If you like Jerry Lee Lewis, than I'm sure you'll like my zine. He said "I'm always right. Once I thought I was wrong but I checked it out - I was right." This is the kind of narrow-minded, self assured attitude that I hope you all carry with you daily. Unlike previous issues, in this issue of DISTORT, I tried a new approach and focused on the esoteric world of hardcore punk bands. Hope our regular readers won't be too disappointed! More on science and geology next issue, you creeps! You may also notice that I have cut out the 'Cult Worship' page from the front of this zine. This is because of legal troubles, I don't want to go into it any further, but I'll just say this: please do not join a death cult. Please don't kill yourself, little babies, or other people. If you need any help deciding the best cult to devote your life and money to, I can help you! Circle one… In this issue, EXTORTION from Perth get interviewed, as does Steve from great 90's Clevo act THE MORMONS, Gabby from great modern Detroit act BILL BONDSMEN and Ben from the VOICES WAKE US fanzine that I read a lot of while riding the d-beat wave a year and a half ago.

SOLD OUT.

REVIEWS:

CARDIAC ARREST 'Life's A Dead End' 7" (Grave Mistake) Simple fact: this record sounds like some archival recording of a band that Choke did between Negative FX and Last Rites. That's basically their sound. Their attitude is pretty similar minus the meathead element. I asked Rob to talk a little about his band, and here was his response that I've edited to fit this review section:
Cardiac Arrest is from St. Louis, Missouri. St. Louis is a fairly large city, but at times seems like everyone here has a small town mentality. It's easy to get wrapped up in a lot of he said/she said bs. I think St. Louis was 1st or 2nd in murders last year, probably because people don't know when to shut their yaps. Ha.
Cardiac Arrest is me (Rob Ruz) singing, Jeff Robtoy on bass, Scott Plant on guitar, and Tom Valli on drums. We're a pretty boring bunch. 3/4ths of us work in some way with pizza, ha. Scott makes it, Jeff delivers it, and I do promotions for it. Tom is way into computers and does tech support stuff. Jeff just finished school for screen printing and art. Tom is in school for computers. Scott and I just hang out, ha. As for crime, I'm sure we are all guilty of something.
I started Cardiac Arrest back in 2002 with a different line up. Then for one reason or another people quit either because they were going away to school, just didn't have time to be in a band anymore, or didn't want to play punk anymore. lame! I really felt that some of these songs were my best efforts and I didn't want to throw them away so I just found replacements. But since I write all the songs anyway, I guess it technically doesn't matter who's in the band, ha. I don't want to sound like I'm bagging on the rest of my band though, just poking fun. I am really satisfied with our current line up otherwise I wouldn't have asked them to be in the band.
St. Louis has a lot of good bands. It's weird because they all have different styles, but everyone is into them just the same. I know I'm going to forget a few, but Step On It, who will probably be broken up by the time this is printed, Cross Examination, the Beating, the Breaks (who have recently broke up, but are worth mentioning) Corbeta Corbata, Adversary Workers, and Civic Progress (who actually played their first show last night and feature Scott and Tom from CA).
We always get Last Rights/Negative FX comparisons, but honestly those bands probably influenced me the LEAST! When I started Cardiac Arrest I was obsessed with AF Victim in Pain, DYS, SSD, Gordon Solie Motherfuckers, SOA, NA, Poison Idea, pretty much everyone's influences.
If you saw us, you would see that we are the stereotypical punks. The kids who got fucked with for being different or whatever. I'm probably the only one in the band that remotely looks like a fighter, and that's even a stretch. With the band, I wanted to be in a band that I would want to listen to, if that makes any sense. I wanted to play the kind of hardcore I would want to hear. I also wanted to use the band to help get St. Louis recognized on a bigger level. Around 00/01 there wasn't much going on in St. Louis. There weren't many bands, tours always skipped St. Louis, and it didn't make any sense. There were enough kids to support a scene, but they weren't doing anything. It's amazing how much things have changed in 5 yrs. My lyrics are basically about things that piss me off, or how I see things. Nothing too special there. Old New is no different. Old New is kind of broad. It deals with bullies, fakes, part time punks, etc. I thought about assholes in my high school that would make fun of me for the way I dressed or what I listened to. Then by the end of high school they changed for whatever reason and tried to be like me and my friends. It was like, "hey, didn't you used to make fun of me for this?? Now you want to try and be like this??" But now it's like we are brothers and we share the same thoughts and fight the same fight.
FUCK THAT!! It also kind of shows the jock mentality in hardcore. It's funny because I am actually into some heavier stuff, or mosh stuff, whatever, but I can't stand kids who get into hardcore just because it might be the cool thing to do this week or because everyone else around them is into that. Get a clue, form your own opinions. It just turns everything into another high school clique. You have these assholes going around and picking on kids at shows. Kids who probably deserve to be there more than they do. When I go to a show, it's my escape from the outside world. I don't have to deal with bullshit of life, worrying about my future, how I'm going to pay rent, or survive. I can just go and have fun. When that outside world starts coming into my world, where am I going to go? Now I have to deal with the assholes from everyday life in my escape. It sucks when you have these kids who get shit on at school, at work, whatever, that now get the same shit at shows. Things shouldn't be that way.
Right now we just have two 7ins out. The first one was on Underestimated, and it's going to be repressed on Kangaroo records. Also, Lifeline records might be doing a limited press of it as a giveaway or something with a discography type cd. The cd should be coming out by the end of the year or early next year. It will contain both 7ins, an unreleased cover song, a live radio set, and possibly some other stuff as well. the second 7in is out now as a split release between Grave Mistake records and No Way Records. Kangaroo will also be doing a European press of it. Lastly, we will have an unreleased song on the 2nd No Bullshit comp on No Way records. It's our tribute to one of the greatest punk guitarists of all time, Pig Champion.
Check it out!! That's all we have slated for right now. I've been writing new songs, so hopefully they will be used for something in the future, an LP maybe? Everyone should check out other releases on all the labels I have mentioned.
Cardiac Arrest only deals with people that we like and respect, and all of those labels are run by amazing people and put out amazing records. We are hoping to tour a little bit more in the upcoming year. Hopefully more of the US west coast, maybe) and Europe. Hopefully at some point we can make it to Australia and Japan. That would be awesome.

DEATHCHARGE 's/t' 7" (Whispers In Darkness) What Amebix effectively captured that few crust / dark punk bands have replicated is the feeling of apocalyptic terror and claustrophobic paranoia, not unlike Suicide, but with actual instruments and with some actual feeling. I bring up both of these bands in reference to Deathcharge because they're an effective combination of the two: they have the dense, plodding tunes of Amebix and a similar vocal delivery, but they sound a lot more empty and lost, like Suicide or similar bands from the era in New York, who are decidedly not a punk band, but developed out of the same artist scene that later became NY punk and internationally recognised Punk(TM). I like Suicide because their music is like Velvet Underground without a beat, just a drone and an cold delivery of vocals. I like Deathcharge because they're a combination of everything I like about the defiance music of Amebix and the resignation / defeatist music of Suicide, and I talked about this before in reference to the new Tragedy record. It's a symptom of the age, that a music devoted to protest music would sing songs of despair and defeat. We are living in a new dark age.

OUT COLD 'Planned Accidents' 7" (Acme) I wrote a little about OUT COLD a couple of issues back, and emailed John (drums) about the band a bunch of times. I originally intended to do a full retrospective interview about the last twenty years of Out Cold, the ultimate goal being to impress upon you all the fact they've been doing this forever and, as this recent EP suggests, have only got better as time went on. Anyhow, I abandoned the interview idea as email is just driving me nuts lately, so here's a couple of questions I asked just to illustrate why this 7" should be on your turntable right now.
What made you wanna do a band at the time Out Cold started? How did you meet up with the other band members? We were really into old punk & hardcore. No one at the time was playing that type of music. That's not the reason we formed the band, though. We just wanted to play this type of music. Fred & I had known Mark for a couple years beforehand. He was a bit older than us and had been playing in bands for awhile. We had the same general taste and opinions on music, so we were a perfect fit. Mark met Kevin through a mutual friend. He fit the bill for a vocalist perfectly.
A lot of the interviews I've read with you - in print and online - you talk about cutting your teeth in an environment that was either hostile or indifferent to the band, and in the MRR interview you mention as an aside the fact the style of music you play as being in vogue at the moment. I'd like to focus on this aspect of the interview, because I think it's kinda important, so I have a couple of questions about it. As someone who, as the intro to the i/v states, has played in the longest running USHC bands, could you give a little perspective into the development of hardcore? Perspective into the development of hardcore? Wow, that's pretty broad. Basically, it started as a development out of punk rock. It was punk rock played faster and more aggressively, turned up a notch in intensity. From there it diverged into crossover/metal or more artsy kinda progressive melodic stuff. Basically by the mid-'80s, hardcore as far as I'm concerned was pretty much dead. This hardcore resurgence that started around the late-'90s was borne out of a whole new generation of kids discovering the good old stuff and being inspired by it. Not sure if that's what you were looking for, but for me, that's it in a nutshell. How would you account for the resurgence in interest for USHC, real USHC? Like I said, it was just new people discovering it for the first time, getting inspired by it, and starting bands. I'm not sure why it happened when it did. Maybe a certain amount of time needed to pass. When we started no one was really interested in this kind of old school hardcore. Now it's the trend.
A new album has been threatened for a while now. Could you talk about it a little? What other future plans does the band have? Any unfulfilled aspirations?!! Yeah, this album is taking us awhile to finish. Not quite sure why. We wrote and laid down the basic tracks really quickly. The overdubs, mixing, mastering, artwork, etc, is what we really drag our feet on. This is usually the case. I think once everything's written and recorded we kinda feel like it's finished and we can put it behind us, even though it's not even released yet. That's kind of our way of thinking, like we're just doing it for ourselves. Anyway, there's no reason that we shouldn't have this next album out by the end of the year. We don't really have any future plans per se, other than to continue writing & recording. We just recorded 4 new songs...three for a split with the Bill Bondsmen, and one for the No Bullshit Vol. 3 comp. No unfulfilled aspirations. I'd like to do more touring, but right now we don't have anything set up.
Over time, how has the impetus to do a hardcore band changed? The impetus hasn't changed one bit. We started doing this simply because we loved playing this music and that is still the only driving force behind our continued existence. The situation around us has changed dramatically, but not us.

SOVIET VALVES 'Sight That Harms / Gaze That Kills' 7" (SmartGuy) This is garage punk with a definite UK influence from Perth, the band that James was doing in between AIDS and Jaws, from what I can tell, but it's decidedly different than both of those bands. The first band that came to mind listening to these songs was Lost Sounds, and the second band to come to mind was the Buzzcocks, but they're both inappropriate reference points I only mention because I'm a little lost creatively. They've broken up now, so I wrote an email to James after buying this record asking him "Could you tell me a little about it? Like, who played on it, what the deal was with it, who wrote the songs, what they're about and what happened to the band..." His response: "we didn't have a bass player, the two guitarists wrote the songs." Thanks bud!! So it'll remain a mystery for a while longer! What they do is secret! Seriously though, this is a good garage power pop punk record worth tracking down.

YOUNG WASTENERS 's/t' 7" (Hjernespind) The Wasteners LP is probably my most wanted record at the moment, so if you own it and can't be fucked with it, pass it onto a good caring home. Please. This record did little to satisfy me at first, being an exploration of the more artistic aspects of the band, but upon severe overplay I've come to glorify it. Apparently, the Wasteners on this record were the vocalist "Willy Viagra" from the first LP and a couple of rope-ins, so we'll assume this record is expressing his artistic intent. I'd love to know more about him and this band, but upon attempts to contact him, I was informed that he has abandoned punk in favour of being a traveling mystic, or something to that effect, which is admirable considering that the punk he left behind is of such high quality. Musically, it's more Dead Kennedys and UK punk than the straight Adolescents / Circle Jerks worship of the LP, but Viagra does the Dead Kennedys better than they did it, and his Biafra, though as enfuriating and grating, is less grandiose, which appeals to me. So… we're left with an LP and an EP from this band who, along with Amdi Petersens Arme (who I will mention every issue) are the apogee of Euro cult hardcore punk, and we are thankful for what we have, though are impertinent enough to want for more.