Flush It Friday X 100% Support: Our Greatest Tradition
It’s Bandcamp Friday, with only three more left this year. So to inaugurate this week’s Flush It Friday, we’re goin’ record shoppin’ in the hardcore section. 5 albums. 100 words. You know the drill.
Mindz Eye – The Vision
The Denver Hardcore kings are back! After 2020’s True Blue got me decked out in some prettysleeves, I’ve been quietly waiting to see if Mindz Eye would return. Out of nowhere, we get The Vision, an extension of the vision first seen on True Blue. Everything that sparkled and glowed on True Blue is still here, but everything feels a little harder, a little tougher, a little more streetwise. The guitars still shimmer, the symbols still clink, and the grooves still mosh, but you might find yourself mean-mugging with a bit more regularity and tenacity. Get blissed out on “Bliss.”
Spaced – This Is All We Ever Get
Let it never be forgotten that Revelation #1 is the Lower East Side Crew EP from Warzone. Though Spaced hails from Buffalo, with its own particular hardcore history, and bands like Gorilla Biscuits and Bold and Youth of Today came to have a more outsize influence on how we view the ’80s NYHC scene, it always comes back to Raybeez and Co. It’s not that Spaced—fitting comfortably alongside Mindz Eye, Turnstile, Slope, and other ’80s-by-way-of-the-’90s bands—sounds as much like Warzone as Mental did, but they’re always there, in every creepy-crawl and every palm-muted two-step breakdown. It’s “The Difference.”
Going Off – Kill List
Apparently I forgot to blurb Going Off’s other 2023 release What Makes You Tick?, so consider this my mea culpa. Going Off just keep going… off. Where What Makes You Tick? was bouncier and more playful, Kill List is one of the most rabid hardcore albums I’ve heard since Bardo. The recipe is a sturdy Madball base mixed with an absurd amount of Weekend Nachos and Ledge and a hint of E Town Concrete. The interplay between the bouncy, virulent, snarling vocals and the crushingly slow, devastating breakdowns is, to my ears, totally unique and thrilling. No “Weak Links” here.
NØ MAN – Glitter and Spit
Formed after Majority Rule reunited for a smattering of shows in 2017 and with the addition of Maha Shami on vocals, NØ MAN is a violently passionate mix of DMV hardcore/skramz and Planet on a Chain-esque throwback hardcore punk. If there wasn’t enough blistering speed nor enough d-beats on the first three records, gird your loins for NØ MAN’s breakneck approach. Things move fast until they very much don’t, the band settling in sonically where they’re most comfortable: in the dark, uncomfortable recesses of psycho-sonic pain. This one is for Palestine. Though forces will try, they will “Never Kill Us All.”
Home Front – Games of Power
Hey! This isn’t a hardcore record! Get over it. Everything I wrote about 2021’s Think of the Lie is still true, there’s just more of it. If your dance party can’t handle New Order or Depeche Mode, you don’t know dance parties. If your punk rock pogo can’t handle these effusively downtrodden Canucks, you’ve got two left feet and aren’t invited. The other night, my buddy had a choice between seeing Home Front or seeing Worm and Hulder, so what did he do? He just went to both shows. What a legend. “OverTime,” we’ll accept he’s just cooler than us.
Hot damn that’s a serious collection of bands, albums, and tracks. What more could you want? Oh. You want to flush? You’re so nasty.
Big Stick! Big Roldy! Teeny tiny Eenzy.
The pure of heart 365 dropped a malignant premiere from legends Malignancy:
Aaron with a thoughtful review of the new album from long-suffering My Dying Bride:
Someone tried to sue Joe ‘n Jordan and I swear it wasn’t me. This week’s Toilet Radio is a podcast:
Samson doesn’t just love Zeppelin and mullets; he loves dissonance oh so much. Heaters!
Rolderathisssssss dropped a venomous new track from Moral Putrefaction:
Come through with the GBUs in the comments. Go back and put your eyeballs on these articles and listen to the recommendations. Share your BCF hauls in the comments, as well. Maybe send someone a BC gift. Have a beautiful weekend. My love to you all.
