We're back! I've returned from my holidays trip and am all caught up on mailorder except for last 48 hours. Thanks for the patience and understanding.
My time back on home turf was tooooo much fun. Between Korean spa, bowling alleys, anime stores, fancy restaurants, avant garde art museums, more food roadtrips, and so many of my friends buying houses and having kids, I was out and about pretty much all the time, and whatever down time I had, I was helping my dad with his model train setup or walking around with grandma at the retirement home. Phone always going off, out on the town all night then sleep all day, I swear I gained like 10 lbs and didn't break a sweat once LOL.
By 4 AM on New Years Eve I wound up with a bleach blonde mohawk and that about sets the tone for my 2022 LOLLLL.
Of course this is great and puts me in a very good mood. If only life could always be this good! But also, I dunno, should it? My trip also reminded me of the fundamental reason I moved in the first place. It's so easy and comfortable to spend all your time fuckin around and hanging out, but that can leave you no space in your life to cultivate yourself, to accomplish, to grow. But then a life spent entirely focused on your passions and pursuits can feel a bit unrewarding in its own way, as I've found. Where is the middle path? What kind of life do I want to live? I'm still sorting that out, but moving away and giving myself some space to figure this out was undoubtedly the best decision in retrospect and I know I'm so much closer to finding my answer than I was before.
Now that we're firmly in 2022 and I'm firmly back in Minneapolis, it's back to fuckin business. Hit the gym, band's getting ready to record our second demo tape, and my apartment is overflowing with records again. Let's dig into it!!
-Dan
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DECEMBER + JANUARY NEW ARRIVALS
For me, the most important record in this update is the Radegast demos reissue LP. This is one I've been dreaming about for years. Raw and wild, reckless and out of control, passion and power, but with that underlying sense of melody and songwriting that so many eastern European bands seem to master effortlessly. In short, for me, this is flawless punk music. It's like raw power is just percolating through the grooves into your speakers.
I was fortunate to buy the 90s Radegast LP for like $20 when I was in college, at a record store in Los Angeles, when I was visiting my grandparents. Certainly it's one of the high points of Czech hardcore, but I like the demos even more, for being more raw and reckless and a little more tuneful.
But what this record really makes me think of is my dear friend Filip. I wonder how happy Filip would be about this reissue, of what he espoused as the most important Czech punk recordings ever. Would he be thrilled they're conveniently back in the world? Or would he find some nitpicky detail to complain about? (LOL we all know the answer here). On the first See You in Hell/Lotus Fucker tour, See You in Hell were covering a Radegast song, trying to spread the good word of Czech hardcore. I'd really have to wrack my brain to remember which one. Anyway, I'll skip the waxing poetic but I really miss Filip. It's been 6 years since his passing but he'll never be forgotten.
Tough segue, but, we got a ton of sick noisecore and grind. I am most excited to see my guys Atrofia Cerebral first demo on LP, and we made a few official Atrofia Cerebral shirts to go along with it. I'm also really chuffed on Genital Masticator reissue LP, more pulverizing relentless raw noisecore. If you want something more current, may I suggest the brand spankin new Cock ESP/Plack Blague split 7"? Two regional legends of experimental music in one place, perfect.
I'm not a metal guy, but if I was, I'd be listening to shit-fi South American black metal and kvlt Southeast Asian black metal. I listen to stuff like Belial LP, Morbius LP, Angelholocaust LP, and I think, fuck, maybe I should grow my hair long and get some sunglasses?? Totally ripping shit, highly recommended. But for now, in my current disposition, I'll stick with the Bafomet tape, top tier metalpunk mayhem.
Normally crust is about as metal as I get and the Fatum/Decade split 12" suits me perfectly fine....although I prefer the Decade side myself LOL. I was also blown away by Socio La Difekta EP, new Japanese band playing the sort of bludgeoning brutal crustcore like Disrupt and Destroy that felt so common when I was a teenager but now feels very hard to find. This record really refreshed and nourished my soul and brought a smile to my face. And if you really want to dig deeper into this sort of punk, you goootttaaaa check out Excrement of War LPs, we restocked the album and got plenty of the recent collection LP.
If you can't handle the stench, we got plenty of proper raging hardcore records too. We got another fat stack of Death Side EP+DVDs, so if you missed out the first time around, we got you. I cannot recommend the Violent Spirit EP enough, possibly my top hardcore record of 2021 and I'm not totally sure where all the copies went but I'm glad we got a few of the repress. New to me is the Acute discography CD, another raging obscurity from Sapporo city, northern Japan, the scene that brought you FUP, Napalm, Gerogerogenbakutai, etc.
And finally, an array of punk shit to suit whatever you need. For proper melody, I'm really hyped on Gentleman Jesse new LP, and Grimple LP reissue sounds better to me now than it did when I was younger. In my friend group, the talk of the town is the new Tough Skins LP, which is actually a Devo cover album but better. If you were into last year's Morbo LP, we got plenty of old Peruvian punk reissues that you gotta hear, especially the Vol.2 : Rock Subterraneo - La Clasica 2 da Maqueta 13 Bandas comp CD. But personally, I am most excited about this giant box of Ignorantes stuff we got, a little stack of the new 7" and a whole smorgasbog of tapes. Ignorantes is basically my favorite band in the game right now and the tapes have been the soundtrack to my life this week.
For more commentary on this stuff and more, please scope our Instagram page, where we review choice new arrivals as they come. If it sounds cool when we talk about it, it'll sound even cooler when you hear it streaming on the online store, and even cooler still when you buy the record and slap it on your turntable.
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next month:
demo tapes from all around the world!
more of the latest Japanese shit!
the latest out of Denmark!
....and a friend from back home is coming to visit so if I am dragging my feet, I apologize!
Thanks and talk more in February.
-Dan