More hardcore songs I like.

John Henry West - Avoiding (From the "3/12/93" comp 7 inch that I'm sure I mentioned on here earlier. Mike Kirsch is one of the most important figures in the Northern California punk and hardcore scene of the 90s, and continues to make records even to this day. An incomplete list of the bands he's played in would include Pinhead Gunpowder, Torches To Rome, Bread And Circuits, Navio Forge, Sawhorse, and this band. Some of these bands featured his vocals, but this one has Cory from End Of The Line singing. Cory's voice is harsh, and the music is fast and chaotic, but Kirsch has a way of playing guitar that always brings out an underlying melodic quality that shines through no matter how fast, chaotic or heavy the song he's playing is. In this way, I'd compare his guitar playing to that of Jason Farrell [Swiz/Bluetip]. The harsh vocals are perfect for the frustration evident in the words, about the sort of cliquish mentality that the singer had thought "would be left behind in fucking high school." I'm sure we've all been there.)

Unbroken - End Of A Lifetime (From their album "Life. Love. Regret." Now collected on a CD with their first album, "Ritual"; collection is entitled "The Death Of True Spirit". Unbroken were the first of the heavier hardcore bands to acknowledge emotions as a prominent driving force in their lives without letting it mellow their music out at all. The liner notes to this album include plentiful Smiths references as well as essays by multiple band members discussing their fragile emotional states. Eric Allen's essay discusses his suicide attempts, and is heartbreaking in light of what happened to him later on. Anyway, it's obvious from their music that not all of Unbroken really could play their instruments well, but they played with heart and were honest and sincere in a genre that did not welcome such a thing. It's my opinion that they did a great deal to change hardcore for the better, in the 90s and beyond.)

Groundwork - Happy Puppet (From their split 7 inch with Unbroken. Later collected on a discography CD. Both are out of print now. These guys were along the same lines as Unbroken [undoubtedly why they did a split record], but were less emotional and more political. Both bands had that same sincere, heartfelt vibe, though. Groundwork took the sort of chugging heaviness that bands like Earth Crisis were flirting with and pushed it to a whole new level. The breakdown about 36 seconds into this song, where the whole band is stopping and starting based on the lyrics, used to make me feel like my head was imploding when I listened to it. These days, I've heard a lot of heavier stuff, but I think Groundwork did a lot to show all of us early 90s hardcore kids just how brutal you could be.)

Frail - Inquisition (From their second EP, "Idle Hands Hold Nothing". Like Groundwork, these EPs were collected on a CD, and like Groundwork, said CD has been out of print for almost as long as the EPs themselves. Frail were crucial to hardcore's history in a different way; 100% of the blame for the screechy, high-pitched "little girl" vocals that were common to certain more emotional hardcore bands in the 90s and eventually birthed the "screamo" vocal style can be laid at the feet of Frail [God, I hope that sentence made sense]. Eric from Frail was the first hardcore singer to scream in a high-pitched bleat, and while time has made this seem like an obviously bad idea, it was such a new thing in a scene where most vocalists were going for a more-macho-than-thou toughguy bark, it caught on and spread like wildfire. By the way, I can't completely condemn Frail--I think this song and a lot of their other songs are really good. They came up with a good mix of faster, thrashy hardcore and the chaotic/emotional thing that was so big at the time they were around, and inspired a lot of bands that came after them. The problem is that most of those Frail-inspired bands were BAD BAD BAD. Oh well, what can ya do.)

108 - Woman (From their second LP, "Songs Of Separation", now collected along with the rest of their 90s-era output on the "Creation Sustenance Destruction" double CD. I know I've banged on about 108 quite frequently on this board, and I know I've posted their songs before, so I'll be brief. These guys fucking rule. The noise-experimentation Vic DiCara did with his lead guitar playing, the mix of Rob Fish's tortured screams with Vic's beautifully sung backing vocals [which don't show up on this song--he only talks for a second during the bridge], the way they snuck the innovations of chaotic hardcore into the mosh scene and used their religion to advocate a more compassionate attitude towards one's fellow man at a time when toughguy callousness was the rule... it's all outstanding. And their reunion album, "A New Beat From A Dead Heart", is quite possibly their best work, and in hindsight almost definitely my favorite album of last year.)

Creation Is Crucifixion - Subversion As A Tactical Metaphor AKA Species Traitor AKA Technology Is Our Iron Lung (From their split 7 inch with Unruh, and a 3 song European CD EP. These guys were honest-to-God insane computer geniuses. You can hear it in their ridiculously technical guitar playing and song structures, as well as the convoluted theoretics in their lyrics. A sample from this song: "Convenience sells us our carbon death. Our hands reek of silicon. Purge me of your protocol. Reverse engineer the tools. Construct our own difference engine. Emerge with activist intent. Subversion as tactic and metaphor." Sure, I know, it's almost like a hail of buzzwords and technical terms, but there was method to their madness--this band was ultimately responsible for the recode.com fiasco of 2003 [the "Nathan Hactivist" quoted in the article was Creation Is Crucifixion's singer]. They also released an EP that came with a detailed booklet instructing the reader about hacking GameBoy games. And besides all that, the music is ridiculously brutal and awesome--especially once you've played the songs about 20 times apiece and they start to make sense to you. At first it's just gonna sound like fucked noise chaos with the occasional mosh breakdown. Keep listening. It's worth it.)

Converge - The Broken Vow (From their fourth LP, "Jane Doe". I would say that this is the peak of the second era of Converge's history, when they started mixing their initial Slayer-inspired metallic hardcore with ideas taken from the power-violence and chaotic hardcore scenes that had grown up around them during their earlier years. This stuff is just as good in its own right as the songs from their classic second LP, "Petitioning The Empty Sky". However, I would say "Petitioning The Empty Sky" is a more important album, and if I had it on my computer I'd have posted a song from it instead. That doesn't mean you shouldn't check this song out, though. It kills.)

Union Of Uranus - Revolve (From their double 7 inch "Disaster By Design". Drift were faster and One Eyed God Prophecy more experimental, but Union Of Uranus were the kings of the Canadian hardcore scene in the mid 90s. Mixing black metal octave chord riffs with the chaos of the San Diego scene and the sort of high-pitched screaming that could have come from either or both scenes was their idea, and they owned Great American Steak Religion, the label that released the best of the records put out by this scene. "Revolve" is based around a heavy, repetitive groove that at this point almost sounds stoner-rock to me, but I wouldn't have caught that at the time, since stoner rock was pretty much just Kyuss and Cathedral in 1995. This is a record that's only grown in my estimation over time, and I really wish they'd released more than 10 original songs [and a 10-second Negative Approach cover] while they were around.)

One Eyed God Prophecy - Individual Gallery (The closing track from their self-titled LP and only release ever, on Great American Steak Religion. Union Of Uranus were the progenitors and the most important band in the Canadian black-metal influenced chaotic hardcore movement of the mid-90s, but One Eyed God Prophecy took the style the farthest, adding in Neurosis-like drone parts and ambient experimentations along with the octave-chord riffing they got from Union Of Uranus and Drift. This song starts out fast and furious, then drops out to almost nothing and proceeds to spend half of its length building back up to a much slower but equally furious riff as the one that begins the song. It's a perfect way to end the album. This mp3 isn't the greatest sound quality, and I apologize for that, but this record was never released on CD, so I've had to deal with vinyl rips I found on the internet. I could probably make a better vinyl rip myself, but it's time-consuming and I haven't gotten around to it yet. Sorry.)

Undertow - At Both Ends (One more emotional mosh track for ya, the title track from Undertow's only LP. There's apparently a CD called "Everything" that collects their entire discography, but I've only ever encountered it in mp3 form. Anyway, this song opens their LP and is the kind of blatant lost-love song that no one would have expected at the beginning of a mosh album in 1993. Sure, Unbroken were around at this point, but Undertow were a good bit more thick-necked than they were, and I'm sure some Earth Crisis fans ended up with this album and were scratching their heads reading the lyric sheet. For me, it was one of the first modern hardcore records I heard once I got to college, and the lyrics were an indication that there might actually be room for me in the whole early 90s mosh thing [as it turned out, there kinda wasn't, but I found out about chaotic hardcore and basement shows pretty quickly, so it all turned out fine].)