SHUFFLER 0165 – THE LEAVES DO FLICKER

Wildernessking – “Morning (Acoustic)” from …and the Night Swept Us Away, the Devil Within (Les Acteurs De L’Ombre Productions)

I almost shuffled right on past. It’s not like you would have known. I mean, it’s an acoustic track by a black metal band whose content I haven’t covered before. It might as well be a De La Soul skit (I may have skipped something along those lines a time or two before). But the thing is, I would have known. And, in case you can’t tell, I hold myself to a pretty high standard over here.

Besides, I got to thinking. Some of the most interesting heavy bands I can think of have tracks that deviate like this. Hell, Denver’s death metal rippers Blood Incantation have an entire release (Timewave Zero) of ambient brilliance that doesn’t contain so much as one snare hit, distorted guitar string, or growl. Wolves in the Throne Room (Olympia, WA) conduct similar experiments (2011’s “Permanent Change in Consciousness” and “Woodland Cathedral,” or the whole of the Celestite record from 2014, etc.), as does Louisville, Kentucky’s Panopticon (see their sophomore album Kentucky, for example). 

This is a mere sample, of course, but you want to know what all three of those bands have in common? Illegible-ass logos. Panopticon maybe not quite as severely, but then they’re trying to bring bluegrass folks in, you know? 

In any case, you want to know what illegible-ass logos portend? Legit heaviness. That’s what.

As for Wildernessking, they bring the heavy just fine. In fact, they’re my favorite South African black metal band. In even more facts, as I write the first draft of this sentence, after which I fully intend to do some googling and report back, they are the only South African black metal band I know about.

But as promised, I’m here with some intel: Turns out someone over at Last.fm made a list, which includes Wildernessking. I don’t think I’ve heard of any of the rest of these bands, but there are pictures of a lot of them, and, South Africa, I feel like I’d like a word: I don’t know your history intimately, just the broad strokes apartheid business, but I do have to say, you know, the first internet resource I was able to find about your black metal scene didn’t have any Black faces. None that I could immediately clock as such, anyway. And don’t get me wrong: I’m a white guy in the United States, so I know how colonization and white supremacy gets its hooks in us, keeps us on opposite sides of some artificial chasm, and so I don’t blame the artists, not fully anyway, and am definitely not suggesting that any of them are of the national socialist bent, though fans of black metal will note that this is an ugly side of the genre.

Note: I did some more googling and discovered this great Revolver piece about an all-Black South African black metal band, Demogoroth Satanum.

If I’m honest, I kind of go through fits and starts as far as my black metal listening goes. There are certain bands to which I gravitate, but not necessarily the ones anyone would expect, and I can’t say there’s any rhyme or reason to what I do and don’t enjoy. I guess maybe coming from punk and hardcore I like things to have a certain energy to them, but it is true that I was just texting my friend Jeff the other day about how I can get really bored with black metal, and, to a lesser extent, death metal. That said, and I think these entries bear this out, there are bands in both genres whom I adore.

Wildernessking play solid black metal in a part of the world that I, rightly or wrongly, did not expect to find much of a black metal scene. Plus they have a bitchin’ name. Plus they do change it up from time to time, as on the track we’re ostensibly focused on today. 

“Morning (Acoustic)” begins with tranquil guitar, something almost like what you might expect to hear in the background at a tavern at a renaissance fair. But inasmuch as I’ll never be caught dead at one of those fucking places, I’ll never know. There’s maybe a certain Zelda something in it, though, for sure, and things are just a tad windswept, you know? As the track progresses, layers are added, including some very subtle drumwork, which always seems tricky on an acoustic track. 

The poet in me is struck by the lyrics, more for their structure than their content: the song is composed of four lines, each containing five syllables. Not a haiku, but rather a quatrain, but I’ll confess I’ve never run across a quatrain that held to that sort of syllabic stricture in the past. In any case, I find it fascinating:

Hail quiet morning / The leaves do flicker / Praise quiet morning / Such beauty you breed

If you were here for a full-on conversation about poetics we could get into the parallel structure and alliteration and religiosity of these lines, but this is, after all, a music blog, so I’ll spare you. 

But this is a hidden paragraph for subscribers and regular readers: would you be interested in some merch for the blog? Something small and free for your patronage, like a sticker or a coaster or some such nonsense? Please let me know, and if you have a preference as well. I apologize I can’t yet afford rockets or sports cars, but maybe someday, with your continued support?

That Wildernessking was willing and able to depart from strict black metal tradition with this track perhaps foreshadows their 2016 effort Mystical Future, which begins with a three minute intro that, while not out of place from a genre perspective, is certainly sprawling and creative, and I’d argue that no one ever did anything interesting without checking the cyclone fence at the boundaries for holes that they might fit through.

SHUFFLER 0164 – THIS IS NOT FOR ME

You and I – “Silent Morning Whisper” from s/t 7” (1996 Sage Records)

My buddy Simon has been a reliable and trusted long distance friend since our bands played together in small-town Illinois in 1998 or so. And in all that time he has been someone whose musical opinion I put a great deal of trust in.

Yesterday evening, while walking to Burbank’s newest (and best-named*) pizza place, What Up Dough, I texted Simon to confirm what I believed to be true — his desert island screamo band is Honeywell. I had just shuffled my way over to You and I, and thought that perhaps it is finally time for me to delve into an exploration of the screamo genre.

We will not be calling it “skramz” here. “Screamo” is stupid enough. “Skramz” is a bridge too far. I’m a few thousand coffees away from being fifty years old; I can’t be running around using these stupid terms. 

While you’re stepping off of my lawn, when did “cap” cease meaning to insult and begin meaning to lie? What’s wrong with leaving well enough alone?

Well. One thing. If we leave well enough alone we allow the following weirdness from an earlier Shuffler post to stand as established record: [I”]nasmuch as [Joshua Fit for Battle] weren’t Saetia, You and I, or Orchid, they weren’t a screamo band I really fucked with very heavy in their day.”

So there you have it. And I am more generous than he is. Which, you know, chalk it up to my innate kindness, or what can only be described as woeful naivete as against Simon’s cultivated sophistication.

And I guess all of this is a sort of prologue to my exploration of the screamo timeline, itself a prologue to me finally exploring this You and I track. We’ll talk cinema, homophones, and times of day. But first, screamo.

Many on the ol’ internet like to talk about San Diego as the birthplace of the genre, with the Che Cafe operating as the primary venue. I’ve never been inside of either space, but it seems to me that comparing the Che Cafe and its influence on San Diego’s punk and hardcore scene to 924 Gilman up in the Bay Area is appropriate, despite differences in sonics, etc. And where there’s a scene there’s a label, Gravity Records in this case, which came on the scene in 1991 and released music from bands like Angel Hair, Antioch Arrow, Clikatat Ikatowi, Heroin, John Henry West, Mohinder, Second Story Window, and Universal Order of Armageddon. It’s easy to see why they are so often cited as having been early purveyors of the new genre. 

One internet source even went so far as to say that Universal Order of Armageddon was the “first true screamo band ever.” It is perhaps noteworthy that this comes via a Prezi that is riddled with spelling errors, so it is likely that this comes to us from a school project for which minimal effort was applied. I’ve been an educator since 2005; I’m all too familiar with this sort of work product.

But it does raise an interesting point: Universal Order of Armageddon were (eventually) on an important San Diego screamo label to be sure, but they hail from Baltimore, Maryland, and in fact put out their first couple releases on hometown label Vermin Scum, who eight years prior had put out releases by cult emo darlings The Hated in 1985. 

Let’s pause here to delineate a handful of things: a) I have only the most passing familiarity with The Hated catalog b) Even so, that’s enough for me to feel confident in saying that they are hardly a screamo band. c) But they are basically from D.C., and while Revolution Summer happened nearby in 1985, it seems this release may have predated it by a handful of weeks. d) Still, it’s worth citing Rev Summer here, as many internet types like to go all the way back to Rites of Spring as the first proto-screamo band. e) But that’s stupid because f1) This is also widely considered to be the first emo release, and f2) because to my mind there are two releases that more accurately usher in the new sound: 1990’s Tightrope Walker/Chinese Nitro 7” by Washington D.C.’s Circus Lupus (on Cubist Productions), and the 1988 Vermin Scum release by Moss Icon, the Hate in Me 7”. 

Those of you who enjoy tidy full-circle moments will especially enjoy this paragraph. We’re back at Vermin Scum with Moss Icon, and while I don’t know the first thing about Cubist Productions, I do know that Chris Thomson and Chris Hamley later played together in Monorchid and — what’s that? — released a Monorchid 7” on Gravity Records in 1997. 

That was a lot to sift through, so I’ll condense. The Moss Icon demo (1987) foreshadows screamo as well as anything in my opinion:

The same can be said for early Circus Lupus, though by the time I was of age and reading fanzines, I mostly saw their name used as a reference point for the then-contemporary-if-not-quite-screamo band The Hal al Shedad. Anyway, check it out, and shout out to Sweetbabyjaysus for having the best page on YouTube:

And at this point I’d like to forfeit the task I created for myself, creating some sort of history of screamo timeline. It’s murky and nebulous and I don’t want to talk out of my ass. Suffice it to say you have a lot of DC, a lot of San Diego, and then, in the late nineties when the scene was at a zenith of sorts, quite a bit was happening in the Northeast. Indeed Saeita were from NYC, Orchid from Amherst, Massachusetts, and You and I from New Brunswick, New Jersey, famous for its basement shows.

And don’t worry, Boulder, Colorado, I know about you, too, but as I say, I have to keep it moving.

Honeywell, meanwhile, were from Southern California’s oddly named eastern hinterlands, the Inland Empire. Corona, specifically, where my brother-in-law resides with his lovely family on a street called, I shit you not, Fashion Drive, and where I always feel somewhat obligated to play the song “Corona” by non-screamo band Minutemen. Corona, by the way, is roughly one hundred miles from San Diego. Honeywell, it turns out, didn’t release anything on Gravity, Vermin Scum, or Gold Standard Laboratories, however, so apparently the pie marked “neat and tidy full circle moments” has made another half rotation on its carousel, and we’re left pondering some unappetizing tin labeled “tidbit mush.” 

You and I were formed in late 1996 in their native New Jersey. And as mentioned above, they did attempt a sort of metal screamo hybrid that, while not entirely unheard of at the time (see: early Cave-in, early Converge, Piebald, etc.), was nonetheless very ambitious (and let’s face it, how many of us remember any of the listed bands for that particular sound?). Being more generous than Simon, however, I’ll allow that when it hit, it really hit, but it just as often rings as incongruous I suppose. 

Everybody can’t be Saetia. Or Orchid. Or Honeywell.

In sixth grade we watched It’s A Wonderful Life on LaserDisc, cutting edge technology at the time that involved a couple of silver LPs that my teacher, my friend Ben’s dad, would have to flip periodically during our viewing. Ben’s dad had created a whole unit around the movie; it may have lasted two weeks or two months, but ignited my love for the film.

As such I love hearing George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) asking Mary (Donna Reed) if she wants him to lasso the moon in the song’s opening. But wait a minute — lasso the moon in the morning? The song is called “Silent Morning Whisper,” which doesn’t make a ton of sense on its own, and especially not with the introduction of the moon. But a closer examination of the record’s packaging reveals that at times the song is called “Silent Mourning Whisper” (emphasis mine), which changes everything.

Musically the song is as frenetic as the rest of the band’s catalog, a real song part soup, but I find it to be a successful soup at that. Lyrically, I don’t really know what we’re mourning. We’re in pain, we love someone, they maybe don’t love us, life is pain, here is my art. That sort of vibe, which, I guess if you’re nineteen, do you, you know?

It was a weird time. Everyone was skinny and smeared with black dye and wearing too-tight thrift store park and rec t-shirts, caking their lungs with tar while holding court ad nauseam about the purity of their hearts. 

In retrospect, I guess we should have seen the k and the z coming.

*I want so badly to be able to give this title to Pinball Pizza, except inasmuch as they are not a sit-down restaurant and do not, in fact, have any pinball machines, just a sign that says it in Old English and a counter for ordering, they actually have the worst name. And bad pizza.

SHUFFLER 0163 – TICKATICKATICKATICKATICKATICKATICKATICKA

Tortoise – “Jetty” from TNT (1998 Thrill Jockey)

It feels like a fool’s errand, trying to write about Tortoise. I’ve been sitting on this one for weeks, stymied perhaps by the lack of lyrics/vocals. At least if there’s some sort of narrative arc happening alongside or even with the music, that provides another way in. But no such luck here.

And the thing is that I’ve written about Tortoise on one or two occasions in the past. 

So I don’t really know what to say. I maintain that Tortoise is perhaps the best live show I’ve seen overall. As such I can’t recommend enough that you rush out to see them live (though, looking now in March 2024, they don’t have any dates listed), or, barring that, you blow off the rest of the day and watch a bunch of live videos. You will be rewarded handsomely, I promise.

Perhaps another recommendation: don’t hide your light under a bushel. If you’re into some weirdo stuff, let the world know about it. For instance, six or seven years ago my friend Brooke was in my classroom subbing for me or proctoring an exam or something, and saw my Tortoise TNT poster. We were already lunch buddies, but it turns out we both love Tortoise, and that album especially, and it’s nice, all these years later, to think of Brooke whenever I think of this record.

So, not a lot of words this time around. Go watch some videos.

Oh, one more thing: I love that this song has multiple iterations — it appears as itself on TNT, as we’ve discussed. But it also appears as the closing track on Tortoise guitar phenom Jeff Parker’s 2021 solo album ForFolks, as “La Jetée.” Importantly, Parker also plays in Isoptope 217, who released the song as “La Jeteé” on 1997’s The Unstable Molecule. Isotope 217 contains other members of Tortoise as well (Dan Bitney and John Herndon). But what’s this? The Chicago Underground Trio closed out their 1999 debut Possible Cube with “La Jetée,” with a writing credit to Parker, who doesn’t play on this record but is in the Chicago Underground Quartet and Isotope 217 with Rob Mazurek. That’s a lot to untangle, and so you may want to do some Wiki research in between Tortoise videos, but a handful of things come into focus for me:

one: Chicago is and has always been a music town. All of the artists listed above, all owe a debt to (and many are directly involved with) Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Music, a scene centered around a love of improvisation and The Green Mill.

two: “La Jetee” is the actual name of the song, written by one Jeff Parker (who also wrote my favorite Tortoise song, “I Set My Face to the Hillside”). It looks like it can weather a variety of diacritical mark placements, and it further looks like it first appeared on that Isotope 217 record, a year before Tortoise’s 1998 masterpiece TNT.

three: there are lots of songs (I counted: 42) called “La Jetee” (with variable accents) on Apple Music. I’m certain that most of them don’t have anything to do with Tortoise. I’m mostly certain that this is also true of the version by El Huervo/Niklas Åkerblad from 2021’s Flammarion. Mostly. Not all the way. And while this all might seem like a cautionary tale against internet distraction, let me tell you about how I’m grateful for it, because otherwise I might not have discovered Munich’s Oakhands, whose “La Jetee” seems to have no non-titular connections to today’s feature. I feel similarly about The Linus Pauling Quartet, whose version is also a wholly different song but stylistically maybe more on the Tortoise side of the dial than the Oakhands side. In any case, I think if a person really wanted to figure out how to sound like Tortoise, a dedicated study of these few dozen tracks would get them pretty close, and that’s a fun coincidence. Also I feel like I should listen to more French music.

Anyway, I guess I found plenty to write about. And while the internet never bought me anything in life, but I wouldn’t be made if the half dozen or so of you out there pooled your money and paid for me to get a tattoo of the early clip art band logo:

​​https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaXSHE54XLg

SHUFFLER 0162 – SOME GOLD

Hüsker Dü – “No Promise Have I Made” from Candy Apple Grey (1986 Warner)

You know, at 45 years of age, I’m coming to terms with the fact that I’m both a terminal and a lousy punk. I guess I contain multitudes. 

Take for instance, the recent death of Mojo Nixon. My point of reference was the Dead Milkmen’s “Punk Rock Girl” (If you don’t got Mojo Nixon then your store could use some fixin’), a song I think I had probably heard by 1990 or so. In other words, I’ve had 35 years to muster up the energy to sample even part of one Mojo Nixon track. But did I? Of course not. 

(And honestly, I probably won’t. Reading about his catalog in the obits was enough for me, I think.)

In a similar vein, having received my punk rock education on the not-so-mean streets of Minneapolis, you’d think I’d have spent more time immersing myself in the Hüsker Dü or Replacements catalogs. I try to rationalize this by plotting time on an axis, given that I didn’t really start attending shows until 1996, but that doesn’t work, because by that metric I shouldn’t like early DC hardcore, or Middle Class, or, shit, bop. And anyway, didn’t I recently procure both a Man-Sized Action LP and the Twin/Tone 1979 compilation Big Hits of Mid-America Volume III?

I guess I know enough. I know that my favorite Replacements song is “Kids Don’t Follow” but that “Skyway” is the saddest, even though “Here Comes a Regular” isn’t close behind*. I know that Flip Your Wig is my favorite Hüsker Dü album, and that really I like Sugar better than anything Bob Mould did in this iconic trio. I know that Jason Narducy has been touring and recording with Bob since forever ago because forever ago I worked for Narducy’s suburban Chicago painting company DaVinci Brothers** until he let me go for being too slow (he wasn’t wrong). Finally, I even know that “It’s Not Funny Anymore” is a Hüsker Dü song, even if I did labor for years under the illusion that the Lifetime version was an original, not a cover.

But there are people out here who know the difference between Hootenanny and Pleased to Meet Me, or Land Speed Record and Zen Arcade, and, well, I’m just not one of them.

All the same, when I see someone on the street in my new Southern California environs wearing a Replacements shirt, I feel like I’m supposed to say something as a native Minneapolitan and a punk. Thankfully for all involved, I keep my fucking trap shut.

In the end, Minneapolis punk for me will always be Dillinger Four. 

I don’t know. Maybe it’s just that the two punk powerhouses that preceded them have such deep catalogs that it feels intimidating to find my way in. Because when I do, it’s not like I have ever found anything that I don’t like, even if I would probably rather listen to Minor Threat than early Hüsker Dü.

Candy Apple Grey, though, coming as it does after Flip Your Wig introduced a new level of tunefulness to the band’s sound, kind of foreshadows all that I would later love about Sugar, especially their album File Under: Easy Listening. Perhaps no track on the album does this more than the closer, “All This I’ve Done for You,” which comes immediately after “No Promise Have I Made,” which to my ears foreshadows Semisonic. You get to decide how to feel about that.

And I think maybe that’s all I want to say about that. This is a band that has been dissected and reconstructed and redissected by people, as we’ve established, far more qualified than myself. I’ll spare this track that treatment. 

NOTES BEFORE THE FOOTNOTES: 

one → If you find that you are interested in this fertile period of Minneapolis music, please allow me to suggest the book Complicated Fun by Cyn Collins. Ordinarily I’d recommend buying books from Bookshop.org, specifically the site affiliated with the excellent Says Who? podcast (kickbezosintheballs.org), but given that I see that the book is available via the Minnesota Historical Society, I feel like that’s a pretty noble destination for your dollars.

two → the picture that accompanies this post is from an appearance the band made on Good Company, the long-running afternoon talk/variety show on Twin Cities ABC affiliate KSTP. If it seems oddly familiar, that’s because it made an appearance in Fargo in 1996. Sort of. As I understand it, it was a facsimile of itself.

*For that matter, I also know that this song is likely set in the legendary C.C. Club at Lyndale and 26th, a bar whose bathroom I have definitely puked in, and what’s more Minneapolis punk than that?

**I don’t know a better way to do this but I want to highlight Jason’s business partner at the painting company, Ben Byer, who had just been diagnosed with ALS at the time I was hired, and made a documentary about his time with the illness called Indestructible. Ben was a good man.

SHUFFLER 0161 – NAKED IN THE UGLINESS

Crafter – “Trying Our Souls” from Lasting Efforts (2019 Patient Zero Records)

Hello again. 

I’ll admit that I’m not super familiar with Crafter. I must have heard them on some playlist or another and been impressed enough to add them to my library. I’m not sorry I did, either, as they play a very engaging brand of straightforward modern hardcore. No Echo cites fellow Northeasters Verse, Bane, and Verbal Assault as influences on their sound, and while it’s unclear whether that list came from the band or the site, I’d add American Nightmare, Have Heart, and Modern Life is War to that list. I’d also add that that’s a hell of a list. And if I really wanted to flex I might mention the time I hosted a basement show for Bane, but no one likes a braggart.

Lyrics are introspective in nature, and of the hardcore bildungsroman variety without being cliche at all: it’s hard to imagine a child once wandered in these shoes / only to come home and look like someone you used to know. We can forgive what I’m assuming was accidental Elliott Smith plagiarism here. Ultimately it’s a song about growing into one’s own set of beliefs and planting that flag solidly in terra firma: I have to believe that there is something / common to all of us in this suffering / humility means more to me / even if there’s no door to tie our souls.

To my eyes it’s an acknowledgment of a shared connection with humanity, the universe, etc., minus the impulse to give it a name, which, as a person who could accurately described as a recovered religious zealot, I find refreshing. Turns out I know a thing or two about an “unlearned sermon.”

I’m glad I discovered Crafter. Please enjoy: 

Songs I Have Enjoyed: 2023 releases that tickled my speakers

Aara – Triade III : Nyx – melodic black metal from … Switzerland?! Album based on Charles Maturin’s 1829 novel Melmoth the Wanderer. Kick drums are too clicky but I’ll be ok.
Aesop Rock – Integrated Tech Solutions – You know him from “Daylight” and that infographic about emcee vocabularies, Aesop Rock doing what he does.
Anti Cimex – s/t EP – legends of Swedish crust, reissue from 1986
Attempt Survivors – Negative Nile – alt/indy that’s as dark as the name suggests. Brings to mind U2, Echo and the Bunnymen, Ted Leo. Kind of a supergroup (look it up, lazy)
Belle and Sebastian – Late Developers – big production on this one. I haven’t spent a ton of time with it but you can’t fuck up Belle and Sebastian
B’LAST! – Manic Ride – Southern Lord reissue of 1980’s Southern California band that really liked Black Flag’s darkest, weirdest offerings.
Blood Incantation – Luminescent Bridge – proggy/techy death metal from a band whose last release was 100% ambient. From Denver’s burgeoning heavy music scene. Too of the death metal heap. Innovative and expansive.
Capra – Errors – Cool modern mid-tempo (plus) hardcore with some technical parts. Maybe like if Tim Singer released something on Bridge Nine. Could open for Bane. Named for the director?
Chick Corea & Gary Burton – Berliner Jazztage – lately I can’t get enough of Chick Corea and his take on jazz keys
The Chisel – Retaliation – the inclusion of the definite article makes this the fast UKHC band, not Ted Leo’s old mod act. Sounds at times like pissed off early 1980s USHC, but just as often they’re straight up oi!.
Deerhoof – Miracle-Level – just the kookiest, loveliest shit
Dreamwell – In my Saddest Dreams, I am Beside You- self-described as “post-skramz,” which is irritating AND accurate. Shimmery. Superfluous comma in album title.
Earth – Earth 2.23 Special Lower Frequency Mix – Earth’s 1993 sophomore doom record, chopped and screwed.
Earth – Even Hell has its Heroes (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) – new songs written for an Earth documentary. Snuck in on January 1. You can be sneaky when you play this slow.
Enforced – War Remains – Crossover thrash that is as good as the logo promises.
Fiddlehead – Death is Nothing to Us – only lames don’t love Fiddlehead.
Full of Hell & Nothing – When No Birds Sang – I love that FoH collaborates with so many bands. Grind and shoegaze? Totally works here in an album that effectively plumbs 9/11 for meaning. Top tier.
Geese – 4D Country EP – FFO Bill Callahan, Nick Cave, Lou Reed, driving in the sunshine.
Geld – Currency // Castration – Not “Gel” – ripping Australian hardcore for people who like to jump off of things onto other similar people.
GRAIN – We’ll Hide Away: Complete Recordings 1993-95 – I was surprised to see this as I’ve always loved this Ohio emocore band and thought it criminal that so few people knew them. Super stoked this exists.
The Hirs Collective – We’re Still Here – trans-affirming grind mutilation. Abbreviates to THC – coincidence?
The Hope Conspiracy – Confusion/Chaos/Misery – No idea why I missed this band way back when especially considering I was friendly with the dudes from Harvest who moved to Boston to join. Rockin’ hardcore that surprisingly dabbles in d-beat. Fans of late-era Unbroken EPs. Abbreviates to THC – coincidence?
Hyperdontia – Deranged EP – the name makes me uncomfortable. Ugly death metal based somehow in both Denmark and Turkey.
John Coltrane – Evenings at the Village Vanguard – I mean, come on…
Karate – Complete Studio Recordings – I have always thought Karate was a perfect band, a trio of superb players. So glad this exists.
Khruangbin – Live at Radio City Music Hall – one of a handful of live albums from this laid back global groove outlet.
Kommand – Death Age EP – Pulverizing LA old-school groove-laden death metal.
Last Gasp – Who Wants to Die Tonight? – For reasons I couldn’t possibly explain I bought multiple copies of the previous Last Gasp LP as well as their split with Who Decides? during the height of the pandemic, I think as an investment. Then the band didn’t catch on. I really need this band to catch on. Fun faster hardcore from Cleveland that sounds like it’s from the mid-oughts.
Lethal – Lethal’s Hardcore Hit Parade EP – such a great fucking name for a record and it pretty much lets you know what you’re in for.
Loma Prieta – Last – a band that can make screamo sound triumphant. a Loma Prieta, Touché Amoré, Modern Life is War bill would slay. Has it ever happened?
Majesties – Vast Reaches Unclaimed – I think the kids call this melodic death metal. At the Gates-worship played by veteran riffers.
Mammal Hands – Gift from the Trees – modern jazz that’s a little precious but makes up for it by evoking Phillip Glass
Militarie Gun – Life Under the Gun – part of nineties renaissance. Is this Zoomergaze? RIYL Drug Church, peak-era MTV.
Move BHC – Black Radical Love – modern Afrocentric hardcore. More of this, please!
Murs & Wierdon – Speak N Spell Deluxe – LA meets Austin in a multigenerational hip-hop collab.
Nag – Human Covered Coyote – Atlanta post-punk that sounds like what I wished Chvrches sounded like when everybody was talking them up to me. Really varied and cool.
OHMMS – Rot – Top notch sludgy heavy shit with polished production
Open City – Hands in the Honey Jar – Ebullition-style hardcore by people who know what the fuck to do
Racetraitor – Creation and the Timeless Order of Things – Essential political mosh attack from Chicago. Inexplicably shares two members with Fall Out Boy.
Restraining Order – Locked in Time – high quality fast(ish) hardcore
Ringworm – Seeing Through Fire – newest offering from longtime Clevo rippers
Scott McMicken and THE EVER-EXPANDING – Shabang – A delightful record that luxuriates in twentieth-century American music folkways. Accessible, fun, refreshing.
Shotmaker – A Moment in Time: 1993-1996 – another nineties Emo/hardcore collection named by a real utilitarian.
Taylor Swift – 1989 (Taylor’s Version) – What?!
Tomb Mold – The Enduring Spirit – super rad modern death metal
Urban Waste – NYHC Document 1981-1983 – a collection of songs by one of the best early NYHC bands.
The Van Pelt – Artisans & Merchants – this might rival Sultans of Sentiment. Really good indie rock with smart lyrics. If I wanted to mention Ted Leo a third time I’d point out that this is his brother’s band.
Wilco – Cousin – sure, that one song sounds like a Prince song, but Wilco is just GOOD.
World I Hate – Years of Lead – terrible cover art, punishing Milwaukee hardcore. They have a song called “Rat Fuck Planet.”
Xylouris White – The Forest in Me – weirdo minimalist out jazz. Difficult.

SHUFFLER 0160 – BLAST THROUGH THE SKULL

Death – “Death by Metal” from Rehearsal 11-9-1984 (2004 Devil Metal)

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, name your band Death.

Consider, for example, the don’t-you-dare-call-it-proto-punk band Death from Detroit, the all-Black early 1970s sensation made up, in those days, by the three Hackney brothers (Dannis, David, and Bobby, with David later replaced by Bobbie Duncan after David’s 2000 death from lung cancer). Their single “Politicians in My Eyes” is, I don’t mind saying, peerless.

But we’re not here to talk about them today. 

After all, they’d been broken up for seven years when a seventeen-year-old from central Florida named Chuck Schuldiner started playing and recording death metal tunes under the moniker Mantas. Can you guess what he eventually changed the band name to? You guessed it: Death.

I don’t want to get bogged down in a whole thing about Death and their incredible influence on the then-nascent death metal genre, especially given the crudity of this recording. Instead I’ll mention that listeners seeking a better recording of the song “Death by Metal” will have to settle for covers – Atrocity does a nice one. I’d also add that you can really hear the thrash connection in early death metal, and this song is no different. The recording is rough — it’s a rehearsal tape after all — but you can hear the magic on this recording. 

Below is the closest recording I could find to what I have in my library. “Death by Metal” can be heard at 3:18.

SHUFFLER 0159 – SWIRL

Monster X – “Hand of Power” from Spazz/Monster X split 7” (1997 Reservoir)

The sadness I feel at never having seen Monster X (did they even come to Minneapolis?) is overshadowed by the incredible joy I feel everytime I listen to them. This band, perhaps inexplicably (I guess we’ll find out) never fails to produce a real shit-eating grin. I think we all need more things like this in our lives.

I graduated from high school in 1996, which is also the year that I got into hardcore in a big way. Previously I had limited myself to whatever Christian hardcore was coming out on labels like Tooth and Nail and whatever secular hardcore I was receiving in the mail on mixtapes from friends I met through making zines, but in the summer of 1996, the world was my oyster. I moved into a shitty but completely serviceable duplex in Northeast Minneapolis with four other dudes. Every last one of us was young and stupid and only two of us were in college. This last point is important only inasmuch as my newfound independence clashed mightily with my academic pursuits.

If we’re honest, I suppose I never really owned those academic pursuits; I went to the University of Minnesota because that’s what I believed one was supposed to do. I didn’t have a plan beyond that or really even understand the utility of a college education (something that I think remains an open question in 2023). I wanted to drink from the cup of the entire world, but lacked so much knowledge, like how to manage an ATM card without overdrawing my account over and over and over, or like how if you stop going to class the college doesn’t just figure it out and drop you. Turns out you still get a bill, and a grade, and neither one is good.

My parents were none too pleased, as they were paying my way. 

I’m not the least bit proud of this, and I tell the story in my classroom a lot as a sort of cautionary tale. I remember my dad, stoic upper midwestern white man that he is, crying on the porch of my rented duplex. That hit pretty hard.

But I wasn’t a complete fuckup. I was working, for example, for the Salvation Army, driving a canteen out of their downtown Harbor Lights location to deliver bag lunches to the unhoused at their encampments and/or predetermined stops around town. I was going to shows, playing in bands, buying records, and reading zines.

Somewhere in there I discovered and fell in love with HeartattaCk, the newsprint hardcore zine out of Goleta, CA that was like what you’d get if Maximumrocknroll narrowed their focus to covering political hardcore bands. Available for a mere quarter at the local punk record store, I never missed an issue. 

I think this is also around the time I came into a cheap copy of the Nothing’s Quiet on the Eastern Front compilation LP that Reservoir put out, featuring bands like C.R., Black Army Jacket, Dropdead, and, you guessed it, the inimitable Monster X. 

I must have read about them in HeartattaCk, and so it was probably also around this time that I bought the Monster X Attrition 7” put out by Ebullition, the label run by the same people who published HeartattaCk.* It was a no-brainer, even though I’m pretty sure I didn’t get that the Ebullition logo was written in the style of Earache Records on the back of the record.

Anyway, what I discovered was a revelation. Here was a straight edge hardcore band not playing in the moshy, Victory Records inspired style of the day, but fast and dirty. They claimed not just straight edge, but grindcore and speed metal, writing “straight edge” with the speed metal swirl that had been prevalent on records put out by Banzai a decade earlier.

In those days Monster X felt almost like a novelty, especially with the release of their 7” of youth crew covers, To the Positive Youth. To hear those songs played at blistering speeds with John Moran’s trademark vocals (alternately low barks and higher pitched screams — we thought there were two singers for a while there) blew up the limits of what I thought was possible, corny as that might sound.

And the riffs! God damn. As I mentioned, I get all warm and giggly every time I listen to this band, and the riffs are a huge part of that. Because they’re not a joke band at all — if they were, their music wouldn’t endure for me like it does. 

“Hand of Power” appears, as noted above, on the 1997 split with powerviolence lords Spazz. This is fitting because my favorite video of Monster X is from a daytime DIY show in what appears to be either a doublewide trailer and/or a VFW hall, on a bill that featured Monster X, Spazz, Devoid of Faith, Judas Iscariot, Quadiliacha, and Charles Bronson. It looks like it was fun as fuck and I wish I’d been there.

And the song rules, because it’s by Monster X. Check it below, along with the rest of the record:

*I am so heavily indebted to Kent McClard and Lisa Oglesby and a whole slew of other people I never met for creating and curating all of this culture. To say it had a heavy influence on me is an understatement; the way I teach and see the world, damn near thirty years later, can be traced back to HeartattaCk and Ebullition. Shit, even the fact that I teach — I used to read Chris Jensen’s “Movement vs. Motion” column about teaching before anything else, including record reviews and band interviews, long before I knew I wanted to be a teacher.

SHUFFLER 0158 – GO

Shai Hulud – “Damage Inc.” from Crush ‘em All (split with Boy Sets Fire) (2000 Undecided Records)

The year was 1994, and I was angry. It wasn’t fair. Barely sixteen, I could see absolutely no reason for my parents to not let me travel in my weird older friend’s bright yellow van that had spray paint all over it two states away to a Christian music festival run by what in retrospect was a real cult-like Christian community. Total bullshit.

Strongarm played the new band stage that year. My weird friend and I interviewed someone or other in that band for our zine, Throat Culture, not to be confused with the other zine called Throat Culture that we had no idea about. That’s the way it goes sometimes. Anyway, I think that’s also the year that my friends came home with the Strongarm demo, which we practically wore out moshing in that stupid van. 

I was there in subsequent years, watching as the Christian hardcore scene ballooned. I was there in 1995 when all of the hardcore and punk bands played sweltering shows in an overcrowded barn (the “Underground Stage”). I remember seeing live photos from those same shows in ads and packaging for Tooth and Nail releases from those same bands — it was fun to look for friends in the crowd, like a sort of weirdo Christian subculture version of Where’s Waldo. I was there in 1996 for the Steadfast Records Tooth and Nail parody “God Save the Scene” shirts, which I purchased and wore proudly at the festival (man I wish I still had one of those, though it would need to be substantially larger these days). I was there a bunch more, though might have missed a few in there somewhere.

I did see Strongarm again at least once, and later saw Further Seems Forever, their new project, also play the new band stage, if memory serves. But who cares?

Turns out Strongarm was a big influence on Shai Hulud, featured today. This makes sense chiefly because they shared a member in Matt Fox early on. I’ve always been a little beguiled by the South Florida hardcore (and other heavy music) scene, mostly because, well, South Florida is kind of the end of the line. Seems to me like it would be hard to build a scene there, because it would be so difficult to get touring bands to make the trek down the entirety of the Florida peninsula. But then maybe that’s just the thing — kids there had to make their own fun. 

This might be my former Christian bias coming through, but I am of the opinion that Strongarm has aged better than Shai Hulud, but I remain a big fan of both bands. “Damage Inc.,” of course, is a cover of a Metallica song, from a split 7” Shai Hulud put out with Boy Sets Fire*, who also turned in a Metallica cover.

This was during a time when hardcore bands just couldn’t get enough of Metallica. It seems weird, now, but I remember seeing a lot of bands even at that sacrosanct Christian fest covering Metallica. 

Thing is — and you can judge for yourselves below — it’s fine. It doesn’t sound as good as the original, and doesn’t really sound like Shai Hulud, but it’s a cool idea that probably made a lot of people happy at the time, and there are worse crimes than that.

*in 1998 my band had a chance to play with Boy Sets Fire, who I think remain very big in Germany. I loved them — I think we all did — but was convinced that God was telling me to go evangelize a bunch of fucking hippies at a Rainbow Gathering instead, so that’s what I did. It pains me to tell you this, but I think it’s important to be honest at this point, don’t you?

SHUFFLER 0157 – WHO’S GONNA TAKE THE RESPONSIBILITY, BINGLE?

J Dilla – “Anti-American Graffiti” from Donuts (2006 Stone’s Throw Records)

Well shit, this is daunting.

So many people have said so many smart things about J Dilla (or Jay Dee) and his production wizardry. I barely understand what it means to quantize anything, so I feel ill-suited to get into the intricacies of Dilla’s methodology as far as that goes. What am I, Questlove? Or this guy? (Actually, you should take some time to check that guy out. His channel is pretty great).

I’m not. And I think I came to Dilla without at a time when I wasn’t really thinking about production, it was just the water in the pool and I was just happy to be swimming. I heard his influence so much that I couldn’t hear what was so wild about it, him playing different elements of the beat intentionally off beat. 

It’s a little bit like trying to notice the things people describe in tasting notes for things like coffee or cannabis or whiskey or wine. Similarly, I often have a tough time observing the effects of different prescription drugs on my psyche. 

Anyway, to my mind, getting super in the weeds about elements of his production is to kind of bury the lede — did you know that Jay Dee recorded all but two of Donuts’ 31 tracks from his hospital room at LA’s Cedar-Sinai Medical Center while dealing with complications from lupus and thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura, or TTP, two conditions that sound incredibly unpleasant? He could have been forgiven for chain-eating Jello cups and watching Law and Order marathons, but instead, per Wikipedia, he used “a 45-rpm record player and a Boss SP-303 sampler” to create the album that many consider his masterpiece. 

Kind of badass, especially considering it’s an album of, you know, just beats. 

Again, from the Wikis by way of Scratch Magazine, Dilla downplayed the project:

“It’s just a compilation of the stuff I thought was a little too much for the MCs. That’s basically what it is, ya know? Me flipping records that people really don’t know how to rap on but they want to rap on. There’s a bunch of that.”

“[r]ecords that people don’t really know how to rap on but they want to rap on.” This is some next level wizardry. And while it’s not our focus today, I think maybe this is summed up best on the track “Lightworks.” Apparently Dilla’s mom and I both count it as our favorite, and more than one MC wanted to rap on it — there are versions by the late MF DOOM and another from Busta Rhymes, Q-Tip, and Talib Kweli. Dilla could no doubt envision the track’s allure; it’s far less likely that Raymond Scott was as clairvoyant when constructing the track in 1959, though I guess his whole deal was in being somewhat futuristic, so who am I to say?

Back to Cedars-Sinai. I don’t like to brag, but I’ve had occasion to be hospitalized a couple of times in the last year, and even texting with an IV in your arm is more of a pain in the ass than one would think; I can’t imagine trying to play and sample records. 

“Anti-American Graffiti” samples comedian David Ossman’s 1973 record How Time Flys [sic], wherein veteran Los Angeles journalist Lew Irwin, playing W.C. Bingle, interviews Jim Dundee, voiced by the inimitable Wolfman Jack about a black hole heading towards the earth. This is punctuated by some rather aggressive “What”s courtesy of rapper Joeski Love’s “Pee-Wee’s Dance” from 1986, and all of this over top a real crate-digger special, “Family Tree” by Tin Tin, straight out of Melbourne-by-way-of-the-UK circa 1970. 

My introduction to hip-hop was through records that would be too expensive to make today because of intellectual property law: early Beastie Boys, Public Enemy, Deee-Lite. That Dilla was utilizing the same methodology, more or less, and in a goddamn hospital room in 2006 is something that gives me a lot of joy. RIP to your favorite producer’s favorite producer.

The track from Donuts is below, followed by MF DOOM’s “Sniper Elite,” which utilizes this beat, as well as Charles Hamilton’s “What’s Going On” from his 2008 album And Then They Played Dilla. NOTE: Hamilton’s lyrics are homophobic in places and generally ignorant, so be advised.