V/A Distort Midwest cassette
I love compilations; getting a chance to dive into a whole scene via one tape is fuckin’ joy, allowing someone like me, a thousand miles away from the US, to voyeuristically pry into the underbelly of whatever the fuck is happening in Midwestern HC. This tape covers an absurd amount of ground, at over an hour in length with fifteen bands providing multiple tracks, giving a fair amount of time to newer, lesser-known acts and some that are more firmly established (Detroit’s SHROUD and Missouri’s MENTIRA, for instance). Genre-wise though, a majority of this is hardcore, on the grimier, D-beat side of things. If anything’s going to make you miss rubbing shoulders with filthy, fucked-up crusties at shows, it’s this tape. A shame to have been released in a year where shows were impossible in the Midwest.