2009 Rolling "Punk" (or non-indie underground) Rock Thread

fuck yeah dudes its a new year.

OK, every other genre's rolling 2009 thread has posts now. Where are the "punk" (or non-indie underground) Rock posts? I'm sort of de-lurking myself (don't think I've posted on ILM since like 2005ish) to bump this thread up so I guess I should add some actual content. I've been listening to a bit of the Hudson Falcons recently (damn NJ influence). Anyone know if their newest album is any good?

i saw vampire hands do a stones cover set on new years eve, it was great!

Okay I'm trying to de-lurk myself too! But I don't have much to add to the thread so far. Does anyone know if Pissed Jeans are up to anything this year?

face accidents tour cd-r from late late 2008 is EXCELLLENT.

Red Mass (www.myspace.com/redmassfce), the band that most of CPC Gangbangs are now in is releasing an album this week. Mighty good and if you are not acquainted with CPC, get on that shit!

leftover from 2008, but the point stands:

TOTAL ABUSE

Haven't been buying/listening to much new shit lately, so I'm kinda out of the loop.

Right now I'm listening to Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, Endless Blockade LP from sometime late last year. I guess it could be punk?, but no, not really. Just a giant wall of horrible machine noise.

Recent Pink Reason split with Hue Blanc is excellent. Ummm...

Total Abuse's online shit sounded good the other day. They might be touring the UK in a bit, apparently

When for new Mayyors stuff?? Regretting having slept on Megan's LOLZ.

yeah i wish i had gotten that too!

my buddy just got the wavves 7" on tic tac totally, and shit is goo-ood. even better than the (sorta uneven, but great in parts) woodsist record.

Still not buying much 2009 rolling "punk" (or non-indie underground) "rock" records.

Newish Blank Dogs EP, The Fields, is a bit disappointing. Not terrible, but a solid step down from On Two Sides and the best of the singles. Couple good tunes, but mostly sounds like middling O2S outtakes. Similar production & tones, just second-tier tunes. I still rep for this band massively, but am kinda bummed that this is probably gonna hit more ears than anything else they've done, what with Woodsist hype in the air.

Coconut Coolouts 45 on Florida's Dying has awesome A-side, "We Drink Blood". Maybe too goofy for the Rusted Shut loving likes of ILM punk thred.

After much struggling, have turned the corner, re: greatness of Black Time. Did not want ITR LP I heard a year or two ago, but recent Skulltones 45 is fantastic, especially on long flipside "Doomsday Parade". Less garage, more indefinable post-ponk.

new wavves 7" preorder, although lets please all resist the temptation to turn this thread into termbo

http://www.theyoungturks.bigcartel.com/product/yt022-wavves-so-bored

i agree about the fields in a way, contenderizer -- i think im just very excited for the 2LP coming out, with its alt-vocalists and promised diversity-of-approach. dont get me wrong, i really really like just about all the blank dogs songs he's done to this point, but broadening the palette is a great idea. i continue to approve of his trajectory, and i bet ill listen to the fields in a year, and itll sound just as good as the hozac 7" or on two sides.

wrt waaves, blank dogs, teenage panzerkorps etc...

i like all these bands, but the whole "in the red" recording style is getting a little old for me. i like a lot of these bands and think they have good songs and wouldn't mind a more trad recording approach.

Been listening to Meth Teeth and Eat Skull (and Blank Dogs) this week and yeah I kinda agree, I like these bands and obviously the lo-fi aesthetic is part of that, but when every song is recorded so everything is massively distorted it takes away the impact.

That said I've been loving Born Pregnant by Drunkdriver and I'm Fucking Dead by Fag Cop.

When for new Mayyors stuff?? Regretting having slept on Megan's LOLZ.

I like that one too.

The recorder grot thing is weird. There are times (bands, records, songs, moments) when I think it is thee shit, makes perfect sense, sounds fantastic (recently: 1st Siltbreeze der TPK & TNV records, most Dank Blogs, lotta that Columbus Discounts), but as a blanket style laid over a whole scene, it gets annoying. Love Eat Skull, but a lotta their shit is just totally unlistenable unless I'm in the right mood. That fucking Skulltones EP, for god's sake. Same for Psychedelic Horseshit and subsequent piles of TNV. Especially frustrating when a really killer hook or arrangement is reduced to a bad, blurry blind-drawing of itself for the sake of aesthetic politics.

I like the Hospitals approach, where it still sounds no-fi, but you tell can tell they put some thought and effort into sculpting distinct sounds.

yeah like when dig yourself came out it seemed pretty awesome like real refreshing...and i do like these bands, love on two side a lot...it's just getting to be overkill IMO

im totally still ok with it LOL

Agre about overkill with the lo-fi. That Eat Skull ep really put me off getting the LP, actually. Maybe unfairly. Although I finally got hold of the Sic Alps record, and they've really got the fidelity right. It just sounds nice and dusty without losing the fleshiness.

That Eat Skull ep really put me off getting the LP, actually. Maybe unfairly. Although I finally got hold of the Sic Alps record, and they've really got the fidelity right. It just sounds nice and dusty without losing the fleshiness.

― gnarly sceptre

OTM, re: Sic Alps, but you really oughtta check out the Eat Skull, even in spite of me saying bad things. Starts out harsh (tho not as harsh as Meds etc.), but gets really damn good as it goes on. Not saying you neeeed it, but listen to it at least, maybe even skipping the first few tracks. Never less than noisy, but they often back off enough to let the songs work.

That Oh Sees 'Master's Bedroom' album from last year seemed like a good example of how to step away from ultra-distorto production and not lose the essence of what you had

^ another good example, though I think the previous Oh Sees did a good job of it, too (relative to Coachwhips/other Dwyerses).

i should recheck sic alps...i saw them live once and i was really hyped and i guess live it just came off as some sort heavyish 2 man bluesy stuff...like not near as far from i dunno black keys or something as i thought it would be...are the records weirder?

In that they sound NOTHING like 2man blues shit ala black keys, yeah, totally. Some older stuff is kinda on the fucked up folky noize tip, like whispy melodies under lo-fi J&MC gnarl. Mold weed crud etc. Some newer stuff is kinda On Sees-ish, with Nuggets vintage rock action mixed in for extra pep. Not really retro, but with toes in distant waters. Pleasures & Treasures is real good, as is Description of the Harbor, former with teh former sound, latter with the latter. Recent U.S. EZ kinda tends back to the hazy, mellow, but with killer tunes and lotsa detours.

yeah it just coulda been the night i saw 'em....i have tons of friends that love the shit out of them....

they seemed like they were in a sorta "jammy" mood and it just sorta chugged along on some classic rock type riffs for long periods of time...but who knows could have been an atypical show or something

Dunno about the live show THB. Could suck for all I know. I did see the Black Keys one time, before I'd heard the Big Come Up, and was totally confuzed about why all these otherwise normal-looking people were grooving to this totally average (and kinda cringe-phoney sounding) rehash blooze rock hooey. Made it subsequently impossible to enjoy the albums, tho Come Up is inoffensive. Not that this has anything to do with anything...

the gary war album sounds like a dude biting haack but trying to make music that still fits into the nu-fuzzy aesthetic

the album has one good track on it but also has this really bad cover of eye in the sky

I can't imagine a bad cover of Eye In the Sky. Or well, yes I can, but I don't want to.

Re: Sic Alps - just listened to their cover of Throbbing Gristle's United, not bad but not essential. I like "A long way around to a shortcut" a lot though.

Also new to me - Sex Vid - Communal Living - fucking awesome.

Anyone picked up those Zero Boys reissues?

I, um, got them sent to me but I have spent three weeks being in love with them. Meant to check them out for ages but this is the first time anything's been in print for years.

I quite like that this verson of the LP has two extra tracks they wanted on there but took off at the suggestion of Jello Biafra, even though he had nothing to do with the album - lol early 80s

I'm going to LA next week so hopefully I'll be able to get a load of this stuff in Amoeba. What's not OOP already, anyway.

This weekend I get to choose between seeing Finnish HC legends Riistetyt or Japanese noisecore "homage" the Wankys. I'm erring towards the latter at the moment (listening to their I Got Vasectomy demo ATM)

I was surprised to find a few different Sex Vid singles in a punk shop in Camden recently. Didn't know Camden kept up with that sort of thing. It's southeast of the station, just off Camden Street, but I'd never come across it before, despite living round the corner. You been there, Mark?? Also some Homostupids, Carbonas, etc. I bought the reissue of the Die Kreuzen Cows & Beer 7".

Would that be All Ages Records? If so yeah I've been there. It's OK but a bit pricey.

There's a distro in London that sometimes has a stall at punk gigs that has the Sex Vid stuff, amongst other things, they probably supply All Ages or something.

These are the guys: http://www.lavidaesunmus.com/PAGES/musframeset.html

Ordered from them before.

Yeah, it looks like it was All Ages. And yeah, pricey.

La Vida Es Un Mus is rad and cheap. I think Paco who runs it is booking Sex Vid for the UK this year but unsure how concrete that is right now. All Ages is something to do w/ the Household Name label if i'm remembering right?

Holy shit is it cheap. They have the Samoans and Zero Boys reissues for £8 each. Thanks for the tip!

wtf, the drummer out of Hacksaw has just been on BBC Takeshi's Castle rip-off Total Wipeout.

Caught Finnish hardcore pioneers Riisteyt playing in Henry's cellar bar week before last, and they totally tore the roof off. (No mean feat in a cellar!) Packed the place out with old-school crusties. Mad mental moshpit - someone was crowd surfing in a venue with about 18" of headroom. I went clanking off home with stray studs stomped into the soles of my engineer boots. Don't miss 'em if you get the chance.

Has anyone heard/liked NO TALK yet? I just got one of their singles today. They are from HOOSton and play gruff chuggy midpace mega sarcastic bad attitude punk rock songs called things like 'Invade Iran'. Also this single is on a label called ARSE GESTAPO 82.

its only february, but "mega sarcastic" is the best band description ive heard this year.

hozac singles club now accepting applications!

hahaha i was waiting to confirm that you heard before i blew it up on the internet

anyone from NYC know this band, Extra Life?

kinda reminds me of Make Believe, sorta...but with a little Slaves/Pleasure Forever thrown in...or something

http://www.myspace.com/extralifetheband

Isn't Extra Life somehow associated with Zs ?

yeah, most of what i like in punk store is good yelling. plus a lot of metal. and i wasn't right about punk store anyway, because they also listen to 100,000 different versions of screeching weasel, of which the problem isn't yelling.

screeching weasel has other problems.

king of yelling:

http://www.poisonpie.com/sounds/haino/images/2_4a.gif

my memory is not what it once is - you're gonna have to tell me who that is.

oh, it's keiji haino. japanese guy who yells a lot. saw him a few years back <3. also like negative approach/laughing hyenas. brannon = ace yelling.

but you don't like "saxophone skree + convulsive drumming"?

is that something i said? it sounds like something i'd say...

and i mostly don't like whatever that would describe (european free music? it's coming back to me now), but then sometimes i do. thing about KH is that i'm appreciating him as much as the music. the persona, the dance & performance art aspects, the sui generis selfmade art spectacle he offers.

the sound alone is something else. frankly, i find many (most?) non-fushitsusha KH recordings fairly difficult to tolerate. too shrill, abrasive, chaotic. but a good live show is always accessible, no matter how harsh the noise.

it is in quotes because it is something you said. Is it the fact that it lacks a certain structure?

it's in part that it lacks what i think of as structure, but also because it doesn't do what i want music to do. i think of the relationship between music and me as being primarily physical. music moves a certain way and sounds a certain way and thus compels a sympathetic response. dance being the most basic version of this.

i can certainly enjoy the sensation of having waves of noise peel my skull back, but i prefer that it be anchored to a rhythmic skeleton my body can understand. or at least to an ambient drone i can inhabit comfortably. if the convulsive factor becomes dominant, i lose the ability to physically connect.

that's maybe why a lot of very harsh and even convulsive 60s/70s spiritual free jazz does appeal to me. because it seems as though the music - jazz music, the swing of it - is still present in and under the noise. like the music is trying to get out through the noise.

fwiw, i'm at this place recently where i'm finding a lot of value in music i'd previously written off. especially prog and art music of a non-punk sort. realizing just how closed-minded i've been about certain things, attached to restrictive (received) ideas about what's cool and what's not. enjoying letting that go, and i'm sure that there's a lot of stuff i need to revisit.

I hear that - I started listening to Magma, and now find myself listening to King Crimson. But - I get what you're saying about the rhythmic skeleton - there's definitely a range of free music or things that could be described as "saxophone skree + convulsive drumming" in terms of departure from that skeleton.

LOVE both magma & king crimson. dunno why, but king crimson have always been exempt from my distaste for prog. perhaps because they were some of the first such music i ever heard, before i had my baffles up. and magma are a universe unto themselves. it's hard to hate a universe.

One of favorite bands (that is now defunct) did a cover of De Futura, which led me to magma appreciation.

now i wanna know who. google sez the flying luttenbachers did it, but i thought they was still active. have never heard many (any?) magma covers myself, but then i'm quite new to them. really only know attahk, udu wudu and MDK.

thread has lost most of its punk points

xp - they broke up two years ago.

That Jeff the Brotherhood sounds really solid from a first listen.

jeff the brotherhood album is very good, esp "heavy damage", "the tropics", "bone jam", "mind ride". only complaints i have are that the sequencing is odd (definitely not front-loaded), and that 've already got a lot of the best tracks on singles - but those are minor quibbles.

plus wanted to 2nd samosa the gib on davila 666. keep forgetting to mention it, but excellent album w lotsa variety and a surprisingly high level of pop craftsmanship. was hoping it'd pick up fans outside the ITR/termbo/goner orbit - dunno to what extent that's happened though.

JTB and davila put on two of the best shows i saw in 09. kinda funny that they both also put out lps that don't begin to hint at the craziness they're capable of live. not bad records by any means, but surprising sedate, given the raw materials.

felt the same about several of the shows i liked best this year, especially jay reatard, wooden shjips, AFGCT. all put out records that are almost criminally misleading wr2 what they're capable of onstage. which doesn't make them bad records by any means, but the contrast is jarring.

Just to veer off topic again for a second, I saw the Luttenbachers cover De Futura in a basement in my town in like 2002 or 03 and it was very good. It was the trio lineup with two bass players.

Jay's show this year in town was really good. But he fired that band and seems to have gone off the deep end according to reports coming out of Memphis. So volatile.

just listened to jeff the brotherhood lp again. kinda regret mentioning it here, on punk thread. it is so not punk. kinda sounds like a hybrid of fu manchu & the cars. stoner riffs + minimal 80s pop. live there's an OTT DMBQ/monotonix vibe, but the album's pretty restrained.

is great and everybody should hear it tho

I saw them live earlier this year, and they were good, but definitely had the classic rock/stoner riffs thing going. They don't play with fire or knock over trash cans like Monotonix, they just play their instruments.

where'd you see them, sh?

Oakland, where I live.

check

agree they don't go crazy overboard with the "showmanship", but there's definitely a theatrical element. at least there was when i saw em - heavy guitar posing, kit destruction, etc. plus the music's pretty cartoony to begin with. not so far from like turbonegro, guitar wolf, hellacopters, (though a lot more humble and genuine in their rock god shtick).

well yeah, but not to the OTT extent of Monotonix.

i have never heard that band, but i met jeff the brotherhood in a diner near my house and i talked to them about kate bush & madonna.

you should see them! great band and excellent dudes. talked to them for a while after the show, but mostly (ok entirely) not about kate bush & madonna.

i almost never go out to see live music honestly. i'm an old curmudgeon.

i see lots of live music but don't listen to enough recorded new/contemporary music, so perhaps we balance each other out.

i don't listen to a lot of new music either. i have to keep up with it to an extent cuz of my job, but... not at home.

heh - i see lots of live music cuz of my "job."

i just like going out to see bands, and sometimes i buy their records and bring them home to listen to.

full circle

good for you, more people should be like you.

yeh, nowhere near enough middle-aged white guys in the world

oh wait, this isn't the metal thread.

http://www.ugo.com/images/articles/000903600/903558_big.jpg

hipsters...

anyway, i was reading this angry-making dusted review and it was making me all angry. who is patrick masterson and why is he such a dink about the eat skull record?

i wasn't aware that the band were "in such an important position regarding the long-term legitimacy of the current underground", so i guess i'm insufficiently bummed about their failure to immanentize the eschaton, but it's still a damn good record, given that they seem to be total weed hippies.

kinda bummed i didn't nominate it on best of 09 thread, but not too much cuz no one would have voted for it anyway. curse you, the double ex! and yes it does belong in punk thread because they kinda rip off the misfits in one song.

I love Dusted, even when they're really, really wrong. Y'know?

i also for the record love dusted and recommend the regular reading of plus have nothing against patrick masterson who i'm sure is otherwise charming and am apparently way too fond of "kinda" and "bummed" for the record

contenderizer - if you want to pm me i can tell you eat skull-related stories vis a vis "the underground", but I won't post about it here.

Glad I'm not the only Dusted reader. Felt like I was for a little while.
I like Wild and Inside a lot. All my friends in Portland HATE Eat Skull.
Hey guys new Eddy Current Suppression Ring album comes out early next year.
New track on their myspace page.

I read Dusted too, from time to time. Rob from Eat Skull lived in Oakland for a while before moving to Portland and starting that band.

my favorite "P"(ON-IU)R of 2009:

guinea worms -- IKWWFL 7" (cannot WAIT for upcoming 2LP)
psychedelic horseshit -- too many hits 2x7", shitgaze anthems 12"
bitters 12"
beets LP
eat skull -- wild and inside LP
dum dum girls 12" and hoZac 7"
christmas island -- blackout summer LP
all little claw records
thee oh sees -- sub pop 7", dog poison mini-LP
ty segall for general achievement
axemen reissues on siltbreeze
woven bones 7"s on hoZac and sweet rot
electric bunnies LP
brilliant colors releases
grass widow LP and 12"
tyvek LP and sub pop 7"
still love box elders; wish the record had been the game-changer that the grotto 7" was last year, but whatever...

does kurt vile count? if so, give it to the mexican summer 12".
does blues control count? if so, their LP gets it.

Local Flavor is top of the heap for me, too, but it's a more Psych-Drone-Freak kinda thing, I thought. I haven't had enough time to digest the Axemen Scary pt III reissue, but it has been bewitching the two times I've played it. It's really very funny, but also to be taken seriously.

It's really very funny, but also to be taken seriously.

that's exactly how i feel about both the axemen reissues!

i talked to them at their carrboro show, and they were sweet guys, too. the whole in-joke thing translated to the live set very well. big cheap motel is very good, but scary is great. ive only heard them through the reissues, so im very excited for three virgins and whatever else siltbreeze is gonna reissue.

the drummer told me about their reunion -- a couple years ago, he was planning his 50th birthday, and someone ran into the bassist, who was homeless and living in a traincar, and invited him to the drummer's party as a surprise. when they were at the party, people kept saying "hey it's the axemen again! the axemen!" (except he said it with his kiwi accent as "x-men" which was cute) so they started talking about wouldnt it be fun, etc, and eventually ended up on tour w times new viking!

That's nice. I love a redemption/reunion.
I never would have heard of them if it wasn't for the reissues, that's for sure.

Came across a band called Arsene Obscene searching for Metal Urbain rarities: great Francophone "bedroom punk" with a cool single "Partir A La Guerre" on Slovenly, and an LP coming. Ultra fuzzed out sound and truly Thunderous 70's punk riffing. Love it!