Hello and welcome to this week’s newsletter!  We’ve got plenty to get stuck into:

• Featured New Arrivals, including great new releases from Daydream and Cut Piece, plus a new European pressing of Long Knife’s Curb Stomp Earth, and I couldn’t resist also picking up one of the absolute standout releases from 2022, Syndrome 81’s Prisons Imaginaires
• Short, Anything But Sweet is a review of some of my favourite 7-inch releases from last year
• Shows and Tours
• Coming Soon, with an array of fine new releases on their way, including Malcría, Pageninetynine, Silver, and Tozcos

Just before Christmas, I had a little run through some of my favourite 12-inch releases from 2023 (A Rage Undiminished) – but what about last year’s 7-inch releases?  I know that a lot of people will consider both alongside one another, but for me the art of delivering a stand-out full-length versus a belter of an EP is rather different.

Typically, to craft a successful album demands a set of a songs that create both a cohesive mood but are also sufficiently dynamic to embrace the listener in a manner that engages them throughout and, on occasion, surprises them.  By definition, a 7-inch offers less scope for such differentiation and evolution – the urgency of delivering your statement as a band is both amplified and, to a certain extent, simplified.

So, what characterises a great EP release?  Broadly speaking, I think there are two routes to the memorable 7-inch.  Route one is to embrace the brevity of the format and use it as an opportunity to distil your sound to its very essence.  Intensity is the key, an unrelenting vehemency that people might find overwhelming across an album, can be unleashed without any such concerns and, indeed, if well executed will leave people actively gasping for more.

Three standout 7-inchs that followed this route for me last year were from Sial, Drill Sergeant, and Consolation.  Singapore’s Sial were back, as visceral as ever, with Sangkar, a follow-up to 2021’s vividly experimental, at times almost psychedelic, Zaman Eden.  This release saw the band fold those experimental urges back into the strictures of their tense, raw hardcore origins to utterly devastating effect.  A record that is abrasive and uncompromising to its very core – relentless, dense riffage, leavened with moments of arresting sonic invention.  Meanwhile, Philadelphia’s Drill Sergeant unleashed Grim New War, by way of a follow-up to their 2021 full-length, Vile Ebb.  The band skilfully marry a rapid-fire US hardcore stomp with swaggering breakdowns as venomous vocals explore the cognitive dissonance that fuels authoritarian populism and climate change denial.  And while Sial and Drill Sergeant continued to rigorously refine their sound, Consolation debuted theirs on Repulsive Reflections.  Noise-infused hardcore punk that sees desperation-soaked vocals roared across discordant, groove-laden guitars and a thunderous yet fluid rhythm section. Lyrically, the EP examines how our current political and economic system has driven hope and optimism from people’s lives – a ‘spiritual theft’.

The second route, and perhaps the inherently more challenging one, is to ensure that you have one song that is so insanely infectious that you simply can’t help replacing the needle back to the start as soon as the side finishes, again and again and again.

For me, there were two leading examples of this, well I suppose it is more of an outcome than an actual approach, last year.  First up, was the very welcome return of Hygiene with their EP, 15 Minute City.  The title track, which dissects the alt-right’s bizarre interpretation of the urban planning concept, is a wonderfully boisterous three-minute harmonised eruption, the very embodiment of Hygiene at their jauntily sardonic best.  And as a great as the flipside tracks LTN and Petrol are, you can’t help but keep repeatedly returning to it.  An added side benefit has been the encouragement to dust off the band’s cracking earlier works and the restoration of the chant of Bring Back British Rail (from 2019’s Private Sector) to our kitchen table was long overdue.   Also forging this route was Madrid’s Rata Negra on their latest release, Bien Triste.  Now the title track inevitably grabs attention being an intriguing departure for the band in its plaintively sombre layering.  But it is the perhaps more archetypal track, Ella Está En Fiestas, that I can’t resist.  It captures almost perfectly that sense of the unrequited at the heart of the band’s darkly melancholic melodic punk and the way it builds irresistibly to its rattling, raucous climax keeps me coming back.

And, as it turns out, there is also a third option, which is to unleash a fearsome combination of both intensity and unadulterated catchiness – step forward, JJ And The A’s with their debut self-titled EP.  Just as the band’s pedigree (former members of Khiis and Cesspool) does little to inform their execution beyond the fiercely crafted songwriting, equally their sound is an incredibly difficult one to pin-down, blending as it does a high-octane hardcore velocity with a wonderfully unrestrained pop sensibility.  In many respects, it brings to mind Slow Ends similarly inventive full-length, Obsolete Bodies, in its intrinsic ability to seamlessly fuse and intertwine a myriad of quite distinct influences to the point where they feel organically as one, as if you were mad to even consider that they should ever have been apart.

And so there were we have it.  Short, sharp but never to be underestimated, the art of the hardcore punk 7-inch is alive and well.

This section lays no claims to being a definitive listing!  It is simply gigs coming up in London that catch my eye and that I think people who read this newsletter might be interested in.  I will always try and highlight where a show forms part of a wider UK tour.

12^th-14^th January Reality Unfolds Fest (New Cross Inn / including Fuming Mouth, Genocide Pact, Iron Deficiency, Wreathe plus many more)

17^th January Restraining Order, Layback, Prey , Dynamite, Tethered (New Cross Inn)

18^th January Samiam, Sam Russo, Uzumaki (New Cross Inn / SOLD OUT)

26^th January Can Kicker, The Pinch, SOP, Shade (The George Tavern)

27^th January Wimp, Ikhras, Strazio, Abso, Affray (The George Tavern)

27^th January Pizzatramp, Rash Decision, Rank plus more (New Cross Inn)

5^th February Mutually Assured Destruction, Allfather, King Street, Peacekeeper (New Cross Inn)

16^th February Es, The Early Mornings, Garden Centre (The Waiting Room)

24^th February Fiddlehead, MS Paint, Wrong Man (The Garage / UK Tour)

25^th February Pest Control, Demonstration of Power plus more (Black Heart / UK Tour)

29^th February Damage Is Done 4 – Fairytale, Take It In Blood, Bullsshit, Subdued, Ikhras, Violent Offence (New River Studios / Fairytale UK Tour)

1^st March Damage Is Done 4 – Fugitive, Illusion, Ninebar, Pest Control, Imposter, Instructor plus more (Colour Factory)

2^nd March Damage Is Done 4 – Framtid, Quarantine, The Flex, T.S. Warspite, Stingray, The Annihilated, Mazandaran  plus more (Colour Factory)

3^rd March Damage Is Done 4 – Visibly High, Rat Cage, Layback, Träume, Middleman, Turbo plus more (New River Studios)

9^th March Opium Lord, Torpor, Jotnarr, Harrowed (New Cross Inn)

2^nd April Spaced, Going Off, Shooting Daggers, Ikhras (New Cross Inn / UK Tour)

Abism ‘LP 2023’ 12-inch (Toxic State)

Hubert Selby Jr Infants ‘Have You Ever Seen A Crow?…Or An Eel?’  12-inch (Scene Report)

Kinetic Orbital Storm ‘The True Disaster’ 7-inch (KOS)

Knowso ‘Pulsating Gore’ 12-inch (Sorry State)

Malcría ‘Fantas​í​as Hist​é​ricas’ 12-inch (Iron Lung)

Pageninetynine ‘Document #8’ 12-inch (Persistent Vision)

Paint It Black ‘Famine’ 12-inch (Revelation)

Pi$$er ‘Too Busy Eating Gruel…’ 12-inch (Scene Report)

Silver ‘Bullet Ballet’ 12-inch (Quality Control HQ)

Tozcos ‘Infernal’ 12-inch (Quality Control HQ)

Yellowcake ‘Can You See The Future?’ 7-inch (Not For The Weak)

Happy New Year and all that!  Welcome to the first newsletter of the year and we’re off with a bang:

• Featured New Arrivals are cracking new releases from Stress Positions, False Fed, Hygiene, and Racetraitor
• A Future Foretold, A Warning Ignored, a look at the latest issue of Alternative Strategies and how hardcore bands have tackled themes of policing and prisons
• Shows and Tours, including new shows from Can Kicker and Es
• Coming Soon, with an array of fine new releases on their way, including Cut Piece, Daydream, Silver, and Tozcos

Just before Christmas, the latest issue of Alternative Strategies was published and, as ever, it provides a thoroughly thought provoking read.  This edition includes a great interview with Tom Ellis looking back over the history of the Static Shock Weekend, which was of course held for the last time back in September after over a decade at the heart of London’s hardcore scene.  Check out Elegant Moshing, Ethereal Aggression and Optimistic Daisies And Gothic Lullabies for our take.

But, perhaps, the stand-out feature is a fascinating interview with Michael Molcher, author of I Am The Law: How Judge Dredd Predicted Our Future.  In an ambitious study that calls on the work of cultural theorist, Stuart Hall, Molcher blends comic book history with a wide-ranging deconstruction of the ‘law and order’ myth that has shaped policing for the past forty-years, most notably in the UK and US, and has seen the police militarise and prison populations soar.  Spanning themes of ‘zero tolerance’, protest suppression, and the surveillance state, Molcher succeeds in skilfully illustrating how the comic not only satirised contemporary politics, but also foresaw how the direction of travel would evolve.   I was only an occasional reader of the comic back in my early teens, but it is intriguing to see that intangible sense that the authors were exploring themes you couldn’t quite put your finger on, brought fully into view.

If I had to flag any critiques, I did feel that the book’s thinking in terms of the intersection of policing and class was less developed than other areas of Molcher’s analysis and his brief foray into the politics of urban planning was surprisingly superficial.  For a book that so astutely disassembles the fallacies of the ‘law and order’ agenda, it was unexpected to see it seemingly lulled into so readily accepting the myths of the ‘sink estate’, the story of the UK’s post-war social housing being much more positive and nuanced than Molcher’s short account allows.  Those modest gripes aside though, it is a thoroughly engaging read.

Policing and prisons have long formed a lyrical theme for many hardcore punk bands, and, if anything, this focus has intensified in recent years, with greater scrutiny of the authoritarian shift in policing and of the levels of police violence.  Lyrically, this examination can broadly be split into two broad categories – the penal system itself and the militarisation of the police.  My earliest recollection of a band tackling the inequity of the penal system was Exodus on the opening track, The Last Act Of Defiance, of their 1989 album, Fabulous Disaster (this track followed by the title track, and then Toxic Waltz is quite an opening salvo). Having opened with a quote from Jessica Mitford’s Kind And Usual Punishment: The Prison Business, the song takes the 1980 riot at the New Mexico State Penitentiary as its starting point, exploring the horrific conditions and overcrowding that culminated in one of the most violent prison riots in US history.

Agnostic Front’s Roger Miret wrote the lyrics to the band’s 1992 LP, One Voice, following his own incarceration, with songs tackling both the inherent inequities of the justice system (The Tombs) and the dehumanising experience of prison itself (New Jack, Force Feed) as well as reflecting on how he found himself there (Now & Then).  I have always felt this to be the stand-out release in Agnostic Front’s discography, so I’m glad to see that it has enjoyed something of a rehabilitation in recent years as its reception at the time was very mixed – I remember catching the band touring the album at Edwards No 8 in Birmingham, where a good portion of the crowd greeted the older material with rabid enthusiasm only to stand absolutely stock still to the new songs.  A rather surreal evening!  A similarly personal perspective is brought to bear by Regional Justice Centre, a one-man project by Ian Shelton (also of Militarie Gun), on full-lengths World Of Inconvenience (2018) and Crime And Punishment (2021) through which he explores his experience of the judicial system following the imprisonment of his brother.

A more systematic perspective can be found on The Proletariat’s 2018 album, Move, where they explore the Incarceration Incentive, which is also addressed on ICD10’s excellent 2022 release, Faith In Institutions, which engages in a wide-ranging critique of neoliberal governance, including a fierce denunciation of the US industrial-prison complex on Carceral Cult: ‘Unbroken chain, the punishment that fills no need, we’re all found guilty by the carceral cult’.

The ongoing militarisation of the police has been a similarly consistent theme.  Stephen Graham’s book, Cities Under Siege, explores how US and European cities have seen an insidious militarisation of public spaces and the rampant expansion of the surveillance state, the function of a ‘boomerang effect’ whereby security techniques refined in overseas wars are retrenched to domestic urban environments.  Intriguingly, this was a trend identified as early as the title track to Hellnation’s debut 1993 full-length, Colonized: ‘Police occupation, internal colonisation, inner cities are colonies’.  More latterly, Moses Brown’s debut solo album as Peace De Résistance, Bits And Pieces, opens with Boston Dynamics, which explores the continued deployment of military technology and techniques for domestic policing: ‘The police will like to call this policing, buying a robotic dog made for the Marine Corps, unless their budget start decreasing, they’ll blow it all on domestic war’.  The wider trends of police brutality and violence that are intrinsically linked to this militarisation have unsurprisingly proven an important theme for a wide range of bands in recent years from Savageheads (Line Of Duty) and Stress Positions (No Sympathy) to Dawn Ray’d (A Colony Of Fevers) and Enemy (Barricade Bridge).

At the root of these dual processes of disproportionate reliance on incarceration and police militarisation is the driving need of our current economic system for ever-amplifying socio-economic inequality and the need to exert social control on the inevitable marginalisation that this inflicts.  Sociologist Loïc Wacquant cogently argues that it is fuelled by an imperative to liberate the wealthy while catstigating the poor, in essence a criminalisation of poverty.  This is a theme viscerally explored by Raw Breed on Government In Grip, from their 2022 full-length Universal Paranoia: ‘Economic levels used as judgement tools, Protect the rich, death to the poor’.

And here in the UK, one of the most surveilled and disproportionally incarcerated populations in the world, perhaps, we should have paid a little more attention to the comic that saw it all coming.  As Molcher observes, ‘For Judge Dredd is – and always has been – a warning, not a manual’.

Check out www.anothersubculture.co.uk for the autumn issue of Alternative Strategies.

This section lays no claims to being a definitive listing!  It is simply gigs coming up in London that catch my eye and that I think people who read this newsletter might be interested in.  I will always try and highlight where a show forms part of a wider UK tour.

12^th-14^th January Reality Unfolds Fest (New Cross Inn / including Fuming Mouth, Genocide Pact, Iron Deficiency, Wreathe plus many more)

17^th January Restraining Order, Layback, Prey , Dynamite, Tethered (New Cross Inn)

18^th January Samiam, Sam Russo, Uzumaki (New Cross Inn)

26^th January Can Kicker, The Pinch, SOP, Shade (The George Tavern)

27^th January Wimp, Ikhras, Strazio, Abso, Affray (The George Tavern)

27^th January Pizzatramp, Rash Decision, Rank plus more (New Cross Inn)

5^th February Mutually Assured Destruction, Allfather, King Street, Peacekeeper (New Cross Inn)

16^th February Es, The Early Mornings, Garden Centre (The Waiting Room)

24^th February Fiddlehead, MS Paint, Wrong Man (The Garage / UK Tour)

25^th February Pest Control, Demonstration of Power plus more (Black Heart / UK Tour)

29^th February Damage Is Done 4 – Fairytale, Take It In Blood, Bullsshit, Subdued, Ikhras, Violent Offence (New River Studios / Fairytale UK Tour)

1^st March Damage Is Done 4 – Fugitive, Illusion, Ninebar, Pest Control, Imposter, Instructor plus more (Colour Factory)

2^nd March Damage Is Done 4 – Framtid, Quarantine, The Flex, T.S. Warspite, Stingray, The Annihilated, Mazandaran  plus more (Colour Factory)

3^rd March Damage Is Done 4 – Visibly High, Rat Cage, Layback, Träume, Middleman, Turbo plus more (New River Studios)

9^th March Opium Lord, Torpor, Jotnarr, Harrowed (New Cross Inn)

2^nd April Spaced, Going Off, Shooting Daggers, Ikhras (New Cross Inn / UK Tour)

Cut Piece ‘Self-Titled’ 7-inch (Sabotage/Dirt Cult)

Daydream ‘Reaching For Eternity’ 12-inch (Sabotage/Black Water)

Hubert Selby Jr Infants ‘Have You Ever Seen A Crow?…Or An Eel?’ 12-inch (Scene Report)

Long Knife ‘Curb Stomp Earth’ 12-inch (Sabotage/Black Water)

Pageninetynine ‘Document #8’ 12-inch (Persistent Vision)

Paint It Black ‘Famine’ 12-inch (Revelation)

Pi$$er ‘Too Busy Eating Gruel…’ 12-inch (Scene Report)

Silver ‘Bullet Ballet’ 12-inch (Quality Control HQ)

Syndrome 81 ‘Prisons Imaginaires’ 12-inch (Sabotage/Black Water)

Tozcos ‘Infernal’ 12-inch (Quality Control HQ)

Hello and welcome to this week’s Foundation Vinyl newsletter! And it is another packed edition to get stuck into:

• Featured New Arrivals from Screensaver and Vintage Crop
• A Rage Undiminished, a look back over some of our favourite releases in 2023
• Shows and Tours, including full details of Damage Is Done 4
• Coming Soon, with a slew of cracking new releases landing in the near future

Our shop will be open as normal over the Christmas period, but this will be our last newsletter of the year.  Thanks for reading and have a great festive break.  We will be back first thing in the New Year!

So, it’s that time of year when we get bombarded with many things, not least with lists that definitively identify the best records of the year.  Now, while I must admit that I find the notion of listing cultural achievements in league tables a touch reductive, it can certainly be productive to collect your thoughts on the music you have enjoyed through the year.  In that spirit, here is my review of 2023 and ten records that helped to define my year.

Musically, things kicked off in a much more restrained manner than would typically be the case as I was entranced by the shimmering austerity of A Culture Of Killing’s (ACOK) third full-length, Dissipation Of Clouds, The Barrier.  Here, languidly beautiful instrumentation is juxta positioned with energetic call-and-response vocals, resulting in a captivating reinterpretation of anarcho-punk, and one imbued with a healthy pop sensibility, with nods to Billy Bragg and The Cure along the way.

Intriguingly, fellow Italians, Spirito Di Lupo (Wolf Spirit / SDL) emerged several months later with their equally transfixing debut LP, Vedo La Tua Foccia Nei Giorni Di Pioggia (I See Your Face On A Rainy Day).  Taking similar kernels of inspirations as ACOK, SDL take them in a very different, but equally successful, direction.  Brilliantly layered dual vocalists clash and complement in tandem with scuzzy, distorted anarcho-punk to fashion a highly effective ethereal aggression that was a stand-out of the final-ever Static Shock Weekend in September.

And, in the spirit of innovation, a third LP that continues to surprise with its unexpected twists and inspirations is Obsolete Bodies by Slow Ends.  Featuring members of Archivist, Slow Ends brilliantly fuse bristling, industrial-tinged hardcore with darkly melodic shoegaze which erupts into soaring choruses and achingly beautiful melodic hooks as the band explore the commodification of modern life.  The breadth of influences that the band integrate without losing even a sliver of coherency is an impressive and undeniably infectious feat.

Things then took a rather more metallic turn.  First up was the arrival of Dawn Rayd’s fourth and, it turns out, final album, To Know The Light.  And while I had always been a huge fan, they reached new heights with this LP.  Every aspect of their sound was taken to new levels of intensity as they deftly intertwined blast-beat fuelled black metal and haunting violin-driven folk. The result is an album that sweeps seamlessly from brutal rage to mournful melancholy as it lays down a fierce lyrical challenge to the engrained socio-economic inequality that defines modern Britain.

Morrow were also reaching a milestone of their own as The Quiet Earth completed their trilogy of albums exploring a future born of environmental and technological catastrophe.  As with Dawn Ray’d, Morrow forge a genuinely organic interplay between melancholic cello and violin with their core sound of furious d-beat fired crust.  Dual vocals, with multiple guest vocalists partnering with Alex CF, complete the sonic onslaught and one that burns with a palpable defiance.

Now, death metal is a genre that I have only skirted in recent years – the technical excesses and lyrical preoccupation of many contemporary exponents do little for me.  But there does seem to be a renaissance underway of bands seeking to harness the hardcore intensity that defined the pioneers of the genre.  And the stand-out for me in this regard is Neolithic’s Shattering Vessels.  With a keen eye for pacing dynamics, roared vocals, down-tuned guitars, and slab-like riffage are deployed to impressive effect on this, their debut full-length.  A thoroughly modern reimagining of the legacies of Bolt Thrower and Entombed.

Reinvention was also a theme shaping Parallel Worlds’ first LP, In The Comet’s Path.  Emerging from the ashes of the Young Conservatives saw the band broaden their musical palette while retaining an undiluted political vehemence.  Still very much hardcore punk but with fuzzed-out yet burly guitars and chunkier bass lines as gruff, semi-shouted vocals astutely dissect issues ranging from social conflict born of precarity and the myth of Britain’s meritocracy, to the desolation of the deindustrialised cityscape.

Less expansive, but certainly no less effective, were two bands honing hardcore down to its absolute core essentials, albeit at very differing stages of their lives as bands.  Stingray landed the first of these shattering blows with their debut full-length, Fortress Britain.  Savagely roared vocals are in barbarous synchronicity with metallic guitars (the opening riff to Trench Demon is utterly immense), while searingly heavy groove-laden breakdowns and wildly surging solos ensure that the ferocity never relents.  This is not empty, performative anger, but rather a ferocious denunciation of the malformed priorities that are hollowing out our city.

And while Famine may herald Paint It Black’s twenty-first year, their rage is just as tangible.  At this stage you think you know what to expect from the band but on this release, they have succeeded in distilling what feels like their very essence, whether the lingering, dissonant feedback, the resonant bass tone, or Dan Yemin roaring in impassioned solitude.  It is such a lean and tightly wound record that every surge in pace, every flourish of melody, lands with a ferociously amplified intensity.

And last, but absolutely not least, in our review of the year is the split LP from Habak and Lagrimas.  The key to the success of this release is that while both bands deal in politically charged emotional hardcore they harness their core attributes of viscerally cathartic explosions and passages of haunting melody, of harsh, roared vocals and sombrely engaging spoken word, in quite distinctive ways.  Lagrimas deal in fiercely crafted, tightly honed eruptions, while Habak are more expansive in allowing the ebbs and flows of ambient melody to shape their songs.  The result is an album of remarkable musical and lyrical coherency.

Every year, I am surprised by the sheer volume of high quality hardcore that is released, whether taking us in unexpected new directions or revitalising sonic expressions of the past.  And at the same time, consistently exploring ideas and themes that help us to better understand and engage with the world around us.  By any metric, 2023 has proven quite the musical year.

This section lays no claims to being a definitive listing!  It is simply gigs coming up in London that catch my eye and that I think people who read this newsletter might be interested in.  I will always try and highlight where a show forms part of a wider UK tour.

14^th December Jesus Piece, Stiff Meds plus more (Oslo / UK Tour)

16^th December Knuckledust, Last Orders, Living Martyr plus more (Black Heart)

12^th-14^th January Reality Unfolds Fest (New Cross Inn / including Fuming Mouth, Genocide Pact, Iron Deficiency, Wreathe plus many more)

17^th January Restraining Order, Layback, Prey , Dynamite, Tethered (New Cross Inn)

18^th January Samiam, Sam Russo, Uzumaki (New Cross Inn)

27^th January Pizzatramp, Rash Decision, Rank plus more (New Cross Inn)

5^th February Mutually Assured Destruction, Allfather, King Street, Peacekeeper (New Cross Inn)

24^th February Fiddlehead, MS Paint, Wrong Man (The Garage / UK Tour)

25^th February Pest Control, Demonstration of Power plus more (Black Heart / UK Tour)

29^th February Damage Is Done 4 – Fairytale, Take It In Blood, Bullsshit, Subdued, Ikhras, Violent Offence (New River Studios)

1^st March Damage Is Done 4 – Fugitive, Illusion, Ninebar, Pest Control, Imposter, Instructor plus more (Colour Factory)

2^nd March Damage Is Done 4 – Framtid, Quarantine, The Flex, T.S. Warspite, Stingray, The Annihilated, Mazandaran  plus more (Colour Factory)

3^rd March Damage Is Done 4 – Visibly High, Rat Cage, Layback, Träume, Middleman, Turbo plus more (New River Studios)

9^th March Opium Lord, Torpor, Jotnarr, Harrowed (New Cross Inn)

2^nd April Spaced, Going Off, Shooting Daggers, Ikhras (New Cross Inn / UK Tour)

Cut Piece ‘Self-Titled’ 7-inch (Sabotage/Dirt Cult)

Daydream ‘Reaching For Eternity’ 12-inch (Sabotage/Black Water)

False Fed ‘Let Them Eat Fake’ 12-inch (Neurot)

Hubert Selby Jr Infants ‘Have You Ever Seen A Crow?…Or An Eel?’ 12-inch (Scene Report)

Long Knife ‘Curb Stomp Earth’ 12-inch (Sabotage/Black Water)

Pageninetynine ‘Document #8’ 12-inch (Persistent Vision)

Paint It Black ‘Famine’ 12-inch (Revelation)

Pi$$er ‘Too Busy Eating Gruel…’ 12-inch (Scene Report)

Racetraitor ‘Creation And The Timeless Order Of Things’ 12-inch (Good Fight)

Stress Positions ‘Harsh Reality’ 12-inch (Three One G)

Syndrome 81 ‘Prisons Imaginaires’ 12-inch (Sabotage/Black Water)

Tozcos ‘Infernal’ 12-inch (Quality Control HQ)

Hello and welcome to this week’s Foundation Vinyl newsletter! And it is another packed edition to get stuck into:

• Featured New Arrivals from Golpe and Quarantine
• Austerity Forever, featuring ConSec, Enemy, and Lethal
• Shows and Tours, including full details of Damage Is Done 4 plus freshly announced shows from Pest Control and Restraining Order
• Coming Soon, with a slew of cracking new releases in the offing

It is always an exciting day when a new set of records lands at our door, and this consignment, which arrived a few weeks back, was particularly anticipated.  The wait to achieve sufficient critical mass to make the shipping costs viable and its then rather leisurely journey from the US via Poland had rather whetted the appetite.  And while I do check out records via Bandcamp, it is really just to taste them – it’s not until the physical record is in my hands that I allow myself to get fully stuck-in.  Happily, I was not disappointed.

KAPOW!!  Swirling saxophone seizes the attention before Enemy lock into their infectiously ferocious stride, a rampantly fluid rhythm section fuelling their blistering debut LP, Maladjusted.  KRUNCH!!  Still reeling, I’m promptly floored again in brutal fashion as ConSec strap me to the Wheel Of Pain for a lesson in searing, high-octane hardcore.  THWACK!!  And as I pick myself up off the floor, Lethal stomp all over me once again with the relentless, nihilistic precision of Lethal’s Hardcore Hit Parade.

These are a great trio of records to listen to in close proximity to one other.  Straight-up US hardcore played with fierce intensity, but each displaying the craft and invention to render their own very distinctive take.  But as I listened, there was also a powerful lyrical connection that became increasingly evident.  Now that hardcore bands often share similar lyrical preoccupations is hardly news.  There was a unity, however, to not only the focus, but also the specificity of the language that was powerfully consistent.

‘Can’t afford to live, Can’t afford to die…Digging my own grave, I’m living on a killing wage’ (Killing Wage by Enemy)

The theme was that of the modern-day work environment.  Challenging the ideological underpinnings of our economic system has long been a foundational theme for many hardcore bands.  However, in wider society, economics has become a widely depoliticised subject, the realm of the technocrat, now that it has been settled that there is no alternative to the fabled market forces.  Needless to say, this depoliticisation should not be mistaken for an actual absence of politics, as the foreclosure of debate and the enforced consensus is clearly serving a political agenda.

‘Working for nothing, and living for less, pointless life, never getting rest, I’m already dead, a pig slowly bled’ (When Will I Sleep? by Lethal)

And work is one of the arenas that this political agenda is most evident.  The origins lie in the austerity that is so integral to the survival of capitalist economies.  Many aspects of our current economic inequality are rooted in how the modern-day state has been so aggressively reconstituted to serve the needs of capital – there is always much talk of shrinking the state, but the markets have, in fact, repurposed the state to create and protect their commercial ‘opportunities’.  But the roots of austerity economics run even deeper.

‘My whole life and everyone I see, has been forged with a shield made of meat’ (Meat Shield by ConSec)

A book that I found hugely insightful in understanding the historical origins of austerity is The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity And Paved The Way To Fascism by political economist Clara Mattei.  It is a comparative study, firmly contextualised in our present, of how austerity economic policies were deployed with remarkable synchronicity in both democratic Britain and authoritarian Italy in the aftermath of World War I to stifle social resistance, fracture worker co-operation, and protect the interests of capital.

It is intriguing to trace the origins of austerity and identify the connections between then and our current malaise, not least in highlighting how the disingenuous narrative of balancing the books continues to be used to justify policies that are, in reality, focused on promoting the entrenchment of privilege at the expense of wider society.  Often, we think of austerity as being a case of cutting budgets to welfare provision and reducing public services and these are, of course, a central element.  But Mattei also very powerfully illustrates how regressive taxation, privatisation, wage repression, and employment deregulation are equally integral to its execution.

‘Morals for the masses, your views, ideals, flavor of the weak…validate your urban fear, social fad, moral gag’ (Compromise by Enemy)

Which brings us swinging back to the present day where much work is characterised by insecurity masquerading as ‘flexibility’, zero-hour contracts, stagnating wages, and surveillance capitalism, all in the context of soaring costs of living and entrenched inequality.  For the past four decades, the balance between labour and capital, or people and profit, has relentlessly swung back to where it was prior to the new social settlement that followed on from World War II.  Already the implications are seeping into political life with the othering of the disadvantaged and marginalised, as if bizarrely they are somehow the cause, echoing the march of European authoritarianism throughout the 1920s and 1930s as it morphs into contemporary populist forms.

‘Must be nice to be so naïve, and to think they’re just gonna change, usefully standing aside, you’re just more of their prey’ (Quick To Forget by ConSec)

I must admit I always try and take an optimistic view in these notes as change is possible, alternatives can be realised.  But in a week where we’ve seen the supposedly social democratic leader of our next likely government praising a former Prime Minister who set in motion the processes that have ravaged our public services, was complicit in the cover-up of the gross police negligence that caused 97 deaths at Hillsborough, and sanctioned state violence against striking workers, it does cause a pause for thought.  These three records vividly bring to life the attrition that this cycle of enforced austerity inflicts and remind us that it would indeed be naïve to expect those in power to be the agents of change.  And to be clear – they also boast some utterly fabulous tunes to boot!

This section lays no claims to being a definitive listing!  It is simply gigs coming up in London that catch my eye and that I think people who read this newsletter might be interested in.  I will always try and highlight where a show forms part of a wider UK tour.

8^th December Portrayal of Guilt, Street Grease, Death Goals (Moth Club)

9^th December The Grey, Aeir, Under The Ashes (The Bird’s Nest)

10^th December Short Fuse, Caged, Depravity plus more (New Cross Inn / UK Tour)

13^th December Helmet plus support (The Dome)

14^th December Jesus Piece, Stiff Meds plus more (Oslo / UK Tour)

16^th December Knuckledust, Last Orders, Living Martyr plus more (Black Heart)

12^th-14^th January Reality Unfolds Fest (New Cross Inn / including Fuming Mouth, Genocide Pact, Iron Deficiency, Wreathe plus many more)

13^th January Venomous Concept plus support (Downstairs at The Dome / CANCELLED)

17^th January Restraining Order, Layback, Prey , Dynamite, Tethered (New Cross Inn)

18^th January Samiam, Sam Russo, Uzumaki (New Cross Inn)

27^th January Pizzatramp, Rash Decision, Rank plus more (New Cross Inn)

5^th February Mutually Assured Destruction plus support (New Cross Inn)

24^th February Fiddlehead, MS Paint, Wrong Man (The Garage / UK Tour)

25^th February Pest Control, Demonstration of Power plus more (Black Heart / UK Tour)

29^th February Damage Is Done 4 – Fairytale, Take It In Blood, Bullsshit, Subdued, Ikhras, Violent Offence (New River Studios)

1^st March Damage Is Done 4 – Fugitive, Illusion, Ninebar, Pest Control, Imposter, Instructor plus more (Colour Factory)

2^nd March Damage Is Done 4 – Framtid, Quarantine, The Flex, T.S. Warspite, Stingray, The Annihilated, Mazandaran  plus more (Colour Factory)

3^rd March Damage Is Done 4 – Visibly High, Rat Cage, Layback, Träume, Middleman, Turbo plus more (New River Studios)

9^th March Opium Lord, Torpor, Jotnarr, Harrowed (New Cross Inn)

2^nd April Spaced, Going Off, Shooting Daggers, Ikhras (New Cross Inn / UK Tour)

Cut Piece ‘Self-Titled’ 7-inch (Sabotage/Dirt Cult)

Daydream ‘Reaching For Eternity’ 12-inch (Sabotage/Black Water)

False Fed ‘Let Them Eat Fake’ 12-inch (Neurot)

Hubert Selby Jr Infants ‘Have You Ever Seen A Crow?…Or An Eel?’ 12-inch (Scene Report)

Long Knife ‘Curb Stomp Earth’ 12-inch (Sabotage/Black Water)

Pageninetynine ‘Document #8’ 12-inch (Persistent Vision)

Paint It Black ‘Famine’ 12-inch (Revelation)

Pi$$er ‘Too Busy Eating Gruel…’ 12-inch (Scene Report)

Racetraitor ‘Creation And The Timeless Order Of Things’ 12-inch (Good Fight)

Screensaver ‘Decent Shapes’ 12-inch (Upset The Rhythm)

Stress Positions ‘Harsh Reality’ 12-inch (Three One G)

Syndrome 81 ‘Prisons Imaginaires’ 12-inch (Sabotage/Black Water)

Tozcos ‘Infernal’ 12-inch (Quality Control HQ)

Vintage Crop ‘Springtime’ 7-inch (Upset The Rhythm)

Hello and welcome to this week’s Foundation Vinyl newsletter! Plenty to get stuck into this week:

• Featured New Arrivals from Mutant Strain, Golpe, and Woodstock 99 plus a Savageheads restock
• Fictitious Afterlives, featuring By The Grace Of God, Die Young, and Franz Nicolay
• Shows and Tours, including new dates from Stiff Meds and Venomous Concept
• Coming Soon, with some cracking co-releases between Sabotage and Black Water Records

And also just a quick thank you to everyone who was able to snap up a record or two over the past two weeks to support the Fisher FC fundraiser on behalf of Time & Talents.  We were able to donate £100 and the appeal overall raised £834.

As I was writing last week’s Dark Myths, Venomous Realities, which explored Alex CF’s (Fall of Efrafa, Carnist, Morrow, and Wreathe) The Book of Venym: An Egalitarian Demonology, on which Wreathe’s forthcoming debut LP is based, I got to thinking of other hardcore and punk band members who have gone on to publish fictional works.

There is always a flow of memoirs and biographies that are at least hardcore punk adjacent, but the majority that I have delved into have been somewhat sterile affairs.  Tour diaries have proven rather more fertile.  Broken Summers (2004) by Henry Rollins details both his campaigning on behalf of the Memphis Three and a Rollins Band world tour between 2001 and 2003.  Despite having read it nearly twenty years ago, it remains a book still surprisingly firmly etched in my mind.  Not so much the specific details, but rather the atmosphere it evoked – a sheer relentlessness that felt an authentic, unvarnished insight into Rollins’ persona.

Forays into fiction, however, are rather rarer.  But three other examples did come to mind, each quite different to the other, and Alex CF’s work.  The first is by Franz Nicolay.  Nicolay played in the rather splendid World Inferno/Friendship Society, and then The Hold Steady, before heading out as a solo artist.  He now has a fine series of exuberant, wryly observed folk-punk albums under his belt, most recently New River.  As it happens, he also wrote perhaps my favourite tour diary, The Humourless Ladies of Border Control (2016), which I touched on in Trains, Ferries, and Water Fountains.  It is a thoroughly engaging exploration of touring Central and Eastern Europe, and his insights from Ukraine are now even more affecting.

After this, he published his first novel, Someone Should Pay For Your Pain (2021), which explores the life of a touring musician, from the days of being in a local scene punk band to becoming a solo artist. A brief flirtation with breakthrough success evaporates before the protagonist locks into a relentless touring schedule of seemingly ever-diminishing returns.  Of course, Nicolay knows aspects of this journey very well, but he also has the skill as a writer to bring it vigorously to life. The novel deftly renders the solitude of life on the road, poignantly insightful, but also laced with a delightfully dark humour.

The second novel is Cane Field (2019) by Daniel Austin.  Musically, Austin (then Daniel Albaugh) is best known as the front person for the politically charged metallic hardcore band, Die Young, who to me have always represented the sonic embodiment of the feral offspring of Catharsis and Trial. They were initially active from 2002 to 2009, including the release of the fiercely visceral 2007 full-length, Graven Images, before reforming in 2013, with the ensuing releases, such as Chosen Path and No Illusions, no less ferocious.  Renowned for their utterly relentless touring schedule during their first phase, the band is still active, but understandably rather less intensively so.

Austin has also published three poetry anthologies, but Cane Field is his only novel to date, and it tells the story of young man from the suburbs of Houston trying to get to grips with the world and the disappointments of his youth.  Not unusually for a debut novel, you again sense a strong autobiographical inspiration that also draws on Austin’s many years on the road with Die Young.  While I must admit that it didn’t entirely capture me, it is clearly a thoroughly sincere and heartfelt work, and one that convincingly depicts the emotional upheaval and uncertainties of entering adulthood.

The final of our novels is The City, Awake (2016) by Duncan Barlow, the third of four he has published.  Barlow is guitarist with By The Grace Of God (BTGOG), and prior to that Endpoint and Guilt, as well as a university lecturer in English.  BTGOG, who coincidentally also popped up in Trains, Ferries and Water Fountains, are a politically strident band hailing from Louisville, who have honed a blistering blend of surging melodic hardcore and socially thought-provoking lyrical concerns.  They released two searing LPs – Perspective and Three Steps To A Better Democracy – and the For The Love of Indie Rock EP between 1996 and 1999, before returning with 2018’s bristling Above Fear 12-inch.

The City, Awake is essentially a noir thriller reimagined through the prism of five lookalikes, who each wake up in their respective hotel rooms with no memory, and a cryptic note in their pocket.  We follow their responses to their predicament, which both mirror and interlink with each other.  In the wrong hands, there is much that could go wrong with an experimental structure of this type.  Barlow, however, manages it so adroitly that those pitfalls become its strength, and a thoroughly satisfying rhythm emerges as the layers of plot are revealed.  His pared, punchy yet lyrical prose also works effectively to conjure a darkly dystopian setting.

By definition, hardcore and punk music demands lyrically that often quite complex themes be distilled to their very essence, capable of being clearly expressed in two-to-three-minute blasts of intensity.  Not simplified, but certainly honed to their leanest form, yet in a way that effectively primes engagement with the ideas being explored.  Writing no doubt allows such ideas and themes to be examined in a more expansive and incremental form, which poses its own distinctive opportunities and challenges.  And, in each case, it is intriguing to see musicians who have brought significant pleasure begin to deploy their creative energies through an alternative medium.

www.daniel-austin.com

www.duncanbbarlow.com

www.franznicolay.com

This section lays no claims to being a definitive listing!  It is simply gigs coming up in London that catch my eye and that I think people who read this newsletter might be interested in.  I will always try and highlight where a show forms part of a wider UK tour.

24^th November Bob Mould plus support (The Garage / UK Tour)

24^th November Another Subculture Weekender (Spanners / Hellish Torment, Moist Crevice, PC World, Rubber, Skitter)

25^th November Another Subculture Weekender (Ivy House / including Gimic, Hygeine, Morreadoras, Plastics, Sniffany & The Nits)

5^th December Militarie Gun, Spiritual Cramp plus more (The Dome)

8^th December Portrayal of Guilt, Street Grease, Death Goals (Moth Club)

9^th December The Grey, Aeir, Under The Ashes (The Bird’s Nest)

10^th December Short Fuse, Caged, Depravity plus more (New Cross Inn / UK Tour)

13^th December Helmet plus support (The Dome)

14^th December Jesus Piece, Stiff Meds plus more (Oslo / UK Tour)

16^th December Knuckledust, Last Orders, Living Martyr plus more (Black Heart)

12^th-14^th January Reality Unfolds Fest (New Cross Inn / including Fuming Mouth, Genocide Pact, Iron Deficiency plus many more)

13^th January Venomous Concept plus support (Downstairs at The Dome)

18^th January Samiam, Sam Russo, Uzumaki (New Cross Inn)

27^th January Pizzatramp, Rash Decision, Rank plus more (New Cross Inn)

5^th February Mutually Assured Destruction plus support (New Cross Inn)

24^th February Fiddlehead, MS Paint, Wrong Man (The Garage / UK Tour)

29^th February – 3^rd March Damage Is Done 4 (Various Venues / including Framtid, Fugitive, Quarantine, Illusions, The Annihilated, Fairytale, The Flex, Instructor, Pest Control, Rat Cage, Subdued plus many more to be announced with ticket details on 3rd December)

9^th March Opium Lord, Torpor, Jotnarr, Harrowed (New Cross Inn)

Cut Piece ‘Self-Titled’ 7-inch (Sabotage/Dirt Cult)

Daydream ‘Reaching For Eternity’ 12-inch (Sabotage/Black Water)

Long Knife ‘Curb Stomp Earth’ 12-inch (Sabotage/Black Water)

Syndrome 81 ‘Prisons Imaginaires’ 12-inch (Sabotage/Black Water)