Operation Ivy - Energy

Just in case you didn't know: Energy is the name of the original 19 song LP from '89. The self-titled is the '91 reissue combining Energy with 1988's Hectic EP and the tracks from Maximumrocknroll's Turn It Around! compilation. Now that that's off the table, let's talk about the left hand corner's resident .jpeg image:

It might seem a little redundant to cover such a well known, ridiculously influential classic like Operation Ivy's sole LP, but whatever, I really, really, love this album and felt like talking about it. In fact, along with Slapstick's Lookit!, Gangster Fun's Time Flies When You're Gangster Fun, and Blue Meanies' Kiss Your Ass Goodbye, this album finally got me to pull the thorn of prejudice against ska-punk out of my side and embrace the complete whitewashing of a black originated genre. But hey, those are the absolute essentials of growing up, so we don't need to go into any more detail. Also: obligatory joke about ska's role in Christian youth in the 90's.

A lot of people refer to songs like "Knowledge", "Unity", "The Crowd", and "Caution" as Operation Ivy's classics, and while I'd agree that those are incredible tracks, the amount of praise heaped upon them sorta downplays the greatness of the rest of the album. There really isn't a single bad or even mediocre song here, and "Missionary" is probably one of the all time best closers - in league with "The Nautical Mile" and "Postures (Leave Your Body Behind)" as far as personal favorites go. I figure I don't really need to painstakingly describe these guys' sound if you stumbled upon this blog, but it's basically a mix of roughly produced East Bay pop punk and speedy ska guitar, the occasional horn, and vocal interplay provided by all four members (with Jesse Michaels at the helm, of course).
Man, do I not sound excited to be reviewing this. Try to ignore that please, I'm tired. I always take way too fuckin' long writing these entries and end up completely wiped out by the end and my writing gets slack as hell. Maybe blow up some balloons and throw confetti while you read it to synthesize my enthusiasm for this album.
Here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?nsxulenn0ue

I know ska is about as fashionable as pastel track pants nowadays, but if you somehow haven't heard this yet, give it a shot or two before you write it off. As far as the genre goes, this is it's masterpiece, and one of the most compulsively listenable albums I can think of. I'll probably cover this in a future post, but check out Jesse Michael's second full fledged band while you're at it - Common Rider. Their debut, Last Wave Rockers, is something I've probably spun more times than what could be considered healthy.

Weekend Nachos - Unforgivable

Here's a sub-review I did for Weekend Nachos' incredible 2009 album, Unforgivable. I actually already posted this as part of three-piece hardcore showcase in my other blog, but I feel there was a good chance it was lost on what little audience I had. Of course, this blog is brand new and so far, has only 3 followers, so being lost on a small audience might trump being lost on no one. Also, two of those followers write for this very blog. One of those two is me. Hrm.
Anyway:

"With a name bespeaking such incredible frivolity, your irony detector's should short-circuit when this bubbling cauldron of dark, humorless, and brutal, hardcore-and-sludge inflected powerviolence punches you square in the eardrums with it's teeny little balled up fists perfectly evolved to frictionlessly navigate the human auditory canal. Weekend Nachos have been kicking the veritable ass since 2004 (presumably) and have a few EPs and a full length preceding Unforgivable, and recently, an EP of pure sludge proceeding it. It's always nice to bear witness to a band unveiling their best work to date, and Unforgivable is totally on my nonexistent "Top 10 Of 2009" list somewhere. Y'know, floating in the intangible ether. Just like fellow face grinders Iron Lung's Sexless/No Sex "opus" (ie an album I like a lot), Weekend Nachos take this opportunity to further baste themselves in the sumptuous tar prepped by sludge cuistôts Eyehategod and low-end Man Is The Bastard, giving this album a biting dynamic betwixt the powerhouse blast-a-thons of yore, comparatively rockin' hardcore punk, and crushing doom riffery. It's nice to see Relapse Records can still throw a fastball here and there."

Get it here.
Buy it here.

Union Of Uranus - To This Bearer Of Truth

Third "emo" post from me in a row... if you don't count the extenuating circumstances (ie in-between posts) that make it decidedly "not in a row". As I described in the Reach Out post, this "genre" was the first thing to break me out of an existence dominated by grindcore, death metal, and crust punk exclusively, so excuse me if I harp on it's greatness for a while. Union Of Uranus, however, are really only "emo" by vague stylistic inheritance, though, so if you're down on the whole style but dig bludgeoning, dense, hardcore, this might the band to check out.

If you're a fan of Orchid, June Paik, or Usurp Synapse, you've probably heard these guys name-dropped as a point of reference. If this is the case, you probably don't need to read any further, as Union Of Uranus' sound very clearly influenced this gaggle and a whole bunch more. If not, imagine taking the "hardcore emo" foundation and fusing it with the wall-of-riffs approach of early crust punk, the hectic, battering, percussion of grindcore, and the suffocating darkness of early Neurosis. Or at least, that's what the first half of this CD sounds like. To This Bearer Of Truth is a discography piece consisting of two split EPs, a double 7", and one demo cassette. The latter of which is less atmospherically dense and more cornered on crushing hardcore. Still evil sounding shit throughout and fitting the aforestated descriptor, but with some definite stylistic advances from the earliest days that made these guys sound totally unique.

http://www.mediafire.com/?3tf2znijmdn

You might wanna listen to this in two parts, though. 9 long tracks of music this crushing and heavy-handed can be a little to much to get into at first. If you need any more reason to download this, members went off to form Chokehold, Tragedy, and His Hero Is Gone.

Reach Out - s/t 1994

Back in my mid teens, I found myself in my first and last incarnation as a musical purist. From the second half of 8th grade all the way through to the Winter of 10th, the BPMs had to exceed a jillion, the vocals needed to sound excreted, and distortion on the guitars had to be reminiscent of that deafening crunch you that rattles your eardrums whenever you begin chewing a mouthful of corn flakes. It wasn't until I was halfway through my 17th year that I finally began to break from the strict agenda of crust-powerviolence-grind and explore "emo" and its subsets. For whatever reason, I was fascinated by the fact that this recently popularized term was not birthed through ex-mall goths and scenesters, but by the limited creativity punks elicited in dubbing genres over 2 decades ago.
I guess it was probably because I had been feeding the directionless anger of my youthful soul while utterly emaciating my angst, but I took to this stuff with obsessive vigor, and hoarded everything I could find from the first, second, and third waves of the genre. Reach Out's s/t EP was one of the first pieces I picked up, and still one of my absolute favorites.
As Andy Radin put it, these guys play "hardcore emo", which is basically hardcore punk filtered through second wave emo with a lot of pained shrieking, chaos, and melody. It might be easier to hop over to fourfa.com though if you're looking for a more in-depth explanation.
Anyway, Reach Out were a Californian 5-piece that existed between 92' and 93' who ended their career on an incredibly high note with this self-titled posthumous EP. Unlike other bands in the gene pool like Heroin, Coleman, Three Studies For A Crucifixion, and Angel Hair, the discordant, chaotic, essences of the genre (as well the hardcore song structures) were more like mere aspects of Reach Out's style rather than the foundation. There's enough sensory overload here to keep you happy (especially in the vocal department), but disarmament never seems to be the intent of the songs. If anything, the four tracks on here, regardless of length, sound epic and grandiose without ever getting too cheesy and overstated. The vocals are primarily delivered in a desperate rasp, and are accompanied by those super-high pitch squeals (think Venus And Bacchus-era Saetia) we all love, and some clean narrative stuff just to saturate the EPIC aspects.
It's occurring to me now that I definitely don't possess the literary prowess to claim these guys as a hardcore band, then refute the sovereignty of the term to describe these guys properly. Also, that last sentence sounded really pretentious for some reason. Perhaps because it was. Or maybe it just didn't make much sense. Here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?6r46nh4thoqz7c2

This is the rip from the emoisdead mediafire page, but I split up the songs into their intended 4 tracks instead of two. It's definitely the best sounding version I've found, with most of the others completely nullifying the squeaky vocals and burying the narrative portions.

EDIT: Uploaded at last.

A Brief Repose...

Call me conservative, but I pine for the 90's punk sound. You know, fairly cheap recordings, raspy vocals, and shitty instrumentation.

I'm a pretty generic dude. I still listen to albums I grew up with religiously and as far as new music goes, I more or less look for bands that sound like stuff I already listen to. Usually these are albums that I overlooked during my youth, but on the rare occasion you will find a great new album. Although it's nice to see people exploring the sonic, aural possibilities of punk rock like Fucked Up or No Age, it's even nicer to see that some things haven't changed. Ben Weasel is still a doucher, making fun of Jawbreaker fans is still really easy, and the Lawrence Arms still crank out good tunes somehow. So it's only natural that there are some bands out there who aren't trying to reinvent the wheel. Unfortunately, the new Social Distortion dosen't look too promising, Bad Religion is still using the same drum pattern from 1995, and American Steel shat the bed on their last album. So what do? Well until a punk committee is formed that legislates and swiftly distributes wholesale assbeatings to lackluster bands, I'd like to use my tenure and soapbox on this blog to wade through all the crap for you, my friend, and spotlight some new up and coming punk bands, hailing from all over the US of A and the rest of the world. Stay tuned.

Asian Man Records 15th Anniversary Show

AHEM.

"Next year, Asian Man Records will celebrate their 15th anniversary. In honour of this, label founder Mike Park is aiming to reunite every band that ever released on the label for a festival set to take place June 16th, 17th and 18th at the Parside and the Bottom of the Hill clubs in San Francisco, CA. While this is an ambitious goal and has not yet been confirmed, some of the possible bands would include: The Broadways, MU330, Chris Murray, Alkaline Trio, Slapstick, Tuesday, The Honor System, The Chinkees, Less Than Jake, Nicotine, Slow Gherkin, The Lawrence Arms, Ee, Dan Potthast, Colossal, Polysics, Just A Fire, Mike Park, Duvall, Toys That Kill, Bagheera, Link 80, Good For Cows, Short Round, Big D And The Kids Table, Screeching Weasel, Coquettish, Satori, Pama International, The Bruce Lee Band, Shinobu, Akiakane, The Queers, No Torso, Buck-O-Nine, Bomb the Music Industry!, Lemuria, Andrew Jackson Jihad, Kepi Ghoulie, Wardogs, O Pioneers!!!, For.the.Win., Classics of Love, Smoking Popes, Knowledge, Let's Go Bowling, Five Iron Frenzy and Sundowner.
Maybe we should start a pool?"

You couldn't take 10 bands out of this lineup and have it notably depreciate in awesomeness. It could probably appreciate with some exclusions (Let's Go Bowling, how about), but it'd be way hard to make it suck. Of course, this shit is happening way out in California - the opposite coast of which I reside. Like viewing "The Fest" roster every single year, I always drool over the lineup but ultimately dismiss it as being too damn far away to travel to alone (I'm in NY, the Fest is in FL if you weren't aware). This festival might meet the same fate (ie not be so utterly blessed by my attendance), but only if The Broadways aren't confirmed to play.
In the future, I will go on at great length how amazing Broken Star is, how much better they were than The Lawrence Arms have ever been, and how unfair it is that they didn't record another LP, but for right now I'll just say this: I've been listening regularly to these guys since a friend of mine introduced them to me mid-high school. I've also been wishing they'd reform for a show pretty much from that same point.

Basically, if these guys get confirmed for Asian Man Records' 15th Anniversary Show, my driving across the whole stupid country will also be confirmed.

http://www.punknews.org/article/40664

Lifetime - Tinnitus

I'm glad there are so many bands that sound like Lifetime/Kid Dynamite. I guess I should lambaste Shook Ones and New Mexican Disaster Squad for their lack of originality, but dammit, sometimes it feels like neither Lifetime nor Kid Dynamite recorded enough to satisfy.

I don't know why I wrote that. I'm not going to talk about either clone band. That intro basically segued into irrelevance.

Anyway, Lifetime. This album here (there, to the left) is the band's last 7" record before 1995's classic Hello Bastards, and acts as kind of a stylistic intermediary between the aforementioned record's melodic hardcore niche and the emocore sound of Background. Basically, a combination of the best aspects of both phases of the band - the high energy and enthusiastic vocals of later albums mixed with the hardcore (the moshy kind) aspects and slow, heartfelt, segments of the early stuff. This guy is only about 11 minutes long, but in my opinion, it's the absolute best thing the band ever recorded. The semi-monotone vocals of Background and Dwell are gone, and the speedy hardcore punk mold has yet to set on the songwriting."Ferret" can stay stuck in my head for as long as my immortal, cosmos-swirling being continues to rock the free world. Seriously, though, all four songs are brilliant. Angry, hopeful, beautiful, angsty, and fun stuff here.

This EP is of course, totally out of print, but you can find it on similarly totally out of print compilation, Seveninches - a roundabout way of saying 'here's Tinnitus' and 'no I don't have a link to where you can purchase it':

http://www.mediafire.com/?qovnuwzyygg

The Shitty Limits - Beware The Limits

Alright, so for my first post I'd like to introduce you to a band called The Shitty Limits. Their sound takes elements of garage rock and 80s Dischord Bands and 70s punk rawk. In my ignorance I've never heard of a band who blends these things together so deliciously well. The Mr. Smoothie of punk rock.

Download - http://www.mediafire.com/?myoejmohdon

This is more of a test....except lengthier reviews in da future

American Steel - s/t 1998

Alright, first real entry time.
Firstly, there isn't a single good picture of this album on the entire internet, and my camera's MIA at the moment, so it looks like we'll have to deal with this muddy, resized, P.O.S until further notice. Secondly, seeing as this ranks amongst my top 10 albums of all time, punk or otherwise, I felt it'd be a great way to kick off this high-crime blogging operation (ie a blog that offers downloadables sometimes).

American Steel started up back in '95 in West Oakland, playing shows all around the East Bay before swapping a bandmate or two, touring the shit out of this shit, and ending up in the studio in '98 with the heroic Kevin Army, producer of a metric fuckton of awesome Cali punk bands and uh, guitarist (?) for the Bomb Bassets. The result was this 17 song condensed epic of gritty melody, aggression, dual guttermouths, and even some ska punk. If you're familiar with any of the other American Steel records, you have to understand that this album sounds nothing like any of them, barring perhaps 1999's Rogue's March, which is dynamically similar, but quite a bit slower and way less gritty. The songwriting here is fantastic, balancing raw aggression and purty melodies in a way which one never detracts from the counterpart and typically results in a chest-thumping anthem.
If I had to make a comparison, I guess it sounds kind of indebted to Crimpshrine and Operation Ivy, but if the two collaborated on the recording and screwed around with the tape speeds. The amount of hooks and riffs in some of these songs makes it sound like half of them used to be 5 minute long compositions that got boiled down into 2 minute ones, keeping all the parts intact but careening between fast and slow parts like they were being charged by the minute. I know it sounds kind of awful in theory, but it's the complete opposite in practice.
Listen to "Cheer Up" for a good example of this.
Also: it kinda sounds like the band has been buried in sand, but it's still an awesome song:

For years I was under the impression that this album was super-duper difficult to come by, but as it turns out, it's just massively, depressingly, unloved at this junction in history. In fact, when you consider how much attention these guys get on punknews.org for their later records (particularly Jagged Thoughts and Destroy Their Future), it's kinda difficult to believe it hasn't been reissued by one of the bigger labels like Fat Wreck or No Idea yet. You can actually buy this sucker from New Disorder still:

try it here: http://www.mediafire.com/?znah1erheli6c2r
fulfill the capitalist agenda here: http://www.newdisorder.com/oneband.eml?band=American+Steel

I picked up this album in 2006 and I've been listening to consistently ever since. It's really an amazingly good album. Maybe not perfect, but so completely exuberant and raw. All of American Steel's stuff is worth checking out, but if you haven't heard them yet, start here and go in order. A few people I know have had a hard time getting into this one after starting with their more polished stuff, but STAY STRONG, it's worth getting into.
Just don't expect too much from Dear Friends And Gentle Hearts, though...

IntroDICKtory

I don't know why I spiked the title with profanity.
But let's move on... this is the companion/irrelevant secondary blog to The Rest Is Just Music, which focuses primarily on art school disaster, avant-garde, noise, free jazz, and other music that no one actually likes but pretends to in order to appear cutting edge or unique (including me).

I'm a really big fan of pop-punk, hardcore, early emo, ska-punk, powerviolence, crust, and the like, but posting about stuff like the Beatnik Termites between reviews of Archie Shepp and the Incapacitants is a little pointless. I think it's safe to say most people stroking their beard and furrowing their brow to some Dave Burrell aren't going to be skanking to Choking Victim later. Actually, a Choking Victim fan probably isn't going to be listening the Beatnik Termites, either... Call it pandering if you like, but whatever, I'm really not a good enough writer to convince a world music enthusiast to try out a Promise Ring album (or vice-versa), so hey, here's a brand new blog.

Hopefully this'll be a collaborative thing, too, with lots of other (or probably "a few other") guys/gals contributing articles/reviews/uploads/concert feedback/naked photos. Hell, if virtually anyone asks, I'll let them give it a shot. Because I am a good Samaritan.

NEXT TIME: CONTENT