Hello and welcome to this week’s Foundation Vinyl newsletter! We have a stacked line-up to enjoy:

• Featured New Arrivals from Enemy, ConSec, Lethal, and Grand Scheme
• Dark Myths, Venomous Realities, featuring Wreathe
• Fisher FC Time and Talents Fundraiser
• Shows and Tours, including the latest on next March’s Damage Is Done 4
• Coming Soon, including some great new releases from Sorry State Records

Last week, we announced a pre-order for the debut LP from Wreathe, The Land Is Not An Idle God.  Wreathe are a new crust hardcore band from London featuring members of Fall of Efrafa, Morrow, and Aboricidio.  Musically, the band build vigorously on the foundations of those three bands – roared, often layered, frequently call-and-response vocals, entwined in raucous tandem with towering melancholic riffage and a thunderous rhythm section.  A palpable rage courses through the sonic onslaught, but one that is matched with a defiant optimism that, collectively, all is not lost.

‘But in the burgeoning fruit of democracy, we find a parasite that craves all, seizes all…it will spread that rot until all are consumed.’

Lyrically, the album follows the path of Fall of Efrafa and Morrow in also being a concept album, a theme I wrote about a little while back in A Pessimist In Search of Dystopia.  This album’s source material is a work of fiction written by vocalist Alex CF, The Book of Venym: An Egalitarian Demonology, and I thought it would be interesting to explore its ideas in a little more detail.  In some senses, it is a difficult book to categorise in that, while it creates its world in remarkable detail, not all of its philosophical thoughts are explicitly explained.  Rather, it seeks to prime further reflection and interpretation around its central concepts.  The language itself is a mixture of prose and verse (and sometimes something somewhere in-between), which positions the narrator as perhaps living in the late 19^th century.  It is written almost as a stream of consciousness, as the narrator grapples with visions of humanity’s fate, conjuring images of the writer feverishly writing down their thoughts late at night by lamp, as if gripped by some spectral force.

‘To see the other as a foot stall to stand upon, to starve us of teaching so that our reasoning is impeded?’

The thrust of the narrator’s visions are focused on how humanity is becoming divorced from the natural word that gave birth to it, driven both by the consequences of human evolution and its own innate sense of superiority.  These dreams introduce us to the philosophy and invocation of a pantheon of pagan nature deities, known as The Increscent, who represent the act of becoming greater than oneself, and who will be provoked to action by humanity’s behaviour.  I will leave the specifics of the world of The Increscent for individual readers to dive into, but I would like to specifically explore the wider themes that the book seeks to address through the creation of this world.  I can’t claim to be a huge reader of fantasy, but while it can often function as a form of escapism, mythologies can also be a powerful way of examining issues from alternative perspectives and escaping the strictures of polarised contemporary debates.

‘The Beast, the great Enemy knows no other course of action, and its tentacles wriggle where none are watching.  They will grow, coil into new patterns, new interpretations of the same strategies.  Divide and conquer, divide and conquer’.

On my reading, The Book of Venym has three overarching themes.  The first we have already touched on, namely humanity’s increasing dislocation from the natural world.  Traced through the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions to the future of the narrator’s visions and our present, the narrator maps how our interaction with nature has morphed from a form of mutual reciprocity into seeking to harness nature for purposes of exploitation and extraction.  These processes irrevocably damage nature, inhibiting the necessary processes of renewal.  This first theme feeds into the second, which is how just as greed has ruptured humanity’s relationship with nature, so it has corrupted its relationship with itself.  An ideological hegemony has been forged that privileges a creed of rampant individualism over that of the collective, valorising the ‘free market’ at the expense of the social good.  A society distorted to the benefit of corporate interests and profit.  This in turn gives rise to the third theme, which is a culture that is fuelled by a distrust of the ‘other’.  As economic inequality is exacerbated and public infrastructure degraded by these warped priorities, so people’s insecurity sows the need to blame someone, often the already most marginalised, to reconcile what is happening.  So, this is a tale not of conspiracy, but of how governing rationalities saturate a society’s thinking and shape its perception of itself.

‘We must reclaim our sense of egalitarianism…We cannot rest until all are seen, all are listened to, and all are heard’.

And the book’s rallying cry to address this cycle is for a rebirth of egalitarianism.  In other words, a recognition of the power of community and the realisation that working together for the collective good has the potential to be far more powerful than the forces arrayed against.  Importantly, this notion of egalitarianism appears cognisant of the need to recognise the intersections of both economic and social identities, which have become increasingly disconnected in the public discourse.  As such, exploring, in rather different ways, some of the ideas examined when discussing the brilliant new Habak / Lagrimas split LP in Hardcore Is Where The Home Is.

The Book of Venym is a beautifully illustrated, relatively slender book.  But it is a work rich in detail and layers that I suspect will reveal themselves in new ways as it is revisited.  So, I hope my initial reading does justice to some of the ideas and concepts that are being teased out.  Anyway, for those of you who like your crushing riffs partnered with lyrical ideas of equivalent heft, The Land Is Not An Idle God should hit that sweet spot very nicely indeed.

The Land Is Not An Idle God is up for pre-order now at www.foundationvinyl.com.  This is the European pressing from Alerta Antifascista Records.  The North American pressing is being handled by Persistent Vision Records.  You can listen to the album at www.wreathepunx.bandcamp.com and you can find The Book of Venym: An Egalitarian Demonology at www.artofalexcf.com.  All quotes are taken from The Book of Venym.

Fisher FC, Bermondsey’s supporter-owned and volunteer-run non-league football club, are hosting their annual Community Day this Saturday (18th November) versus Whitstable Town.

The club are dedicating their fundraising efforts to support local South London charity, Time and Talents.  We would like to do our bit to support the appeal, so we will be donating 10% of all sales (bar shipping costs) between 2nd and 16th November (ends tomorrow!).

So, if there’s a record you’ve had your eye on for a little while, now is the time to make it happen!

And if you live in London and enjoy your football, but are tired of extortionate prices, plastic seats, and bad beer, get your yourself down to the Fish for the game.  Fisher will be donating £1 for each paying spectator to Time & Talents, as well as running a fund-raising half-time raffle on their behalf.

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.

18^th November Axegrinder, Civilised Society?, Zero Again plus more (New Cross Inn)

19^th November Chain Whip, Johnny Throttle, Shade (New River Studios / UK Tour)

21^st November Slapshot, Death Before Dishonor plus more (New Cross Inn / 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)

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 plus support (Oslo)

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

18^th January Samiam, Sam Russo, Uzumaki (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)

Golpe ‘La Colpa È Solo Tua’ 12-inch (Sorry State)

Mutant Strain ‘Murder of Crows’ 12-inch (Sorry Sate)

Woodstock 99 ‘Self-Titled’ 7-inch (Sorry State)

Hello and welcome to this week’s Foundation Vinyl newsletter!  A packed edition this week, so let’s get stuck in right way:

• Featured New Arrivals from Closet Witch, Mazandaran, Möney, and Fredag den 13:e
• Synth Resistance Is Futile, featuring Home Front and Subdued
• Wreathe Pre-Order: The Land Is Not An Idle God
• Fisher FC Time and Talents Fundraiser
• Shows and Tours, including further news on the Damage Is Done 4 line-up
• Coming Soon, including some great new releases from Discos Enfermos, 11PM, Not For The Weak, Phobia, and Sorry State

So, a couple of weekends back, I was confronted with something of a dilemma, with two very enticing gigs on the Friday (Stingray / T.S. Warspite) and Saturday (Home Front / Subdued).  Back-to-backs are quite difficult to engineer these days (yep, Londoner complaining about there being too many great gigs to go to…), so a choice was going to have to be made.  All things being equal, I would most probably have leaned towards catching Stingray on the back of their quite brilliant new LP, Fortress Britain, but then the flyer language caught my eye: Fancy Dress Mandatory.  And if there is one thing that I hold a deep, unyielding aversion to beyond all things, it is fancy dress.  Decision made, and let’s face it Home Front and Subdued is no bad back-up is it?

Anyway, I got down to New River Studios (loving the new layout), unfortunately, just as Rifle concluded their set but was well ensconced by the time Subdued hit the stage.  Now you would be unlikely to claim that Subdued have quite the stage presence of some of their more energetic peers, but every time I have caught them over the last year, the sheer intensity of their bristling anarcho-punk delivery has gone up yet another impressive notch.  Central to this I suspect is their guitarist (who was also in the fabulous Permission) who never fails to conjure a seemingly instinctual onslaught that is equal parts subtlety and ferocity, fiercely disciplined yet also boldly pushing the limits.

And so, to the headliners, Home Front.  Now I must confess that I can sometimes be rather slow in adopting new forms of instrumentation into my punk palette.  I remember feeling rather uneasy when first entranced by the shuddering drum machines of the early industrial pioneers of Godflesh and Pitchshifter, a sense that took me some years to fully shed.  And while for some reason a spot of violin or cello never worried, the appearance of keyboards was rarely welcomed.  It just didn’t seem to fit, well, with my preconceptions anyway.  Because let’s face it, how is a keyboard more ‘artificial’ than an electric guitar and a battery of effects pedals?  Although to be fair, my earliest encounters with synths in hardcore punk often seemed a touch inorganic, flirting with an idea, rather than exploring it with conviction.

However, the sheer weight of great new electronic-led punk that has been released over the past few years has undeniably swept away any last vestiges of reluctance on my part.  Indeed, the term synth-punk feels increasingly reductive (although it is a shorthand I will no doubt continue to employ liberally!) bearing in mind the diversity of where this form of punk is being taken – from the dance-orientated dark wave of Adult’s Becoming Undone (2022) and the elegiac beauty of Tulips’ Tangled In Transition (2023), to the wonderfully understated textures of Optic Sink’s Glass Blocks (2023), that has seeped irresistibly into a position of almost constant rotation on my turntable.

But the release that perhaps terminally broke the dam for me was Home Front’s cracking debut LP, Think Of The Lie (2021).  I found its euphoric melancholy pretty hard to resist as they took some vivid 1980s’ influences from The Cure to Echo And The Bunnymen via The Eurythmics and reanimated them with a vibrant electronic punk twist.  And this year’s Games of Power took things into even more expansive directions.

And Home Front’s recipe is also particularly well suited to the live setting, which can pose challenges to some of the more electronic-orientated bands.  Firstly, their sound is imbued with a punk energy and sheer danceability that translates well to the stage.  Secondly, keyboardist / drummer Clint Frazier sheds his instruments to take on the role of frontperson, and clearly revels in doing so, ensuring a pronounced physicality to the band’s performance.  And, finally, the touring band (Home Front record as a duo) are not only accomplished musicians, but clearly throw themselves into proceedings with impressive abandon from the pounding drummer and sweat-drenched keyboardist to the swirling bassist, who spent a considerable portion of the night swamped in the stage’s cobweb decorations.

Well, it proved quite the show and thankfully, for this miserable killjoy at least, there was barely any fancy dress on display at all…

We are delighted to announce a pre-order for the European pressing from Alerta Antifascista Records of Wreathe’s debut album, The Land Is Not An Idle God.  It is available to pre-order from our store from today and is expected to ship in late February 2024.  Persistent Vision Records are handling the North American pressing and release.

Featuring members of Fall of Efrafa, Morrow, and Arboricidio, this is the debut LP from London’s Wreathe.  Roared, often layered, call-and-response vocals interplay with towering melancholic crust riffage and a thunderous rhythm section to deliver a sonic battery of invigorating, defiant intensity.  The album’s lyrics are based on vocalist Alex CF’s book, The Book of Venym: An Egalitarian Demonology.  This is a fictional exploration of the philosophy and invocation of a pantheon of pagan nature deities, known as the Increscent, ‘a battle cry for the much-beleaguered idea of compassion above self-interest and bigotry’.  Guest vocalist appearance from Autarch’s Jamie Pratt.

Fisher FC, Bermondsey’s supporter-owned and volunteer-run non-league football club, are hosting their annual Community Day on Saturday 18th November versus Whitstable Town.

The club are dedicating their fundraising efforts to support local South London charity, Time and Talents.  We would like to do our bit to support the appeal, so we will be donating 10% of all sales (bar shipping costs) between 2nd and 16th November.

So, if there’s a record you’ve had your eye on for a little while, now is the time to make it happen!

And if you live in London and enjoy your football, but are tired of extortionate prices, plastic seats, and bad beer, get your yourself down to the Fish for the game.  Fisher will be donating £1 for each paying spectator to Time and Talents, as well as running a fund-raising half-time raffle on their behalf.

Thanks to everyone who has been able to support so far!

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.

9^th November Rifle, Mindless, Catholic Block (The George Tavern / UK Tour)

9^th November Jonah Matranga plus support (The Slaughtered Lamb / UK Tour)

11^th November Diaz Brothers, Toronto Blessings, The Charlamagnes, Dinosaur Skull (Hope & Anchor / UK Tour)

12^th November Filth Is Eternal, Death Goals, How Long You Been Driving, Closed Hands (New Cross Inn)

13^th November Madball, Ironed Out, Rash Decision, False Reality (The Underworld / UK Tour)

18^th November Axegrinder, Civilised Society?, Zero Again plus more (New Cross Inn)

19^th November Chain Whip, Johnny Throttle, Shade (New River Studios / UK Tour)

21^st November Slapshot, Death Before Dishonor plus more (New Cross Inn / 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)

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)

13^th December Helmet plus support (The Dome)

14^th December Jesus Piece plus support (Oslo)

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

18^th January Samiam, Sam Russo, Uzumaki (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)

Cimiterium ‘Self-Titled’ 7-inch (Phobia)

Consec ‘Wheel of Pain’ 12-inch (Not For The Weak)

Enemy ‘Maladjusted’ 12-inch (11PM)

Golpe ‘La Colpa È Solo Tua’ 12-inch (Sorry State)

Grand Scheme ‘Numbers Game’ 7-inch (11PM)

Hez ‘Panamaniacs’ 12-inch (Discos Enfermos)

Kinetic Orbital Strike ‘Self-Titled’ 7-inch (Phobia)

Lethal ‘Lethal’s Hardcore Hit Parade’ 7-inch (11PM)

Mutant Strain ‘Murder of Crows’ 12-inch (Sorry Sate)

Woodstock 99 ‘Self-Titled’ 7-inch (Sorry State)

Hello and welcome to this week’s Foundation Vinyl newsletter!  Lots of cracking new music to discuss this week plus news of a charity fundraiser we hope you may be able to support:

• Featured New Arrivals, including the Destruct / Dissekerad / Rat Cage / Scarecrow split Screaming Death LP plus new releases from Stiff Meds and Total Nada as well as a Hellnation reissue
• Footballing Fish and Community DIY
• Shows and Tours
• Coming Soon, including some great new releases from Circus Of The Macabre, Discos Enfermos, 11PM, Not For The Weak, Phobia, Quality Control HQ, and Sorry State

Football, like music, is best done DIY.  It can act as a hugely positive force for empowering communities at a time when much professional sport can seem like simply another vehicle for fiancialised excess.  And you don’t get much more DIY than Bermondsey’s Fisher FC – a wholly supporter-owned, volunteer-run mutual society.

The club was founded in 2009, when its predecessor Fisher Athletic went bankrupt, with supporters determined to rebuild their club as a community enterprise.  Initially exiled to play in Dulwich, Fisher secured a return to Bermondsey and Rotherhithe in 2016 at the St Paul’s Sports Ground.  Since then, the Fish have gone from strength to strength, and are now firmly embedded back in their local community, including providing junior football for 200-plus kids from age 5 up to 18.

Each year, the club hosts an annual Community Day, which is this year being held on Saturday 18^th November at the match versus Whitstable Town.  The club are dedicating their efforts to raising money for local charity Time & Talents that has been working to strengthen and support neighbourhood ties in the local area for over 100 years, having initially been founded in the 1870s to challenge the gender status quo.

We would like to do our bit to support.  So, 10% of all our sales (bar shipping costs) from tomorrow (Thursday 2nd November) until Thursday 16th November will be donated to Time & Talents via the club fundraising appeal.

So, if there’s a record you’ve had your eye on for a little while, now is the time to make it happen!

And if you live in London and enjoy your football, but are tired of extortionate prices, plastic seats, and bad beer, get your yourself down to the Fish for the game.  Fisher will be donating £1 for each paying spectator to Time & Talents, as well as running a fund-raising half-time raffle on their behalf.

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.

3^rd November Last Wishes, Splitknuckle,  Dynamite, False Reality plus more (New River Studios)

4^th November Pest Control, Hellbound, T.S. Warspite, Stiff Meds, Layback plus more  (MOT / SOLD OUT)

9^th November Jonah Matranga plus support (The Slaughtered Lamb / UK Tour)

11^th November Diaz Brothers, Toronto Blessings, The Charlamagnes, Dinosaur Skull (Hope & Anchor / UK Tour)

12^th November Filth Is Eternal, Death Goals, How Long You Been Driving, Closed Hands (New Cross Inn)

13^th November Madball, Ironed Out, Rash Decision, False Reality (The Underworld / UK Tour)

18^th November Axegrinder, Civilised Society?, Zero Again plus more (New Cross Inn)

19^th November Chain Whip, Johnny Throttle, Shade (New River Studios / UK Tour)

21^st November Slapshot, Death Before Dishonor plus more (New Cross Inn / 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)

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)

13^th December Helmet plus support (The Dome)

14^th December Jesus Piece plus support (Oslo)

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

18^th January Samiam, Sam Russo, Uzumaki (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)

1^st – 3^rd March Damage Is Done IV (Various Venues / including Fugitive, Quarantine, and Illusions plus many more to be announced)

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

Cimiterium ‘Self-Titled’ 7-inch (Phobia)

Closet Witch ‘Chiaroscuro’ 12-inch (Circle Of The Macabre)

Consec ‘Wheel of Pain’ 12-inch (Not For The Weak)

Enemy ‘Maladjusted’ 12-inch (11PM)

Fredag Den 13:e ‘Mänskliga Gränstillstånd’ 12-inch (Phobia)

Golpe ‘La Colpa È Solo Tua’ 12-inch (Sorry State)

Grand Scheme ‘Numbers Game’ 7-inch (11PM)

Hez ‘Panamaniacs’ 12-inch (Discos Enfermos)

Kinetic Orbital Strike ‘Self-Titled’ 7-inch (Phobia)

Lethal ‘Lethal’s Hardcore Hit Parade’ 7-inch (11PM)

Mazandaran ‘Self-Titled’ 7-inch (Quality Control HQ)

Möney ‘Punk Demo’ 7-inch (Discos Enfermos)

Mutant Strain ‘Murder of Crows’ 12-inch (Sorry Sate)

Woodstock 99 ‘Self-Titled’ 7-inch (Sorry State)

Hello and welcome to this week’s Foundation Vinyl newsletter!  No blog this week (the demands of half-term and all that), but we still have plenty of great new music to get stuck into:

• Featured New Arrivals from Astio, Hellshock, Katarsi, Life Scars, and Mock Execution
• Shows and Tours, including two great line-ups at New River Studios this weekend, featuring Stingray / T.S. Warspite (Friday) and Home Front / Subdued (Saturday)
• Coming Soon, including some cracking new releases from Discos Enfermos, 11PM, Not For The Weak, Phobia, Quality Control HQ, and Sorry State

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.

26^th October World Peace, Xiao, Trading Hands plus more (New Cross Inn / UK Tour)

27^th October Cuero, Stingray, T.S. Warspite, Turbo, Catastrophe (New River Studios / Halloween Fancy Dress)

28^th October Home Front, Subdued, Rifle (New River Studios / UK Tour)

9^th November Jonah Matranga plus support (The Slaughtered Lamb / UK Tour)

11^th November Diaz Brothers, Toronto Blessings, The Charlamagnes, Dinosaur Skull (Hope & Anchor / UK Tour)

12^th November Filth Is Eternal, Death Goals, How Long You Been Driving, Closed Hands (New Cross Inn)

13^th November Madball, Ironed Out, Rash Decision, False Reality (The Underworld / UK Tour)

18^th November Axegrinder, Civilised Society?, Zero Again plus more (New Cross Inn)

19^th November Chain Whip, Johnny Throttle, Shade (New River Studios / UK Tour)

21^st November Slapshot, Death Before Dishonor plus more (New Cross Inn / UK Tour)

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

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

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

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

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

18^th January Samiam plus support (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)

1^st – 3^rd March Damage Is Done IV (Various Venues / including Fugitive, Quarantine, and Illusions plus many more to be announced)

Cimiterium ‘Self-Titled’ 7-inch (Phobia)

Consec ‘Wheel of Pain’ 12-inch (Not For The Weak)

Destruct / Dissekerad / Rat Cage / Scarecrow ‘Screaming Death’  12-inch (Skrammel)

Enemy ‘Maladjusted’ 12-inch (11PM)

Fredag Den 13:e ‘Mänskliga Gränstillstånd’ 12-inch (Phobia)

Grand Scheme ‘Numbers Game’ 7-inch (11PM)

Hez ‘Panamaniacs’ 12-inch (Discos Enfermos)

Kinetic Orbital Strike ‘Self-Titled’ 7-inch (Phobia)

Lethal ‘Lethal’s Hardcore Hit Parade’ 7-inch (11PM)

Mazandaran ‘Self-Titled’ 7-inch (Quality Control HQ)

Möney ‘Punk Demo’ 7-inch (Discos Enfermos)

Mutant Strain ‘Murder of Crows’ 12-inch (Sorry Sate)

Stiff Meds ‘Tales From The Slab’ 12-inch (Quality Control HQ)

Total Nada ‘II’ 7-inch (Discos Enfermos)

Woodstock 99 ‘Self-Titled’ 7-inch (Sorry State)

Hello and welcome to this week’s Foundation Vinyl newsletter!  As ever, we have some cracking new records to discuss, and this is the line-up:

• Featured New Arrivals from Stingray, Institute, Felsenmirror, and Warkrusher
• Hardcore Is Where The Home Is, featuring Lagrimas and Habak
• Shows and Tours
• Coming Soon, including some cracking new releases from Agipunk, Contraszt!, Discos Enfermos, La Vida Es Un Mus Discos, and Quality Control HQ

One of the pleasures of doing a regular newsletter that I underestimated has been the opportunity to sit down and think more explicitly about the different facets of music.  Not just to enjoy the immediate hit, but to think about it in wider terms.  And one of the aspects that has struck me is what the actual purpose of a split release is.  I must admit I have always been slightly cynical of the motivations behind some – there seems a certain expediency at play.

Yet in more recent years, while expedient examples remain, I have seen an increasing number of split releases where the bands and labels recognise that such projects offer the scope to realise a much more unified vision – one that entwines the participating bands much more intrinsically.  The 2019 Myteri and Procrastinate release on Alerta Antifascista Records is an excellent recent example, and even more recently the Habak and Lagrimas joint release on Persistent Vision is a brilliant illustration of what a well-executed split release can artistically achieve.  So, what makes it such a successful realisation?

First up, both bands have born their sound from the same initial kernel of inspiration, but then evolved this initial influence into a sonic expression that while not entirely disconnected, is certainly recognisably distinctive.  In the case of Habak and Lagrimas both bands are rooted in an emotional hardcore that is infused in equal measure with influences drawn from crust and post- metal.  Each band blend viscerally cathartic hardcore with passages of haunting melody, and harsh, roared vocals with sombrely engaging spoken word.  However, they harness these shared attributes in quite different 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.

Second up, both bands have a shared socio-political purpose.  They are deeply imbued with a DIY ethos, and both are explicitly political projects that focus on examining the impacts of current economic systems (and their political enforcement on people’s everyday lives).  What lends even further weight to this shared purpose is that both bands adopt very different lyrical approaches.  Habak, perhaps in keeping with their broader musical sweep, favour more poetic allusive expression, deploying the spectral imagery of an ever-expanding desert to illustrate the rapacious expansion of capitalist rationalities into every corner of people’s existence.  In contrast, Lagrimas favour a more direct, matter-of-fact language that lends a fierce velocity to their exploration of the impact of urban financialisation, gentrification, and economic exploitation on working-class communities in Los Angeles.

And it is the themes that Lagrimas tackle that I’d like to further touch on, linking as they do with some of the same issues that this week’s new arrivals from Stingray and Institute look to address in their songs Inner City and City respectively.  Living in South London it has become transparently clear how urban development, and in particular housing, has become subservient to the needs of real estate capital and a central construct of the governing hegemony.  This has manifested itself in the privileging of developer interests, wholesale privatisation of public land, and people being displaced from their own communities.  Even where communities have successfully resisted, residents have endured over a decade of uncertainty as they have courageously fought off attempts by councils (who purportedly represent them) to demolish their homes.

Now, while the elements of any city’s development are specific to it (Anna Minton’s Big Capital: Who is London For? and City of Quartz: Excavating The Future In Los Angeles by Mike Davis are decent starting points for London and Los Angeles), there are also readily identifiable themes that connect lived experiences and patterns of urban development across major cities.  It is these core underlying forces that Lagrimas’ lyrical approach bring so effectively to life, and they can be as readily applied to London as to their home city.  It began with a process of stigmatisation of working-class housing that was purpose built in the heart of London and framing these communities as undeserving of such location (Illusions of Success) and the wholesale privatisation of much social housing, which has seen the return of an exploitative rental market (Mandatory Overtime) that is wildly disconnected from the economic realities of much modern work.  The result is people being forced from their own communities (I Can’t Afford It) with the inevitable insecurity and instability that this introduces to people’s lives, and already socio-economically marginalised communities (No Resources) bear the brunt of this ‘regeneration’.  As Stingray examine in Inner City, this slow violence of resident stigmatisation and relentless cost-cutting sowed the seeds for the Grenfell Tower fire in West London that resulted in 72 deaths on 14^th June 2017.

With those in power (and aspiring to it) mired in a failed consensus that treats housing as a financial instrument as opposed to a social good, it is great to see hardcore bands willing to confront the issue.  Songs rarely change the world, but they can force us to question what we see and, hopefully, increase our understanding of what we need to work to change.

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.

21^st October Stiff Meds, Layback, Churchgoers, Ikhrah, Catastrophe (Moor Beer Vaults / plus Leeds show 20/10)

21^st October Commoner, P.I.G, Under The Ashes (The Bird’s Nest)

24^th October Institute, Glue, Island of Love, Hellscape (The Shacklewell Arms)

26^th October World Peace, Xiao, Trading Hands plus more (New Cross Inn / UK Tour)

27^th October Cuero, Stingray, T.S. Warspite, Turbo, Catastrophe (New River Studios)

28^th October Home Front, Subdued, Rifle (New River Studios / UK Tour)

11^th November Diaz Brothers, Toronto Blessings, The Charlamagnes, Dinosaur Skull (Hope & Anchor / UK Tour)

12^th November Filth Is Eternal plus support (New Cross Inn)

13^th November Madball, Ironed Out, Rash Decision, False Reality (The Underworld / UK Tour)

18^th November Axegrinder, Civilised Society?, Zero Again plus more (New Cross Inn)

19^th November Chain Whip plus support (New River Studios / UK Tour)

21^st November Slapshot, Death Before Dishonor plus more (New Cross Inn / UK Tour)

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

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

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

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

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

18^th January Samiam plus support (New Cross Inn)

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

1^st – 3^rd March Damage Is Done IV (Various Venues / including Fugitive, Quarantine, and Illusions plus many more to be announced)

Astio ‘Bocche Stanche’ 12-inch (Agipunk)

Hellshock ‘Self-Titled’ 12-inch (Agipunk)

Hez ‘Panamaniacs’ 12-inch (Discos Enfermos)

Katarsi ‘Self-Titled’ 12-inch (Discos Enfermos)

Life Scars ‘Pęknięte Serca’ 12-inch (Contraszt!)

Mazandaran ‘Self-Titled’ 7-inch (Quality Control HQ)

Möney ‘Punk Demo’ 7-inch (Discos Enfermos)

Misery ‘The Early Years’ 12-inch (Agipunk)

Mock Execution ‘Circle of Madness’ 7-inch (LVEUM)

Stiff Meds ‘Tales From The Slab’ 12-inch (Quality Control HQ)

Total Nada ‘II’ 7-inch (Discos Enfermos)