Flush It Friday: Still Not Loud Enough / Still Not Fast Enough

Flush it Friday, Metal, Not Metal, Open Swim

January 24, 2025

Front, front life.

It was a lovely scene over at Normal Bar last Friday night. I had just wolfed down a vegan Chicago dog and a salad with goddess dressing across the street at Hi-Lo while watching some SEC gymnastics (all sports should be played in sparkling leotards) with the crew. Normal was hosting a show for a bunch of young upstart hardcore kids and my old-ass friend’s birthday, organized by my old-ass friend’s bandmate. Those two play in a “band” called Ralph. Does Ralph have songs? Kind of. I called them “movements” in the car the next day, though that feels far too grandiose a term. Avant-garde noise metal? Total freaked out two-piece bullshit art grind? One of them rips through blistering death metal riffs and southern-fried sludge bombs while the other plays drums that are filtered through a processor that make them sound like different drums and sings belligerently and incoherently. It’s some kind of awesome. Or it’s awful. None of it has been recorded so far. All praise due to St. Hubertus, patron saint of hunters, mathematicians, opticians and metalworkers. The kids love it, though.

You know what else the kids love? Playing scuzzy, crusty, fast-as-hell hardcore in the vein of Doom, Discharge, S.S. Decontrol 1982 Bad Brains, and 1979 Black Flag. Hardcore scenes come and go in Athens with not much staying power, but whatever bar tar swill the youth are brewing, I’m ready to guzzle down. We saw Beer Piss and the kids moshed. Beer Piss was gettin’ greasy ‘n grimy ’cause Regulator couldn’t make it. Too busy ridin’ their beach bruisers around town, I suppose. Rosary creepy-crawled their way out of swamps of Florida to strangle you with your own blood-soaked prayer beads. Snuki rang in closing time because closing time is midnight these days playing something like if Eyehategod never heard Skynyrd and never birthed sludge and was just the South’s ugliest hardcore band. The kids, indeed, will have their say. Let’s hope it sticks around a bit longer than when I was a young turk moshin’ in flipflops at venues that are long gone.

None of this had to do with Brutal Truth. Let’s flush.

There’s a lot of bad music out there. But some good stuff, too! Stick‘s got us watchin’ what Pelagic does in 2025 in this week’s TMP. Roldy is all over that new Fleshbore in an admittedly quiet week for TTT. (There’s some good stuff hidden in there, though!)

Reliquary Tower interviewed Bariann Tuite of Fiadh Productions. An absolute whiz-bang delight that will have you scrambling to order any and all tapes you can.