122 Hours Of Fear

Tomata Du Plenty of Screamers - Photographer unknown

*Note for those that care or are waiting for packages to be mailed out. While writing this latest post I ended up having some serious pain that I had to get checked at the hospital. At the same time my phone busted and has been in the shop for a week(?!). The good news is that I should have my phone back in hand in the next couple of days so I can respond to any Instagram messages etc. Also I don’t have testicular cancer. Just engorged veins that make me feel like I’ve been kicked in the nuts for days at a time. I’ll also say that an ultrasound on your genitals feels positively lovely. We’re always going for the silver lining here at Neon Taste. Ain’t life grand? Anyways - I’m not dodging you. I’m just slightly fucked but ever so thankful for Canadian Health Care.

Well shit, it’s February of 2024 and I’ve managed to nail down a small smattering of writing for some new releases again, finally. A short one, just 5 new titles but they’re each very worthy of your time. I’m here in Calgary, Alberta going through a particularly uncharacteristically warm Winter which has made some of the record hunting a little easier to manage instead of the usually bitter cold -30. And though most of what I’ve been buying here in the bins hasn’t been jaw-dropping, I’ve still managed to track down some neat punk records. Some of the better ones are mint copies of Twisted Nerve and Vex 12”s but there was a large drop of On-U Sound reggae LP’s that dropped at my favourite little used shop here awhile ago and I cleaned up heavily on some dub plates, Creation Rebel LP’s and more. In actual news, the store in Vancouver will be shutting down at the end of April as our lease is up and we just don’t have the time to invest. If you’re in the city, pop by on a weekend and grab some things will you? I am dreading shipping the massive amount of stock to Calgary when it’s all done. It’s odd being in a new city. I have no idea what’s going on and feel completely out of touch. If you’re here and can tell me about what is going on in the DIY scene i’d love to hear about it. So far, it looks like nothing.

Preorder for the new Traumatizer and Jug records is still rolling. Traumatizer is a band you’re going to be hearing a lot from as that 7” is insane. I suspect in the future that you’ll be hearing much more from them. Winnipeg’s Jug are that local band you play with while on tour on a Monday, the throwaway date and you’re completely blown away by them. Exasperated delivery of mean, mid-tempo Hardcore. I expect you to love it like I do. I’m always happy to do quality bands first records and that goes double time when it’s a band from a scene that doesn’t get any love. If you need a copy of each, you can preorder Traumatizer here and Jug here.

Here’s stuff I’m digging right now. Fuck the hype train.

Pura Mania have managed the difficult task that is covering a Screamers track with guitars and bass as primary instruments. This is a straight up Punk Rock function without sounding tedious or stupid. The rock approach of these punks might make this sound like a stripping away of what makes Screamers special but you’d be wrong. Pura Mania have shown that 122 Hours Of Fear lends itself to Hardcore Punk extremely well. Why don’t you hear many bands covering the synth-punk, first wave lords of LA?

My guess is because it’s fucking hard to get it right.

Bands in the past that tried to get somewhere near Screamers maniacal but claustrophobic Punk often missed the mark, maybe the closest would have been Phantom Limbs who had one great, debut record on Alternative Tentacles and at least one other one that I didn’t care about. They stuck close to what I could consider an evolution of Screamers original vision with a side-helping of creepy-crawl, Los Angeles vampirism. They were the cellar dwellers to that early-aught, skinny boy, Le Shok, Crimson Curse noise. That had its moment and some of those records are still very much worth your time. If you don’t know them, I’d recommend Phantom Limbs for their nightmare, circus organ and great song titles like Hot Knives And Hornets.

We’re getting off topic though. What makes Pura Mania’s return such a knockout is more than just a well executed cover track. The new 7” on Roachleg has more to do with anthemic Oi and Melodic Punk as it does the seething influence of Tomata Du Plenty. The cover track itself though admirable, is not their best moment. After an epic piano and organ intro, the record the urgency picks up for the first song. The real gem sticks out in El Mundo Al Revés which gets me humming daily since spinning my copy. This kicks up dust like a more Post-Punk effected No Hope For The Kids. I confess that I get sick of what I consider to be overly effected bass or guitar. This might have been an issue here but the bass’s swampy chorus and flange or whatever adds much more than it takes away. The flanked guitars and their interplay is great, these are really well written songs delivered exactly the way that urgent Punk should sound. It’s a fucking knockout and quite likely one of the records you’re still going to listen to in 2030 if the sun hasn’t warped all our records into ashtrays. In what I consider a rare occurrence for Punk and Hardcore, I truly wish this had a bit more to chew on. This is the leanest and most varied 7” record I’ve heard in awhile. Leave em wanting more I guess! Need a copy, we’ve got em here.

Fugitive Bubble knocked me out with the Stucco release and this new LP on Sorry State is just as worthy. Scrappy guitars, great vocals and bouncy drums form a package that gets slightly close to the funky jams of Minutemen and honestly reminded me of Bristol’s Gimic who we were lucky enough to gig when Chain Whip was out on tour in the UK. Delusion’s main weapon is a clean, fast guitar that sometimes has that elastic-band, jibber-jabber tone that was present on Saccharine Trust recordings and sometimes fucks around with quick, melodic riffs and the odd freakout. Vocally, there’s some variance in approach from song to song. The experimentation seems so honest with what they’re doing here that you could tell me this is from 1979 and I’d believe you. That’s no insult from me nor is it a braindead exasperation by some 30 year old ‘77 Punk saying “finally!” because something fits their narrow parameters for acceptable Rock ‘n’ Roll. Nah, this just straight up sounds like West Coast Punk with the speed but not the boorish aggression of hardcore seeping in. If you’re looking for muscle and brash destruction, you might want to skip this. If you’re looking for a neat contemporary band that is playing a style of Punk that is often forgotten about and doing it fucking well you should dig on this. It’s weird to make comparisons sometimes but if you have records by bands like The Fastbacks and Delta 5 then you should be able to dig on in to this. Available right here.

Cosey Müeller’s second release is here and has been graciously released on 12” vinyl for your listening pleasure. You should be grateful you filthy little pig. This is the beat you hear reverberating through the concrete staircase, through the rings of smoke and past the night creatures that haven’t seen the sun for weeks. Dancing blind, the club is lit by a celluloid splash of redbluewhites. Plastic, fishnets, leather and powder are the vices of the night and Cosey’s the soundtrack. The minimal-synth bop caresses in that space accompanied by ice-cold, sensory dep vocal and the racing pulse of backroom, anonymous lust. This music is best when dipped in eros, informed by Punk and listened to under the influence. I can hear the sounds of Kas Product, the dungeon dreams of Boy Harsher’s early recordings and songwriting prowess of their German peers, Aus. I guess this came out in 2023 but I’ve only recently been able to get copies of it. Buy it now or really fuck up.

Nightfeeder are back with their 2nd 7”, called Disgustor, which follows the Cut All Your Face Off LP and it’s the kind of quality that you’d expect coming from the folks behind Deathraid, Disrupt, Consume, State Of Fear etc. We call it “pedigree” folks, and these dogs are smart enough to keep the genes fresh so there ain’t any defects going on. There’s a focused horror theme that runs through all of Nightfeeder’s records and the most improved part of this aesthetic is in the artwork for the new offering. Lewis from Bootlicker knocks it out of the park with a particularly slimy cover collaging eyeballs, vampires, ghastly faces and disembodied hands all glued together on a vomit-green background. As for the music, Nightfeeder plays with a lot of tempo changes keeping their slow parts menacing and their D-beat attacks destructive. I can’t help but hear the Rock ‘n’ Roll backbone that holds it all together. Its not quite as evident in this release as their LP but there’s still some groove in these tracks. The title track, Disgustor opens with a gross riff and Jay Stile’s signature growl proclaiming “I AM THE DISGUSTOR”. His voice is perfect for this type of thing. You can really hear the violence in the delivery, it sits like spit over the microphone that’s been loosed from the back of his throat. Thick with venom making soundmen cringe when they switch the mic out for the next band. The two remaining tracks are blasts of Hardcore that grab you by the throat, The Suffering is straight up perfect Hear Nothing, See Nothing Discharge worship. Media Circus is the gunshot blast that you’d expect from these mutants before falling into a dirge and closing with news media samples covering cults, murder, rape and something I can’t decipher about some guy with scissors cutting things that isn’t paper. These guys will never put out a bad record and after getting to play a couple of gigs with them on their ill-fated Canadian tour I will vouch hard that they are great people. We’ve got copies enroute to us so you can reserve yours right here. I’ll get it out as soon as they arrive.

Groucho Marxist Record Co:Operative compilation is a wonderful little piece of DIY, CrashBangPop that compiles four 7” E.P.’s released by the Groucho Marxist label. The label was run out of Scotland by Tommy Kayes, a member of the anarchist group a member of the Clydeside Anarchist Group. If you chew your rhythm to UK Punk from the 70’s you know that arguably the best vintage is 1979. This magical time of Punk Rock hitting it’s apex and the sub-genres flowering into their best versions before being swallowed by trends in New Romanticism, extremely bad Pop music and blistering Hardcore. This compilation brings you 14 tracks by 8 artists that fits directly in the puzzling space between the DIY/Messthetics explosion, PowerPop, Punk Rock and post-Pistols moodiness. Sneex, The Fegs, Mentol Errors, brings the purist sounds of zitty Punk Rock while Mod Cons and Urban Enemies provide some Lo-Fi, Good Vibrations-esq tracks. If you’re looking for the perfect Punk pop, look no further than the Defiant Pose tracks which sound like early Jam with Undertones melodies. The Poems track has the cardboard box drums, out of tune guitar and immediate vocals as if they wrote the lyrics minutes before recording them and read them off lager stained paper. This is likely as their lone track fades out mid verse (ha!). The band with the most tracks is XS Discharge, a band with a delightful personality crisis hopping from classic Punk to PIL-inspired dubby wailing.
Each one of the E.P.’s compiled here provides a handful of crucial tracks that could have been (and perhaps were) compiled on Bored Teenagers or Back To Front compilations and when they’re repackaged so flawlessly with a giant, 40 page booklet it becomes a mandatory grip for anyone that has an interest in this stuff. Special thanks to Sealed Records for putting this one together as it’s truly done with love for the primitive sounds of pretty anarchists making their noise. In a run of crucial reissues, this is one of em. If you hear this and can’t get over it, do check out the Model Citizens 7” (here) which has much in common with the sounds on this LP and released but the same label. It might give you the bonus track you’re aching for. You can find this compilation in the shop here.

I read a couple of books recently including Paradise Rot by Jenny Hval which I really enjoyed. The whole thing is dripping in piss. Listening to people piss, pissing, thinking about other people hearing you piss. The secret is in the piss. The piss is the secret. Those private, morse code moments that you share with others in the quiet tinkle behind a closed door. This book is also soaking wet in rotten fruit, subtle erotica, queer lust and the confusion of life. It’s enveloping, it’s short, it had me thinking for days afterwards and it’s definitely recommended. Jenny Hval has a few books and this is the first I’ve read but I’ll be looking to read more in the future and you’ll likely hear more about them here. If you’d like to hear some of Jenny’s music you can find the most recent work via Sacred Bones and 4AD or the great devil of Spotify if you like.

The last book i’ve had a chance to dig through is called Succubus Up! which is a piece of 1970 erotic pulp by Chris Longo. It’s a perverse little story about a 15 year old boy who accidentally kills his first lover in their joint de-flowering which turns her into a succubus. He then becomes a Prince of Darkness, tortured by his succubus lover into being trapped at the intersection of sex and death. What follows is a descent into psychedelic sex, a road trip through ghostly brothels, early Satanic Panic hysteria and extremely slight, repeating glimmers of very demented, existential anguish. Rampant sex, grit, violence, nihilism and of all the nasty things you’d expect for a book written for perverts in the decade that’s only just recovering from the Summer Of Love hangover. You get crucifixions, S&M of the most revolting stripe, incest, rape and more. At times the sex scenes get a little more drawn out than necessary but that’s the genre, innit. The nice thing about these Pulp novels is that they focus on story and not plot. Succubus Up! knows the rules to keep the juices flowing. Introduce some characters, make them fuck, talk about life and loss, some more fucking, some Satanic iconography and rampant blasphemy. This is blood flavoured, bubblegum prose and I think it’s special even though quite imperfect. If you’re expecting loose ends tied, you won’t fund it here. Standout moments include the narrator waiting for his turn in the confessional and a woman before him is confessing her sin but repeatedly being told to “speak louder!” by the priest. So she ends up inadvertently confessing to everyone in the church and then runs away in shame, dropping erotic photos of herself in the process. The orgy in the steam room with the ghost is also nightmare level wet-dream. If you’ve ever wondered what really started the Second World War, it was a blowjob in a brothel. Don’t take it from me. Take it from Chris Longo and his protagonist(?) the Prince Of Darkness. These little paperbacks aren’t as easy to find as they used to be and I suspect they’re going to cost me a bit more when I finally do get a scoop of them. You got some filling your grandpas shelves that aren’t glued together? I love filth. Gimme.

Last but not least, I was digging in the 7” boxes at home and came across the lone E.P. by Human Cabbages. It’s a nice little 3 track offering from 1981 in Coventry and sits comfortably in the messthetics scene. This ones got some hot organ all over it. The Witch has some playful, spookier subject matter that speak to the coming Goth explosion and a Punk Rock shaker called Air-Raid Shelter that kicks off side 2. One More Fool ain’t too bad but is a suitable choice as closer between the three tracks. This was a nice repeat listen today. I recommend hitting it up. Human Cabbages had a track on the Boys And Girls Come Out To Play E.P. compilation which i’ll include here. This has been on my want-list for a decade, my birthday is in August. Play yourself out.

Til next time,

Free Palestine.

Josh