{"id":81041,"date":"2018-07-17T13:00:58","date_gmt":"2018-07-17T18:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.toiletovhell.com\/?p=81041"},"modified":"2018-07-16T12:00:14","modified_gmt":"2018-07-16T17:00:14","slug":"quarterly-roundup-addendum-moar-punk-pls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/toiletovhell.com\/quarterly-roundup-addendum-moar-punk-pls\/","title":{"rendered":"Quarterly Roundup Addendum: Moar Punk Pls"},"content":{"rendered":"
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We ain’t quite done yet.<\/p>\n

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Originally inspired by a YouTube rabbit hole that started thanks to the channel No Deal<\/a>, where I found a lot of what’s featured below, the idea of this post was to point out that punk is still alive and well in 2018. I’m sure you’ve heard someone say, “Man, what happened to [genre]”, and complain about how it’s just not the same anymore as it was in some purported golden age. A careless blanket statement, wrongly deduced from a superficial look at the genre in question, a fact which becomes all the more bewildering if the complainer claims to be into the genre. Surely you can make the effort to look a bit deeper than what is being peddled at the top level, especially with the internet at your disposal.<\/p>\n

Anyway, since our favourite Russian-Canadian president Vladimir Poutine<\/a> already made an excellent start highlighting some of this year’s punk and grind releases, I thought I’d add my two cents to further the point that punk is, indeed, not dead.<\/p>\n

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Hank Wood and the Hammerheads – s\/t<\/h3>\n

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Toxic State Records<\/a> | March 9th<\/p>\n

You can’t help but be reminded of the Dead Kennedys<\/strong> here. The clanging guitars reek of police trucks and holidays in Cambodia, and the vocal style sits somewhere between Jello Biafra<\/strong> and Iggy Pop<\/strong>, delivered in a janky, jolting way, interspersed with more ‘ugh’s and ‘huh’s than James Brown<\/strong> at his most coked-out performances. Add to that the drums that spread a bit of a surf rock vibe and an organ, and you might think you’ve got yourself a fun summer soundtrack. Not so; even a look on the tracklist – featuring titles like “You Wanna Die” and “Love is a Cold White Tile” – is enough to tell you there’s something dark going on. Indeed, the buoyant energy of the music is constantly offset by a murky atmosphere, where the reverb is sometimes enough to obscure the chords and the aforementioned organ will frequently stick to mournful melodies. Instead of rides to the beach in an open convertible, this is more like struggling uphill in brutal heat. Instead of asking you to take the fight to the streets, this music has resigned to an internal fight, and the only goal it hopes to achieve is to maybe wring the occasional minute of enjoyment out of the surrounding misery.<\/p>\n