway. Here are some early 90s chaotic hardcore tracks:

Universal Order Of Armageddon - Visible Distance (Originally the B-side of their "Symptom" single, they re-used this song as the leadoff track on their Kill Rock Stars 12 inch EP, "The Switch Is Down." These days it appears on their CD discography [which isn't actually a complete discography, as it is missing 2 of the 3 songs from their second 12 inch EP, on Gravity Records]. UOA guitarist Tonie Joy also played in such bands as Moss Icon, Born Against, The Great Unraveling, and The Convocation Of... so you know he's talented. Drummer Brooks Headley was in Born Against and Young Pioneers. Bassist Scott Malat was in Great Unraveling. Singer Colin Seven was out of his fucking mind. You can tell if you ever locate any live tracks by UOA [there are two officially released live songs, and both end with Colin ranting Malcolm Mooney style while the band prepares to play another song]. I can't really describe what's actually going on in the song--the drum pattern alone blows my mind, even after owning this record for 13 years.)

Angel Hair - Lazy Eye (From their split 7 inch with Bare Minimum, later collected on "Pregnant With The Senior Class". Some members of this band went on to play in The VSS, and the guitarist is now in Pleasure Forever along with DCDave. [Joking--the drummer of the VSS/Pleasure Forever is named the same thing as DCDave, but they're not the same dude.] Angel Hair epitomize everything I love about the chaotic hardcore sound of the early 90s, and are in my opinion the band from that scene that got it most right. I'm trying not to write too much, so just listen to it and hopefully you'll understand.)

Honeywell - Screaming Numbers (From their self-titled LP. Josh Ovalteen's voice might sound distorted on this track, but it's not--I saw Man Is The Bastard a few years after they broke up, when Josh was doing noise and vocals for them, and it sounded exactly the same way live as it does on this record. The thing I love most about Honeywell, though, is not the insanely brutal vocals [as awesome as they are] but the kitchen-sink approach they had to making records, with tons of between song noise and samples and the way you could tell they were sort of improvising the beginnings and endings of their songs. The spontaneity they captured with this approach really won me over, and continues to impress me to this day.)

Antioch Arrow - Chaos Vs. Cosmos (From their second LP, "In Love With Jetts." This album and their first LP were both collected on one CD from Gravity Records, but I don't know the title. Anyway, I read an article in Your Flesh magazine years after Antioch Arrow broke up that described how bassist Mack Mann wrote their songs as sheet music. It did a lot to explain songs like this for me. The first 100 or so times I listened to this album, I couldn't tell what the fuck was going on 90% of the time. It wasn't until I'd played it so many times that I had it memorized that I could start to understand the structure of the songs. I eventually figured out that--other than one or two exceptions on the whole record--no part was ever repeated more than four times, and once a part was played once, they never went back to it. Even though their songs are only around a minute long each, this meant that all of them were really complicated and had a whole lot of parts in them. No wonder none of their three albums were more than 15 minutes long! There are even stranger elements to Antioch Arrow's sound--Aaron Montaigne's vocals, which sound to me like Jello Biafra trying to be Rozz Williams, the occasional use of cheap Casio keyboards for melodic flourishes, the weird chords their guitarists use--but all of it still sounds like hardcore to me, even though it didn't to a lot of people hearing this record back in 1994. By their third album, "Gems Of Masochism", Antioch Arrow had gone almost completely goth, but "In Love With Jetts" has the perfect mix of weird goth atmosphere, complex and original song structure, and hardcore intensity. A stone fucking classic, no matter what ANYONE says.)

Heroin - Blind (From their second 7 inch, known as the "Paper Bag" 7 inch because of it's strange covers, made out of silkscreened paper bags. This record was the beginning of chaotic hardcore proper--there had been bands leading up to it, like Born Against and End Of The Line, but Heroin really kicked the whole thing off. This record was the first release on Gravity, the first of many silkscreened-bag/envelope record covers, and all of the members of Heroin went on to do other important chaotic-hardcore related things--singer Matt Anderson continues to run Gravity Records to this day [although I'm not sure how active they are these days], guitarist Scott Bartoloni went on to play in Clikatat Ikatowi, bassist Ron Johnson sang and played guitar for Second Story Window, and drummer Aaron Montaigne, as mentioned above, later sang for Antioch Arrow. I don't know what else to tell you about this band--listen to them.)

Oh and hey, I don't have any Swing Kids on my computer, but here's something almost as good: an 8-minute live set from a performance in Bremen Germany, 1996. The songs they do are "Warsaw" (Joy Division cover), "Line #1", and "Forty Three Seconds".

[andronicus]

Dude I haven't listened to Acme in an age.  So awesome.  I don't even know if I have anything by them anymore, definitely going to d/l this.  Thanks dude.

[Babar]

whoa andrew, easy on the ysi's, it's hard to keep up. i think i'll just burn them all on a cd and spin that shit

[WhereTheSlimeLive]

I downloaded all of these and put them in a playlist.  I am pleased!

[rockmeamadeus]

I feel like my YSI were lacking in description, compared to Andrew. Damnit!!!

Your awesome tho.

PS That Flag demo is something I was aware of but have never tracked down, even though that lineup is pretty much what I need. I am searching. Fuckin' Chuck Biscuits! Dude played with Danzig! Any friend of Glenn's is a friend of mine! Thanks for the heads-up.

[monkeypants]

Holy shit, Honeywell just blew my mind.  A quick google search on them didn't turn up much.  Is that record impossible to find?

I also really liked the Botch track.  Given my aversion to metal-influenced hardcore (sorry guys, just not much of a metal fan, don't hit me), is the rest of their stuff equally awesome?

And thanks for posting those Andrew.  You are swell.  Hardcore swell. 

[Andrew_TSKS]

re: honeywell--um, pretty much impossible to find, yeah, though if you know how to google you can probably find a blog with their whole discography posted for download. i own all of their vinyl except the first 7 inch, so i didn't feel so bad doing exactly that, but hey, it's all mad out of print now, so you shouldn't either.

troubleman unlimited were supposed to release a cd discography, but hey, they were also supposed to release a hated box set something like 10 years ago, and we all know how that turned out.

as for botch, yeah, i'd say that song is pretty indicative of their standard approach, though i personally am a big sucker for that one just because of the big brutal a capella breakdown in the middle. if you like it, you should get "american nervoso". you may not be as big a fan of their later stuff, as it tends to be slightly slower, but "american nervoso" and the compilation of their pre-first LP stuff, "unifying themes redux" (so called because their first ep was called "the unifying themes of sex, death, and religion"), will probably be right up your alley.

[rockmeamadeus]

See I never got into Botch, due largely to the fact I heard only some of their later slower stuff and wasn't all that big on it. I will have to track down American Nervoso, that track you posted is sick.

[Andrew_TSKS]

i won't deny that, after having "we are the romans" for a few weeks, i started going, "man... this album is so SLOW."

but for those first few weeks, i was playing it at top volume and throwing things around my room, so it's not like it's BAD.

[jebreject]

Hah, I said no themes, but then I keep on coming up with themes anyway. Here are some early 90s chaotic hardcore tracks:

Universal Order Of Armageddon - Visible Distance (Originally the B-side of their "Symptom" single, they re-used this song as the leadoff track on their Kill Rock Stars 12 inch EP, "The Switch Is Down." These days it appears on their CD discography [which isn't actually a complete discography, as it is missing 2 of the 3 songs from their second 12 inch EP, on Gravity Records]. UOA guitarist Tonie Joy also played in such bands as Moss Icon, Born Against, The Great Unraveling, and The Convocation Of... so you know he's talented. Drummer Brooks Headley was in Born Against and Young Pioneers. Bassist Scott Malat was in Great Unraveling. Singer Colin Seven was out of his fucking mind. You can tell if you ever locate any live tracks by UOA [there are two officially released live songs, and both end with Colin ranting Malcolm Mooney style while the band prepares to play another song]. I can't really describe what's actually going on in the song--the drum pattern alone blows my mind, even after owning this record for 13 years.)

Angel Hair - Lazy Eye (From their split 7 inch with Bare Minimum, later collected on "Pregnant With The Senior Class". Some members of this band went on to play in The VSS, and the guitarist is now in Pleasure Forever along with DCDave. [Joking--the drummer of the VSS/Pleasure Forever is named the same thing as DCDave, but they're not the same dude.] Angel Hair epitomize everything I love about the chaotic hardcore sound of the early 90s, and are in my opinion the band from that scene that got it most right. I'm trying not to write too much, so just listen to it and hopefully you'll understand.)

Honeywell - Screaming Numbers (From their self-titled LP. Josh Ovalteen's voice might sound distorted on this track, but it's not--I saw Man Is The Bastard a few years after they broke up, when Josh was doing noise and vocals for them, and it sounded exactly the same way live as it does on this record. The thing I love most about Honeywell, though, is not the insanely brutal vocals [as awesome as they are] but the kitchen-sink approach they had to making records, with tons of between song noise and samples and the way you could tell they were sort of improvising the beginnings and endings of their songs. The spontaneity they captured with this approach really won me over, and continues to impress me to this day.)

Antioch Arrow - Chaos Vs. Cosmos (From their second LP, "In Love With Jetts." This album and their first LP were both collected on one CD from Gravity Records, but I don't know the title. Anyway, I read an article in Your Flesh magazine years after Antioch Arrow broke up that described how bassist Mack Mann wrote their songs as sheet music. It did a lot to explain songs like this for me. The first 100 or so times I listened to this album, I couldn't tell what the fuck was going on 90% of the time. It wasn't until I'd played it so many times that I had it memorized that I could start to understand the structure of the songs. I eventually figured out that--other than one or two exceptions on the whole record--no part was ever repeated more than four times, and once a part was played once, they never went back to it. Even though their songs are only around a minute long each, this meant that all of them were really complicated and had a whole lot of parts in them. No wonder none of their three albums were more than 15 minutes long! There are even stranger elements to Antioch Arrow's sound--Aaron Montaigne's vocals, which sound to me like Jello Biafra trying to be Rozz Williams, the occasional use of cheap Casio keyboards for melodic flourishes, the weird chords their guitarists use--but all of it still sounds like hardcore to me, even though it didn't to a lot of people hearing this record back in 1994. By their third album, "Gems Of Masochism", Antioch Arrow had gone almost completely goth, but "In Love With Jetts" has the perfect mix of weird goth atmosphere, complex and original song structure, and hardcore intensity. A stone fucking classic, no matter what ANYONE says.)

Heroin - Blind (From their second 7 inch, known as the "Paper Bag" 7 inch because of it's strange covers, made out of silkscreened paper bags. This record was the beginning of chaotic hardcore proper--there had been bands leading up to it, like Born Against and End Of The Line, but Heroin really kicked the whole thing off. This record was the first release on Gravity, the first of many silkscreened-bag/envelope record covers, and all of the members of Heroin went on to do other important chaotic-hardcore related things--singer Matt Anderson continues to run Gravity Records to this day [although I'm not sure how active they are these days], guitarist Scott Bartoloni went on to play in Clikatat Ikatowi, bassist Ron Johnson sang and played guitar for Second Story Window, and drummer Aaron Montaigne, as mentioned above, later sang for Antioch Arrow. I don't know what else to tell you about this band--listen to them.)

Oh and hey, I don't have any Swing Kids on my computer, but here's something almost as good: an 8-minute live set from a performance in Bremen Germany, 1996. The songs they do are "Warsaw" (Joy Division cover), "Line #1", and "Forty Three Seconds".

Most important post in the history of LPTJ

[rockmeamadeus]

word to that my brother, the post should be shellac'd and hung in a hall somewhere.

Andrew: that is the one I heard! I maybe just wasn't feeling it... oh well, after I check out the early stuff you recommended I will probably try again, it is in a box somewhere back in new england.

PS: Swing Kids - El Camino Car Crash 'cause the thread was lackin', although the live set posted in the Post of the Century above was way fucking rad. I would say more but I just discovered these guys! Other dudes dorked out in the other hardcore thread, I direct you there.

[ellaguru]

Anyone else having trouble downloading the Minutemen and Honeywell tracks? I got the others, though, and shall also be making a playlist. Andrew gets his name in my iPod!

[Andrew_TSKS]

ella, i checked the links, and they're working, so i don't know why you're having trouble with those in particular. if you can't get them to work i can re-up, but like i said, they're working for me.

also, i'm gonna post more songs to this thread tonight.

[ellaguru]

It was doing some sort of a thing. First the tried to play instead of download, and then they gave me an "Invalid Quickkey" message. But then I tried it in Explorer instead of Firefox and it all went down hunky dory, so all ended well.

[graham]

I don't have much on my computer, but here are a few songs that deserve a listen.


Assfactor 4 - I Reckon

Possibly the song that best sums up my idea of being punk in the South.

http://www.mediafire.com/?oggy4ayym34

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Bastard - Misery

Demonstrating why Japanese hardcore fucking rules.  Pretty much established the template for the whole "epic" metallic crust sound that came after (Tragedy, From Ashes Rise, etc.)

http://www.mediafire.com/?anwo2zm6txi

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Crude - The Scum Selled Oneself

Another fucking raging Japanese hardcore band.  Crude has a little more of the manic energy typically associated with Japanese thrash, but throws in a bunch of ripping cock rock solos over top.  One of the best live bands I've ever seen.

http://www.mediafire.com/?igfb9lgmd9n

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Punch - No Such Thing As A Stupid Question

Just booked a show for these folks and this record is easily one of the best hardcore releases I've heard in a long time.  Members used to be in Bullets*In, Under A Dying Sun, End on End, and bands like that, but this sounds nothing like any of them, opting more for a mix of fast shit (like Kill the Man Who Questions played ten times faster) and slow shit (like the breakdowns in any early- to mid-90s mosh tune except ten times slower).  So fucking good, despite the shitty rip of the songs.

http://www.mediafire.com/?nonmc5gt0wc

[Andrew_TSKS]

I'm glad you posted this stuff. That Assfactor 4 song is great and I never would have posted those other 3. In fact, I need to check out Punch.

And don't worry dudes, I'm gonna post more here. I just haven't had time yet.