about a hard rock/metal band's debut (with a decent music video)

This band sounds like it will steal your tools

The band photo shows three guys wearing ugly masks, studded arm bracers, and chain mail as they pose, let's say, in the side yard of someone’s wood-shingled duplex in Nassau County, New York. With those costumes, you’d be forgiven for lowering your expectations. But Rotgut’s debut, “24 oz Cantrip,” features five songs of excellent, heavy rock n’ roll amped up with death metal, black metal, and thrash influences.

Opening song “Bonemelter” is fine—thick guitars with hot leads, bass and drums tight as hell, and good momentum.

But I took interest in the EP when I heard “The Hunger.” Rollicking from the first, the song’s fast thrash riffs burn amphetamine energy. This sounds like driving with your eyes closed, racing down the freeway shoulder, sending cars spinning in all directions.

“24 oz Cantrip” isn’t beer-bash partier thrash. Rotgut trends darker. The single, posted below, is “Return of the Dead Without Eyes.” Just get passed the group-shout chorus and focus instead on the splashy cymbals after 1:25 and thereafter as the song revels in black-metal-influenced passages. It wraps with beautiful patience at about 3:20 with an inspired payoff led by the vocals, “Blood of the maiden, blood of the priest, blood of the mason, blood of the thief / A beggar to Caesar, a flame to the cloth, sixes in triplicate, salt to the north / A clarion call to the dead without eyes to lead us to darkness and swallow the skies!”

I love the agile bass on this album. It's always on the offensive. It looms and lifts the whole composition.

The album goes by fast. The songs, each 3 or 4 minutes long, make for a loud and enjoyably intense listen. The music sounds a little like The Crown, Midnight, and, at a vast distance, Converge. The Seattle-based band self-released “24 oz Cantrip” on streaming platforms June 20th, 2025.

Those costumes are a fun, cheap way to get your attention. But this band’s sound deserves to hold it.

 

 

a review of a Thirdface album

A second listen reveals the pleasures of this rush of raw, invigorating hardcore, noise rock, and metal from late 2024

I listened to this album last winter and decided to pass. Big mistake!

Thirdface’s “Ministerial Cafeteria” is beautiful savagery—slam-dance energy courses through body-blow rhythms and face-raking vocals.

I rescued my download of this album from the recycle bin after “Sour” played on some playlist. The song offers so much.

It’s the most measured and spacious song on the album. The bass guitar steps up, and a patient but hard-hitting beat stalks menacingly amid a claustrophobic guitar. The effect is a gross, dangerous tension.

But urgency and abundance power most of the songs. The exemplar is the groove-chewing “Pure Touch.” This fucker is exciting—a nearly perfect song with its ferocity and change-ups. A coiling guitar riff sounds like rock n’ roll under spittle-fly vocals. The song is part Dillinger, part Jesus Lizard. I also love the spastic, syncopated “Bankroll.” The song runs into a few danceable grooves, including a great harmonic-driven riff near the 1:20 mark.

The Nashville hardcore-punk quartet released “Ministerial Cafeteria,” its second full-length, on November 1, 2024, via Exploding in Sound.

I mean, don't most of us wish we were back in November 1, 2024?

and puts a positive spin on some HC album

Those Left Standing square up with the world on "Almere City Hardcore"

Hardcore punk band Those Left Standing come out from Almere swinging.

The press release for the new album says, "Coming from Almere, they face prejudice and feel like outcasts, but they are resolute in representing the Almere City hardcore reality, embracing their role as outcasts among outcasts."

The place must have some reputation.

Almere is a planned city in the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area. It's not even 50 years old. But the Amsterdam of today began over 850 years ago on a continent where people have been loving and fighting and holding grudges for a few thousand years.

But in 2024, Those Left Standing voice a new grudge in volume and attitude on "Almere City Hardcore."

The album sounds solid as the band switches between hardcore punk and 90s-influenced metal. Super-tight drumming competes with incessant in-your-face-asshole vocals.

So what's the story with Almere? I asked vocalist Dennis Jansen, aka DeeJay, about the city and how these outcasts make new sounds in an old world.
 

D: I enjoyed listening to the new album, "Almere City Hardcore." This is my first exposure to Those Left Standing and Almere. Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions.

DeeJay: Thank you for interviewing us, and good to hear that you enjoyed the album—we’re really proud of it!

D: When I listen to the album, I think of NYC hardcore band Biohazard. Who influences Those Left Standing, and what is the band listening to now?

DeeJay: First of all, very cool that you're thinking of Biohazard. I remember getting that orange CD tray version of the "State of the World Address" album for my birthday back in the day. I played it right away 'coz I thought Biohazard was awesome. It still is, by the way. NYC Hardcore like Madball and Biohazard are definitely a major influence on our sound. So that's a real compliment for us right there. Backfire! is an important one as well.

On the question—well, we listen to quite a diverse range of bands and styles.

For me, I gotta confess that my CD collection and playlists contain a lot of 90s, early 00s hip-hop and hardcore.

As for the other guys: our bass player Jeff is really into grindcore like Napalm Death and more extreme metal stuff; drummer G listens to, for example, Kublai Khan TX but also Devin Townsend and more punk-oriented bands; guitar player Laurens has a slightly more metallic background in taste—DevilDriver, Lamb Of God, Gojira—but also hardcore bands like Hatebreed and Terror.

D: Your hardcore sound is traditional. What role does tradition and influence play when you write and record a song?

DeeJay: We don't necessarily think about these things when we're writing our songs. We play hardcore 'coz we love the style, the intensity, the rawness of it. And, yeah, we grew up with and listen to a lot of bands, which I guess tends to rub off on you—ha! But it's not by design. We really just write and play whatever we think sounds awesome enough.

For recording the album, we obviously used modern recording techniques, but everything you hear was played by ourselves. Our first demo we recorded playing live together in different rooms, which was a lot of fun.

But for the album we wanted a more controlled process. So we recorded drums in the studio first with WD (DoubleYouD Productions), then all the guitars and bass at home. Then we did vocals at our friend Dick's (Rausbaum) house; he has a home studio. Finally, we re-amped all the guitars at the studio and let WD work his magic in the mix.

It was a long process, but, to be honest, we're really happy with the sound of the album. Turned out great! So, not really traditional, but still man-made, I would say.

D: A lot of hardcore punk bands express pride in where they're from, like they want to represent it. Those Left Standing sounds like it has a complicated relationship with Almere. Describe Almere and what it means to you. And please describe what it means to title the album after Almere.

DeeJay: Almere is a relatively young city. Which we saw grow from nothing as we grew up here ourselves. A place where people say there is no history or culture yet. But that’s not true. It's here 'coz we are making that history and culture ourselves. But, yeah, there are growing pains you have to endure. And it's not always easy, I'll give you that.

As a band, if we made R&B instead of hardcore, we might be more well known. But that's not what we are about.

And through the years, we’ve had the support of a diehard group here that sticks tight and is proud of Almere and its alternative band scene. As are we. And that’s what we want to show with "Almere City Hardcore."

To our A-town people, but also to the rest of The Netherlands, that we got something going on here! Something we are proud to reprezent.

D: What's important to you politically, socially, or personally?

DeeJay: Personally, wow, I guess that we get out of life what we can. And that is a challenge on its own. Life can be unforgiving, unfair, and overwhelming. You gotta find a way to keep going, find a good place, pick your battles, let yourself be heard, and enjoy the small victories.

Our triumphs, as they—even for that one moment—make it worthwhile.

And for what it's worth, I think that we should start respecting each other more. There is so much division nowadays. As we point out in the song "Split" on the album. And it's all amplified by the sides involved who are just out there yelling crap at each other and rallying anybody they can find for ... for what, really?

Come on people, don't fuck this up.

a review of a punk and noise rock band from Oslo

Daufødt throws a thousand pounds of "Glitter"
 

"Glitter" opens with a hard-driving bastard of a song. It's Daufødt's demand to be reckoned with.

The Oslo band plays punk with a noise rock sound—walloping drums, full power-chord guitars, and raw vocals forced out from deep inside.

The album is Daufødt's third. The promotional material describes it as more radio-friendly than the first two.

Of the new songs, "Jeg vil bare hjem" tries hardest to make friends. Listen below. Simple, repetitive chords and a swinging backbeat bring out the attitude that sometimes goes missing from the vocals on this album.

But the song I like is "Skjelvet." The bass, propelled by drums, chews through the dense, dark future while the guitar rings out watchful notes like a lantern casting shadows. The vocal smears glittery mud along the path in case we need to turn around.

The young band takes a grim view of the future and says, "When everything goes to hell, at least you can have a good soundtrack."

We will each reckon with the future in our own way.

The album is set to be released September 20 on Fysisk Format Records.

 

a generous note about a Swedish hardcore punk band's EP

If you can’t win by reason

With an earth auger of a sound, “Mental Taxation” kicks off the new galloping seven-minute streak of an EP by Industrial Puke. The opening song’s thick, compressed production and deft chord changes represent the band’s best and only method.

Industrial Puke at times tries a regulated rhythm but cannot long resist the siren of speed. The one break from the forcible run comes at about a minute and a half into “Constant Pressure” with a slamming progression of chords—each chord stands out once from the blur. Then guitars harmonize and the song resumes its inevitable flameout.

The music bullies you, goes straight-ahead with insolent consistency—Industrial Puke happily suffers the hobgoblin of little minds. The band comes from where volume is power, volume overcomes weakness. Sound waves knock through the ear canal and shoulder into the tympanic membrane, like it or not.

The Swedish hardcore punk band started about 5 years ago. Time settling on a lineup and writing songs led us here, to Where Life Crisis Starts. The band put out its debut single and video, “Mental Taxation,” in June 2022, is partnering with Suicide Records to release this EP on September 16th, and plans to issue the full album Born into the Twisting Rope in spring of 2023.

(posts) "Hardball" by D.R.I.

about how every song is a ballad

 
"Punk rock should mean freedom: liking and excepting anything that you like, playing whatever you want, as sloppy as you want, as long as it's good and it has passion."
  -Kurt Cobain

(or posts) "Career Opportunities" by The Clash

Career Opportunities
 -by The Clash

The offered me the office, offered me the shop
They said I'd better take anything they'd got
Do you wanna make tea at the BBC?
Do you wanna be, do you really wanna be a cop?

Career opportunities are the ones that never knock
Every job they offer you is to keep you out the dock
Career opportunity, the ones that never knock

I hate the army and I hate the R.A.F.
I don't wanna go fighting in the tropical heat
I hate the civil service rules
And I won't open letter bombs for you

Career opportunities are the ones that never knock
Every job they offer you is to keep you out the dock
Career opportunity, the ones that never knock

Bus driver; ambulance man; ticket inspector

They're gonna have to introduce conscription
They're gonna have to take away my prescription
If they wanna get me making toys
If they wanna get me, well, I got no choice

Careers
Careers
Careers

Ain't never gonna knock

"Concubine/Fault and Fracture" by Converge

Suicidal Tendencies, "Institutionalized"

something about "Please Kill Me" by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain

Billed as "The Uncensored Oral History of Punk", Please Kill Me testifies to punk rock's NYC birth in the mid-1970's. The book organizes quotes from a cast of people who were there--participants and witnesses, and these people describe the scene, say who's who, and, of course, talk about the sex and drugs. But noticeably missing in these quotes is elaboration on the rock and roll.

There is no date or period anchoring the end of this telling, but the notable event in the final pages is the death of Johnny Thunders, former guitarist of the New York Dolls and, later, The Heartbreakers. These bands--the Dolls, in particular--dominated the genre's salad days. The Stooges (aka, Iggy and The Stooges) and the New York Dolls are the book's favorites, followed by the Ramones and the mostly derided Sex Pistols. The Dead Boys get minor coverage, too. But the deaths of Sid Vicious, Stiv Bators, and, as noted, Johnny Thunders serve as the conclusion to punk's story--at least in this version, even though Bators and Thunders died 10 years after the core of events described in the book.

If you're really into the music of any three of the above-mentioned bands, then Please Kill Me is sweet, truthy gossip. If you're not, then the quotes and people fast grow petty and irrelevant--the narrators sometimes indulge the "more punk than you" pissing contest that strips punk of its cultural relevance by pretending this raw, resilient music that crackles with energy belongs only to them, those self-important members of their own inertly private country club.

Mike Muir

Just that this is a cool picture of Mike Muir of Suicidal Tendencies.