Seven Minutes Of Nausea - "Does Abstinence Kill" Demo & Live '86, "Karen's Edge" Demo '86, Advance Tape to "Thrashbora" Flexi '88


Uranus to the titans of noise-grind! Inspired to destroy music after attending a Death Sentence gig, the nascent duo quickly decided playing 1/4 of a minute was too stoner doom for them, so they destroyed music's corpse even further...to a single second...per song...in tune...with acidically spat sociopolitical statements barely forming a single sentence or pair of words within each aural aneurysm (literally 100s of tracks...all with titles, all with lyrics!!!!!!). Two O.G. demos and an O.G. advance tape for their "Thrashbora" flexi. Demo 1 is their stoner doom days, the other demo is the style they've mostly carried on with to this very day. And Thrashbora? Nigga...kiss your SOUL goodbye!

Collapse Society - Demo '93 & EP '94

An O.G. rip from an O.G. tape, re-gifted to me the year of release (Morishita > Hometown Homie > Me). Hell yeah I'm gonna brag! Picture the transformers you see on telephone poles shorting out and arcing through your brain...that's Collapse Society. 2nd wave dis-noisecore who were among the very first in Japan's initial revival of the genre. Up tempo on the EP, oddly "groggy" on the demo (I prefer the demo), the dis is usually Doom/E.N.T. speed with noise levels into the infrared. As so elegantly photographed, I had a shithead paint pen accident that I just as shitheadidly failed to morph into the band's initials. And for the cybersadists, the cover isn't O.G. because that got TOTALLY destroyed. Real punx always party on their shit! I had no drama whatsoever with the EP, or any of my vinyl...but tapes...they saw dark things.

Christbait - "Prod" Demo 1991 & "Yeast" CD 1992

FUCK I kept some (now) ancient shit! Heavy as whale balls on your exposed lungs, Australian sludge-death and rare shock ultragrind that morphed into solemnly emotive industrial metal. Fairly low gurgles and deathliness gave way to clean shouts and a template closer to a simplified Helmet or Zeni Geva. Godflesh is the most obvious and redundant influence, noticable in the reverbed-out singular note noodling, but they "groove" more than loop themselves. Tight and well produced on the demo, and very tight and expertly produced on the CD, this was a band truly worthy of cult status that blew all the homies away upon first release...BOTH the demo and CD (and I was the nigga to dub the band for them...aaalll of them)! SO...whatever happened to the Fear Bait / Christ Factory collaboration?

Skumdribblurzz - Live 83/84, "Practice", 2nd Show May 1984 (With Tracklist)

Nine+ minutes of horrifying dogshit. According to legend (pensioner punks) the band formed just to get in free for shows, too fucked to even bother with a Shitlickers level of anti-musicianship. More Suburban Filth or Eat Shit than Anal Cunt, the "band's" biggest claim to fame was Digby Pearson joining them much later on bass (and a mention in the first Filthy Christians LP). I barely heard them in 2003, and quite frankly this is the first time I bothered with the "experience" all the way through. One live show with a surprising amount of clarity given the form of cacophony, and a "practice" that sounds like a single member dicking around on a 3rd world guitar with all the wiring completely soldered over (my trader insisted Dig is in on the practice...doing what, blowing homie on his shit-tar?). For ultra-nerds only, who will ultra say this "deserves" vinyl. So why did I upload it? People don't listen to the truth, they gotta LIVE it... 
2017 Rip: First Show/Practice...

2021 Update: 2nd Show/"Gabbas Headache":...

The Grey Wolves - "Legion Of Hell" Cassette (Year? [mid 80s])

My fave release from the U.K.'s #2 terroristronics duo. Grainy field recordings of Satan talking shit warble O-P-P-R-E-S-S-I-V-E-L-Y over chirps and blurbles of traditional dark synth (the kind heard in every mid 70s to mid 80s z-grade sci-fi flick), all mindfully enhanced with existential reverb and nihilistic delay......as it should. Some of the more identifiably synthy accoutrements have a sporadic feel to them, but I also can't quite measure the improv element considering how damn effective the rest of the recording came out. Grey Wolves always preferred to play it fast and loose, so maybe I should (over)analyze less and just get to the link...

Merzbow - "Merzbuddha" CD 2005


Masami Akita's exceptionally brutal tribute to the drum n' bass genre...massively deconstructed and weaponized as violating meditation. Pulsar-heavy-pulses decompose into subsonic rhythmic loops, while neutrino bursts quadrophonically hiss ceaselessly about like flies on it's greasy black corpse. The frighteningly engulfing mix (total dimensional dislocation yo) is so intentionally midrange it literally makes me queasy......and yet...I keep listening. Not as frenetic as he's usually known for (there's a patience to the textural sculpting that heavily reminds me of his much older work "Memorial Gadgets"), but there's no pejoratives in that either, the enhanced focus is what maintains this particular release's lingering memorability and revisitation.

Intense Degree - "War In My Head" LP 1989

I've owned this LP for 28 years. D-A-M-N! Faster than Napalm Death (and maintaining more cohesion), this Britcore quintet continues to get no respect in the history of fastcore. Maybe it's the predominantly American hXc influence, the posi melody that gracefully matched energetic tempos just wasn't "brutal" enough compared to the rest of Earache's roster. The clean guitars and Skate-Rock vocals were actually a point of contention for Digby, with him hammering the band to downtune and go the cupped mic route...a style they had absolutely no interest in pursuing (and I really don't blame them, as any ensuing sound I could speculate on would probably be as forced and disappointing as the final Filthy Christians disc). They never caved, Digby cried, and here we are enjoying them for what they always were: AWESOME AS FUCKING SHIT! Japanese CD's rip. My fave song offa this is still Skate Bored.

P.S.: CD's liner and sleeve notes (in Japanese of course) by the ultragrind homie Ogita/Awesome Mosh Power Records!

Harmony As One - "No Elite" 12" 1989 & "White Darkness" 12" 1991

Pre Scalplock. England's answer to Straight Ahead (and I'm not just lazily saying that because of the Spirit Of Youth cover). Mildly chuggy, but mostly fast/thrash/core that gloriously wears Negative Approach on their sleeves (and another cover) as much as Tommy Carroll's beatdown bros. Name off most of the faster 80s East Coast bands, overlay blastbeats, and you've got two 12"s worth of solid shaved-head speedcore that'll get you goosestepping as much as pointing arthritic fingers at the aging youth crew.

Production on both releases is odd. The first 12" is noticeably over-bassy, especially in the deeper tones. Maybe they thought you would "feel" the thrash as much as hear it, but the effect is actually annoying on occasion. The 2nd 12" has a more "live" production as well as a mild stylistic change into something that nearly resembles earliest Crumbsuckers meets fuck-if-I-know experimentation (songs are still very short, if not very fast). I dug 'em, I still dig 'em, and I give no fucks if the bassist roadied for Skrewdriver (allegedly). 


Generic Death - 2010-2012 CDR

Upper mid-fi home produced solo noisecore-grind ('88-'90 throwback status) from Dopi/Machetazo/Bobybag. The genre is dead seriously arranged and played, though there are willfully retarded moments the style was always known for. It's like a perfect molecular fusion of Sore Throat, Seven Minutes Of Nausea, Anal Cunt (duh), and even the Xysma demo's pitched sewercore vibe...all disastrously unspooling at once. Complete discography, Dopi only gave a handful of these out as one massive mega-advance to all the releases...and then he "broke up"!

Halo - "Degree Zero Point of Implosion" CDR/LP 2000 & "Guattari (From The West Flows Grey Ash And Pestilence)" CD 2001

Cum my noisenheimers, let us smoke irradiated Swanflesh out of David's Head (which is wearing oldschool walkman headphones playing a hyper-tight Throbbing Gristle in one ear, and a death metal Fall Of Because in the other). Disassociative and dreary, uber-distorted bass and analog drums crushingly overlay unindulgent feedback fetishes and longer ambient segues (usually created with acoustical phenomena inherent to each instrument). The band was just so impressive across the board, from songcraft to production...all on the DIY downlow. That production is engineered in a manner very close to most of the aforementioned godheads, an astounding fact (F-A-C-T) considering the duo would capture nearly all of each session live...sometimes improv...with only a minimum of additional mixing/effects overdub. They were good enough for Relapse, and with most bands that are good in general, they vanished not too long after. They have more stuff, you'll hear it before we die, but this stuff's the best!

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