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)

Hello and welcome to this week’s Foundation Vinyl newsletter. This week’s featured releases focus on Refuse Records, who are currently celebrating a pretty remarkable thirty years at the heart of European hardcore.  The full line-up is as follows:

• Featured New Arrivals from Drink Deep, Foresight, Drill Sergeant, and Dregs
• Returning Friends and Determined Ghosts, featuring As Friends Rust
• Refuse Records at Thirty
• Shows and Tours, including a new Stiff Meds record release show
• Coming Soon, including some cracking new releases from Agipunk, Contraszt!, La Vida Es Un Mus Discos, and Quality Control HQ

As my tube rattled north of the river last week, I couldn’t help but feel a growing excitement. I was heading off to see As Friends Rust for the first time in fifteen years at the Boston Music Room.  And there is something undeniably powerful about having the unexpected opportunity to again see a band important to you.  The unprompted smile that spreads across your face as the band take to the stage.  The jolt of adrenaline that surges through your body as the first riff unfurls.  The lyrics that form, not as you would expect in your head, but rather from somewhere deeper, more primordial, leaving you hoarse by the end of the night.  The unseen force that sucks you into the heart of a swirling mosh pit for the first time in, well, quite a while.

Now it would be easy to dismiss this as the cosy (if somewhat sweaty) embrace of empty nostalgia.  And nostalgia has in many ways become a defining force in our society – as things literally crumble around us, it is easy to take solace in things that bring us comfort, that transport us to back to times when life seemed more straight forward.  But to do so, I think would be to ignore the values that serve to drive most hardcore punk.  Looking around the audience that night, you would have struggled to find many who were not still active in the scene, or conversely, anyone who stopped listening to new music twenty years ago.  And it was refreshing that material from the band’s stellar new LP Any Joy (‘roughly a minute of music for every year since our last album’) was greeted (almost) as enthusiastically as their stand-out classics of yesteryear.

I think a more accurate interpretation is to recognise how bands of meaning to us serve to link both our past and our current selves.  As the words to a searing rendition of Coffee Black (‘You like your coffee black, your neighbourhood white.  Your lights are out at nine o’clock at night.  Are you afraid of everything, or just the truth?’) boomed out from the audience, the sentiments spoke to not only why many present were first drawn to hardcore, but why it also remains integral to our way of evaluating the world.  It reaffirms our refusal to yield in our desire for change and the spectres of our younger selves remind us why we should not settle for current realities.  In other words, as cultural writer Mark Fisher eloquently argues in his book, Ghosts Of My Life, ‘It is about not giving up the ghost – and this can sometimes amount to the same thing – the refusal of the ghost to give up on us’.  And it is here that the music of As Friends Rust is powerfully relevant as Damien Moyle’s sardonic dissection of contemporary society, and the band’s melancholy infused song writing, perfectly capture not only the sense of lost futures, but of a fierce unwillingness to accept the distorted replacement that is being offered.

And what if this was your introduction to As Friends Rust?  Well, you were simply fortunate to see the vibrant resurrection of a great band.  Of course, there will always be the hackneyed cynics who seem to view any band reuniting as little more than an attempt to cash in (a transparently nonsensical idea in hardcore), or as a mid-life crisis playing out in plain view.  Now there may be a little more traction in the latter, although not in the way it is intended – it is more a question of mid-life opportunity.  Most hardcore bands are to all intents and purposes part-time DIY projects and inevitably as people get older, life finds many ways to make touring as a band that much more difficult.  But, as life further progresses, these pressures often begin to ease and the scope to return to doing something you love returns.  Anyway, if it is a mid-life crisis, guitarist Joe Simmons (who, unfortunately, had to miss the tour) is doing it in style: 1. Reform band 2. Launch brewery 3. Do both at the same time.

The gig itself was, as you will have gathered, superb.  There was a wonderfully celebratory air in the crowd as bodies flew, as songs were bellowed out word for word, and even the space created for debutant stage divers.  The band themselves were clearly delighted to be back out in the world, especially with new music to be interweaved throughout the set.  And there was also another inspiration for the band – the loss of bassist Kaleb Stewart, whose life the band were clearly determined to honour in the best way possible.

Fingers crossed that the wait until they next hit London is not quite so long this time round…

Refuse Records are celebrating their 30-year anniversary in Warsaw this weekend (see below), following another weekender in Berlin a month ago.  I have had the pleasure of buying records from Robert for over a decade (as well as attending some of the many tours he has promoted) and pictured are the great records that first introduced me to the label.  So, here’s hoping that this weekend goes down a storm!

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.

17th October Phew, Alison Cotton, Me Lost Me (Cafe Oto)

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)

Felsenmirror ‘Self-Titled’ 12-inch (Contraszt!)

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

Institute ‘Ragdoll Dance’ 12-inch (LVEUM)

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

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

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)

Stingray ‘Fortress Britain’ 12-nch (LVEUM)

Warkrusher ‘Armistice’ 12-inch (Agipunk)

Hello and welcome to this week’s Foundation Vinyl newsletter. I’m finalising this week’s edition having just caught an utterly brilliant As Friends Rust show, so I think we’ll get straight to it!  This is the line-up:

• Featured New Arrivals from Habak / Lagrimas, Advertisement, Private Lives, and The Cowboys
• Rocket From The Cast, featuring John Reis and Justin Pearson
• Shows and Tours, including Another Subculture’s 10th Birthday Weekender
• Coming Soon, including some cracking new releases from Contraszt!, Discos Enfermos, and Refuse

We apparently live in the age of the podcast, but this has all rather passed me by. It’s a medium that I only occasionally engage with.  I get the idea, the opportunity to dive deep into a specialist topic, but I haven’t really found many that deliver on that promise.  So, I remain very much tied to the written word.

There is, however, an exception to that rule: it’s the Cult & Culture podcast, hosted by Justin Pearson (Three One G Records, Deaf Club, The Locust, Planet B, Struggle, Swing Kids) and Luke Henshaw (Planet B). The podcast focuses on hardcore punk, with a particular – but not exclusive – focus on music emanating from San Diego.  One guiding principal though is that Justin only interviews people that he knows, which lends an easy familiarity to the conversations, that in turn produces interviews of real depth.  And, since the show began a couple of years ago, there have been intriguing discussions with bands ranging from Adult to Deaf Club, Silent to Napalm Death.

The episode that I want to touch on today is a recent one with John Reis (Pitchfork, Rocket From The Crypt, Drive Like Jehu, Hot Snakes).  Now I must confess that while I knew of John, I have never had the opportunity to immerse myself in his music.  I still crack out Scream, Dracula, Scream! from time to time (On A Rope remains a song to lift any mood), but strangely I had never connected with his other projects.  Hence the clear bias towards Justin’s bands in the photo above!

So, the interview itself was not coloured by any preconceptions on my part, and what followed proved to be a genuinely insightful and humorous take on punk through the decades, touching on interactions with everyone from Ian MacKaye to Henry Rollins via Danzig.  And it also explored a range of themes from first discovering hardcore – ‘It feels wrong the first time you hear it, like it should be illegal’ – and different bands’ motivations – ‘What’s more grosser than ambition.  Such an ugly look’ – to the best definition of post-hardcore that I think I’ve heard – ‘What hardcore turned into for us.  Where it went next’.  It is also interesting to hear John discuss the contrasts between his three best known projects: the fun, Rocket From The Crypt (‘Nothing more fun than being kick ass’ through relentless practice); the introspective, Drive Like Jehu; and the more literal, Hot Snakes.

I’ll leave you to listen to the interview for the full detail, but there are three overarching themes that really caught my attention.  The first is reflections on the gig culture of the late 1980s and early 1990s, notably the random violence and jock culture that scarred elements of the West Coast scene.  It is true that gigs in London had a much more volatile feel in those days, but violence of the type described was pretty rare.  So, it was interesting to hear that the community co-operative venue Che Café in San Diego was born as a direct result of people wishing to create a space that was, at least initially, free from such behaviour.

The second theme picks up on a topic from one of my recent pieces on The Lost Art Of The Spoken Word at hardcore gigs.  Now, it turns out that while John hates singing (which he does only for Rocket From The Crypt), he positively enjoys the role of front person and talking with audiences.  This stems, he says, from what first drew him to punk.  Whereas metal bands wanted to be ‘worshipped like false idols’, punk was a great leveller – ‘We’re on all the same stage, band and audience’ – and that two-way communication is vital to cultivating this and breaking down barriers.  He also picks up very neatly on another important dynamic that arises from this equity and serves to make punk shows unique: ‘We all have a responsibility to make tonight great’.

The final theme is less specific to music and relates to the recent death of Rick Froberg, John’s friend and collaborator across Pitchfork, Drive Like Jehu, and Hot Snakes.  It was clearly difficult, yet also helpful, for him to talk about his relationship with Froberg.   He speaks very eloquently about the nature of loss.  That moment when you think you need to talk to someone before realising that, obviously, you can’t.  The glimpse of someone at a space you often shared, which is, of course, a ghost of your imagination.  Time helps to blunt loss, but it forever shades aspects and moments of our life.

So, dive in for a thoroughly rewarding hour.  And in the meantime, I’m off to discover Drive Like Jehu for myself.  Better late than never…

‘Cult and Culture’ is available on most podcast platforms, including at ruinousmedia.com/cultandculture.

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.

7th October Clear Channel, Agua Viva, Es (New River Studios)

7th October Three Swords Fest (The Engine Rooms / including Change, Cruelty, and Odd Man Out)

17th October Phew, Alison Cotton, Me Lost Me (Cafe Oto)

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, 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)

Drink Deep ‘DD’ 7-inch (Refuse)

Felsenmirror ‘Self-Titled’ 12-inch (Contraszt!)

Hez ‘Panamaniacs’ 12-inch (Discos Enfermos)

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

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

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

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

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 As Friends Rust, Damien Done, Optic Sink, and Corker
• A Pessimist In Search Of Dystopia
• Shows and Tours, including new dates from Es, Institute, and Stingray / T.S. Warspite
• Coming Soon, including new releases from Discos Enfermos, Feel It, and Persistent Vision

When I hear the term concept album, my mind immediately registers a clanging alarm bell – self-indulgent instrumentation, bloated narratives, and over-extended run-lengths.  Now, to some extent this can be true as, let’s face it, prog rock almost colonised the term in the 1970s.  But in reality, concept albums in the truest sense of the term – an album narratively bound by a single cohesive idea – have long formed an integral feature of contemporary hardcore.

This thought process was first ignited by several recent arrivals here at Foundation Vinyl, which got me thinking of the different forms a concept album can take from the specific (a book, a picture, even a word), and the broadly expressive (the illustration of an idea), to the more fully actualised (a detailed marrying of narrative and idea).

Let’s take the specific first.  A great example is the recently reissued Men As Trees LP, ‘Weltschmerz and Sea of Ice Songs’.  Men As Trees were a DIY screamo band from Michigan, who were active from 2003 to 2009.  ‘Weltschmerz’ explores a very specific concept drawn from that German word – meaning a sense of grief at how the world falls short of our hopes and expectations, and pessimism that it ever can.  They sought to examines this idea through the life of naturalist and conservationist, Dick Proenneke, who lived in remote isolation for some thirty years in the Alaskan wilderness.

The band are not explicit on the connection they are seeking to make with Proenneke’s life.  My personal interpretation is that the link is not in the sense of removing ourselves from wider society to start afresh – there are few solutions to be reached by living as a hermit.  But rather in the fulfilment that can be achieved through forging a level of self-sufficiency and learning skills that enable us to do so – an allusion to the DIY ethos that anchored the band.  Indeed, the album ends on a quote from Proenneke that echoes this sentiment, ‘Too many men work on parts of things. Doing a job to completion satisfies me.’

The second half of the reissue ‘Sea of Ice Songs’ is perhaps even more specific, concentrating on a single artwork, Caspar Friedrich’s haunting arctic painting ‘Sea of Ice’.  This was a theme that the band was to revisit when they reformed as Locktender in 2012, whose three LPs focused exclusively on the sonically examining the work of ‘Kafka’ (2013), ‘Rodin’ (2014), and ‘Friedrich’ (2018).

But, a truly successful concept album must not simply explore the idea or narrative, but also forge a cohesive musical expression.  And it is here that Men As Trees excel, through blending extended passages of evocative ambient post-metal with cathartic crescendos of hardcore intensity.  Not only conveying a sense of Alaska’s natural beauty, but also building layer upon layer to create that sense of momentum being built, a task being completed to satisfaction.

The next type is the more broadly expressive, that seeks to create the concept of an illustrative potential future.  This is a route that Rigorous Institution have deployed to great effect both on their early EPs (now collected as the ‘Strange Harvest’ LP) and their debut full-length, ‘Cainsmarsh’.  Throughout their discography, the band’s aim is to conjure a near future dystopia born of environmental catastrophe.  Their lyrics vividly portray a world in a state of virtual, brutal collapse.

But it is their music that brings full realisation to the concept.  By skilfully fusing doom-laden crust with anarcho-punk, the band create an atmosphere of unrelenting, dark foreboding.  Growled, half-spoken vocals prove the perfect foil to this post-apocalyptic soundtrack.  The band locks into discordantly powerful grooves throughout, enriched by haunting gothic flourishes.  And there is a sense of dread that permeates every aspect of ‘Cainsmarsh’ – a feeling that no matter how bad things have become, only worse is to follow.

And any discussion about hardcore concept albums wouldn’t be complete without exploring the work of Alex CF, which will lead us to the third of our variants in the guise of one of his current bands, Morrow.  He was originally lead singer of Fall of Efrafa, who released a trilogy of albums based on the novel ‘Watership Down’ by Richard Adams.  The albums ‘Owsla’ (2006), ‘Elil’ (2007) and ‘Inlé’ (2009) address the story in reverse and use it to deftly interrogate themes of authoritarianism, animal rights, and atheism.

Since the band bowed out, Alex CF has been involved in a myriad of projects all of which, to a greater or lesser extent, have been conceptual in nature.  His current three projects most certainly are.  Median Rot, in partnership with Bryan Lothian of A Global Threat, investigate themes of urban financialisation and social segregation through J.G. Ballard’s novel ‘Concrete Island’ on their EP ‘Exit’.  A similarly specific concept is explored by his band Urskek, a collaboration with members of Monachus, who on the LP ‘Thra’ unleash a bone-shuddering doom metal reimagining of ‘The Dark Crystal’ film.

But it is his third live project, Morrow, that is perhaps the most conceptually adventurous of the three, seeking as it does to actualise an originally conceived narrative.  Across a trilogy of albums – ‘Covenant of Teeth’ (2016), ‘Fallow’ (2017), and ‘The Quiet Earth’ (2023) – Morrow render a post-apocalyptic world through the eyes of a futuristic nomadic tribe to explore themes of environmental and technological catastrophe.  Morrow, in fact share a latter temporal phase of the same fictional universe of another of Alex CF’s projects, Archivist.

Sonically the band, which features members of Momentum and Svalbard, evoke this ravaged world through d-beat fuelled melodic crust, with violin and cello infusing a wider hue of mournful melancholy.  Across the albums, Alex CF shares vocal duties with a wide range of guest vocalists from bands including Archivist, Autarch, Drei Affen, His Hero Is Gone, and Masakari.  The result are truly furious call-and-response vocals that inject even greater urgency as the band hone a crushing assault that is equal parts raucous and reflective.

And so, yes, concept albums can be bloatedly self-indulgent in the wrong hands.  But, when fused with the disciplines and energy of well-executed hardcore, they can also prove hugely successful – sparking both musical innovation and intellectual reflection.

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 October As Friends Rust, Calling Hours plus more (Boston Music Room)

3^rd October Smirk, Eel Men, and Morreadoras (The Waiting Room / UK Tour)

7th October Clear Channel, Agua Viva, Es (New River Studios)

7th October Three Swords Fest (The Engine Rooms / including Change, Cruelty, and Odd Man Out)

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 plus support (New River Studios / UK Tour)

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)

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)

Advertisement ‘Escorts’ 12-inch (Feel It)

Habak / Lagrimas ‘Split’ 12-inch (Persistent Vision)

Hez ‘Panamaniacs’ 12-inch (Discos Enfermos)

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

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

Private Lives ‘Hit Record’ 12-inch (Feel It)

The Cowboys ‘Sultan of Squat’ 12-inch (Feel It)

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