Dopestroke on Badmaster Records

Been a while since I heard from Badmaster Records, who broke that Pop. 1280 to me and I ended up checking out here in NY a few times, really great. This latest single is a 5 track EP from Philly's own Dopestroke who are balanced right between this stripped down hardcore and no-fi metal sound. A sort of Suicidal Tendencies meets Anthrax combo that's almost so closely related it's almost weird those are two completely separate music demographics.

A-Side's "Wet Brain" kicks in with a spazzy superhuman beat, speed hardcore tempo of alternating kick and bass, the entire band is using twelve tracks for yelling...the distortion and fast thrash is just a delivery device for the content. A heavy machine sound barfing up dense noise for the vocals to carry this. It switches gears into a chorus anthemic punk, TV party style with a burst of super echo metal guitar solo. "Social Loathing (I, II, III) is almost an instrumental track of that headbanging raw distortion....with more metal guitar screaming in. Dual vocals of throaty yelling and talking layered over each other. This track has slowly been building the agression back up and as much as they're straight up hardcore yelling, they seem to be messing around a bit too, throwing a bit of goof into the seriousness along with these serious metal chops here complete with serious technical skill.

B-side comes along with, "Help Unwanted" and all I can hear now is chanting the lyrics, it's almost losing all melody and in the process, definitely getting darker and this is where I think they're getting to a different place then just hardcore. They're going to hell, if you believe this tough vocal and banshee wail track of vocal just underneath, like that devil guy on his shoulder has completely taken over.
"Negative, Angry & Depressed" is similarly vocal centric, with people laughing, coming in at the chorus? Man that is the worst. Especially when you are seriously already pissed and depressed. That would really make you kill someone. Why is that the freaking worst sound. People are going to use pummeling a lot to describe this, but really what else is there?
"Copland" has a beefier thick guitar sound, with a police office at the beginning trying to talk to these hooligans. Cerebral Ballzy is great, and I love that they have tracks about skating and generally seeming like goofballs, like some sort of Natural Child based out of queens, hopping turnstiles with 40's, but Dopestroke seem to be taking a more serious angry approach to those same fucked up situations....wait
are they yelling "Go / To / Lunch!" (from Glenn Gary Glenn Ross?) Maybe I've completely pegged them wrong after all. Not the part about this being heavy as hell hardcore/metal....just the dead serious part.

BM0025 - DOPESTROKE EP
In our continuing quest to support and release records by Philadelphia music makers, we offer the vinyl debut for punk frontrunners DOPESTROKE! This Self-titled EP is a 5 song rager, presented on the ever-popular 7 inch, vinyl format. DOPESTROKE has been tearing up Philadelphia and beyond for a short while now and we are stoked to emblazon their style of nihilist punk in a thick platter of black wax. Channeling the unrepentant anger and hardcore speed of Rudimentary Peni and Dissucks, DOPESTROKE draws influence from the classic buzzsaw guitar melody of The Freeze all the while taking ques from bands of the East Bay area, like Grimple and El Dopa. Live shows have been compared to Out Cold, Void, and Easy Action. Go see them when they visit what passes for your local, flea-ridden, basement "venue". 300 pressed on black vinyl. Listen to 'Negative, Angry & Depressed'.

Get it from Badmaster Records direct. What do they have against babies by the way? Humiliating them like that?

7Inches - Singles awards of 2010 extravaganza- PT 2

The Already Overpriced Single award goes to Best Coast, there have been plenty of repressings of this on Art Fag, but they keep flying off the preverbial ebay shelves at ludicrous prices...kind of reminds me of the old Vivian Girls singles, it's like people wanted them to be rare already or something. It's nice to know there are super fans checking this stuff out and willing to shell out serious money for them, so I'm not complaining. $82 for this Best Coast single is very tempting sometimes...that's almost 1/10th of pressing your own!



Winner of single 7" that has no business being pressed, but I'm so glad they did:

Portal 13 Globes on Chrome Leaf Records. Of course they are better live. I was actually a little scared they were going to sacrifice something on stage, or hang themselves...like a snuff film amusement park. Extreme is always good, they do it the best. When these two worlds came together at the merch table I was seriously protecting this thing in my bag the whole way home.


Least wanted single (two years running): Brian Jonestown Massacre, not only that it's always listed for 9.99 or some nonsense. It had to be listed at least every week for the entire year, not selling once. Haven't you spent at least 10x that in listing fees? Throw it away already.
Dig! is the worst documentary.... not the way it's made...but both of those terrible bands make me sick...and of course the Dandy Warhols would be successful over BJM. Indie Rock? Get lost. Overrated creeps. The worst pathetic druggies with delusions of grandeur...sadly full of themselves. I might have even liked the part towards the end when they fight with each other in front of 10 fans...but then they probably staged it thinking that anyone gives a shit.



Best packaging for a single: It's a tie between PIAPTK's wedding album of handcut picnic plate lathe singles in the shape of hearts, his letterpress plate series and the Records Digest book/lathe cut series that all came out this year and Sonny Smith's 100 singles art show and boxed set.
Both of these are so insane/amazing that I couldn't choose. An amazing amount of work all for the love of the single. We don't deserve it and I hope you get over to their sites and pick these up because I'd like to see both of them continue their unique brand of sadomasochism.



Best new 7" label: Olde English Spelling Bee, congrats guys, there is no way I can even keep up with your releases let alone research all of these insane bands. I'm officially overwhelmed. The tip of the iceberg was the Big Troubles single, and they've been around since 2009. Still the best.


Special award this year for the longest band name with a single: The world is a beautiful place and i am no longer afraid to die on Top Shelf Records, I like their massive instrumental, emo, post sound, they do it right. You can't even abbreviate that.



Noisiest split single goes to (split decision): Mucky the Ducky and Hexlove and Aids Wolf and Satanized on badmaster Records, two singles that push the limits of what is even music, and that's a good thing.


Most obvious sign of the 7" apocalypse: Scion is not only promoting live garage shows at the Knitting factory but pressing records, which are unbuyable...it's one thing someine there has crazy taste and puts together shows, have free streaming songs from these bands on their 'radio' station but then to go and press records, you have no chance of getting? Thank god for ebay.

Aids Wolf/Satanized split on Badmaster Records

Aids Wolf...of all the animal names out there this at least gives you an idea of where this is probably going. If you said experimental noise insanity, you would be completely right.
It's kind of liberating sometimes to listen to something that you know won't be enjoyed by anyone else. It's got very little to do with the actual sound itself... more the very act of just accepting this arrangement, these distorted vocals which can't be about anything pleasant makes you part of the subset that owns this 7" and who can reject everything.
Just putting this on the turntable says "There is nothing that will shock me, and there is nothing I won't try."
You'd also be hard pressed to meet an asshole at one of these shows.
AIDS-Wolf are so anti-establishment that instead of attending the show with a group of murderers and convicts, they are all music nerds like yourself who are just saying "Bring it on." We all can't wait for the band to start playing and clear the room of casual listeners.

There is an entire underground here in one side of a single. A vocabulary a majority of people are probably unfamiliar with. You can grasp tiny pieces, a hint of a repeatable rhythm or a word from the vocal, but it's mostly alien. It isn't ever about volume and just indiscriminate layers of noise. Throbbing Gristle established the art to pushing the limits, you can hear the carefully planned experience they've been crafting. The years of music it takes to get to this experimental place means that should put them at the top of anyone's list. But the problem is always in acceptance and the narrowing base of listeners a forward thinking a project like this inevitably becomes. They belong to that group of singles, I'm glad exists, but it's rare to commit this to careful study. But they've deliberately set it up that way.

The B-Side, Satanized has an off kilter, jazz-math, metal vibe with appropriately distant recorded-in-a-metal-box vocals.
They make very clear they can play, that's the reason no one could dismiss this...it isn't just noise or the shitty facsimile you would hear from a fictional bad ass band in a movie. Why is that always a joke...a bad stereotype when a periphery character's avant-garde music is played? The music supervisor should know better. If your trained in classical composition, you should be aware of this end of the spectrum, or you're worthless.
There's a huge amount of rhythmic changes. I wonder why the vocals stay that same I'm-in-hell growl tone. Why aren't they experimenting as much vocally? Is that the weakness in this endgame?
It's just a statement about the whole noise genre, not Satanized. They make perfect sense and for me have the musical talent to get away with it. I just think if I'm listening, then we've all agreed we're here for the ride, push it. I'm on board...give it to me.

Impressive 4 color screened sleeve with that rough matte ink, smelling like the printmaking room. Purple splattered 33 rpm vinyl...on Badmaster Records, who is also having a crazy vinyl sale, one LP and 2 singles for $15.

Hot Guts / Pop. 1280 split on Badmaster Records

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Hot Guts on Badmaster /Suicide Tax Records

This is the Hot Guts debut single on Badmaster Records. The pharmaceutical pills in a heart shaped box xerox sleeve could be a warning of something barfing-ly cute or just overly suspect but one minute of the thunder inside and it starts to look and sound like real danger. It's not a found photo anymore, someone in the band probably had this image in mind and went out to execute it. They just couldn't help making it happen in person.

Just when you think the whole world of loud as shit bands can't get any louder, when that wall of sound must have become too thick, that no one could build it any higher, Hot Guts adds another couple of stories. More than anything else they come off like a serious as fuck drone outfit, Harvey Milk style, advocating the aural sludge flow.

This "Ballad of Jon Simon" just completely destroys…and it's the full range of sound that does it. Tthe barreling kick drum and two finger bass, tests the subwoofer while two arms crash away on the cymbals, not to emphasize, more like deathly afraid of the silence.

"Abandon at Leisure" then forces a drum machine into hysterics while the rest glitches away with it's digital head cut off. I would not be shitting you if I said the guitar here sounds like bagpipes. Somehow the pieces come together into a low end recognizable structure, but there's no leisure here. Going down indeed.
"Did You Not go to the Dance Alone?" recaptures the slow defeatist creep of Suicide. Drone monotone with underlying atmospherics has this track coming off like the best sounding industrial era sound that just wouldn't have been possible in the '90s. There was too much promise in the technology, the focus of the "alternative" music world was too much for them, now it just sounds weak and insanely dated. Hot Guts take those same elements and this time do it right. Distorted vocals are somehow quiet, like a dread filled Nothing People…who are creepy, but once you had an idea approximately of where they were going, you could depend on it. Hot Guts, on the other hand, are playing with any kind of expectations learned on whatever track you heard from them last. They can ride the same dark gothic bus as Blessure Grave even, but then make stops for massive energetic fuzz that would make JAMC jealous.

Hot Guts is the perfect name…brief enough to not ever come off pretentious and the natural pairing only brings one thing to mind….they were just spilled.
Shit.... remember what I said about this track earlier?…well, I've been writing through an extended jam with waves of guitar distortion and rapid fire percussion I never saw coming.It's gone completely different. From moody garage instrumental to dense jam. It's a long road that deserves another listen at least.
The vinyl label looks like a photo of a xerox of letraset letters. it's minimal, and full of process. The entire single is a harbinger of the lengths Hot Guts will go at 33 1/3 on a lowly 7" single.

Get it from Badmaster Records.
There's a few left.
I can't wait to hear their latest.