More pages this time around. I distract myself from pissing on your front doorstep by obsessing on the eternal question: if the Roky Erickson 'Evil One' LP makes my life righteous, is the pursuit of Roky's (or Darby's or Ginn's, etc.) artistic vision the closest thing to truth I’m gonna get? That is the most rudimentary expression of what this zine is about. This issue, interviews with STATE, COLD SWEAT and old Sydney band SUBVERSION, archive photos / fliers of BLACK FLAG.

Copies not available. SOLD OUT.

REVIEWS:

DISTROY 'Demo' TAPE Upon hearing the DISTROY demo, I wanted to do everything to make sure people heard this band outside of Tasmania. I conducted an interview with them a while ago. I've condensed it to fit this review section. I like their attitude: when I asked about the band members, Ben (guitars) said: "With alot of the music I listen to and make I'm still on my own, even within the confines of this arse kissing braindead 'in-crowd' that exists down here." Tasmania, eh.
The DISTROY demo is fucking awesome. If you're the kind of d-bag who hates bands who sound like Discharge, I don't know why you'd read this zine. But, rest assured, DISTROY sound little like Discharge or any other D-beat band. Their sound is dirty thrashcore, very similar to the Canadian heavy/blast sound perfected by Left For Dead. Like I said, I'm making it my personal mission to make sure people know about this band outside of Tasmania, because it would suck to hear about them breaking up because there's no more venues to wreck in Hobart, no more scenesters to bum out. I hope they bring their bad attitude to the party on an international scale. Here is an excerpt from an interview I did with Sam and Ben. If you wanna read more about them, interview them yourself. Sam (vocals) said in an email the band started from being bummed on everything down there. I asked him and Ben to elaborate on this and whether there any bands / records worth looking out for from Tasmania. Sam elaborated: "I guess the more involved you are in the Hobart scene (or any scene for that matter) the more frustrated you get with the sheer stupidity of most of its participants. Everyone is just so happy to do what is expected from them and no one will ever question someone on things that have been done or said. I found myself slipping into this way of 'play acting' I guess you could call it, this meant going along to shows where I didn't want to be and pretending I liked it just to keep up apperances. In the end I just said "fuck this" and stopped doing it, I quit the band I was in and just became a hermit, hanging out with Lu and my dogs! After a long, long time of talking and scheming with Ben we decided we needed to do a band we believed in, one that captured all we felt at that time. Distroy is that band! We recorded a Demo straight away and despite getting heaps of copies out there, you, Dan are the only person I have heard any feedback from. Which is what you expect from Tassie, cause everyone wants to just sit on the fence and play happy families. Next will be our live shows where we hope to bring back a bit of fear and recklesness to the Hobart Punk Shows. Forget the Tassie scene, Perth is where it's at!"
In turn, Ben said: "After my last band disintegrated I didn't do anything of substance with anyone else for a while, just sat in my garage and made the most harshest noise I could, after a while I thought fuck it, I want to do a band again, but on our terms, no arse kissing, no industry bullshit, none of that, so we did." The lyrics are very over the top in a Sakevi kinda way. In a song they demand that they're not fucking around, so I took them seriously. Sam said: "Again it has to do with the apathy that surrounds this place, everyone wants to go along to shows and not feel threatened or scared, that is not what interested me about punk 9 years ago and with bands like H-100s chucking hammers at crowds and GISM poisoning the water at shows. Crossing your arms and nodding your head at a gig shouldn't even be an option. I don't want to sound like a meathead cause I have never been in a physical fight and if I was I would sure as hell lose, I just think people need to step outside their comfort zone and open their eyes to what they are involved in and it's history of violence."
Ben: "Time after time I'm confronted with such hypocrisy by the bands that exist down here. it gets extremely disheartening when time after time you go to a show and the bands are singing about the most pointless things imaginable, its the classic cliché of solely being in a band to fuck girls. Sometimes it makes me so angry I want to start a fight right there and then. Even if I lose at least I'll have put some meaning into an otherwise pointless mockery of this music that is supposed to mean something, and if it takes a foot or a guitar to the face to wake them the fuck up then so be it. Even if it doesn't I'll feel better."
Along with the demo, Sam said they've got plans to record a 7"... "I feel like a 7" would be the perfect format for DISTROY, so we are going to work towards that. This band probably has a limited life span due to people moving away and all the usual bullshit so we are cranking out new songs every week and I sure as hell have plenty more shit to fling and bridges to burn before I can call it a day. I really like the Tape format, it is cheap and easy to distribute so that may even be an option again if all else fails. As for a tour I would love to play in Launceston and kick some trendies heads! That place is full of "Adelaide Fringe Festivals" all ripe for the assaulting. Pretty sure thats as far as we would go though because I am sure no one else would give two hoots!"
Ben: "I've been toying with the idea of releasing a 7" single or series of them, with an epic A side song coupled with some crazy AA side shit happening! Touring would be good, I think our name will turn to mud very quickly in this burg so it will be a matter of new horizons to torch, destroy them while you have the chance."

OUT WITH A BANG 'I'm Against It' RETAINERS 'Teenage Regrets' The Fashionable Idiots label is one of my favourite out of the US at the moment; their records look good and sound good, which is pretty much all you'd ask from a label. The Retainers record, 'Teenage Regrets' is on this label. Like most modern punk bands that play music that actually interests me, I'm assuming these guys are not teenagers documenting their regrets, but are the same mid-20's burnouts that are probably in the majority of their record purchasing demographic. For some reason, if the Retainers were real teenagers, it somehow seems more credible and real, because punk has long been about youth and the concerns of being young: hating your parents, teenagers and all adult authority figures.
But, time moves on, and now punks are older, and the punk music that I listen most is made by older punks, punks of my age or older, because teenage problems and teenage regrets don't interest me anymore. When I saw TV Smith from the Adverts playing a show with the Thought Criminals, it was basically a representation of this situation: before playing 'Bored Teenagers', he announced "we're all gonna stay bored teenagers forever", and of course we cheered because we weren't bored and we weren't teenagers and he was about to play a song that was about thirty years old. There wasn't a teenager in the room, let alone a bored teenager, and if there was it was probably because seeing a fifty year old man talk about being a bored teenager is not the kind of thing that a kid gets kicks out of. So, we're no longer teenagers, and we no longer have teenage regrets: we have adult regrets, which are more crippling and fuck our lives up more. Teenage regrets are minute in scale, irrefutably insignificant as the years move on. Adult regrets are more immediate, and documenting adult regrets and adult hopelessness is far more, fuck, important, to me at least. Like I said, I doubt the Retainers are teenagers, but if they are, then they are the next Red Kross. If they aren't, and what they are doing is actually documenting being a bored adult with adult regrets, all under the auspice of attempting to appeal to that part of us that finds punk a childish and infantile concern, then I'm equally content. As always, it comes down to their fuckin tunes, right?
When I put the needle onto the record, I did that thing that most people who listen to vinyl probably have done once or twice. I put the needle on the outside edge of the record; my record player is high on my shelf and ill lit to conserve energy so I can feel like I'm doing my part to save the environment / world / money to buy more records, etc, so I couldn't actually see this and walked away to the sickening sound of the needle dropping onto the mat and making that sickening scraping sound, like a fingernail against your prostate, at which point my mind was filled with the diagram on the package of one of my record stylii which depicted the needle splintering into tiny shards and the words 'TAKE CARE NOT TO DROP ONTO OTHER SURFACE' or something equally obvious in broken English. I ran across the house to inspect the needle briefly and finding no tiny shards littering the mat or falling from the stylus, I replaced the needle and the record started. The problem with the Retainers record, or at least the problem in this context, is that I couldn't remember if it was so distorted and fucked up in it's recording or the needle had been damaged and was currently widening the grooves of my record like some sadistic pervert would when they stick their cock into a wound they just stabbed in some animals stomach.
Luckily for all of us, my needle was not damaged and the Retainers record is recorded all distorted and fucked up, because a) with a damaged needle I would be incapable of conveying to you my reaction to blasting these tunes and b) with this vicious recording, and with the kinds of tunes that the Retainers write, the world has become a better place to live in. In order to describe the sound of the music that the Retainers make, I would ask you to imagine the record sessions of Dick Dale with the Angry Samoans, produced by Joan Jett, never played on Rodney on the ROQ, lost for years, found and repackaged by Fashionable Idiots. Actually, fuck that description, but I'm not going to delete it as I'm stuck for references. Retainers combine all the best moments from wild raw garage punk and surf rock recordings with a distinctive modern Midwest air to it (Fashionable Idiots are cultivating this sound, I'd suggest). Great fucking record.
Equally great is the Out With A Bang EP, which was no great surprise. I knew I'd like this band before I heard them, because their singer sounds like a fuckhead, a total asshole, and plus the cover looks like shit, and basically the whole thing reminded me of the first time that I read about the Germs or Gehenna or Nine Shocks. I first heard about this band through the incredible interview with the singer, Anus, in MRR, when he described the peers of the band as "i would say any stupid band who's full of blind fucking hate for the universe and likes to try and play their shit raw and not totally by the fucking numbers..and MAYBE get fucked drunk and high in the process, havin' fun ruinin' everybody elses evening...you know? got the idea? bands whos members are probably considered fucking assholes by most ,haha." All bad grammar and shitty punctuation by Anus, as I can't be fucked correcting. This was taken off the band's myspace: a place for friends. The record itself makes me wanna brick windows, like all great records should. I can't stand listening to this music in the middle of the work week. Does this make sense? I gotta get up tomorrow and crawl to a desk and sit there assisting to arrange the operations of a call centre. It's just about midnight and I'm listening to this kinda shit and trying to keep it low. It's just fuckin unreasonable, an unreasonable way to live. I'm past the age where I can believe that there is a way out for me, that there is some kind of solution to "the intolerable weight", so I can't handle what this record and records like this propose. I'm not going to elaborate on that. But I will say: Out With A Bang and any aforementioned bands and hundreds more in a list that would stretch from here to Verona and back, a list which would probably start with Black Sabbath or The Stooges, bands like this remind me that a) rock n roll saved my life b) rock n roll ruined my life. Now, I gotta listen to something more calming and conducive to sleep.

SCHIFOSI 'Absentium Existence' SMASH 'N' GRAB 's/t' Now, I hate to put this record next because of what the previous question suggested, but the truth is that Schifosi's record is more calming than Smash 'n' Grab, and I've committed to writing about both of them before I kick out. Following Out With A Bang with Smash 'n' Grab is not good behaviour. I think this band is best understood when you see the two part cartoon Spider drew for a flier: in one panel, a dirty mohawked fucker in a Mob 47 shirt is vomiting the words "stab the system", and in the next the same guy is dressed as you might expect as he cautiously mumbles "I used to be a violent crust punk but now I'm better: a passive emo kid". That's it, right there. I understand this and I applaud it. I'd propose Spider is attempting to write the soundtrack to this vision: punk as an army of nasty fuckers with Cimex shirts throwing cider bottles through church windows and kicking in the sides of politicians cars.
There is a song on this record called 'Sydney Terror', and if any words could be used to describe the sound and feel of this band, those are the words: this is the sound of Sydney punks picnics when the sun is starting to set and the bricks are covered in broken glass, and everybody starts looking at eachother nervously. This is the feeling of a punk record like your parents would imagine when you bl'asted the Sex Pistols or Exploited and told them you hated them and drew skulls on your school uniform or whatever; the difference being, the Exploited were easily packaged and easily exploited, a cartoon of what's represented in Smash 'n' Grab… or more appropriately, Smash 'n' Grab are the guys who took the Exploited for real, a cartoon of the Exploited from the warped minds of all of the Sakevi's out there to draw and make real. I like this description. It's a good record. Schifosi. I've always been impressed by their riffs, which are the most characteristic aspect of the band in terms of their song constructions, and give their songs a depth lacking from most bands which get lumped under the "crust" banner. In the past I attempted to explain what crust music was, from my perspective, and what my problems were with the bands that attempted to play "crust" punk. From a review: "Crust is a pretty difficult style of punk to master well: the basic deal is it involves a lot of influence from Motorhead style hard rock / metal (over the top vocal delivery with little care for enunciation and manic guitar leads played dumbed down) on a traditional punk rock song structure and played with the traditional punk rock signature of "talent, we don't need no stinking talent!". A lot of the better crust bands were just politicised Motorhead tribute bands, like Amebix, or their litany of imitators, like Axegrinder; a lot of the worse crust bands have none of the drive of Motorhead, but still attempt to keep up with them." I guess that doesn't really illustrate my primary problem with crust / political punk. Crust / politics. A lot of punk bands are really, really bad, but they're popular on the basis of their politics, which are often pretty reductive and unchallenging if you're out of high school. Their politics take on this meaning outside of their music that apparently gives them depth and makes their crusade somehow heroic, and their music becomes secondary: the old "we're too busy killing vivisectionists to write a decent guitar riff" argument. While you can have incredibly moving punk like Amebix with beautiful, intricately constructed songs, politics that don't sound forced or fake and a sincerity which isn't resonant of dumb ass hippie fantasies, the majority of crust / political punk lacks the kind of consideration that bands like Amebix put into their music, and falls back on sloganeering and posture. This is the same across punk in general, and obviously most forms of music suffers from this disparity between bands which have something to offer and bands through which we must suffer.
But, regarding crust punk, the disparity seems much larger because there is apparently something more than music at stake here. I like the romantic notion behind this, but rarely does crust punk move me in the same way that Out With A Bang have, because whilst crust punk can recognise that punk matters in ways more meaningful than trading shit money for shit records, it rarely manages to even make the shit records seem worth the shit money. This might be an unfair comparison because bands like Out With A Bang are playing for a complete different reasons, but the bottom line is, obviously, I'll take a killer tune played by an nihilistic Italian scumbag over a shitty tune written by a well meaning tree dweller.
Now, all of this is to say that Schifosi are in the same league as Amebix, to me, and it's obviously a difficult thing to say as 'Monolith' is one of my favourite records of all time, and Schifosi are friends, etc., all that shit that makes such grand statement lose any kind of legitimacy when put under any kind of heavy scrutiny, I'm obviously trying to convince you that Schifosi matter in the same way that Amebix do… their music is dark and brooding and this recording gives their songs a lot of warmth, which is important in ways I cannot quantify. I will say this again, for the sake of conclusion as much as emphasis, this is a dark, dark record, dark in the same way as Joy Division or Killing Joke or (haha) Amebix is, and it's my favourite record from this band so far.

WARKRIME 'Give War A Chance' EP SOCIAL CIRCKLE 'Static Eyes' EP THE BLINDS 'Busy With Business' TAPE US label No Way Records, run by Lauren and Brandon, two hard working Virginian punks, has a bunch of new records, but lemme talk about two of them I've listened to of late. And a cassette.
Warkrime are children of the South Bay hippies / rich Jewish society types, and are pissed off with the longhair / cultured heritage they must carry. Their tunes are reminiscent of pre-skool Gang Green and other such 'Boston Not LA' favourites, but I get a feeling they wouldn't have sounded right on the 'This is Berkley…' compilation. These guys have bad attitudes and cool tunes: I guess I have to agree, Warkrime rules. Then, there's Social Circkle, another band who can't spell (next records on No Way: Codak Moment, No Kolor, Whipped Kream, etc.). They no doubt listen to the same records that Regulations do, as they are not too dissimilar in their aesthetic or sound, but that's just a puerile opening impression that has stuck with me. I'm not going to write much more: I believe if you like the early 80's LA punk sound, you may like what these guys are doing with it. I don't really care, myself.
The Blinds are Swedish. They sound like Zeke. They are apparently young and horny and into drinking and rocking hard. Their tunes are good, but I feel their guitarist lets the band down. He's undisciplined and not impartial to the occasional creative lick, which can really distract me from a song. I don't like being reminded of a band's creativity unless I'm listening to Deep Purple and a guitar lead really matters. If a band is going for that "fuck you up and get high" sound, nothing bugs me more than transparent guitar work. Damage it or fuck it up: if you get it right, you're not fucked up enough and I don't believe in you.