ABSOLUTE GARBAGE – Chef’s Kiss album

garbage appreciation society

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Middle aged punks blasting into the last years of our lives, with a fatalism perfectly pitched for aging Gen X’ers and like-minded younger generations, who all see the same bleak future. (from band bio)

Hailing from New York, ABSOLUTE GARBAGE knock out authentic, old-school US hardcore like the last 40 years never happened. With a refreshingly unvarnished execution, sarcastic vocals make satirical points through amusingly crude lyrics. Released digitally in 2022, this recently received a vinyl outing, so it qualifies for inclusion here. Seconds-long snippets of ultra-fast jokecore aside, the rest of these songs clock in around the two-minute-plus mark. Steven Tyler Won’t Care When You Die is straight-up, 80s political hardcore, Jello-warbling vocals occasionally slipping into spoken. The spiky female vox peppered throughout are a cool addition; see the catchy Jeff Epstein’s Sex Plane (He Was Just Indicted And Now He’s Dead), the superlative fastcore of Garbage Mouth (be warned: the video below this review is fucking horrible), and the title track highlight. A dead ringer for FLAG OF DEMOCRACY, it includes a bizarre middle with disturbing sounds of people appreciating food with lip-smacking creepiness. Buying A Book On Amazon Makes You A Billionaire’s Toilet oozes DEAD KENNEDYS charm, as does the sarcastic Yank punk of We’re All Going To Jail, and The Mambo Man Seeks Justice, the latter featuring a great spoken section. The lean, hardcore burst of Kampus K.O.P.S. is killer, and the supremely catchy When The Economy Collapsed makes greater use of those crucial female vocals. Get Fucked Up! is nothing short of a modern genre classic, and following a chilling spoken part, the song builds to a demented denouement.

Chef’s Kiss will take you back to a time when bands like FALSE PROPHETS, THE CRUCIFUCKS, and DEAD KENNEDYS made political points through pitch-black satire, personality, and zero trace of metal. That you don’t hear this kinda thing too much only serves to highlight how utterly refreshing it sounds. A disturbingly lip-smacking chef’s kiss to ABSOLUTE GARBAGE.

Released 20th May 2024 on vinyl

https://absolutegarbage.bandcamp.com/album/chefs-kiss

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FEN FEN – National Threat album (Sweet Time Records)

mchc

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NATIONAL THREAT, the debut full length from Detroit street rockers FEN FEN, is guaranteed to melt the needle off your Crosley Cruiser and mysteriously empty out your parent’s beer cooler.

promo blurb

Compared to FEN FEN’s 2022 self-titled mini-album, National Threat is a whole different Motor City malarkey. Still very much of the Detroit garage punk lineage, they have absorbed a nascent hardcore urgency to their swivel-eyed lunacy. That inherent free-wheeling belligerence fits the brief anyway, accompanied by a new-found brevity; none of these 14 tracks breach two minutes, two are under a minute, and one of those is just twenty seconds long.

That debut’s earthiness is intact, though the production here is a cleaner, chunkier affair. In among the snotty hardcore of American Lies, all basic riffs, sarcastic vocals and mangled guitar solo, the tinny bass of the herky-jerky FM, the primitive, sub-one-minute attack of Never Sleep, and the snappy stop-start of Small Town Beatdown, they still cling to their garage roots. The bass and drums rumble away while the guitarist knocks out a scrappy solo during Nothing To Say, and the raw, chunky riffs of Sonic Rat Deterrent‘s Detroit snot has a little Jello-style vocal on the chorus. Elsewhere, the droney primitivism of High Tech hints at FLIPPER, and the brain-damaged vocals and blazing solo of KYP sounds like a Let Them Eat Jellybeans outtake, with a DEAD KENNEDYS tickle on the guitar. That band’s influence shows up again on Bub, the vocals feeling it in their bones, while Grub contains a little of the theatrics. Elsewhere, there is the choppy mania of Priority 2, the primordial first-wave of Dumb, Snake Oil‘s garage mania, and I Wanna Meet Your Dog‘s crazed vocals and fast, one-two-one-two drums.

I guess it would be lazy to name check early Detroit and adjacent hardcore like NECROS and THE MEATMEN. Still, listen to the early work by those bands as they push their snotty, first-wave sonics to ever greater limits. Throw in FEN FEN’s original garage punk sensibilities into the mix, and this is the new sound of FEN FEN. Raw, hyperactive, unpredictable, National Threat is a mighty fine mix of Detroit scuzz and primitive, hardcore snot. A hugely enjoyable listen.

Released on 3rd May 2024

https://fenfen.bandcamp.com/album/national-threat

SHRUG DEALER – ‘Infested’ EP Review

technical hardcore for skate punks

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New York’s SHRUG DEALER follow up their 2018 self-titled debut with the 8-track Infested EP. It’s times like these that I thank the stars for Personal Punk, as the chances of my stumbling across bands like this would otherwise be vanishingly small.

Let’s get straight to the point: PROPAGANDHI. You’ll see the Canuck national treasures tagged a lot in this review. That’s okay though, as the band reference them directly, their DNA intrinsic to the sound SHRUG DEALER produces. The good news is, they simply unroll the blueprints, absorb the dynamics and run off on their own cheeky flights of fancy. Straight off the bat, Participation Trophies is a hyperactive PROPAGANDHI, the day they forgot to take their meds. Fast, catchy, and addictive, you could throw in a little FLAG OF DEMOCRACY to fully describe the mayhem. They even have a John K. Sampson (PROPAGANDHI/THE WEAKERTHANS) vocal for their Anchorless moments. However, that song didn’t have Tilt Mode‘s addictive complexity, Please Turn Off The Gramophone‘s sublime vocal melodies or Desperate Housewives Of Ada County‘s off-kilter sense of fun. Summer Camp packs speed, aggression, gang shouts, and technical guitar into just 56 seconds. How about that? They do get a little daft, as on the tiny technical punk of Get To The Point, and a fragment of BAD RELIGION’s American Jesus riff sneaked into the speed-skate anthem Skate and Decoy.

If there’s a highlight among highlights on Infested, it’s the epic wet dream The Call Of The Epigon. Using the PROPAGANDHI classic Anti-Manifesto as a springboard, they set their cross-hairs on scene hero worship, from THE RAMONES to REFUSED. Lifting lyrics directly from that well-loved song, they’ve thrown everything at this bonanza of cheeky references, including an ice-cool, jazz-funk interlude.

Hey! Ho! Let’s Go!

From Queens to Hermosa Beach
We write the same songs on repeat,
And underscore the notion of being free,
while waxing nostalgic in major key
That New Noise, it never came
Supplanted by a conquest for fortune and fame
And all that strange to tame 

from The Call Of Epigon

Hope, perseverance, a vision (some doubt).
Green ink, a 26 oz., a bad case of big-mouth.
A sum of our parts and I’ve never laughed harder.

from PROPAGANDHI’s Anti Manifesto, lifted for use on The Call Of The Epigon

The lyrics are a fascinating mix of abstraction and transparency. Aside from the aforementioned critique of punk hero worship, the rest of these words should lead you on a juicy google. You’ll discover a cautionary Watchmen tale, that stubbornly Republican Ada County is in Idaho and Summer Camp is a damning indictment on America’s immigration policy. Even Tony Hawk and Fat Wreck‘s legendary compilation Fat Music For Fat People get a look-in.

With many musical ideas fighting for space in each song, Infected is an exhilarating blast of intelligent, exciting skate-punk, fed through the mangler of technical hardcore. If PROPAGANDHI, I SPY, or PEARS had ADHD and grew up on MR BUNGLE, they might sound like this. Absolute killer.

released by By Polar Records & Hidden Home Records on September 30th 2022

https://shrugdealer.bandcamp.com/

https://hiddenhomerecords.bandcamp.com/

LOOSE NUKES – Forward To Extinction LP (Kibou/Kangaroo/Cimex)

crushing Texan hardcore

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Formed in Houston, Texas in 2016, LOOSE NUKES (not to be confused with the now-defunct Philadelphia crew) have a full length album (2020’s Cult Leaders) and two 7″ EP’s. Incredibly, Forward To Extinction is their 2017 demo, remastered and rejigged – they added four more songs from the same session and culled another. Taking inspiration from early 80’s American punk bands, particularly speedcore bands such as NEOS and KORO, on the strength of Forward To Extinction they appear to have arrived fully-formed and ready to go.

Short, fast and loud, LOOSE NUKES bolster longer songs like Fast Forward and Earwax with some riff-heavy, motörpunk momentum to add a crossover-era DRI flavour. On Slaves, Flesh and Mindrape though, they shift to lightening-fast hardcore, all clocking in at well under a minute. Blending blastbeats with blazing guitars, tight drumming and gang shouts for added anxiety, the cover of their beloved KORO’s Dear Sirs is equally invigorating. The vocals get a little tough (not tough guy) on the mid-paced, DICKS-esque Vietnam, head-turning riffage enters the fray on the panicked, chorusy Gag Order and Used sports a nifty MDC intro. Things sag just a little on Parasite but Conversion Therapy gets the show back on blazing track, with a little guitar widdle, gang shouts and more shades of MDC. Ditto Loose Nukes because I can’t get enough of stop/start, shouty hardcore and White People Problems knows how to close out an album. All rocky and catchy in a classic MDC/DICKS vein, complete with guitar solo, you’ll struggle to keep this one out of your head.

So many hardcore bands are described as having ‘no frills’, it’s difficult to stand out from the pack, but if you are into this style, I urge you to listen to LOOSE NUKES. The whole thing flies by as it should, effortlessly encapsulating past and present. Speed variation abounds, from DICKS-style mean rockin’, MDC mania, fastcore and blastbeat blur, with heaps of hooks and gang-shout choruses to reel you in. It’s telling that the bands I thought of when I first heard this are from Texas (MDC, DRI & THE DICKS) so geography plays a part but these guys have given themselves a chunky production and added COKE BUST hurly-burly, bringing it bang up to date. Stop-on-a-dime hardcore at its very best.

Released by Kibou (UK), Kangaroo (France) and Cimex (Sweden) on the 18th July 2022. Here’s where you can get it

https://kibourecords.bigcartel.com/product/loose-nukes-u-s-countdown-to-extinction-lp

https://kibourecords.bandcamp.com/album/fast-forward-to-extinction?from=fanpub_fnb

SEIZED UP-Marching Down The Spiral 7″ EP (Cursed Blessings Records)

Canadian label, Californian punk

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Formed in 2019 in Santa Cruz, California by members of DISTILLERS, GOOD RIDDANCE and BL’AST, SEIZED UP have the pedigree without sounding like any of those bands. Marching Down The Spiral, the follow-up to 2020’s Brace Yourself LP (Pirates Press), is a three track affair of hard-hitting, sociopolitical punk from the North American tradition of bands like D.O.A., SUBHUMANS and VERBAL ASSAULT.

First track Forum of Decay takes potshots at the worst aspects of social media and its alienating influence. Angry, tight and chugging, this is mid-80’s US punk rock with an inevitable ‘grumpy old men’ aspect to the lyrics (“No substitute for real air!”). Peppered with some great DEAD KENNEDYS lead guitar discordance, it’s a fine opener. Dead Zone Denied is more of the same, mid-paced chug, with some interesting turns. These two tracks are crying out for group shouts but then I think most punk choruses should have them, so maybe that’s my blind spot. The final track Marching Down The Spiral is king here: stop-on-a-dime US hardcore with a juicy pick-slide, breakdown and, right at the end, some backing vocals.

This sound harks back to a time around the mid-eighties when American hardcore bands were incorporating ‘rock’ elements, taking a little more care with the song-writing and refining their anger. These guys have been around the block a few times and that shows in their solid musicianship, attention to detail and lyrical concerns. The imagery and delivery bring to mind the hugely underrated Welsh band FOUR LETTER WORD and trust me, that is a complement right there. Highly recommended. Available for pre-order now, vinyl drops 9th April 2021. Follow the link below.

Cursed Blessings Records was started in June 2020 by Al Nolan, frontman for Canadian punk band ALMIGHTY TRIGGER HAPPY and seem to have an interesting collection of releases so far. Worth a look here.