Void - Inner Ear Studios Demo

Void
Inner Ear Studio Demo
unreleased



by DC the Medic

First, let me say that Void is my favorite DC hardcore band. Yes, I like them better than Minor Threat and Scream, which is to take nothing away from those two great bands. Void played with a certain energy, even in the studio, that I haven't heard in many, if any, other bands. They seemed to create a maelstrom that threatened to make any song at any time fall apart into total chaos. Punk rock, indeed. Void were far from a technically proficient band, normally I would say that sloppy playing is not a valid aesthetic choice. However this is the exception that proves the rule. Although, to be more specific I don't consider Void to be sloppy or bad musicians, but rather reckless ones. All four guys just play as fast as they can as hard as they can, and if someone drops a beat, comes in late, or doesn't play in perfect synchronization with the rest of the band, then, oh well. Like I said before, the effect of all this is to create the legendary Void musical maelstrom.

Speaking of legendary, Void never seemed to get their due back when they were active. The closest they ever came to a full-length release was the Faith/Void split (still available through Dischord Records) even though they recorded Potion For Bad Dreams for Touch & Go Records. However, according to internet rumor, guitarist Bubba Dupree had some kind of undisclosed issue with it and has subsequently blocked the album's release for more than 20 years. And for Bubba Dupree, I found the comparisons between him and Greg Ginn to be both inaccurate and unnecessary. In my opinion, Dupree's work stands on its own and it should be enough for him to the manic guitar player from Void instead of "the Greg Ginn of the east coast" but I suppose there are worse people to be compared to.

As for the demos, they were recorded in the famous Inner Ear Studio in late 1980 and would eventually be released in a different track order as the Condensed Flesh EP. Different versions of some of these songs would later appear on the Faith/Void split. The sound quality here is excellent, and all the songs are killer. Recommended for any Void fan, any old school hardcore fan, and anybody else except for Hatebreed's lawyer.




Void - Inner Ear Studios Demo



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Pelican - The Fire In Our Throats Will Beckon The Thaw

Pelican
The Fire In Our Throats Will Beckon The Thaw
Hydra Head Records



by DC the Medic

Getting people to listen to instrumental music is like getting people to watch The Wire. They'll acknowledge that it's good and has its merits but, when you play it for them, you literally can see their eyes glaze over. I suppose, without lyrics to relate to or a singer to identify with, the music is forced to speak for itself. Appreciating this style of music requires a certain amount of effort on the listener's part which, unfortunately, most people are unwilling to put forth.

This is ironic, considering the amount of time people spend with earbuds in their ears. You would think a better appreciation for music would naturally develop. Maybe iPods are just another extension of the corporate idea of music as interchangeable background noise [It is. -BNF]. Then again, maybe I just hang out with the wrong people. After all, Austin isn't what it used to be.

As for the record, The Fire In Our Throats Will Beckon The Thaw is great. The blessing and curse of instrumental music is that the music must be cohesive and expressive enough to stand on its own. There are no shortcuts to accomplish this. Luckily, these dudes can play. The songs have rich atmospherics and sweeping movements that build momentum as the songs and album progress; and these guys can get heavy. Pelican originates from Chicago and they have a strong Midwestern element to their sound. I don't know why weirdos make the best music, or for that matter why so many weirdos come from the Midwest, but they just do. I can definitely hear equal parts Shiner and Isis in Pelican's sound, but the band takes these and many other elements to create something all their own.

I don't intend to merely stick the label "instrumental" on these guys and leave it at that. The joy of this band is that they defy any kind of classification. Their music is just music, and any other description or meaning, much like this album's title, is solely up to your own interpretation.




Pelican - The Fire In Our Throats Will Beckon The Thaw




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Isis – The Mosquito Control EP

Isis
The Mosquito Control EP
Escape Artist



If you’re only familiar with newer Isis material like In the Absence of Truth, this one is going to shock you. The Mosquito Control EP features the intricate melancholy of strange hardcore bands like Kiss It Goodbye with the crushing heaviness of Christdriver and mid-period Neurosis. There’s nothing on this EP that’s even remotely “Tool-like.” Personally, I prefer the sound of earlier Isis material like this record and The Red Sea (coming soon) and I wished they had kept pushing in this direction. “Poison Eggs” is one of my single favorite songs ever. The Mosquito Control EP is recommended for reefer-heads and folks who know what’s up.

This was requested at the behest of No Funeral writer DC the Medic. He said that he needed to hear something heavy because life in the ATX has got him down. Look what you Austin posers have reduced him too!





Isis – The Mosquito Control EP




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Shiner - The Egg

Shiner
The Egg
De Soto



by DC the Medic

The French word for egg is oeuvre, which also their word for a work or piece of art. Chef d'oeuvre is the French word for masterpiece, and The Egg is Shiner's masterpiece. This album showed more of a Jawbox influence than the shades of Season To Risk on their previous album Starless. After adding Josh Newton on second guitar, Shiner began adding polyrhythmic and polytonal elements to their sound. On The Egg, Shiner used these elements with odd time signatures to create multiple layers that formed not so much a wall of sound, but an intricate tapestry. On just about every song, every instrument is playing something separate that builds to a climaxing crescendo. Listen to "Play Dead" and "Andalusia" for the best examples of this. Don't assume this is just tuneless noise, this is definitely rock music in the truest Carduccian meaning of the term.

The album as a whole also takes these separate parts to create a sweeping movement that slowly builds steam until it reaches its climax on "The Simple Truth" and then recovers and builds again to a final exclamation on "Pills" before finally fading away on "Stoned." In a way this also represents the story of the band itself. They toiled for many years without receiving much recognition until shortly after The Egg was released they played one last show in their home of Kansas City and broke up. If the title track is interpreted to be autobiographical, they were finally left cradling their egg, their collected works, which in my opinion were ahead of their time and have only improved with age.

I know this isn't a metal or hardcore album, but it is still a very interesting one with a lot going on. Real fans of music would be advised to listen to this with a good pair of headphones to appreciate the many layers. It's just a shame these Midwesterners never got the appreciation they deserved when they were around. However they have gone on to form new bands in Shiner's wake, my personal favorite being Allen Epley's The Life And Times, which is chock full of spacey, Midwest weirdness. Accidental? Maybe.





Shiner - The Egg





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Black Flag - The Complete 1982 Demos Plus More!

Black Flag
The Complete 1982 Demos Plus More!
bootleggish type thing



by DC the Medic

The 1982 demos show an interesting aspect of the Black Flag discography. Damaged was recorded as a five-piece, but the songs were written with one guitar in mind. However the later material, especially My War and Slip It In were written for two guitars, but were recorded with only one player, Greg Ginn. The Unicorn lawsuit prevented the band from playing or recording anything as Black Flag for the better part of two years, muzzling the band during a period of peak creativity. When My War was finally released, it must have seemed like an entirely different band calling themselves Black Flag, and for all intents and purposes Black Flag was a different band. When the group finally emerged triumphant from the Unicorn lawsuit, Chuck Dukowski, Dez Cadena, and ROBO had all left the band. Undeterred, Greg Ginn found new players and continued to push the group forward, and Black Flag started releasing, in rapid fire succession, all the material that had been shelved for the previous two years. The rest, as they say, is history.

However in 1982, mired in their legal battles, Black Flag said to hell with court injunctions and went to the studio to record a demo of their new material. The 1982 demos are the post-Damaged material the way it was intended to be played. The lineup was Greg Ginn, Henry Rollins, Dukowski, Cadena, and Chuck Biscuits (post-DOA, pre-Danzig) on drums. These songs, especially "My War" and "Can't Decide" show the full, and unfortunately unrealized potential of Black Flag with two guitar players. When I hear the 1982 version of "My War" I wonder why modern bands who insist on covering this song (I'm looking at you Bleeding Through) don't take their cues from the layered sound Ginn and Cadena created. Biscuits' drumming fits this material surprisingly well, even though this was the only time he recorded with the band. The first two songs, "What Can You Believe" and "Yes I Know" were written by Cadena, and when he left the band he took the songs with him, so Black Flag never played or recorded them again. The session ends with a brutal version of "Nothing Left Inside" and "Scream" played back to back, or as I call it, eleven and a half minutes of pure hate.

The Plus More! consists of three songs and an interview from the Radio Tokyo studio which were recorded just before the band embarked on the My War/Slip It In tour in 1984. By this time the lineup had morphed to Ginn, Rollins, Kira Roessler on Bass, and Bill Stevenson on drums, which personally speaking, was always my favorite Black Flag configuration. They do not disappoint as they shred through killer versions of "I Love You," "My War," and "Swinging Man" showing a group reaping the benefits of countless hours of practicing. The interview gives some insights into the individuals' thought processes and feelings about being on tour, the infamous The Bars tattoo, and other topics.

The 1982 demos are a missing link between Damaged and My War and they show the progression of the band as it added more elements to its sound. They also make any Black Flag fan wonder what could have been if the band had never signed that deal with Unicorn records and had been allowed to record and take the audience along as they grew and progressed. The Radio Tokyo 1984 songs bring us back to what actually was and remind Black Flag fans that despite all that could have been, what we had/have is still worth listening to, still killer, and still better than most of the stuff you hear today. Needless to say this is one of my favorite Black Flag albums.



Black Flag - The Complete 1982 Demos plus more




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