Entries associated with the tag "Hardcore":

My friend Dave sent me the link to this:

I asked him how he found it, like, was he searching for Throwdown videos for some reason? He told me no, that he'd ended up finding it through another video of moshing cats. He is the kind of guy who can really make your buddy list special.

The dirt-slinging-fest former Victory Records VP Ramsey Dean posted at AbsolutePunk.net about label head Tony Brummel is, er, compelling reading. The original post was taken down not too long after it went up, but the Google cache of it lingers here.

At some point last year I went to the MySpace page for spazzy Chicago metalcore band Wolf & Cub and found they'd stuck a (Lone) in front of their name. They'd also changed their location to "CHICAGO IN THE U.S. NOT AUSTRALIA, Illinois United States." I assumed that someone else had jacked the name, which isn't hard to believe, considering that it comes from pretty much the best series of samurai comic books and movies ever. So I decided to check out the competition and was fairly unimpressed. I heard a little guitar riffage and a couple of mildly cock-rockish moves, and I wrote them off after a couple seconds as a kinda less-awful Wolfmother -- a designation that still allows for a considerable amount of sucking.

But now I've actually sat down and listened to the Aussie Wolf & Cub's full-length, Vessels (which gets its stateside release March 6th on 4AD), and sadly enough I feel like I might have to switch sides. I still love shrieky metal noise to death, but it turns out I like a high-powered blend of Clinic-al abstractness, My Bloody Valentine guitar abuse, and Led Zeppelin stomp even more. Wolf & Cub may be the first band to work in a style that could be called arena shoegazer (for a good sample, click here to listen to their single "Steal Their Gold). I'm sorry, Chicago Wolf & Cub--you still rule, but those Australians are really kicking my ass.

Ever since the news came out that Cal Robbins -- the infant son of incredible DC rock people J. Robbins and Janet Morgan -- has a terrible and most likely fatal disease, a bunch of people have gotten it together to help them out. Apparently doctors and hospitals don't accept scene cred as payment for their services, so on top of individual donations to the family, benefit shows have been announced all over the place. In Chicago, the first one's happening on January 27 at the Empty Bottle. Eleventh Dream Day, Chin Up Chin Up, Bobby Conn, the Life & Times, and Red Eyed Legends are playing, and Reader contributor Jessica Hopper has helped put together a raffle with prizes ranging from Pitchfork Festival VIP passes to a platonic dinner date with hers truly at Lula Cafe. I'll be contributing a mix CD to the raffle. I'm trying to secure a Nas exclusive for it, but it looks like that is actually impossible, so I'm moving to plan B: secretly taping someone from Kill Hannah karaoke-ing a Christina Aguilera song.

Tickets for the show are $15, which is a hella deal considering the lineup. And seriously, when was the last time you got drunk and felt good about yourself? 

There's good news and bad news today for all the Jawbox fans out there. Idolator recently discovered that the band's out-of-print emocore classic For Your Own Special Sweetheart is now available for digital purchase at iTunes and eMusic, but there's bigger and infinitely sadder news as well. J. Robbins -- who played not only in Jawbox, but also hardcore pioneers Government Issue and the post-Jawbox project Burning Airlines -- and his wife, Janet Morgan, who plays with him in the band Channels, recently found out that their infant son has type 1 spinal muscular atrophy, a genetic disorder that severely hinders the development of even the most basic voluntary motor functions. It's usually fatal, and even if little Cal beats the odds, he will still be wheelchair-bound for his entire life. There is no known cure for SMA.

It would be hard to overestimate Robbins's contribution to independent music. Beyond his own music, his production work for bands like Texas Is the Reason, the Promise Ring, Against Me!, Bayside, and the Dismemberment Plan has helped to define the sound of post-hardcore music. Beyond that, his generosity and his commitment to the best parts of the hardcore ethos -- for instance, his willingness to do shit like drive hours to work on a four-track session in someone's parents' basement -- are legendary.

Like most working musicians, Robbins has a variable income and less-than-stellar insurance coverage. There's no known cure for SMA, but there are alternative therapies that the family should have the right to explore. DeSoto Records' site has more information on the family's situation and  how you can donate money via PayPal. If you're one of the countless people who've been impacted by Robbins's work, you might want to try to give something. 

I couldn't get down with crust punk back when I was young and naive enough to potentially join up with a squad of anarcho-vegan Dumpster divers. That was partially because of my aversion to white kids with dreadlocks, partially because I'm too much of a pussy--crust kids don't fuck with bands like Heavenly, and I do. But I've always loved crusties for the same reasons I love Hells Angels hippies and the kids at the gritty raves where sketchy meth dealers hung out--they've turned people's worst nightmare of a fringe socio-musical grouping into their day-to-day existence. There are probably a lot of middle-American moms who imagine that the mall punk their kid's getting into is the starting point of a descent into hard drugs, petty crime, face tattoos, and nearly illegal personal hygiene. Crusty kids fulfill all of those bad expectations, and probably worse ones.

I don't see many crust punks in Chicago anymore, though I recall a group of baby crusties hanging out in Wicker Park back in the summer, decked out in crisp new Crass shirts and fuzzy dreads. I'm in Portland, Oregon, at the moment, and the real dirty kids are still holding it down here. Watching them spare-change downtown on a trip earlier this year partly inspired my recent obsession with the stuff. Other contributing factors are the recent Nausea anthologies on Alternative Tentacles, the outrageously corrupt Bush administration (and the almost suffocating rage it has inspired in me), and Tragedy's Nerve Damage album. Tragedy doesn't have an online presence aside from fan pages on MySpace, their liner notes reveal little more than the names of the people involved and the lyrics they howl, and they make massive jams that weld furious D-beat hardcore to some sort of rock music that sounds like Motorhead,  if Motorhead was Pink Floyd. The air raid sirens that start off Nerve Damage are kind of subtle compared to the dread and chaos that follows them. I loaded it up on my laptop before I flew out here, partially because nothing complements early-morning flight terrors like a deranged fucker screaming that everything really is as bad as it seems.

I'm currently on my eleventy-jillionth listen to Fucked Up's Hidden World, which came out on Jade Tree this Tuesday. They're from Montreal, they all have terrible stage names, and they write hardcore songs that regularly pass the five-minute mark without getting boring, which I don't know has ever happened before.

The other big talking point on Fucked Up is that its members are all seriously mentally ill -- or, at least they want you to think they are. They supposedly get into big fights with each other, and they can't fly on planes, and all this other stuff. Which I could really care less about. If they're really crazy, that would probably help explain why they decided to write seven-minute long punk songs, and if they're not it's just another made-up band gimmick. Whatever. Half the reason people put bands together these days is so they can make up catchy fictional "band facts." The other half is coming up with a good band name, and if coming up with a good band name was a video game, I think Fucked Up may have gotten the high score.