punk & hardcore

Led By Lions are a band that are fairly local to me, with members hailing from several areas of South Wales. This band was born from the ashes of long-running metal-meets-pop-punk group Man Of The Hour, who have been flogging the local circuit in various guises since 2007, so A Long Time Coming has been, well…a long time coming, really. Led By Lions is essentially the final incarnation of Man Of The Hour, with the…

I’ve had this album for years, and I can’t remember where I got it from. Anyways, I got it and was expecting some nasty goregrind but instead was met with some metallic punk sound so I fucked it off and forgot that I had it. It wasn’t until I saw Malignant Tumour live in Obscene Extreme Festival 2013 that I remembered I had this 12″; Gumpy said something about really enjoying them and wanting to…

This is one of the more ‘brutal’ Misfits releases. If anything, it is the fastest, grimiest (studio) recording the band have done. Even the cover art alone is something more crust/grind-looking, although it was released a while before those genres really came into their own. This spins at 33rpm, which is surprising considering how short it is, I was expecting it to be a 45. Still though, Earth A.D. / Wolfs Blood is a short…

Well, this is one short-ass tape. I should have seen it coming really, going on the Witch Cult live sets that I’ve experienced. This tape is Witch Cult to the core; starting off with some building harsh noise before ramming head-on into a grinding fury of total chaos and speed. Drainland have only two songs here, but they are really good; I just wish it lasted a bit longer (then maybe this review could be…

This is one of my favourite grind-related things of 2012. Everything about this thing is just perfect; the production, the balance and the over-all vibe is amazing. Shoot The Bastard are a fast, punky grindcore act that features members of boozing grind unit The Afternoon Gentlemen. STB are most definitely more “to the point” though, with a stripped-down affair of super-fast hardcore goodness. Imagine Crass on amphetamines crossed with, I dunno…Unseen Terror or something. That’s…

I fucking love Gets Worse, to be honest. What a cracking fucking band. This little 45rpm 7″ EP starts off sounding very metal indeed, but it does not take long for the powerviolence assault of the senses to fully begin raining down on your poor little ears. After the little intro “Too Much Talk” starts off with a mid-paced growly approach before heading into blasting territory and then into something resembling a hardcore breakdown…that’s pretty…

When I heard that Fukpig were returning with another 7″ I welcomed the news with open arms. Bad Fucking Dickhead looks absolutely fucking amazing…shit…just look at it! And thankfully, after the slightly off-key release of 3, Fukpig are back on track; Bad Fucking Dickhead sounds as fucking amazing as it looks. I can’t really understand what is being said but there is a lot of swearing and a lot of screaming, which is always a…

Holy shit, Corrupt Moral Altar are heavy! Like, proper heavy! I love the mix of styles going on here; one minute I’m getting doomy vibes, the next it’s all about the crazy flat-out grind type of shit! Wrap all that into a modern “dark hardcore” ball (think Black Breath, Nails and all the recent shit Southern Lord has been peddling) and you’ve got one hell of a 7″. Neither side is better than the other;…

Hate sound absolutely nothing like what I expected. Being totally unfamiliar with them, I should really have looked them up before buying this record, but Bongripper’s name alone carried enough weight to seal the deal for me. This split spins at 45rpm, so it is unfortunately very short, but hey – give me quality over quantity any day of the week. So like I said, Hate sound nothing like I anticipated. Splitting with Bongripper made…

This is a nifty little split 10″ that I keep forgetting I own. It’s in a plain white sleeve with a stamp like a club 12″ and recently until I separated my 10″ and 12″s onto different shelves I would keep losing it in the pile of vinyl that I have. The choice of artists appearing alongside each other here is pretty varied, but there isn’t a shit song on the entire thing. It spins…

I first saw these guys by chance when I went up to Bristol to catch Weekend Nachos. Little did I know until a few days before that the show was an all dayer, filled to the brim with some of the best fuckin’ grindcore bands the UK has to offer right now. Despite the fact that I had completed the Ultimate Burger challenge (I won’t go into it) pre-gig and was in a state of…

Crossface aren’t particularly bad for your average hardcore band. I don’t understand hardcore at all so I’ll skirt over this before I say something to embarrass myself and bring down a sea of X-marked fists upon my head. Schnauzer on the other hand is one of my favourite things ever. Why is it then, that it has taken me so long to finally write a post for this, one of my all time favourite 7″s?…

One doesn’t really know where to start when it comes to analyzing the works of Steve Albini, and if I’m honest I’m still a total amateur on the subject; although I guess Songs About Fucking is a great place to start considering it is rather well known. I kinda worked my way backwards through the world of drum-machine propelled music, starting with Agoraphobic Nosebleed and other digigrinders, then onto Godflesh and other industrial. Big Black,…

As much as I facking adore Fukpig I can’t help but get tits-bored of this album by track three or something. I almost feel bad writing this, but this record is equal amounts nasty, heavy and boring. I know that it is hard to be original in the d-beat/crust corner of grind and punk, but even when Fukpig bring their own rather unique black metal-esque distorted tinge to the table, the combination of different outcomes is still disappointingly low….

Two bands, four songs – every last one of them covers. Yacopsae’s usual frenetic powerviolence noise attack has been dropped here for a more punk, almost progressive (ha ha) take on things. They cover two songs, by Gang Green and Verbal Abuse respectively and they are definitely more laid back on this 5″ than the flip-side which features Massgrav, who tear into shit with no fucking remorse! Noisy and very fast, Massgrav clearly are the dominating band on this…

Wow! This is short and sweet but it sure does the trick of hitting the ol’ grindcore spot  (could I shorten that to g-spot without sounding suspect? Hah). Necklacing’s pro-pressed tape release of I is a powerviolency grind smash up available in three lovely colors. I have the transparent red version. Don’t take my word for how awesome this is, listen to it for free and then buy it because it’s wicked awesome and cheap…

Post Mortem is another Seth Putnam band* from back in the day before Anal Cunt gained any particularly large international recognition. Although Seth is only on side A, he put this out on his own label; Wicked Sick Records (RIP). His vocals here show a whole different side to the guy so deeply associated with his usual shitty AxCx gargles and screams. Post Mortem themselves seem a bit lost musically, there is a whole lot…

Early Misfits seems to me to suffer to the same bane as Agathocles, all the same shit seems to be released on tons of different bloody albums. It is hard to tell what is the original recording of a track and what is different. I was going to start off by saying that Legacy of Brutality mixes alternate recordings of some tracks with other tracks that are originally off…then I drew a blank. They really…

I had a passing interest in Gallows when they hit “the big”; they were a gritty band combining the groove of traditional/doom metal with the energy, anger and song structure of hardcore and punk. Unfortunately, I’ve spun the one record with this song on it a few times (I can’t remember what it is called) and I don’t get it. I love “In the Belly of a Shark” as a single though, which is a…

This is a classic in my book. Never considered myself a Kennedys fan but I love this song. I remember hearing it on some lame Kerrang! compilation CD when I was in Sixth form. That I would later go on to discover Napalm Death had covered this made it even better. There is a few different versions of this pressed by both Subterranean Records and Alternative Tentacles, and I was initially confused with which one…

This here version of this awesome little record is the 2010 repress by Deep Six Records. For those of you not in the know (like me when I bought this – Ha ha!) this split was originally released back in 1996 as a collaboration between fellow blogspotters Bovine Records and Rhetoric Records. I got this off the Bones Brigade stall in Hellfest 2010. Basically what we have here is more horrible spazzy 8 track foolishness from Brutal Truth! Exactly what the doctor ordered!…

This is Agathocles’ split with Italian fastcore band Repulsione, released in 2008 as a co-release between the excellent Grind Block Records and ¡ZAS! Autoproduzioni. Limited to 500 copies on black wax. Another great Agathocles release, I’m not entirely sure if these songs are originals or not but they are not of the “what appears on 95% of splits” stock. Sound is raw as per usual, but great tunes. Repulsione, who feature members of 2 Minuta Dreka (also the…

Shred Yr Face is a 3-way split 7″ featuring The Bronx, Fucked Up & Rolo Tomassi. It was released on a pressing of 1000 red by Wichita Recordings, Matador Records, Hassle Records & the somewhat elusive Coalition Records in 2009. It was sold on the tour featuring all three of the bands on the record. I picked this up in Spillers Records a while ago, I remember buying it because it was cheap and I’d…

What a treat for the ears! Honestly, this one has been on the to do list for LIW for years and years – it’s embarrassing. Daughters are now much more, a complete whole other beast, but this album will always hold a place in my heart haha! Coming on like a garage rock band breaking out into some DEP style meltdowns during a recording session, Hell Songs possesses a beautiful blend of violence, intricacy and…