various artists - Bloodclot

I have no clue how I ended up with this compilation.

Was it the name? Did I misidentify this as a mid-70s roots reggae comp? Or a tribute to Cro Mags' vocalist John Joseph? The cover is giving me mid-90s SoCal punk graphic design. The cover photo reminds me of the kind I'd have taken outside a showspace I went to in Baltimore back around this time. Maybe that's it...maybe, whenever I nabbed this one, I took a wag because maybe I thought it had some deepish cut Orange County tracks, the kind that I've been enjoying digging because I couldn't bother listening to it when it was new.

This is not that. This has two of the most ubiquitous songs of 1998 on it, with "The Rockefeller Skank" and "One Week" both popping up on the front end of this HITS radio sampler. The selections from K's Choice and Spacehog are not the songs that played everywhere. I didn't own either of these records, so it was interesting hearing what their respective labels were positioning as singles. Truth be told: the most interesting songs come on the back half of the CD, with Rufus Wainwright, Emm Gryner, and Dimitri From Paris all making appearances. It's capped off with that one MxPx song that I remember the video from, a pretty solid pop punk track from a band that hailed a ferry ride away from my current home base.

Discogs

Click here to download.

various artists - Tromeo & Juliet (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

When I saw the other day that James Gunn had yet another movie open #1 at the box office, I was reminded, yet again, that he made his bones writing "Tromeo & Juliet", Troma's beloved take on Shakespeare. So it led me to bust out this shiny slab of aluminum. I bought it b/c Troma and Unsane, I kept it b/c Motörhead and Superchunk and Meatmen and Wesley Willis. Hell, they even managed to wedge a song from Gunn's band, the Icons, on here.

This is not going to show up on a listical of iconic 90s soundtracks. But I'd suggest that it should be recognized as part of the canon. While there's little here that is exclusive to the soundtrack, it does offer a wide swath of "alternative" rock from the late 90s, from a deep cut from Sublime to music from the Ass Ponys and Supernova. Plus: Brujeria!

Discogs

Click here to download.

various artists - You've Got The Fucking Power

It was the "dubstep's for pussies" comment in "Deadpool 2", which I watched part of Sunday morning as I ate a donut (ok, multiple donuts) for breakfast, that drew me to share this one, and to thinking about microscenes in general. I've always loved riddims, and so it was that I was drawn to drum n bass in the mid 90s as my exposure to electronic music expanded. And anything that grew naturally from a love of both synthetic sounds and hardcore politics was going to grab my interest. So sometime in 1996, I learned about Atari Teenage Riot and really got into digital hardcore. Bought the records, mail ordered the t-shirts, went to at least one or two shows when anyone from the roster came to the States. Even showed up for Wu-Tang/Rage Against the Machine to catch ATR from the expensive seats at Merriweather.

But it was a trend, like crystal soda and third wave ska. It didn't stick for me past the now-beloved "Live at Brixton Academy 1999" set, by which point I had probably donated the t-shirts and sold the CDs. This, which came pre-stocked in a 15-count display to the record department in 1998, is one of the few vestiges of that fandom. This holds up pretty well a quarter century after the fact; it clearly did some blocking to clear a path for big beat and IDM and, ultimately, EDM to become one of the predominant sounds of the 20s. At this late date, I'm probably most jazzed by Curse of the Golden Vampire, an Alec Empire/Justin Broadrick/Kevin Martin collab that draws as much from early 90s UK grind & crust as mid 90s hip hop as it does from 80s UKHC. Did it open me up to checking out Coil and Whitehouse? I can't say precisely, but there's a line there I just can't ignore.

So back to microscenes: I think I've always been reluctant to talk about the art I've embraced only temporarily. No one wants to be considered a poseur, but it's also a very normal part of our fandom for it to burn brightly and quickly sometimes. Yeah, I'm a guy in his mid 40s who'll probably listen to Fugazi and Discharge until the day he dies. But I also chased down out of print Toasters records in the 90s, had more than a few Bandcamp purchases of chillwave, and hope to be a bit more kind to myself when my current k-pop obsession wears down. Whether the greater world thinks it was cool is irrelevant. I dug it then; that's enough.

Discogs

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various artists - All Power To The People, Not The State

I'm pretty certain I flipped past this CD a half dozen times in various distros back at the turn of the millennium. So how did I end up with a copy in 2024, and why?

The how is simple: I paid less than a buck for it from an eBay seller I frequent. See, when the auction is over, you just click a button and BAM! a week later, a padded mailer or box arrives in my mailbox with this CD in it.

The why is less simple, but still simple. It has a bunch of bands on it that I like: Submission Hold, Gasp, Good Riddance, I Spy, Citizen Fish. It was released in an edition of 1,000 CDs, benefiting a pair of anarchist collectives. I think it was probably released by the fella $eth, whose record is the only other release on Black Star Recordings. It has a pretty amateurish illustration of a cop in riot gear on the cover; it's the kind of spare graphic design that really stopped flying around that time. Yesterday was Mumia Abu-Jamal's 70th birthday. And since a portion of the proceeds from this release ostensibly went towards his legal defense, I figured now was as good a time as any to share.

Discogs

Click here to download.

various artists - Chasin' That Devil Music

This is the sound of ghosts. Even the commentators have been dead for over 50 years. So put away the Ouija board and cue this up to invoke the spirits; names like Charlie Patton, Son House, and Skip James who you (should) know by heart, and those like William Harris and the Confiners, whose identities are mostly lost.

This came affixed to the book of the same name by Gayle Dean Wardlow, who by 23 was interviewing the remnants of the first wave of blues musicians and now possesses one of the great collection of pre-war blues records in the world. When I was 23, I barely had a serviceable stack of first wave American hardcore. All of which is to say: you see a copy of Wardlow's "Chasin' That Devil Music" out in the world for less than $10 (like I did), you oughta grab it.

Discogs

Click here to download.

various artists - Seven Unlucky Sevens

Or as I like to call it, "500 Slampt Fans Can't Be Wrong!!!"

It's seven early 7" releases from Slampt, as true and honest a DIY enterprise as history has even seen. Run by two kids from the North-East of England as an arts umbrella, Slampt was known for awesome cover art and killer lo-fi records. They were like an Tyneside K Records, in kinship with New Jersey's Troubleman Records and responsible for some classic slabs.

Like the insert says, these represent the debut singles for six of the seven bands appearing. You want to hear what the dudes from Franz Ferdinand were doing in their youth? Well, there's a Yummy Fur 7" to check out. Label "owners" Pete & Rach show up with Avocado Baby and Pussycat Trash, the latter of which remains THE great under-heard riot grrrl group from the early 90s. Pete's long-running lo-fi group, Milky Wimpshake, not only had an all-time great name, but also debut here.

You should know by now; I like my punk rock recorded on a boom box and played as amateurly and heartfelt as possible. This one gets me right in my sweet spot.

Discogs

Click here to download

various artists - In The Name Of Satan: A Tribute To Venom

Sigh...

In the positive column:

• Voivod, Nuclear Assault, Kreator, and Sodom, all appearing on a tribute to black metal "originators" Venom
• It cost me a buck
• This copy has a hole punched through the barcode, which tells me the first owner of this paid little to nothing for it

And in the negative column:

• This is the American version of the release on Deadline/Cleopatra, with an extra track by the Electric Hellfire Club jammed into the middle of the comp
• As the US-released version, they dropped the "In The Name Of Satan" part of the title, so as not to offend anyone in middle America
• This isn't an hour of bands influenced by Venom doing riffs on this EP

This isn't "good", but it's worth hearing at least once all the way through.

Discogs

(using the OG German cover b/c it's cooler/cornier)

Click here to download.

various artists - Chords Of Chaos

One of this week's thrift store finds...a single buck American for this late-90s slice of goregrind on a Brazilian label I'd never heard of. The standout is, of course, Relapse Records stalwarts Exhumed. These San Jose legends were still just in their first decade of existence when they provided seven tracks to this comp; they have a new record that came out a couple weeks back, which, if you're into death metal or goregrind, you probably already have, preferably on the limited-to-100-copies picture disc which looks sick as hell.

Ear Bleeding Disorder were from Colorado and left behind a split 7", along with a handful of comp appearances (including this one) before splitting up. Mortville compiled their discography in 2004, so if you ever wanted to hear a live version of their hit, "$300 And A Hand Job", taken from a second generation VHS tape, well, you can cop it for pretty cheap.

I won't presume to know much more about Spain's Execreted Alive other than what's in the unfolded booklet and what Discogs has to say about them. While they came nowhere near the discography size of, say, Agathocles or Unholy Grave, they managed a fair number of split albums and 7"s throughout the 90s. They had a compilation of their 7"s come out last year on cassette via the UK's prolific Grindfather Productions label.

Last, but not least, come Necrose from Brazil. I recognized the name from a comp of HG Fact they appeared on. This is easily my favorite material, hewing more towards a classic grind sound, a la Napalm Death. Respect to anyone cutting a track called "Football Hysteria Motherfucker". Mortville and Grindfather teamed up back in 2014 to put together a limited-to-100 discography cassette together; it probably wouldn't take a lot of arm twisting for me to drop $6 on a copy from a distro (those still exist, right?).

Look, it was a dollar CD, and "Creepshow" just got added to Shudder, and I've been running a bit low on records to post, so, here you go. This is not for everyone. But if you have a bit of the ol' "sik fuk" in you, you'll probably want to bang your head to this.

Discogs

Click here to download.

various artists - Mailorder Is Fun

Just a killer proto-Warped Tour sampler, featuring a shit-ton of bands from the Asian Man roster, as well as some from the pre-Fall Out Boy Fueled By Ramen lineup. The standouts include lead-off batters Slapstick, who by 1998 were mostly remembered outside of Chicago as being the band that spawned Alkaline Trio and the Lawrence Arms, the aforementioned A3, J.Church covering E.L.O., and Discount.

But, for me, revisiting this 24 years later, what hits me hardest are the lesser-remembered offerings. I recall how stoked everyone was on Link 80 in 1998, seeing them as the heirs to Operation Ivy. I was always excited to see the likes of Slow Gherkin, Johnny Socko, or Animal Chin on the back of a compilation; you knew if was going to be goofy and danceable and just a hell of a lot of fun.

It was all happening so far away from Baltimore at the time. The Fest wasn't a thing yet; the Misfits Of Ska tour hadn't been organized; if anyone hit the mid-Atlantic, they were playing weird, out-of-the-way towns because spaces like CCAS or the Sidebar were still in the future. But we had this, and it was most good.

Discogs

Click here to download.

Left For Dead - Splitting Heads

A goddamned all-time ripper of a discography, up there with the likes of Rorschach or Infest, in my humble opinion. Of course, I didn't hear this until after their demise, coming to it as a result of Ruination and Haymaker. B/C I was young and dumb and really hyped on ska when LFD was playing out, the follow up to the Beckman Brothers' immortal Chokehold. Working my way backwards, I put it together that Left For Dead did that Acrid diecut buzzsaw split on No Idea, an amazing concept that I somehow missed buying. So dumb.

"Splitting Heads" features just 14 studio tracks (their splits with Ochre & Acrid) and their half of a live split 12", shared with Chokehold. The front half was recorded for $40 in a psychopath's basement; it sounds like it. Not a lot of output for such an influential band, but every single cut is explosive. A389 reissued the studio portion as "Devoid Of Everything" in 2013. Left For Dead played a surprise set at CCAS after the A389 Anniversary in 2013, and were as great as I had hoped.

Totally worth spending at least $10 for. Do it.

Discogs

Click here to download.

various artists - Teenage Rebel ... ... Der Sampler - Volume 2

I've turned some fun, inexpensive records this week; very little of which I would post here. But when one finds a cheap copy of "Rumours", or the last Daft Punk record, or the only Yellowman major label release, I suppose one has to pick them up.

I snagged this because it reminded me of all the good things I've downloaded over the years from WhyDoThingsHaveToChange. I started visiting because they'd post up some great bootlegs, as well as some real solid records I'd never taken the time to rip on my own. I keep visiting for the insanely deep selection of European punk, power pop, Oi!, and hardcore they share, very little of which I've ever been exposed to. Just this week, they've paired a Steve Roberts (ex-UK Subs) solo record with a KBD classic from Victim. To keep it 100, today's post is T.S.O.L.'s 1981 deathrock classic "Dance With Me". It's a daily visit for me.

Just like the cover says, this is the second sampler from Düsseldorf's Teenage Rebel Records. The primitive cover was what grabbed me; it made me think of those limited-to-25-copies CDr's with handdrawn covers that you'd encounter on a band's merch table. I flipped it and recognized a few bands: Terrorgrupe, Artless, and Male. Once I ripped it and gave it a spin, I found it quite worth the $3 I paid. It's a small price to pay for 30 tracks of (mostly) German language punk, with a smattering of hardcore and power pop.

It also makes me miss the days before the common market, when I had to try to remember the basic conversion rates for 15 different countries, instead of two. I also enjoyed walking to school in the snow...uphill...both ways.

Discogs

Click here to download.

Sea Of Cortez - Age Of Anxiety

I don't have a lot to really say about this. Sea Of Cortez was one of those emo-bordering-on-math rock bands that existed all over the place back in the late 90s. Their name came from the old Spanish, describing what we know as the Gulf of California. Or was it after the Promise Ring song? I couldn't say. They came from the outskirts of Phoenix, made a full-length, a 7", and a split, and appeared on a few comps. I remember them sounding a fair amount like Unwound. The members have probably gone on to separate lives.

This is the sort of record one never expects to turn up in a Goodwill; after all, were there more than 1,000 copies pressed on CD or vinyl?

But that's been one of the nice things about living where I live. I see all these recordings I remember from the back pages of zines from 20 years ago, except now, it's there on the shelf for a few bucks, so why not give it a go? Multiply that by three records a visit, two visits a week, and...well, that's how I quietly crept over 7,000 CDs in my collection in 2021.

Discogs

Click here to download.

(The) Monorchid - Who Put Out The Fire?

Monorchid (photo by Drew McDermott)

A monorchid is a being with only one testicle. (The) Monorchid was a brainworm I couldn't shake out of my head, with triple the balls the name would imply.

I came to Monorchid in a backwards fashion. I booked Wrangler Brutes into the Art Space, in no small part because Andy and Brooks from Skull Kontrol were the rhythm section behind Cundo from Nazti Skins and some dude named Sam. I liked Skull Kontrol (check the name of the blog, dog), and someone mentioned that Andy and Chris, the singer of Skull Kontrol, had done a band in DC before that called Monorchid. So I snagged a copy of their second and final LP, "Who Put Out The Fire?", and, well...

This is where I finally learned that if Chris Thomson was involved in something, I'd probably like it. The thru-thread spun through DC to Madison back to DC and on to Chicaog, from Ignition to Fury to Circus Lupus to Las Mordidas, on to Skull Kontrol to Red Eyed Legends to Coffin Pricks. It was going to be punk and weird and beyond cool and worth studying. When I sang, I wanted everything to sound like a glorious ad lib, no matter if it was stream of conciousness or written months before...to possess that sense of cool I always heard in Chris's voice.

"Who Put Out The Fire?" came out the same year as "Terraform", "What Burns Never Returns", and "Starters Alternators". It was a veritable murderer's row of great records from Touch & Go in 1998, which makes their infrequent releases in 2020 a goddamned shame.

Discogs

Click here to download.

Indigesti ‎– Sguardo Realtà

I've always felt like my knowledge of Italian punk and hardcore was a bit on the weak side, so it was really cool to turn this up for $1.50 at a Goodwill a couple years ago. I had downloaded the Wretched / Indigesti split from Erich Keller's blog years before, so I had a good sense of what I was in for. But this 1998 compilation, featuring Indigesti's collected output from 1982 and 1983, was a mind-melter. I mean, who would you compare this to? They were among the leading lights of Euro-thrash; they just were doing it two to three years ahead of everyone else. What I like most about this is the D-beat-esque lyrical style: just slam poetry, dunked down hard atop a pulsing beat.

This is a reissue of the record that came out in 1994, which, of course, compiled their cuts from that Wretched split, their "Sguardo Realtà", 10 unreleased tracks, and an 8-minute live set in Milan. I won't say it's the best $1.50 I've ever spent, but it's definitely one of the best dollar bin/thrift store finds I've ever had.

Discogs

Click here to download.

Servotron - Entertainment Program For Humans (Second Variety)

I don't want to get in that old fart mode of "I've done so many things I forget most of them", but I'm at the point where the random shit I've done is starting to blur more than a little.

I'm fairly certain I saw Servotron once, although the particulars escape me somewhat. I know this because the timeline for seeing them play Reptilian Records on a Sunday afternoon lines up. Any AmRep band on tour in the late 90s at least stopped in to say hi to Chris X. And if you were in or around town on Sunday, you probably played a free gig at 5pm in the back of the store, after Chris and Johnny Riggs and Gene had moved the videos and iguana out of the way. This was the first time I'd seen anything we'd now describe as synth-punk, although I'm sure my only frame of reference was Devo.

A bunch of college aged kids, leaning into kayfabe, dressed up like cyborgs, making punk rock about robot revolution is about as peak 90s as it can get. Throw in some cover art by Shag, and how pissed off the audience would get over a pro-robot message, and you have a package that's is sadly lacking these days. How stoked would you be where you can afford to get angry over such a silly thing? It'd mean life was pretty good, right? Bring back something like this as the soundtrack to freeing yourself from organic tyranny.

Discogs

Click here to download.

various artists - Goin' After Pussy: Teasers & Tidbits

Stolen from Etsy

Call me crazy, but I don't think you could put this record out in 2020.

There's this whole trash punk scene from the 90s that, despite being prime for revival, no one's truly examined in detail. I mean, I guess Eric Davidson touched on parts of it in his must-have history of late century punk, "We Never Learn".

(Sidebar: how the fuck is that book no longer in print? Somebody should reprint it, tout en suite!)

But there's this whole sleazy, Dead Boys-loving, pomade wearing scene, illustrated by Coop, I remember from the 90s that really doesn't get mentioned anymore. It came from labels like Sympathy for the Record Industry and Reptilian Records, and stood in stark opposition to the political punk and hardcore, or the much more cheerful Epitaph/Fat mall punk of the same period. Not that I'm the cat to write that history, mind you. But it's worth revisiting, especially since I think the greater culture lacks the nuance to permit so much off-color shit to happen in a 30-minute punk rock set.

Goin' After Pussy provides a nice snapshot of that time. It's ostensibly a sampler of the first 20 or so releases from California's Junk Records. It's also sexy, kinda dangerous, fun...like huffing glue in a dark alley behind the dive bar. I won't sit here and bitch and moan about the bad ol' days, but it was nice to come up in a time where not every mistake was recorded. The music and posture of each of these bands reflects that. You get some early period Electric Frankenstein, a Candy Snatchers track from the period around their second record, and a pair of ripping Zeke cuts, not mention an assbasket of other rippers. The music is intercut with answering machine messages, which is quite a lost art.

So if you find yourself with a handful of mysterious pills and about 75 minutes of free time, put this on and get weird. I'm pretty certain I pulled this out of a Half Price Books warehouse sale in 2018, so I paid something like 25¢.

Discogs

Click here to download

The Dismemberment Plan - The Ice Of Boston

Photo by Kampers

Holy shit, planet Earth! I don't think I ever went full retard over a band like I did after the first time I ever saw the Dismemberment Plan. I went through this phase in '97 and '98 where I'd latch onto a band I saw at the Black Cat or Ottobar or Fletcher's, and, for about 2 weeks (or a fortnight [whichever you prefer...that is to say, wherever you may hail from]), I'd turn into a big slobbering mess, blaring the current record at way-too-loud levels inside the Borders-style book & record store I worked for. And then, as quickly as I got high off the band...

/poof

...the thrill was gone.

The Plan was one of the few exceptions to the rule. I've probably seen these cats at least a dozen times, including a trip to suburban Detroit for the last Michigan Fest, a few performances down at Fort Reno, and a number of local shows. For those of you reading who were not fortunate enough to see them live...FUCK! They were outstanding! Hardcore kids got their groove back when they saw the Plan for the first time. Why did indie rock dance parties get big all over the country back around 2000? Blame the Plan, yo.

So there's a story behind posting The Ice Of Boston. This 4-song EP was a teaser for Emergency & I, which was initially slated to drop in the fall of '98 on Interscope Records. When Universal/Polygram got purchased by Seagram's, however, a ton of bands got dropped, the Dismemberment Plan included. I can't really remember the details of how the Plan got the rights to Emergency & I back, but a year later, it was released on DeSoto, and the kids had a classic. And a mighty cheer went up from the crowd. The title track came from the D.Plan's 2nd record ...Is Terrified. However, the other 3 cuts are pretty hard to find otherwise. I have the Resin Records comp that has "Just Like You". The demo version of "Spider In The Snow" never got released anywhere else, and "First Anniversary" is similarly unreleased.

Shake asses, get your grind on...this one's a keeper, y'all.










The Dismemberment Plan - The Ice Of Boston
(click the record to DL)

RIYL: the noise, the funk, bringing in either