“Basic Humanity Disappears”: Birdleg’s Visions Beyond the Ape Cave
“Fear the other. Fear the difference. Wielding power minus love.”
Released by New Age Records in 1996, Redemption 87’s self-titled debut LP was, like Fastbreak’s earliest material, at the vanguard of the first youth crew revival. Eschewing both the thrash-infused crossover of the early ’90s as well as the heavier mid-paced sound of Undertow and Chokehold, Redemption 87, as the name points towards so directly, sought to reanimate the still-warm corpse of NYHC glory days, channeling all the bands that made Revelation Records great. Tracks like “Rumor Mill” and “Blind Participation” are a continuation of the project started by Youth of Today, with Eric Ozenne’s vocals rasping and pitching about like Ray Cappo’s. “A Solution” and “Can’t Break Me” are more Gorilla Biscuits, the latter’s slower tempo, bubbling bassline, harmonizing guitar lick, and upbeat attitude something like the natural evolution between Start Today and CIV’s Set Your Goals. Rather than softening their sound as CIV would almost immediately do, Redemption 87’s second LP All Guns Poolside! still possesses all the fury of Youth of Today and Sick of it All, while the addition of Jade Puget on guitar meant things start shifting ever slightly more West Coast. Still, this is blazing ’80s hardcore in its truest form.
The same year Redemption 87 released All Guns Poolside!, Ozenne’s new band The Nerve Agents released their own self-titled debut on Revelation, while Puget would join AFI for the band’s 1999 landmark Black Sails in the Sunset. (Bassist Ian Miller, who does not deserve to be put in these parentheses, would later play in Kowloon Walled City, Less Art, Pig Destroyer, and more.) The Nerve Agents, as fans well know, were still hard as hell, but just as Ozenne expanded his vocal approach, the band consumed more punk influences, instantiating beautifully that ever-vanishing line between hardcore and punk. Not dissimilarly, though on an entirely different scale, with Puget AFI would become AFI, solidifying the very idea of East Bay Hardcore before venturing further and further from it.
This is all to say: Redemption 87 is back! Well, sort of. Ozenne and Puget have reunited with Redemption 87’s original drummer Gary Gutfield as well as bassist Ryan Doria (Old Rivals, Overexposure, Pressure Cracks) as Birdlegs and released earlier this month Visions Beyond the Ape Cave via—who else?—Revelation Records. Though nearly 30 years has elapsed since All Guns Poolside!, the fury and spirit of Redemption 87 is alive and well. Visions Beyond the Ape Cave is as potent a revival record as I can remember hearing in years, with the band scorching through 9 tracks in under 20 minutes. The only way you can really tell it’s been 30 years is the new influences the various members have collected, influences that both pre-date and post-date Redemption 87. Visions Beyond the Ape Cave is a collage of punk and hardcore classics reassembled to highlight what makes such bands and such ideas so remarkably perseverant, buoyant, and enlivening.
That premium blend of new touchpoints and old standbys is what I adore so much about this record. Ozenne still sounds like himself, though now he reminds of Ozenne doing an impression of Cappo doing an impression of Jello Biafra doing an impression of Fred Schneider. The rest of the band follows suit, running classic youth-crew riffs through weird Dead Kennedy twists and B-52 turns on tracks like “Clown,” “Icebox,” and “Apricity.” “Mind in the Margins,” in its 59 seconds of glory, is Op Ivy on trucker speed, a smuggling-in of the band’s Bay Area roots into an otherwise New York affair. Moreover, Puget has imported the kind of songwriting and riffcraft that made Black Sails, All Hallow’s, and The Art of Drowning genre classics while also taking the band in directions unmistakable to fans of modern hardcore. “The Twisted Screws of Now” rumbles like Bane’s “Ali V Frazier I” before ending with a little bloodletting a la AFI’s “Exsanguination.” Similarly, titular closer “Visions Beyond the Ape Cave” is a razor-wristed attempt to capture the neo-retro, looking-forward-to-look-backward-to-look-forward sound of Ceremony’s “In the Spirit World Now.” It’s a surprising and surprisingly effective finale, tying up bows like the pogoing weirdness of “Devils Own Grip,” an almost-silly song that still manages to yank on heartstrings, demanding to know what we will do with our one life. More straightforwardly, standout track “The Unraveling” is a melodic hardcore marvel, with all the emotional punch of Have Heart or With Honor. Who came before and who came after starts to blur and become irrelevant, as Birdlegs links together different bands and different times in an unbroken chain. It’s youth, passion, fire, and zeal, even when played by a bunch of old guys.
All this gleeful pirouetting through references might be enticing or entirely beside the point. Will the album grab you? Will opener “Emergence” grab you by the throat or the heart, pulling you immediately into a sweaty the-mic-is-for-everyone embrace? If so, then “Let’s go. Let’s rise up,” ’cause “we have somethin’ to say.” Just last week, End It released a video for “Cloutbusting” off last year’s Wrong Side of Heaven. The video has a brief intro from a live set with Akil imploring the audience, “Start a band. Book a show. Fucking do something. Get off the fucking internet.” Because that’s what hardcore is and always has been: an injunction and a demand to do something. Do something and try.
So what will you do?
Visions Beyond the Ape Cave is out now on Revelation Records.
Burgundy and jade marble vinyl is already sold out,
but you can snag some blue marble or a shirt.
Grab your friends and sing along.
