Please see the attached reviews of seven inch sized records below for your perusal and/or enjoyment. They were done by Tom DeAngelo and Tony Rettman. They're easy to tell apart. Tom's are the ones written with a youthful vigor fulla enthusiasm and moxy. Tony's are the short 'n' not-so-sweet scribblings of a man jaded and beaten. See if you can tell 'em apart! First person to send in winning results will be awarded with a swift kick in the ass.
EDDY DETROIT &
THE SUN CITY GIRLS - Eddy Detroit Meets The Sun City Girls (Ammit,
7”)
Here’s a recorded pairing that on first glance seems like a
great idea. Sun City Girls, nem’s the tits! And Eddy Detroit, why Immortal Gods is only one of the true
out-of-its-time classics of the Reagan era! Recordings of them together from
the mid 80’s/90’s…what’s not to like? So in place of a record review let’s
present a hypothetical - albeit highly plausible - situation: You’re browsing
the fresh off the boat goods at your local chop shop and see this tidy seven
inch sleeve sprinkled with a couple desert baked freaks and a topless lady and
you pick it up without even thinking twice about the box of ant traps or multiple
cans of duster your $5 to $7 could theoretically go to instead. Then, whilst
putzin’ on back to the sewer drain you crawled up from it hits you; the Sun
City Girls have like 400 hours’ worth of seriously unlistenable material, and
that’s just the shit they decided to release on vinyl while they were still a
band! You’ve been duped again by those sly Arizonian tricksters! But hey,
there’s still a chance the record could be OK. Let’s see…throw it on the
turntable (why the fuck you got a turntable and records in the sewer anyway
Ratatouille?) and listen to the 6:44 A-side jam Shango. Hmmm, some conga to start things off, not so bad, now some
hazy group moaning, awww shit this is just like that dragging performance art
cloggin’ up all those stray SCG VHS/DVD’s, but this time Eddy D’s handling the
mic! Well sure, bet it was cool to be there dosed to the nines, but you’re not,
you’re in a filthy fucking sewer surrounded by toilet water and vermin, and
this song’s isn’t helping you to forget it any. Flip it over and wait, what’s
this? An arid midnight psych burner that sounds cherry picked straight out of
the prime post- Torch catalog, which
it was (1993 to be exact) and recorded on a 4-tack in Phoenix. Two and a half
minutes of greatness there, though Eddy’s contribution is hard to pick out
(guess he was playing bongos or somethin’). As any lazy music “critic” who’s
kinda bored with his own writing might say in a pinch, “Worth the price of
admission alone.” Well sort of. You probably still don’t need this record, but
it’s definitely not a complete waste or nothing. Last track’s another ramblin’
live number, reportedly recorded in an abandoned Phoenix house, which sounds a
fair bit darker than the aimless ambiance of the first side and a good deal
more palpable as well. Not a terribly essential piece of vinyl, but still
probably better than the vast majority of music recorded in 2012. Just pretend
it’s one sided I guess. – TD
HOAX - 2nd E.P. (Youth Attack!, 7”)
Follow up to the terrific 2011 debut stomper from this popular
New England gaggle, released via Hardcore’s premier joke label. I’m sure the
YA! catalog description makes some reference to father time’s undying glare
withering away mankind’s emaciated butternuts or Juggallo face paint or cotton
candy flavored suppositories. But Hoax just continue to deliver the mic-to-the
forehead goods on this subsequent four song batch; like if Chaos UK packed
their bags for the greasy pastures of Pizzaland and shared bills with Wretched
and Raw Power instead of English Peace Punk bands. The catchiest cut I can see
kids getting loose to “in the pit” is the opening one; the mid paced chugger Down. That’s followed by a re-recorded
version of demo track Suicide Pact,
which features some of the funniest hardcore couplets this side of a One Life
Crew record. As others before me have pointed out already: If this dude’s so
set on killing himself why’s he still kickin’? Well at the very least he’s in a
decent Hardcore band, which is reason enough to keep climbin’ Hamburger Hill.
Packaging is of course unnecessarily involved for a Punk record, making the 7”
a huge pain in the ass to get out of the sleeve, and features a bizarre/stupid
preoccupation with the rock climbing off shoot of “spelunking”, tho’ I do like
the pile of rocks transposed over a military man on the cut out flip piece
(nice nod to the jacket of Bo Diddly’s Where
it all Began on that ‘un). Still, I’d recommend modifying your copy with a
dust sleeve tucked into the fold over plastic if you plan on actually playing
the thing. At times, as is often the case with “these bands”, the misanthropy
comes off as more than a little forced, but Hoax write some seriously crushing
riffs, so I gotta give ‘em the edge here. Plus, the drummer was wearing a Fugs shirt
at the gig I picked this record up at, so I know these kid’s hearts are in the
right place. The world’s your oyster god damn it, so here’s to a nice group
grope! – TD
LAKES – Crossed With Leaves (Quemada, 7”)
As I get older and my ears grow hair, I feel myself
regressing more and more back to a very fond love for the seven inch format. If
you asked me if I wanted to have such an abrupt listening experience sometime
in the 90’s, I would have coughed a cloud of dope smoke in your face and
continued trancing out to a nine hour No Neck Blues Band jam. But nowadays, I
want something concise and affective in-between my bowl of All-Bran and a bike
ride. So, I wonder if I am so enamored by this new Lakes single due to its
length (ew-er!) or its actual qualitative nature. I’d like to think it’s a
little from column A and a little from column B. I scored a copy of the Lakes LP Winters’
Blade in the summer of last year and it didn’t really pump my organ. This
little beauty though sounds like one of the finest gloomer discs to trod wax
stained floors since Sir Chamberweed himself donned a Merciful Release
t-shirt. Seriously. Don’t be afraid to
swoop. – TR
NASAL BOYS – Hot Love b/w Die Wuste Lebt! (Sing Sing,
7”)
My relationship (for lack of a better word) with the Sing Sing
label is a weird one. I find some of the stuff they re-issue to be of the total
head-smacking ‘Why didn’t I fucking know about this?!?’ variety (Dwarf, Deaf
Aids, Roller Ball, etc.) and some of it just reeks to me of the sole New Wave
band in some Podunk town who managed to squeak out a single before retiring to
a life of data entry or gas pumping. And trust me I should know about such
things having grown up around the likes of Smart Remarks and the Shades. But
sometimes this label gets their lucky duck hands on something that is a truly
phlegm caked gemstone; such as this first 45 by Switzerland’s’ Nasal Boys from
‘78 for instance. Many a deep pocketed pal and/or older punk type has jammed
this thing for me before and made me red with envy. But I guess good things DO
come to those who wait, ‘cause here I am jamming the record with enough money
left on the debit card to get a quinoa patty and a seltzer for dinner tonight.
Who would have thought we’d see such a time? You know…where I’d eat a quinoa
patty. Folklore tells that the Nasal Boys were more influenced by New York than
the punk coming out of London at the time, but both their shiny leather pants
and the A-Side of this single tell me a different story. Hot Love sounds like a prime candidate to be played behind some
stock footage of two multi-colored haired morons strangling themselves on the
dance floor of the 100 Club. And that’s certainly not a diss. The B-Side states
the case of a Ramones influence a bit more but the rhythm section of Konrad Sauber
and Pade Schletzer swing way more than Dee Dee and Tommy ever could. Now who’s
gonna have the huevos to release the LP these guys released on Epic under the
name Expo? That record might not be raw like a war, but it’s up there with shit
like the Empire 12” in regards to cleaned-up and confusing Punk records go.
Anyone? Anyone? – TR
OMEGAS – N.Y Terminator (Painkiller, 7”)
I’ve read Montreal’s Omegas heralded as “The best current
band in Hardcore” or what -have -you from a handful of fairly disparate sources
by now, and I gotta say, after attending the release gig of this very 7” I
might have to agree. What’s so great about this slam-skank promoting unit? Well
for starters, in a live setting they bring a level of unbridled ignorance
harkening back to the days before Ray Cappo, John Porcelly moved from Connecticut
to the Big Apple. Hilarious crowd baiting, people far too old to be moshing
doing so, and indiscriminate attacks at audience members were aplenty the only
time I caught ‘em in the flesh. But this is a record review, not an appraisal
of the state of fashionable Brooklyn loft performances; we’ve got an E.P. to
discuss. Much like the absolute juggernaut which was last year’s Blasts of Lunacy, this platter is filled
with awkward tempo changes that shouldn’t work but do along with gloriously
heavy breakdowns that would make any Krakdown fan’s nipples hard, and lyrics
addressing topical concerns of the street. And again, much like the album, the
prime influence I’m picking up hiding just below the surface is Christian
Death. Seriously, nobody believes me on this but listen to the snaking bass
line in the outro of Nazi Rules and
tell me it doesn’t elicit an image of the band hiding out in some abandoned
Southern Californian church shooting smack between their toes right before
pressing record. I was actually jammin’ this one in the presence of a friend a
couple days before writing this review and he noted that it didn’t seem to hit
as hard as the LP, and while I’ll agree that they’re might not be anything as
instantly addicting as Disgusting Fun,
it’s still a hard ass record that makes most other corny Punk bands around
today look even worse than they already do. But really there’s no sense in
comparing the Omegas to children ‘cos, for one, their full grown adults and
two, they’re a damn fine hardcore band no matter the era in consideration. - TD
SCRAPS – Secret Paradise (Disembraining, 7”)
That Scraps LP from last year certainly won my ‘Best Record
Title’ for ’11 award (Classic Shits) but
I didn’t really find myself listening to it more than once or twice. And that’s
not to say it was lousy or anything; it just failed to register in my barely
pumping brain. But this three songer from the lady from Brisbane is having the
opposite effect on me; it’s registering out the wazoo! Those unfortunate enough
to return to my house after a night of carousing will know I have a great fondness
for the first two singles by Thick Pigeon and Ms. Scraps (Laura Hill if you’re
nasty) seems to have nailed down the pristine, creepy electro feel of those
tiny little discs on this single, for sure. I could assuredly see this 45 being lined up
after a sauced jamming of Subway or Dog the next time I come home from a
liver damaging session. Max Milgram: you have been warned. - TR
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