Floridian "Power violence" / (and the death of hardcore?)

some of this is five or six or seven years old isn't it? i didnt even know any of these bands were still around.

No, none of those bands are still around! I'm just curious what people think of these bands--what their audience is, as their records are still in print and available, etc. Did sales just stop in 1997?

i bought all of these records out of hardcore loyalty, but i doubt i played most of them more than once. power violence seemed like the worst idea to me, even in theory (metal stripped of its dynamics at, like, gabba tempos and hardcore lenghts.) it really is the un-funkiest music possible, to the point where it just seems to bypass the body compeltely. "heavy" ain't about speed, fools.

the best power violence records were the early neanderthal and man is the bastard stuff.

the best stuff to come out of this southern hardcore axis were in/humanity. who were fucking monstrous and terrifying.

hardcore seems to have stalled/regressed into meathead/xxx kids land now; has it evolved at all since these days? are any bands today worth listening to, are they doing anything exciting?

i just realized man is the bastard were great because they knew how to use BASS. they were like early swans at hardcore tempos and lengths rather than death metal.

all the people i know who were into hardcore when i was are now into the whole lightning bolt/providence noise rock thing. or indie.

The new From Ashes Rise LP is terrific.

There might be some good stuff in that Buddyhead, Icarus Line, LA scene but I've never bothered to check

best hardcore band I've seen in a long time: Wrangler Brutes.

read article on wrangler brutes @ lotsofnoise.com, written my mike t of palatka; kind of got me thinking on this whole subject?

where on the site, Ian? I just looked for it and didn't see anything.

thanks!

wow, i had no idea sam mcpheeters had a new band.

The Florida bands were mostly emoviolence, weren't they? When I think of powerviolence, I think of west coast, Spazz, Discordance Axis, Capitalist Casualties, etc.

Asshole Parade may have had the most expensive looking equipment of any band I've seen outside of a stadium. They looked like a bunch of spoiled, preppy fratboy assholes, but their sound was ferocious.

Powerviolence on record was mostly a waste, but it was a useful genre in that a song over 15 seconds in length could seem positively epic. There was one incredible Stapled Shut song that made its one minute sound like forever.

"Angel Present" on the last Discordance Axis album is the same way, the final scream with the crazy riffs crossing all underneath sounds so final and cathartic, and it's like 10 seconds, tops. There's really nothing else like this stuff.

yeah jess Wrangler Brutes just were on a big tour, I saw one of their NYC dates and it totally fucking smoked.

also I don't know any of the other bands mentioned on this thread aside from Man Is the Bastard.

you're not missing much!

not as much as what you missed by not seeing Wrangler Brutes, probably.

I mean, yeah.

i am just a slave to the rhythm, i guess.

if you haven't heard the first or second in/humanity lps, however, i'd recommend them.

cool, thanks!

yeah... i'll have to check out that interview... used to know mike t a wee bit... eons ago. i witnessed all those bands first hand in gville.

i tend to think the post-hardcore people have molded over into the noise scene (load/threeoneg/skingraft/vermiform fall out/5rc). of course there's all that nu-emo violence like poison the well and the punk high kids seem to latch on pretty hard in various places. that continues some of the tradition. (in bland revival crapdom.)

the first time i saw AoR and LB i thought, wow, the last time i was that pumped up excited/deaf after a show was back in the day in gainesville. the sound is pretty different, but the energy and detachment is there.

at the time of all that gville stuff, i just remember also listening to san diego stuff like antioch arrow and uoa, etc. moss icon was huge with the kids around there as well. unwound. dc stuff. gosh, other west coast stuff... fisticuffs bluff, nuzzle...patterns make sunrise... good god...

i also had a roommate that was way into ornette coleman and john zorn and so "boom!"... we're playing doom to zorn's "naked city" and "torture garden" and then going to see a palatka show at the megarockarena or utility house... it was hard to miss the similarities.

in/humanity was almost comical to me. good comical, but comical.

all i know is... "the real punk" ... that dadaistic, diy, destruction/reconstruction/malfunction/mutation was best described as post-hardcore and emo violence, etc in 1995 around the time all those bands kicked it hard and fast and on the edge of experimental and somewhat aggressive/subversive... and today that's morphed into the noise rock scene... those elements of it that have remained somewhat rocking, somewhat entertaining more than masturbatory, yet risky...

that's the pulse of the living, the kids, those tomorrowmorrowland wolf girls and radio boys.
m.

I was in a band many people called "powerviolence." We were called, BLACK ARMY JACKET. Our drummer was also in DISCORDANCE AXIS.

-carlos nyc

HARDCORE WILL NEVER DIE! BRING THAT BEAT BACK! BRING THAT BEAT BACK!

I saw your drummer with Melt-Banana a few weeks ago, Carlos. If powerviolence has one singular legacy then may it be Dave Witte, the man is a fucking machine.

Carlos - I still listen to the 222 LP and the split with Hemlock pretty often - Your band kicked ass. Live, too. How's Orlando doin'?

I saw Black Army Jacket a few times. Dave Witte IS amazing.

Is Slap A Ham still putting out records? If not, yeah I'd say powerviolence is pretty much a dead genre.

DA has always reminded me of the locust and dillinger escape plan... good stuff tho. doesn't a merzbow remix exist?

an email i received today...

Subject: Nintendo Power Violence (syracurse)

FRIDAY DECEMBER 5, 2003 8PM $3
COMPANY GALLERY 110 W.FAYETTE @ CLINTON, SYRACUSE:

TOTAL INFORMATION INNOVATIONS:

Confronted by angry cyborgs you must navigate a twilight zone between
simulated battlefields and real-world event scenes. Now, you are a prisoner
here, subsumed in the command line of the program. You are trapped with
only 8-bit archetypes as your guides. Atari and Nintendo have colonized
your mind. You may choose to literaly pick up a controller and play a
videogame, but there is no choice in the psycho-active play going on.

VIDEO GAMES WILL PLAY YOU.

Data-hungry video friends stalk you relentlessly, you must pulverise them
with your info-warfare, before they elimnate you with theirs. You must learn
how and when to author your own messages. Even when you’ve overcome the
info-thugs, Evil Double-U, the mad and merciless mind behind the robot gangs
will leap out from where he’s been hiding. Yes, game player, tonight is an
a evening of installation/performance/electronic collage--you as the
audience are part of the conflict. Live feeds from the very games you play
are processed live before your own eyes/ears!

A legion of ancient video games awaits you, as well as performance by
Jeremy Bailey, live video-battle by Zach Denfeld and Carl Diehl, electronic
wizardry by jeremy allen and ashley cox--- and special performance by Matt
Garite--as was featured in his presentation at the recent Level Up Digital
Games Conference in The Netherlands!

As the Evil Double-U warns: “it’s important for us to explain to our nation
that life is important. It’s not only life of babies, but it’s life of
children living in, you know, the dark dungeons of the Internet.”

FRIDAY DEC 5th 8pm, $3 110 W.Fayette @ Clinton, Armory Square, Syracuse!
for more information contact:
cfdiehl@hotmail.com

And then there's me, whose email address is named after a powerviolence band I've never actually heard. Keeping the dream alive there.

Anyone ever get/hear the East/West Blast Test thing that Chris Dodge and Dave Witte did together? Thoughts?

If you like all things Witte (as I do), then you'll like East/West Blast Test. Sort of what you'd expect from Witte in terms of percussion (blindingly-fast-hyper-blast-beats), but the stuff Dodge adds is a bit more varied than the usual grind. Hints of jazz, etc. Fun.

It looks like Slap-A-Ham is done and that Relapse is reissuing the EWBT album -- http://www.inmusicwetrust.com/articles/60k07.html.

Lack of Interest was strange, it sounded like their guitar player was playing through a 10 watt crate amp.

Hey, thanks for the kind words about BLACK ARMY JACKET! That means a lot to me...

-carlos nyc

The Blast Test disc is out. And Hydra Head is in the process of reissuing the Discordance Axis catalog - Original Sound Version is already out, with a shitload of extra tracks. Jouhou will be out next year.

omg jouhou is fucking kicking my ass today. i so so needed something like this tonight.

I like the name. So this is worth investigating?

if you like very very very fast stop-on-a-dime grind with weird quasi shoegaze texture things going on when the notes overlap in the background (and the pre-requisite screamy/growly bits)

and, of course, i know you do

Well, yes.

yeah, discordance axis is grebt.