EP 254: March 2025
Killer episode this week on the pod. Check it out here, here, or here and check the playlist here or here.
Grand Scheme S/T EP 7” 11PM Records
7 songs in 9 minutes. Solid recording. No guest spots. Singer sounds mean AND can kickflip. It’s a step up from their 2023 EP that was also good. Hell yea.
Identity Shock Traces EP 7” Designated Moshers Unit
8 songs in 7 1/2 minutes. No guest spots. Singer sounds mean. This record already shipped and comes with a full sized lyric sheet and a big fold out newsprint poster. Sick. Record goes hard. As for the recording, it sounds wild - maybe it was mastered with everything pushed to 11? I dunno. It sounds wack in my truck, okay in headphones, and good on my turntable. A perplexing mystery that will fascinate us for years to come like the lost city of Atlantis.
With Hate From Boston, With Hate EP 7” Tribe Dream
7 songs in 12 minutes, so basically Zeppelin II after the last two EPs. Nice, bright recording. With Hate is really making an attempt to write memorable vocal hooks and I’m here for it. The singer has a lot of personality, mostly snarling throughout the tracks but sometimes he lets up and almost slips into some Choke-esque tunefulness. The record ends with a Dropkick Murphys cover, but not the one about going to see the Stiff Little Fingers play. Killer 7”.
Nisemono LP Toxic State
Two of the dudes from L.O.T.I.O.N. paying reparations with this excellent LP after subjecting us to 10 years of terrible techno-punk records. It’s neck and neck with The Massacred for best hardcore punk LP of the year so far, but is it enough to atone for “Cybernetic Super Lover?”
Around the time the aughts ended, an easy way to tell if a band was an overrated flash in the pan was to see how hard folks on the Bridge 9 message board fawned over them. So when posters starting fellating the Boston Strangler demo, I was pretty dismissive. Then it happened again with the LP so I downloaded it off some blog and goddamn…I dun fuct up - they deserved every bit of hype they got. Primitive is a beast of a record seamlessly merging 82-84 Boston and 1981-1983 Detroit with a perfect modern recording for the style, akin to Dead Stop’s Done With You that came out a half decade earlier. A+ riffery, vocal hooks, and drumming. Shoutout to the bass player too who I’m sure is a cool dude.
I dunno why I never checked out the 2nd LP but recently I was talking to Kev and he said he might like that one even more, so I checked it out and goddamn…it’s a killer followup. It’s a little more anthemic and it sounds thicker in a way my smooth brain can’t explain. So we’re putting these two head to head to decide which we like more.
Spoiler: We’re split.
You know the stupid saying that pizza is like sex cuz even if it’s bad, it’s still pretty good? To me metalcore is the opposite. My opinion is completely tainted by sitting through derivative clones of bands like Acme for my first handful of years in hardcore. It was unavoidable and basically drove me to only enjoy bands who just played the fat three strings to this day.
I found myself enjoying moments here though. The singer has a seriously awesome voice, maybe legitimately the best throaty scream voice there is. The recordings are great for the era and Acme kept their songs relatively short, an element that their copycats failed to replicate. The only other band somewhat similar to this that nailed brevity was Indecision, but they were as much straight ‘90s NYHC bounce as they were metalcore. “Ordinary” goes especially hard and may now be my favorite straight up metalcore song other than that Morning Again song on the 25 Ta Life split.
Sozz Patrol Car 7” Farmer Records (1979)
We went old school to briefly touch on this Sozz 7”. I don’t know anything about the band other than that they’re from Switzerland and they put out this 7” in ‘79 and put out another in 1980. It totally sounds like something that would’ve been on No Future records in 1982. Both songs are killer.
The Straight Ahead Breakaway 12” has been out of print since the ‘80s, it’s never been on streaming, and yet those six songs are cannon for anyone who likes hardcore. I loved Tommy Carrol’s parts in Tony Rettman’s excellent NYHC book and I couldn’t recall seeing an interview with him anywhere else so I reached out to him to see if he was down to come on the pod. I was stoked that he agreed. He was super humble and cool. Check it out.
Tribal Publishing just put out this sick Straight Ahead zine that was an insta-sellout. Peep their site and grab something else before it’s gone too.
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- ZN