Flush It Friday: The Ditties May Be Itty Bitty But They Ain’t Shitty

I’m out of ideas!
I’m in Athens for a friend’s birthday. We got tattooed last night. Tonight he’s playin’ a show with a bunch of scuzzy hardcore bands. You’ll hear more about that next week. Tomorrow we’re headin’ home for a memorial for our friend’s mom who passed over the holiday. There’s so much of life all of the time, all the good and the bad and the beyond good and beyond bad. Fortunately, I’m well-stocked with love love love. Here’s some 100-word reviews to start your weekend.
Guilt Tradition – Our Season
Independent | January 1, 2025
It’s a new year, so we need new hardcore albums from dudes who have been in the game for 20+ plays. Our Season is seasoned, to be sure, steeped in generations of different sounds. The band lists heavy hitters like Terror, Buried Alive, and Hope Conspiracy as major influences, and you can certainly hear that here, though, in keeping with the times, you could also add Madball, Speed, and Trapped Under Ice to that list, too. I could listen to “Faith Abuse” or “Mouthful of Thorns” on repeat all day. PDX looks to have an exciting scene on its hands.
Yarbo – Husband
Independent | November 22, 2024
I don’t know. I keep listening to this looney Saskatoon-y post-hardcore bad acid trip and keep ending up more lost than ever. Every time I think I’ve got my bearings—”Tarbox” and “Pinot Grigio Hide” sound like Refused!—I’m otherwise in the dark. And, sure, listening to new music isn’t totally an exercise in extracting a band’s references to make reviews easier, but it’s not not that. One likes to feel moored and secured, and yet, that’s not the point. An immense amount of swaggering braggadocio, sneering sweat, and an utter contempt for both self and world went into Husband.
Nate Collins – DØMINIØN
Fiadh Productions | December 20, 2024
There’s nothing funny about this record. A disquieting, pooling lake of noise shudders and shakes you from your oafish stupor. Let’s lighten the mood with a quote from 1830s food reformer Sylvester Graham on eating meat: “Its permanent effects, from generation to generation as a general fact, are to increase the relative proportion of the lower and back part of the brain, and to cause the animal to predominate over the intellectual and moral man: and when the numerous exciting, irritating, debilitating and depraving causes which abound in civic life, co-operate with this, their combined efficiency of evil is tremendous.”
VA – Past/Present 2024 Compilation
PITP | December 18, 2024
I own this compilation, though I didn’t buy it nor does it show up in my bandcamp collection. But there it is, a 26-track, 3-hour compilation of a year’s worth of ambient music. My love for Past Inside the Present and Healing Sound Propagandist is well documented. From the kaleidoscopic “Axiom Haze” by 36 and the slowly unfolding grand atmospherics of “Cavanaugh Bay” by Slow Dancing Society to Corrupting Sea’s panoramic sonic environmentalism “Nature,” there’s such a richness of sounds, patterns, and feelings. Something to put on help ease the burden. Something to parse, with loving care, track by track.
Kerosene Heights – Leaving EP
Independent | June 7, 2024
You know I love that jingle jangle of whatever version of the emo revival we’re on at this point. It’s an endless one, like an evangelical big top on the side of a backroad that stays up all year so you can always find your way to healing and faith. You also know I love Glocca Morra and Free Throw. So does this Asheville four-piece. We’re a match made in Michigan. “Everything feels different when you’re gone.” Ain’t that the truth. If you’re lucky enough to live a long life full of love, people will spend a lot of time gone.
Now that you’ve listened to those 5 records in full, it’s time to F-L-U-S-H!
Stick shotgun-blasted us with so many No.s in TMP. Roldy shared some classic tech-death heat on TTT.
Hans is back with a learned review of some new Dutch black metal courtesy of Grafjammer.
More black metal! Falxifer went Discog Diving into the Swedish orthodoxy of Ondskapt.
Toilet Radio ep. 538 features not only Joe n Jordan doin’ the usual but also Justin Foley of Killswitch Engage. We’re all agreed about BHBS.
Toilet Radio 538 – Drum Theory with Justin Foley of Killswitch Engage
Long live Transcending Obscurity. I hit y’all with the track-by-tracker.
Traditions With No Certain End: Transcending Obscurity Label Sampler 2025
That’s the week in the Bowl. You know what to do. First, you read all my little reviews and marvel at them. Second, you go back through this week’s articles and marvel at them. Third, you share your GBUs in the comments and, you guessed it, marvel at them. Have a marvelous weekend, you marvels. Warm hugs and wet kisses.