Sometimes you hear a record and fall hard for it, and one of the things youโre thinking about it is that it โtranscends its genreโ. Unfortunately, you have also wasted a huge part of your life reading crappy music reviews and therefore know that these sorts of phrases are red flags for inane observations from dilettantes. How to proceed? Maybe by coming out the gate and saying that Behind The Concrete Veil (Mendeku Diskak), the debut album by Chicagoโs Lost Legion, is a front-to-back object lesson in how to make a modern Oi! record, and that the many components that arenโt entirely textbook examples of the genre โ which transcend it, even โ in no way serve to water down the final product.
On record, Lost Legion are a duo, lead vocalist Ian Wise sharing instruments with bandmate Dave Fortunato. โWar Machineโ, which opens this LP, has bass-first arrangements on the verses and nasally punkabilly guitar breaks that skew closer to decorated Chicago veterans Naked Raygun; although that feel doesnโt evaporate, Behindโฆโs subsequent nine songs deliver more of the boots-and-braces good stuff.
Let me count the ways I love Lost Legion, specifically during this 25 minutes: Wiseโs melodies that soar to the point of bombast, even while the actual sound is clipped and minimal; the fact this album sounds so great despite (in fact, likely because of) the singer recording it himself; โDisposedโ, which has great, layered shimmers of gothic guitar and updates the workers-against-the-bosses lyrical trope for the actual age we live in; sections, fleeting or otherwise, that remind me of Leatherface or the Misfits or Joy Division or Stiff Little Fingers or Institute without โ to reiterate this point โ making the whole some inconclusive halfway house of a thing.
Overdue shine given to Hacker from Melbourne on the occasion of Psy Wi-Fi (Beach Impediment / Helta Skelta), their first 7-inch after a 2021 12-inch, Pick A Path, that could have easily been a 7-inch if theyโd wanted it to. Listening back, having all but slept on it at the time, that older release is some choice high concept hardcore knuckleheadery, and although their four newest tracks drop the pace moderately Iโm calling Psy Wi-Fi a step up.
Hackerโs two guitarists allow for two angles of attack, with moments of metallic swagger rising from the stab-frenzy staccato stomp that defined Pick A Path. It sounds like thereโs two vocalists, as well, but both seem to be Nellie Pearson, moving between registers with aplomb. Pearsonโs other band, Soakie, released a smashing EP in 2020 and nothing since, so if required Iโll settle for Hacker and her compelling lyrical tack. โHow Do You Kill It?โ is Dungeons & Dragons-themed, โDeliveratorโ more real-world in its encapsulation of the takeaway food courierโs grim lot but with some sci-fi angel dust sprinkled on top.
Pearson recently described Melbourne as โbig enough to have overlapping scenes, but small enough that most people know each other,โ so from several thousand miles away I wonder if a band like garage punks Drunk Mums are included in that. Theyโre good for my column, at any rate, and Iโve even looked past the โband of male musicians with name that kinda implies theyโre womenโ thing, although not so far past that I didnโt mention it.
All ten songs on Beer Baby (Legless / Bachelor), the fourth Drunk Mums album, are under three minutes and half are under two, which amounts to substantially greater efficiency than its predecessors. Vocals are shared in a way that implies grand blokeish camaraderie, while the tunes split the odds between โ77 London punk, the pub rock which spawned it and US counterparts like the Dead Boys. Less insistently Antipodean than one might assume of a band with a frontman named Jake โDingoโ Doyle who open their album with a song titled โNew Australiaโ (probably the most lyrically thoughtful song on it, as it goes), Drunk Mumsโ influence on Amyl & The Sniffers and The Chats is noted; for the compulsive rankers among you, theyโre not as good as the first of those bands and better than the second.
Back to the Basque label Mendeku Diskak with the third EP by Barcelonaโs Enemic Interior. Closer to what one might consider โclassicโ Oi! than Lost Legion, the four-piece nevertheless slather on solid portions of goth gloom in their lyrics and production touches alike, as well as encroaching on hardcore territory with the 51-second โAls รngelsโ.
Itโs worth again lauding efficiency as regards these five songs, as heaven knows there are plenty of Oi! bands who would have dragged them out to twice their length: Enemic Interior get things done with the devastating unfussiness of a hired assassin or eccentric plutocratโs butler. It appears to be another self-recording job, and with no-one to blame if they stray from the path these Catalonians do no such thing. Sumptuous chorus pedal lights up โPilars De La Decadรจnciaโ, while a call-and-response vocal gambit (with a few cheeky โwoah-ohโs for good measure) stirs the claret on โCos A Cosโ, the EPโs relative epic at just over two minutes. If you swoon to bands like Rixe youโll probably dig these fellows, although that doesnโt describe the whole picture.
The wind now blows us west to Madrid and knocks the clean-tasting lager from our hand, because that wind is in fact the gymnastic bulldozer of a debut LP by straight-edge hardcore legion Desorden! Afilado Terror (Quality Control) turns oneโs head with its sleeve, which depicts a giant version of the bandโs vocalist Alenka destroying the cityโs Edificio Metrรณpolis. Or possibly a normal sized version of her destroying a scale model of it.
Desorden crib, most prominently, from a fairly narrow section of hardcore history โ an early 90s sound that flourished in north-east USA and built on both late 80s NYHC (with, generally, more โproโ recording jobs) and the thrash metal and crossover from the same period (with most of the virtuosity and onanism stripped out). Guitarist Leo Forjados is also vocalist for Arma X, another Madrid edge unit whose 12โ Quality Control released about 18 months ago, and if that band go bigger on warp-speed solos and Slayer genuflection than Desorden do, when either come with a doomladen intro you know something berserk is on its way; Forjadosโ and Afilado Terrorโs most metal moments, namely โHargaโ and the title track, are also LP highlights, and Alenka is a vocal powerhouse in any language.
New on QCHQ, too, is the debut demo from Ikhras, who are based between London and Brighton and divide their lyrics between English and Arabic. Cassettes of Jahanam Btistana come with a sheet of A4, featuring writing by Ikhrasโ Hassan Afaneh and Hassan Dozakhi โ Pakistani frontman of German band Zanjeer, whose fine 2022 EP I reviewed. Ikhras, much like Zanjeer, are valuable for reasons of representation alone, but are also using their moment to speak with force and clarity on matters which affect them far more directly than most people to whom hardcore gives a platform.
They also have a shipping containerโs worth of riffs across these five songs: thereโs a bit of mid-00s Boston in the mix, some proto-youth crew before it got cleaned up too much, probably some London HC contemporaries like Layback. โTolerate Meโ and โEnlighten Meโ have a hip hop bounce thanks largely to the vocal delivery, and like more than a few classic hip hop albums Ikhrasโ main lyrical target isnโt the unreachable bigots out there but liberal head-patters: โYou pick your words so carefully / Trying your best not to offend me.โ โAl Nahrโ, which concludes Jahanam Btistana, is a specifically pro-Palestinian song (this being Afanehโs familial heritage), and while its words could have been written any time in the last two decades or more it drives home how unusual it is โ in the last five months or before โ for hardcore bands to address this particular atrocity in their music.
Londoners Catastrophe have also just dropped their Dead On Arrival demo (through the PMT tape label) and it is some ripper crust, I can tell you! Chaotic, like life is, but hardly cack-handed, this fivesome tune the bass to full buzz, limber up their D-beating hand and nail their doomladen sound seven times over.
Itโs homage on some level, I guess, but maybe better thought of as patching their favoured niche noises together in an attempt at creating the exact sound they wanted to hear. In this case, those might include UK anarcho at its most apocalyptically riffy, early 80s Swedish hardcore and the parts of late-80s โBritcoreโ that werenโt overly metallic or pseudo-American. Canโt make out Jon Osborneโs lyrics for the most part (or read the handwriting on the insert), and the song titles are essentially cookiecutter for this type of music, but the inlay does also say โKILL THE ROYAL FAMILY AND PISS ON THEIR GRAVESโ โ inspirational for those too impatient to let nature take its course.
Coax, a hardcore band from St Petersburg, have released two tape EPs via Englandโs Noise Merchant label, Time Warp having come out about six weeks before this column. In between those was a one-off song, โDumblandโ, from spring 2022 and about โour societyโs reaction to the catastrophe in Ukraine and Belarusโ. Not sure that fully comes through in the lyrics (representative sample: โYour dad is an asshole / And mum is a cuntโ), but Iโm on board with the broad โtude of Time Warp, possibly the first time Iโve stuck my head in a Russian hardcore hole since waxing loopy about Petlya โ also from St Petersburg, but with no apparent activity since 2019.
โEgg or chain?โ ponder Coax in their Instagram bio, and โ at the risk of doing my small bit to help make these jokey subgenre names into real, codified ones used by people years down the line โ thereโs both effervescent unseriousness and unfettered rage on Time Warp. โGlue, gas, booze, drugs โ thatโs my lifestyle!โ claims Alena Shpana on โDickheadโ. โI like my colourful dogs,โ she continues over deathrock-derived guitar and a beat that swings like an anvil on a bungee rope. โTime Warpโ the song is a sinister plod (non-pejorative use thereof), โHalf-Life Troopersโ and โTin Soldierโ much higher tempo and suitably militaristic, rhythmically.
Noise Merchantโs latest crop also harbours the debut EP from Palรกnta of Budapest: it was first released in Hungary 18 months ago, on a label named Szรฉgyen Kazettรกk that seems pretty foundational to a whole DIY punk scene in the city, but I sure wasnโt hip to it at the time and am rudely going to assume that you werenโt either. Indulge me, then, as I catch up with Palรกntaโs unpeggable progcore steez.
A keyboardist, Bรกlint, is among the four instrumentalists of this quintet, and lends a heavy psych wail to circus-tempo thrashings like โDรณnde Ruedaโ and โรhsรฉgโ; Grรฉta Tรณth-Krippl is the only credited vocalist, but either by studio conjuring or pure discombobulation it often sounds like thereโs three or so people chuntering on here. โรjszakai Kerti Partiโ and โDezsลโ both approach the five-minute mark but never let the energy drop, their preposterous impulsiveness reminding me of 90s mouldbreakers like Trumanโs Water, and Iโm charmed by โรhsรฉgโ โ which zigzags between HC/jazzoid aggression, a quick guitar break that makes me think very specifically of Throwing Muses, and organ-damaged wizardโs-cape prog โ most of all.
Snuffling around the aforementioned Szรฉgyen Kazettรกk label caused me to be knocked asunder by a more recent tape of theirs, by Cฬงayรฎr โ whose membership is mostly unknown to me but at a minimum share members with bands who share members with Palรกnta. Itโs ten songs of noisepunk/crasher crust of the most unfeasibly primitive stripe: guitar and bass nuclear-fused together, sometimes effecting a sort of mutant throb with early-00s Load Records vibes (see โรvszรกzad Temetลjeโ) but more often like a band who sent a demo to the Crust War label and got told to clean their act up a bit. Distortion devotees step inside!
At the last, four songs of something approaching pop music: in the context of this column, yes, but also on its own terms, which are set out by London duo Lindsay Corstophine and Heather Dunlop as Grazia. Though this is Dunlopโs first band of substance, Corstophine has been releasing records for nearly a quarter-century: Sauna Youth were his longest-running group, Violin (a hardcore band in which he plays everything) the noisiest, and based on Graziaโs debut 7-inch In Poor Taste (Feel It) they are set to be the sweetest.
Both members also being an actual couple probably aids this impression, even if thereโs nothing in these songs that specifically addresses it: โCheapโ talks of rugburn and other quasi-sexual things, if you must be prurient. By the same token, you can unpick threads of lyrical self-critique by Dunlop in โThistleโ and โStupid Paradiseโ, but that canโt override how comprehensively cheerful In Poor Taste sounds. Garage rock organ, basslines primed for the more melodically-inclined end of postpunk (or โBoris The Spiderโ by The Who, in the case of โSpeed Freakโ) and cooly spoke-sung vocals that take the Shangri-Las via tweepop route to the cranial pleasure centre: distortion devotees, maybe youโll like this more than you know.
