Capitalist Casualties – “Storms Somewhere/Spare Parts” from Subdivisions in Ruin (1999 Six Weeks)
Man, Capitalist Casualties are one of those bands, you know? And as the name suggests, they aren’t big on humor, so the lyrics of the two songs that are combined on this track are heavy-handed and earnest as can be. And the hand-drawn logo (featured above, dollar sign and all) makes them easy to write off as a punk band that isn’t interested in necessarily trying very hard.
This is, I think, a shame. Because Capitalist Casualties occupy this interesting space between powerviolence, crust, and fast hardcore, and they played this blistering cocktail of punk subgenres in what looks to this outsider as a very fertile nineties Bay Area punk scene.
If I wanted to be overly simplistic I might say something about how they were an important and talented band from an important scene full of talent, that they used the ugliness of their music to hold a mirror up to the ugliness of society.
But being overly simplistic misses the fact that, when Subdivisions in Ruin (a title the grammar of which I struggle with, wanting instead to call it Subdivision in Ruins, but then that’s not up to me) came out in 1999, CC was thirteen years old. What’s more, they had recruited bay area skin-pounder “Hirax Max” Ward for this release. If that name sounds familiar, it may be from the many bands he drummed in (Plutocracy, Spazz, What Happens Next?, and Bombs of Death), his relentless vocals in Scholastic Deth, his stellar 625 Thrashcore record label, or his academic work as an associate professor of Japanese history at Middlebury College.
Before concluding member talk and jumping into this track, it feels important to pause and note that CC lost two of their members in the last handful of years: singer Shawn Elliott died in 2018, and longtime guitarist “Spider Mike” Vinatieri died in 2021. I looked for a bit online to see if I could find the reasons but felt a little bit like I was digging around in someone’s private business so we’re going to have to just leave it at that.
Okay. “Storms Somewhere/Spare Parts.” I’m not entirely sure how or why these two songs are combined as one track on the streaming version of this album, but they are. There are certainly elements of powerviolence but also of a kind of ugly and rudimentary crusty punk rock. The first song deals with child abuse while the second deals with gene splicing through a class lens: “The wealthy sit first in line.” Things slow way down to almost doom metal tempos here before speeding and slowing again in a lurching angry dirge.
And while their store is out of stock in a lot of their offerings, they do have an embroidered patch for just $5, and if ever there was a band not called Avail that warrants a patch, Capitalist Casualties might just be that band.
Please note that I was not able to find these particular songs isolated online but did find you all seventeen minutes of Subdivisions in Ruin, containing seventeen brutal bangers. Enjoy.
The Shuffler 