Knife Fight Isolated 7″ Painkiller Records One of my favorite bands of the past decade return, taking the Oi! influence of their previous few releases and combining it with a huge Discharge/UK82 influence. This is gnarly, angry hardcore. Definitely a contender for record of the year.
Breathing Fire Years of Lead LP Painkiller Records About seven years ago, Breathing Fire’s demo really blew me away. I remember listening to it every day in the fall of 2004 while studying before my evening classes. Brutal, heavy, and very dark hardcore in the vein of bands like Eyehategod and Rorschach. After years of delay, Breathing Fire returned with this LP. The influence of bands like the aforementioned is still very prevalent, but so is other bands like Saint Vitus and Napalm Death. Easily one of the best of the decade.
Scapegoat S/T 7″ Painkiller Records When I first got this record a friend sent me a zip file of mp3s so I could listen to it in the car. While walking across campus down at Stockton one day after meeting with a former professor about graduate school stuff I toggled through my player and queued up Mind Eraser, Rupture, Crossed Out, and this new Scapegoat record. I didn’t really think about it; I just got in my truck and bolted back onto the parkway. On my way back into Manahawkin I looked down at my player because I thought the…
Read more
Restless Youth State of Confusion 7” Painkiller Records When I first heard about Restless Youth, someone told me they sounded like The Bad Brains. It even says it on the Painkiller website. Cooch is one of the people whose taste I trust the most, but I thought to myself “yeah, right, heard that one before.” Well folks Restless Youth do in fact sound like The Bad Brains! These six songs fit somewhere in between Roir and Rock For Light, moving at hyper speed. This is one of the most impressive records I have heard in awhile; I cannot wait to…
Read more
Mind Eraser are my favorite hardcore band right now. I was very impressed by their demo and then totally blown away by the Cave LP. I did this interview last week with Chris Corry. *** Was releasing the demo online a conscious choice the band made? In the age of $5 demo tapes and CDR demos that can hold 80 minutes of music but only have three songs on them, it was quite refreshing to see the Mind Eraser stuff online for everyone with a net connection to be able to check out. Nah it wasn’t really any kind of…
Read more
