Podcast001

Click here to download the file (warning: it’s big as hell!)

This is the playlist for the show:

Reason of Insanity – Insomniac’s Dream
Sluglords – Day to Day Living
Skate Korpse – Front Page White-Out
The Blinds – Do You Wanna Slide
Black Market Baby – Backseat Sally
Electric Deads – 30 Years
Government Warning – Walking Dead

Along with a LOT of me talking. If you’ve got any feedback about what you’d like to hear or any way I can make your listening experience better please leave a comment. Also, please see the post just below this for info on how to subscribe to this podcast and have the files automatically delivered to your computer and/or mp3 player every time there’s a new one.

New Feature: Podcast!

I am nothing if not a shameless appropriator of other people’s good ideas, and since I’ve been listened to so many podcasts lately and wondering why there aren’t any really good punk and hardcore ones out there I’ve decided to start my own. If you don’t know much about podcasting don’t worry; podcast posts will show up on DM just like normal posts, only instead of written words there will just be a link to audio content. However, for those of you who are into podcasting you can subscribe to our podcast feed via the following URL:

http://www.deadmetaphor.com/?feed=rss2&category_name=podcast

Just plug that bad boy into iTunes, iPodder or whatever podcast software you’re using and anytime there is an audio file uploaded to the site your computer will automatically recognize it and download it for you. There are already a few podcasts there with content from the My Wife Hates Hardcore mix tapes; in the future all mix tape content will be podcasted and there will also be stand-alone podcast posts, the first of which will go up later this evening. I’ll probably be playing and talking about under-appreciated hardcore records; basically, it’ll be exactly like my normal blog posts but you’ll listen to them instead of reading them.

In other news, today I went to the eye doctor for my annual exam and it was quite an experience. As usual, the doctor dilated my pupils, but I think he put way more of the chemical in my eye than he was supposed to because I fucking freaked out. When I put my contacts back in after the exam was over my vision was so blurred that I honestly couldn’t tell whether my lenses were in or not, which is a pretty big deal since I’m all but blind without contacts or glasses. The doctor mentioned as I was walking out that I might have trouble seeing up close for the next couple of hours; boy was that an understatement! I paid for my subscription with my credit card and when the lady at the front desk handed me the receipt to sign I honestly couldn’t see any of the printing on it; she had to take my hand and put it on the beginning of the line so that I would know where to place my signature. I couldn’t tell what time it was because I couldn’t get my watch far enough from my face in order to be able to tell the time. This lasted for about three hours, during which time I sat on the couch and listened to NPR because I really wasn’t fit to do anything else.

So that was quite an experience, though I’m bummed that it kept me from reading and writing for the site all afternoon. I’m making up for lost time now, though, with two posts in the past few minutes and a podcast post coming up.

Help! My Wife Hates Hardcore! Disc 1 Tracks 21-25

Some of you have no doubt been wondering where this feature was; honestly, I’d planned to do another entry before I went to Mexico a few weeks ago but I didn’t end up finding the time and since then it slid further and further down the list of priorities until I just completely forgot about it. Hopefully, though, we’ll be able to get back on the ball. I’m not sure when Kelly will have time to write her entry, but that shouldn’t stop me from giving you the files (well, most of ‘em) that you’ll need to complete disc 1.

21: Direct Control: Terror Shock

Direct Control had to go on this mix for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that I love the band enough to put their record out. This track, “Terror Shock,” is from that record (the Nuclear Tomorrow EP; Sorry State #1!!!!) and it’s also my favorite Direct Control song. I remember when Brandon gave me the track listing for the EP… I was so stoked! If I had to pick five Direct Control songs to compile my own “best-of” 7″ it almost certainly would have been those tracks. “Terror Shock” is simply Direct Control’s most fully-formed masterpiece, a “song” in every sense of the word… even though they’re playing at lightning-speed there’s still a hook and it still finds it’s way into my head, and not just when I’m listening to the record but when I’m standing in line at the post office, walking down the street in Chapel Hill and other inopportune moments. This song is definitely one of the high points in the last decade or so of hardcore.

22: Effigies: We’re Da Machine

You’ll notice that there is no link to the Effigies track I’ve chosen. This because a few other music bloggers I know of have posted links to Effigies tracks and have subsequently been contacted by the band asking them to take the files down. Rather than leave the file up until the band found out about it and got pissed at me I decided to take the high road and leave the track off. If you simply must have track 22 it’s in print and available on the Remains Nonviewable CD; I assure you that no one who reads this site (whether you read it for the coverage of more melodic stuff like Leatherface or the older hardcore stuff) will regret adding that CD to their collection.

The Effigies are a band that I’ve only discovered in the past two or three years, but in that time I’ve listened to them an absolute ton. Further, I think there’s a chance that Kelly might actually like these guys since they have the big, melodic guitar sound that she’s fond of and the whole thing is quite melodic and catchy. Personally, I don’t see how one couldn’t like the Effigies, but having Kelly evaluate this mix tape has been one long string of surprises, so we’ll see.

23: Agent Orange: Bloodstains

There was a mini-controversy in my head over whether to put the album or the single version of this song on the tape and in the end I chose the single version. Honestly, it’s been so long since I made the tape that I can’t remember why (hell, if you caught me on the right day I might be willing to argue that I like the Spermbirds’ cover of this track better than either of those versions anyway). Still, this is one of those tracks that is so simple and powerful that you think to yourself it simply must be a cover of some classic rock and roll song from the 50s. However, it’s all Agent Orange and if there were any justice this song would be covered as often as “Louie Louie.”

24: 76% Uncertain: I Hate the Radio

Listening to this mix tape several weeks after making it I can’t quite remember why I put this song on instead of one of the classic songs from 76% Uncertain’s Estimated Monkey Time LP. I think I had just bought their second LP, Nothing But Love Songs (on which this track appears), for next to nothing and I was really proud of discovering what I considered to be a buried treasure. I still like this song, but honestly I think it’s one of the weaker ones on the tape; it’s a little repetitive and just not as distinctive as it could be. I hear there’s also a version of this song on the CIA LP; if anyone has info on that please feel free to post a comment.

25: Undertones: You’ve Got My Number (Why Don’t You Use It?)

I thought I’d follow the advice of mix tape makers everywhere and end on an extremely high note, even if that note is of a slightly different timbre than the rest of the tape. Yeah, most of this thing is full of hardcore (by some definition or another) but I’ve chosen to end it with a song from probably the most melodic and poppy of all melodic, poppy punk bands. To my credit, though, this is easily the Undertones’ most aggressive track; just listen to that riff that starts the song (and pops up occasionally throughout)! I really think that riff is one of the most sublime moments in punk rock… it’s so smooth yet so powerful, and it anticipates the sound of some of my favorite punk guitarists like John Haggerty and Frankie Stubbs by quite a few years. Plus, the song is extremely underlooked by Undertones aficionados since it only appeared as a single released between their first two LPs. If you’re an Undertones fan who hasn’t heard this song before prepare to be amazed!

Gosh Darn

Wow, three whole days without writing anything for DM… I bet some of you are starting to feel like you don’t even know me. Things around here have been a weird mix of really busy and really boring. As I may have said earlier, the second press of the Direct Control 7″ came in last week so there were a couple of days of furious packing and mailing, but the greater part of that has now subsided. School actually doesn’t start until tomorrow (well, not for me since I don’t have classes on Tuesdays!) but today was an incredibly busy day. We had orientation for the new graduate students at school today and I participated in that as much as I could and I also had the summer reading program discussion in which I talked with a bunch of incoming freshmen about the book I mentioned in the blog a couple of weeks ago. That discussion went pretty well; I was afraid I would be a little rusty after not having been in front of a class for several months but it’s amazing how quickly you re-acclimate to these things. The kids (well, the ones who showed up; the program was optional and I had four out of 25 students in my group show up) were quite eager to talk, but not so eager to push themselves about what they believe and be really honest with themselves. The book was an extremely honest exploration of the author’s own deep-seeded and not entirely desirable views about race, but these kids refused to believe that themselves or anyone they know personally was capable of prejudice. One of them actually prefaced a comment by glancing around the room and saying “now, of course we are all open minded.” In their vision anyone who has a tinge of racial prejudice is a redneck or some other worse (but still completely impersonal) term… I felt frustrated that I couldn’t make them all see things a little more deeply in the space of two hours but at least I tried.

I was thinking about writing a blog post about how Gainesville, Florida really hasn’t produced as many good bands as everyone seems to think. Reading through zines it’s become some kind of critical maxim/cliche that that city produces all of these amazing groups, but aside from Gunmoll I just don’t see it. In fact, I would be willing to argue that Less than Jake are still the best band ever to come out of Gainesville, and that isn’t saying much. However, I managed to piss of a whole shitload of people by casually referring to straight edge in my last show review so maybe I’ll try and avoid pissing off the entire state of Florida (though I wouldn’t want to mess with Tampa, home of the Tim Version) and just keep my thoughts to myself.

I know it’s a big fad right now but I’ve been really enjoying a lot of podcasts lately. I haven’t actually managed to find any good music podcasts (which kind of makes me want to start one, though I know I don’t have the time to keep up with it), but I’ve found a ton of cool podcasts about science. I’ve always been fascinated with scientific and technological innovation (though on nothing really deeper than a Popular Science kind of level) and it’s cool being able to take a break from blasting the Necros out of my ipod every once in a while and find out what’s going on in neurology, astronomy, physics, etc.

I was going to do the final post of disc one of My Wife Hates Hardcore tonight (thanks Big Al for reminding me; I’d honestly forgotten about the project!) but after putting in a 12-hour day at school I just don’t have the energy. Instead, I think I’ll crawl in bed, read the Reason of Insanity interview in the latest MRR and wake up tomorrow refreshed and ready to give some slightly more interesting content.

Fun Fact

I’ve been concentrating a lot more attention on reading than listening to music this past week, which is why blog posts have been scarce. So, rather than just write nothing I thought I’d give everyone a fun fact from today’s reading.

In the early eighteenth century the author John Dennis developed a new manner of recreating thunder on the stage. Dennis included this method in the stage directions to one of his plays, but it was refused for production by the playhouses in London. A few months later, while watching a performance of Macbeth Dennis found that the playhouse was using his method of reproducing the sound of thunder. Upon hearing this, Dennis angrily condemned the managers for stealing his thunder but refusing to act his plays. I believe that this may be the first use of the idiom “to steal one’s thunder.”

Fuck the Kids

I was just reading this article on the TV show Brat Camp on Slate and I came across what is probably the single best paragraph published by that magazine:

Though I’m normally a pretty empathetic person, I hate teenagers with incredible fervor. It’s nothing personal: I hate them categorically, like I hate injustice. I hate the way they roam around in packs, wearing floppy, Technicolor clothes, sculpting their marginal facial hair, slapping and tripping each other, shouting strings of banal obscenities as if they were delivering the “Gettysburg Address.” I hate the way they express personal inadequacy through car accessories and vandalism. I even hate the word “teens,” which sounds like some kind of infectious skin fungus. When a child I love becomes a teenager, my love for him goes into escrow for seven years. I know that there are biological excuses for their behavior—their amygdalae (the brain’s anger and fear center) are ballooning, their exploding sexualities have only secret and shameful outlets—but that doesn’t change my instinctive revulsion any more than knowing that sharks eat people because they need the protein. The cast of Brat Camp—a tribe of self-absorbed, violent, coke-dabbling, pimply rage-aholics—isn’t an anomaly: It is the fullest logical expression of the genus teen, the platonic ideal of the species.

Sheer fucking genius… I should memorize this and recite it to myself the next time I’m stupid enough to go to a movie theatre on a Friday or Saturday night.

Playlist

I’ve spent most of last night and this morning ripping some of the big stack of 7″s in my “new” pile to mp3 so that I can listen to them on the ‘ol ipod. Here’s what’s on the list:

Strung Up – Warfucked (AMAZING! I never would have thought they could top Society Rot in Hell but they have indeed done it)
Taeve – Homocore Aus Danemark (see previous review)
Taeve – EP (their first EP and it’s even better than Homocore…!)
Skate Korpse – Rochester Blues & Self-titled 7″s (see previous review)
Gorilla Angreb / Lokum – Split (excellent KBD-worship from these Danish bands)
Gorilla Angreb – Aborted 2000 & Self-titled (see previous reviews)
Arrigt Antraek – Self-titled (more Danish old school-sounding stuff; if you liked Amde Petersen’s Arme you’ll LOVE this)
86 Mentality – On the Loose (on the whole not as good as their first, but the title track is probably their best song)
Observers – Lead Pill (formative, yes, but still great)
Tetsu-Arrey – Force (rocked-out Japcore a la Forward… this is exactly what I wanted to hear this morning)
Asta Kask – Till Sista Droppen (never been able to get into these guys too much, but I’ll keep trying!)
Avksum – Crucified by the System (perfect repro/reissue on Prank… powerful old school Scandi HC)
Supertouch – What Did We Learn (bought this just to sell it on ebay but I’ve found myself really liking it… reminds me of my old faves Four Walls Falling)

If you’re a longtime reader of the blog you probably remember me mentioning something about my PhD qualifying exams. They’re still six months away but I’m studying like mad. Yesterday and today I’ve been attempting my first practice essays and I’m finding that it’s really difficult to study for an exam like this. I have questions that were asked on previous exams, so I answered two of those in the past 24 hours but now I have no idea whether my answers were any good or not. I really don’t even have any idea if they’re in the ballpark with acceptable, so I suppose all I can do is keep answering questions and hoping that I achieve a finer and finer level of detail with more and more practice. I can tell you, though, that it’s pretty damn hard to just call to memory minute details from a list of several hundred books, poems and plays, especially when you’ve got 45 minutes or less to answer some of these questions.

Regulations: Self-titled LP

I’ve been sitting around for the past few weeks watching this thing garner spots on numerous playlists posted online and seen a couple of decent (but not stellar) reviews, but I’ve still been waiting for someone out there in internet-land to point out the fact that this record is a classic in the making. However, aside from record label-associated promo materials, no one has been willing to do that yet, at least not in writing. Well, once again Dead Metaphor comes to the rescue to let you know that this record by Sweden’s Regulations is one of the few records that you need to buy this year.

I actually didn’t like this record too much at all when I first heard it; for lack of a better word, I thought it sounded kind of contrived and came at a suspicious time given all the Danish bands inspired by the Killed by Death sound getting so popular (though, to their credit, I don’t think Regulations make any bones about being inspired by those bands). However, as with so many great records I found myself flipping through my LPs, wondering what to listen to and thinking “hey, maybe I’ll just check out that Regulations record again.” Before I knew it I was completely hooked and knew every word.

The first song on the record to really, really stick out was the opener, “Anna’s Eyes.” It’s been a while since I heard a record with such a killer opening song; sure, there have been records that have been pretty great (though decidedly uniform), but “Anna’s Eyes” just screams “OPENING TRACK!” the same way that “Rise Above” and “Holidays in the Sun” do. It’s not a radical departure in style from the rest of the album, but it’s by far the most instantly memorable track with its stop-start chorus and subtle (for this band at least) vocal melody. From there the fire cools ever-so-slightly for “In 1945″ (still one of the best, most melodic songs on the album) and goes through a few comparatively non-descript (but still great, just more along the lines of their earlier, more hardcore-influenced EPs) songs before getting to the side one closer, “I Don’t Need.” Just as “Anna’s Eyes” starts the side perfectly, “I Don’t Need” ends it perfectly. I just can’t get over when the chorus comes in and the guitarist hits that one chord and just lets it ring while Otto yelps “I won’t pretend / that IIIIIIIIIII need you!”

The b-side opens with what many are identifying as the record’s “hit”, “Police Sirens” (download an mp3 from Havoc’s site here), though I think it’s actually the weakest of the four tracks that get the prime spots on the vinyl (i.e. beginning or ending a side). At just over three minutes it’s the longest song on the record besides “I Don’t Need,” but where “I Don’t Need” uses that extra space to let the song breathe a little more, “Police Sirens” just sort of charges through to the end. As on the first side, a few of the less melodic songs follow and the record ends with “Fashion Girl.” At first this song failed to grab me because of its rather lackluster lyrics, but on the fifth or sixth listen I finally paid attention to that fucking great riff that starts the song and pops up occasionally throughout. While a lot of Regulations’ songs could be fairly standard hardcore songs if they didn’t have the thin, old-sounding production, “Fashion Girl” sounds like it could only sound the way it sounds.

In the review of this record that appeared in Maximum Rock N Roll the reviewer said that this is exactly the type of record everyone was expecting to make the Stitches to make throughout the late 90s, and I think that says it all; aside from (perhaps) Gorilla Angreb, no record in recent memory has been able to bridge the gap between ’77 punk worship and hardcore revivalism as effectively as this one, so whether you tend to buy your records from Bomp! or Hardcore Holocaust (or [sorry for the plug] my humble distro) you’ll certainly want to pick this up.

hardcorepunkrockshow

I’ve been having a hell of a lot of trouble getting my thoughts together about the show that I went to last night. I know that I definitely wasn’t into it, but I can’t seem to put my finger on a satisfactory reason why. So, I guess that I’m just going to relate what the night was like and maybe by the end of it I’ll have some conclusions.

We got to the club just as the doors were opening and it was pretty much a mob scene; fifteen minutes before the doors were scheduled to open there were probably 200 people there, more than I generally expect to come to a typical Richmond hardcore show over the course of the entire night. My friends and I were occupying ourselves by telling stories about how we first heard Verbal Abuse and why they were so damn amazing. The people who weren’t there the last time Verbal Abuse played Richmond seemed skeptical of my assertion that 90% of the people there were there to see Municipal Waste (which I was pretty sure of since there were less than 50 people at that show last year). An impromptu survey of the high school-aged kids around us confirmed that Municipal Waste have, indeed, reached the level of local phenomenon.

After 30-40 minutes of waiting in line we finally got into the club, where Witch Hunt were just beginning to play. I know that some people really liked them, but I wasn’t too impressed; they seemed way too all over the place for me, alternating between bursts of quick, modern hardcore a la Tear It Up or Cut the Shit and melodi-crust in the Tragedy / From Ashes Rise vein. I actually really liked a couple of different passages in which they pushed the melodic angle a bit harder and came up with some relatively complex, interesting melodies, but all in all they didn’t really do anything for me.

The next two bands that were scheduled to play were RAMBO and Asshole Parade. I’ve never really been a fan of RAMBO and I just saw Asshole Parade a week or so ago in Raleigh and didn’t really like them so I went to get some pizza and then milled around outside. I talked for a while with the singer from New York’s Eyes of Hate (more on that later) about all the shows he saw at A7 back in the early 80s and we went and drank a beer with Nicki Sicki from Verbal Abuse, who is easily one of the nicest old hardcore dudes I’ve met. He told us all about their drummer troubles, which resulted in them flying in a new drummer from the west coast that day and attempting to teach him the songs in the van on the way from the airport. After a while, though, Nicki had to get back for Verbal Abuse’s set so we meandered back to Alley Katz.

I forged my way to the front of the stage and was surprised to find that they had installed a barrier, which I’d never seen at Alley Katz before. Annoyingly, the damn thing got black paint all over my home-made Void t-shirt (which I got several compliments on over the course of the evening), but I decided that I was going to have fun despite this because, hey, it isn’t every day you get to see a legendary hardcore band. So, Verbal Abuse started to play (I think the first song they played was “Verbal Abuse”) and, man, were they rickety. While they sounded pretty good considering it was the first time they had ever played together, it was still not quite passable. Those of us excited to see them did our best to rock out, but it was difficult because the songs’ choruses seemed to come out of nowhere… the songs didn’t really flow; they were just sort of incohate bursts of speed, which works for a lot of bands but Verbal Abuse are really a lot more sophisticated than that. They went through an abbreviated set, doing some songs fairly well and having some songs just fall apart at the seams. They closed with the same two covers as the last time they played Richmond, but this time “Paranoid” was a bit more Sabbath and a bit less Dickies and “We’re an American Band” was almost painfully slow (even to Nicky, who was screaming at the drummer to play faster throughout the song’s intro).

Then things got weird. I’d heard earlier in the evening that New York’s Eyes of Hate, who were touring with Verbal Abuse, would be playing a couple of songs with Verbal Abuse’s equipment after VA finished their set, and I didn’t really think anything of it. When Verbal Abuse finished playing the Eyes of Hate guys jumped on stage, changed out the snare drum and got ready to play… it took them probably 60 seconds but it was enough time for the people who were putting on the show to get really pissed. The band started playing a song (they sounded kind of like Kill Your Idols from what I remember, but I didn’t hear much) and the venue quickly turned on the between-band music, turned off the lights and took all of the instruments out of the PA. The band soldiered on, but as they finished their second song the guys from Municipal Waste jumped on the stage and tried to get them to stop. I thought maybe the bands were about to fight, but who knows… regardless, the situation was tense.

While I’m all for cultivating the “anything can happen” vibe at punk rock shows, I think that this ended up being a pretty fucked up situation for a number of reasons. The biggest thing was that it put the Municipal Waste dudes (I think Tony booked the show) in the position of having to look like an asshole; clearly most of the people were there to see their band and would have been disappointed if time had been shaved off their set for some unknown hardcore band from out of town. More to the point, though, is the fact that this just wasn’t that kind of show; for better or for worse, Municipal Waste aren’t really a hardcore band anymore, and I’m pretty sure that their shows wouldn’t be like hardcore shows even if the band wanted them to be.

After the melee surrounding that died down Municipal Waste took the stage, and honestly I’m at a loss about what to say about that one. They had some kind of extended introduction in which someone (who I couldn’t tell… all I could see were the hundreds of heads in front of me) recited a little routine in that annoying radio announcer / monster truck commercial voice. As soon as they started playing the place just erupted; the theme of the night seemed to be “thrash metal pool party,” as there were foam noodles, inflatable rafts and beach balls flying all over the place along with the requisite human bodies. Tony introduced all of the songs in his best “metal” voice (“this song is called SWEET ATAAAAAAAAAAACK”) and the band was as tight as ever.

Reading about it, this probably sounds like as much of a blast as the Waste shows of old, but there was this shade of violence to the evening that I was never able to ignore. There were a lot of Richmond’s annoying straight edge crowd there doing their feet-first stage dives and other dangerous, macho bullshit, and when the band played “Jock Pit” (a song making fun of tough guys), the crowd seemed to take the lyrics in earnest, doing their best to start “the new dance craze that’s really gonna hurt.” Ten minutes or so into the set a gigantic fight broke out just in front of the stage and it quickly expanded to include about a fourth of the club. Once I saw that I went outside, disgusted with the crowd. However, things weren’t much better out there; there were 30 or 40 kids milling around outside and just as I stepped out of the club’s door a line of cops were coming down the alley, forcing people to either go into the club or go somewhere else. I stepped just inside the club and stood in the hallway next to the people working the door. After they cleared the alley the cops came in and gave the guy at the door some bullshit spiel about how it looked to him that the club was over capacity (I seriously doubt that… not only did he not enter the room where the bands were playing, but the show wasn’t sold out and while it was crowded it was far from uncomfortable inside the club) and he threatened to call the fire marshall. Deciding that watching a bunch of jock punks kill each other was less annoying than being around fucking sleazy-ass cops, I went back into the room where the Waste was playing and watched them play their last few songs. People went nuts and the show was over. Walking around outside afterward things were still tense and before I left at least one person was convicted by the scene police for starting the fight and went home with his face and shirt covered in blood.

One of my favorite things about Alley Katz is the fact that much of the exposed brick lining the club’s walls is not actually brick at all, but molded, painted plastic that’s been stapled to the plywood walls underneath. You don’t notice it at first; indeed, you feel like you’re in a real, seedy underground club. However, when you lean against the brick there is a bit of tell-tale give that reminds you that your experience has been manufactured for your sake, that maybe you haven’t been at a hardcore / punk / rock / whatever show at all, but an artist’s representation of one. I think that pretty much sums up the experience of going to this show.

Click here to see more pictures of Verbal Abuse

RIP Biscuit

I haven’t seen this posted around the web anywhere, but apparently Biscuit from the Big Boys died. here is the story from his hometown paper. It’s a very sad day indeed.