A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the “Love I Bring” b/w “My Cat is on Prozac” split 7” single by Sic & Mad and The Slackers. There’s little doubt that this review will sound dismissive – such is the most common byproduct of a release which isn’t very good. Now, it’s true that the governing wisdom in the music industry has always been that, “They can’t all be genius,” and that may be true – but basic quality...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the “Windowland” / “I Almost Lost You” 12” Digitally-Printed single by The Slackers. It can be fun to write a short review once in a while and, when one addresses The Slackers’ newest single, “Windowland,” it’s impossible to not be brief. Clocking in at less than ten minutes total, the two songs on the single (“I Almost Lost You” is the second cut in the running but, because both songs appear on...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the To Victory EP by Lars Frederiksen. After a career spent tirelessly writing, recording and performing music with a celebrated list of bands on an incredible number of releases (to date, that list includes no fewer than forty-five releases recorded with bands including Rancid, Stomper 98, Old Firm Casuals, The transplants, The Bastards and Oxley’s Midnight Runners), it seems genuinely surprising that, only thirty-eight years after he started, Lars Frederiksen has added...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into Plizzken’s …And Their Paradise Is Full Of Snakes LP. The fact of the matter is that, in punk circles, no one wants to be a “middle of the road” kind of band. Why? Well, as Dwight Eisenhower once said, “The middle of the road is all the usable surface. The extremes, right and left, are in the gutters,” and it is in those gutters (or teetering on the brink of them) where...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Pretty Garbage LP by Come Closer. While it’s very easy for me to get excited about a new punk band that I’ve never heard before (I’ve been listening to a lot of punk, for a for a lot of years), running across something which makes me excited because I can’t immediately qualify it is instantly attractive because it’s obviously operating within a paradigm I recognize, but there’s something about it that...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Kings LP by Antagonizers Atl. While it is far from un-tread terrain, it’s impossible to not get excited by the promise contained in the grooves of Kings – Antagonizers’ sophomore full-length album. This time out, the band has allowed the gang chorus/gang vocal power in them to build and season for a while before unloading it in a set of ten slabs which ignore the now long-worn costume that punk rock...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Now Or Never 12” EP by The 45 Adapters. From note one of their new 12” EP Now Or Never, it’s patently self-evident that while the band took almost four years between the They Call It Justice 7” and this new, six-song EP, they must have been working – because they don’t sound quite like the same band. As soon as stylus settles into groove on the A-side and the title...
Johnny Peebucks & the Swingin’ Utters Boots ‘n Booze (comic book w/ 7” single) (Pirates Press Records) Whether it was intentional or not (and, given the multi-media-angled nature of this release, which combines a comic book with a 7” single, it may indeed be intentional), Pirates Press and the Swingin’ Utters have actually done something pretty surprising with Boots n Booze; while other bands (like NOFX, Butthole Surfers, The Replacements, Rancid and plenty of others) have embraced the fact that...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Oi – 40 Years Untamed compilation from Pirates Press Records. I confess that, when I first heard the punk subgenre known simply as Oi!, it was pretty far from my favorite thing. At the time, the music just didn’t seem to be too interesting to me – and it didn’t help that a couple of my friends insisted on playing Dropkick Murphys’ “Barroom Hero” constantly – often dedicating it to another...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Oi! This is Streetpunk! 2020 compilation from Pirates Press Records. This far into the evolution of punk rock, it has reached the point where the myriad sub-genres that punk produced are easily able to stand on their own as well as having a dedicated, autonomous fanbase which doesn’t necessarily rely on crossover appeal to get over with listeners. Simply said, hardcore bands don’t have to hope for some runoff fans from...