Trans-national hardcore ragers PETTYBONE have been shaking things up in London for the past few months, injecting some much needed socially conscious girl rage into the largely boy-centric punk scene in this city. Ivona, Amy, Lianna and Zel make up Pettybone, from Czech Republic, Germany, London and Cornwall respectively! Their music is fairly unclassifiable in the best way, but mixes bits of ‘big’ sounding metallic hardcore that’s heavy on the chug with mid-paced, almost crusty sounds and a dose of ’90s-style impassioned melody. It’s just really exciting.
Of their name, they say:
We’re named after the artist Raymond Pettibon with a feminine twist [...] One of most – if not the most iconic artist in punk rock. Although a few people have asked if we are Undertow / Edge Of Reason tribute band after John Pettibone. However this is not true.
They’ve just recorded an album in Putney with Sam Thredder, which has been mixed by Kurt Ballou, and are currently looking for someone to put it out.
You can listen to their demo, being given away at shows, currently here.
From the latest issue of MRR, here’s Robert Collins’ demo review of a great new Midwestern band to watch out for!
Robyn of Street Legal (photo by Justy Betterton)
I pulled this out of the demo box at MRRHQ and knew I had to review it. Not because I thought it would be good, but rather because one look at the cover and I knew how awful it would be, and I reveled at the thought of hiding anonymously behind these newsprint pages and ripping to shreds the painstakingly crafted work of some punk kids thousands of miles away (news flash folks, that’s really why we do this, we get our jollies saying that your precious bands are horrible) and leaving them with shattered dreams and ink-stained fingers. Well, the joke’s on me this time, because that demo featuring the crudely drawn middle finger with two butt cheeks on the back of the hand and the title: Butthand AKA Street Legal… the demo fukkn rules! Male/female vocals (mostly female, and she sounds like Ivy from ALLERGIC TO BULLSHIT/MIAMI minus the rasp — totally bad ass), totally melodic, but fast as shit and with fukkn killer guitar work that will make you question why you ever bothered playing in a band — cause chances are you ain’t writing hooks like these, kiddo. I bet that live STREET LEGAL (or is it BUTTHAND? I really hope it’s BUTTHAND) has the same energy that NECRO HIPPIES did when they passed through a few months back — in fact the sound is not dissimilar, though STREET LEGAL/BUTTHAND are a bit more melodic. “Knocked Off My Feet Again” is a total classic, and the way the bass rushes in afterwards to start “Ode to You” is perfect… My only negative observation is the demo quality of the recording, but fukk me, it’s a demo and all the power is there so I’ll shut up. As I wipe the egg off my face, I strongly encourage you to drop them a line, and hopefully we can expect a slightly more high fidelity recording from them in the near future.
LAS RODILLERAS is a three-piece that hails from Spain, which is kicking out some rather impressive beach punk and garage as of late. This band (whose name means “knee pads”) has a new LP, Horror Pleni, which is yet another great release skirting the same genre, but uniquely combining elements of goth punk, garage and surf punk. These three ladies could share a stage with ULTRATUMBADOS or RATAS DEL VATICANO — even TY SEGALL fans might be into it, if they can take the darkness… Reminiscent of PARALISIS PERMANENTE in mood, and at times in vocals, their songs are atmospheric with reverbed guitars and somber yet rocking mid-tempo melodies. The vocals are a raspy and echoed female crooning that has some VIOLATORS and RICHARD HELL moments with great backups, like a more goth and more punk CRAMPS. They cover the GERMS’ “Forming.” Their lyrics are morbid and, no, this all-female band does not sound like SPITBOY. There are only 525 copies of their screen-printed LP, so get your hands on it! Check out this video of the title track!
THICKxSKIN is a new band out of Brisbane, Australia. They had their first gig a few months ago, playing straight up youth crew influenced hardcore in the vein of Floorpunch, Stop And Think and a variety of mid-’90s Boston bands. I’ve been lucky enough to catch them a decent number of times and have not been disappointed. With this kinda stuff you know what to expect: hard guitars, and songs that are straight and to the point.
You can find several of their songs online at www.myspace.com/thickskinhc. They also have a 9-song demo tape/CD-R that’s well worth picking up and a 7″ in the works surprisingly quickly.
I had to prize the demo by Western Australia’s GOLDEN STAPH from the hands of another MRR reviewer, so enamored of it am I. The first song, “Dr Tony,” has already been my bedroom classic for a few months. Brace yourselves chapesses and chaps — all four songs on this cassette will only add further fuel to the swirling mystique around just what it could be about the vast sub-equatorial landmass of Oz that produces such exciting music. I’m under-qualified to theorize on that, but what I do know is that GOLDEN STAPH is excellent. They don’t really sound classically Australian, in terms of punk, which in my brain has always been a bit on the blokey-mental-junkie-genius side of things, rather than the raw lady-vox keys guitar fuzz we have here, but feel free to correct me. To me they recall more the howling, high-pitched wonderment of raucous echo chamber shouters like ACTION PACT or even HANS-A-PLAST. Sonically they’re extremely vintage upbeat punk, late ’70s, in a magic dark alley somewhere between the Masque and the Roxy (holy shit, dream city) but without sounding obsolete. The guitar and keyboards work together super well. It’s sparse and Amber’s vocals reminds me a lot of Olga de Volga’s stint with THE LEWD.
MRR columnist Juls Generic, formerly of Vancouver, BC’s Margaret Thrasher, is back in punk rock action — this time playing guitar in Newfoundland’s TIED DOWN. The band looks promising, considering three out of four of them were hella sick (literally) at this show, and they still kicked ass.
The bassist of the band, photographer/videographer Jonathan Kennedy, has a great blog site, where he posted the art for their upcoming demo. Sweet! Look for a review in MRR in the near future.
Set list for the video:
Anatomy
Get Rad
Tied Down
Native American Apparel
Tally Counter
And this, from bassist Jonathan:
We played two other songs. One at the beginning which was a clusterfuck and we gave up halfway through. One at the end that was almost a clusterfuck but the camera ran out of recording space halfway through.
Shout out to Chris Scott for filming while I played bass.
Demo review by Justin Briggs from the new issue of MRR, hot off the presses, and photos stolen from Chris Strickland‘s Facebook page…
Criaturas (photo by Chris Strickland)
CRIATURAS – This cassette is pure, unabashed sonic perfection and we’ve been blasting this thing around my house for weeks now, non-stop. On first listen, the first thing that caught me off guard was the guitar. Its tone is crazy and flanged or something throughout, which in itself sounds crazy enough, but the leads and hidden little tickles that are thrown into the spaces between the riffs, are fucking mind blowing and are what really catapult this from being a great demo with great songs, into its own fucking orbit of great cosmic importance in my world. There is this real subtle melody in the last song, “Hay Viene la Muerte,” that makes me psyched to geek out on this kind of shit every goddamned time I hear it. It’s not really just the guitar that’s brilliant either — everything here is great, from every word of Dru’s amazing vocals to every drum hit. It’s punk, it’s hardcore, and it sounds like nothing else out there. CRIATURAS hails from Austin, TX, and some of them have been in other bands you know and probably like, but it doesn’t matter ’cause this shit is head and shoulders above almost every other release that will come out in 2010, and that’s a promise. A flawless example of everything I love about music. Period.
Szatymaz, Tanya, May 1, 2010 (photo by Tamas Bernath)
This week’s New Band Spotlight comes to us by way of our trusty shitworker Spencer Rangitsch, who interviews Rákosi in this month’s issue of MRR magazine.
Rákosi is written with an accent over the “a,” making you dwell on it a little longer and adding a little more emphasis… Besides the more known meaning of the name (Mátyás Rákosi, the ever-reviled leader of the Soviet puppet government, who ruled Hungary as “Stalin’s best pupil” from essentially 1945-1956) there exists a stream near Budapest called Rákos patak, which is home of a deadly viper that locals call Rákosi vipera. You’d be right to think this is a fitting name for Rákosi, the band. Their music blasts with both the eeriness of a snakelike predator as well as the bite of a venomous reptile. But unlike a snake, these four Magyars are very much warm-blooded — soaked in the sweat and discontent of “post-hope” ’00s Hungary.
Hailing from the vast Hungarian plains where post-industrial grays meet with the dregs of those agricultural yellows and browns, Rákosi provides a harsh, brittle soundtrack for post-socialist, yet depressingly capitalistic Central European grit and realism. Their songs are marked most prominently with the acidic vocal delivery of Csoki Rákosi. His voice scratches like sandpaper over a fierce and unrelenting melee of punky hardcore, telling tales of local lore and bitter truths from a grim past and static present. Yet amidst these vitriolic, bleak songs whose jarringly disturbing stories stretch a well-blazed trail from Budapest to Mezőtúr to Szeged, there is an enthusiasm and drive in this music — all of it tightly wound up in a healthy mess of impending nihilism and excitement that Rákosi internalizes and thrives upon.
Viktor of Sofa King zine puts it this way: We’ve seen fake people try to do real things for too long. Those images jaded us enough that now we seem to believe only ugliness could be honest. And because we’re not used to honesty, to avoid awkwardness we try to take it as a joke. Well here is some awful truth for you delivered by four Hungarian folks. What Rákosi does is maybe one of the closest things to the real deal that I’ve heard in recent years. In the beginning I tried to convince myself that maybe I should try to laugh with them, but I couldn’t. This simple natural rage comes hand in hand with striking, sharp and amazingly grooving hardcore punk what just turns out perfect. Listen to them and explore the borders of brutality, horror and of course beauty.
Rákosi only has one self-made recording so far — a demo that was recently pressed as a 7” EP by California’s Lengua Armada Discos. Get it while the blood is still warm. Also, they’re gonna be on tour this summer and still have some holes in their route, so if you’d like to see some Magyars play mutant hardcore in your town, just get in touch with them at: rakosi.vipera.elvtars {at} gmail(.)com
For more, check out the detailed interview with them in issue #325 of Maximum Rocknroll.
MRR readers need to know about a great and original new band I’ve been obsessed with — CRAZY SPIRIT. After reading a description on a distro website selling their demo comparing them to the Germs and Cheetah Chrome Motherfuckers, (two of my fave bands,) I was compelled to do some further research.
Punks are a little spoiled these days. It used to be serious work to track down the tiniest bit of info on a on a band that sounded interesting but now it’s only a click away. I’m a jaded old punk and that’s whole nother article but this is a good thing because I found Crazy Spirit’s MySpace page and was instantly blown away by what I heard. Shades of the aforementioned bands with hints of Rudementary Peni and some rhythms that reminded me of the old Texas band, the Motards. Seriously, the vocals are like the rabid weasel from some old Tex Avery cartoon — they have to be heard to be believed. Lots of the best foreign hardcore punk influences as well. They were nice enough to float me a demo with a rough mix of their upcoming 7″ even! Like a drooling junkie wanting more, I was hooked. Their artwork is amazing as well.
Well, I’ll let two of the members quote some info for themselves…
From Walker (vox): We started practicing as a full band almost exactly a year ago. Our drummer, Henry, and our bass player, Sam, wanted to start a band that had early Discharge and Brazilian influences, then they got Eugene, who is the drummer of Perdition, to play guitar. They started practicing in Eugene’s room with tiny little amps and a wooden spool with plastic buckets attached to it as drums. They recorded an instrumental demo tape and then I started practicing with them, singing random shit into an acorn while we practiced. We added lyrics, then had our first show in September and recorded the demo. On a side note, no one seems to think this, but I’d say my biggest influence on singing is Battalion of Saints. We all grew up together and got into punk together, all local NYC/Brooklyn. Now we practice in Brooklyn at the same spot as Perdition and Dawn of Humans at the house of half of the band Question. Sam and Eugene are also in Dawn of Humans.
From Sam (bass): yo i just read walkers thing it sounded pretty right. the only thing is henry started on a wood box. not buckets. but whatever…. uh the only thing i wanna add is that we love discharge and brazil 80s hc, and the aesthetic of those bands, BUT we did not start crazy spirit thinking “oh how can we sound like discharge”. i feel like a lot of bands nowadays just choose some other band to sound like, or to relate to. i don’t wanna be part of that.
They have a couple 7″s coming soon and maybe even a vinyl reissue of the demo. Keep on the lookout. Seriously.
Yeah, you probably know by now that MRR has a boner for the LA Raw Ponx scene, and you’ve heard us tell you a million times about raging bands like TUBERCULOSIS, LA VOZ, and RAYOS X — who all, by the way, have new records out on Lengua Armada that totally rule. You may have even seen the name POLISKITZO in amongst the aforementioned bands, but I’m here to tell you that this is the band to watch out for.
At any given Raw Ponx show here in LA, there’s bound to be at least six bands on the bill, and up to ten will actually play, and only if you know the bands personally do know who the hell you’re watching. So for like three or four shows there was this one band that always blew me away, but I could never figure out what they were called. That band, of course, is POLISKITZO. They’ve got a demo out on the Raw Ponx official Silenzio Statico label that’s great, but doesn’t quite capture the band’s live sound. They’ve talked about actually putting out a live recording, which would be sweet. For a glimpse of what I’m talking about, here’s a live video from a typical LA show. (Sorry, this video went “private” for reasons unknown… bummer.)
UK anarcho-punk legends ANTISECT, Virginian crusters APPALACHIAN TERROR UNIT, David Ensminger on his book Visual Vitriol, the Bay Area's NEGATIVE STANDARDS, the OMEGAS frm Montreal, Canada, Ireland's ONLY FUMES AND CORPSES, South Africa’s first punk band POWERAGE, the Bay Area's NO STATIK, Japan's ZYANOSE, YOUR PEST BAND and SKIZOPHRENIA, EUTANASIA and Rock Subterraneo in Peru, and Greek scene report. Cover by Guillem el Muro.
Buy issue #349 here — use drop-down to choose your location:
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Trans-national hardcore ragers PETTYBONE have been shaking things up in London for the past few months, injecting some much needed socially conscious girl rage into the largely boy-centric punk scene in this city. Ivona, Amy, Lianna and Zel make up Pettybone, from Czech Republic, Germany, London and Cornwall respectively! Their music is fairly unclassifiable in the best way, but mixes bits of ‘big’ sounding metallic hardcore that’s heavy on the chug with mid-paced, almost crusty sounds and a dose of ’90s-style impassioned melody. It’s just really exciting.
