Records of the Week: VATICAN DAGGER 7″ & RIXE 7″
VATICAN DAGGER — “Not to Be/The Mess” 7”Kudos to VATICAN DAGGER for foisting their hate on us this early in the year. Birthed from Louisiana shit and boasting the always deadly Gary Wrong on guitar, VATICAN DAGGER take classic neg-vibe aggression and make it an earworm. It’s great to hear punk rock this dark and ugly imbed a hook in the listener… It just makes the pop camp look like bigger idiots. The first great punk record of 2015, I’d say.
(Total Punk)
— Mitch Cardwell
RIXE — “Coups et Blessures” EP
Fuck me. Everyone kept saying, “This record is great, this record is great I love this record, oooooooohhhhhh this record is the best thing since I learned how to go potty in the toilet not all over my leg,” So, of course, I’m all, like, “Eat my fukk, punks, the shit ain’t that good.” And here I am, eating my own fukk, muttering to myself in disbelief, “It really is that good, it really is that good, it really is that good.” All of you monkeys who think that simple Oi! punk shits are cool now and want to join in the fun by writing some dumbass generic two-chord punk, need to listen to this right the fukk now. Because nothing here is hard—but everything here is good. Filthy sounding and brutally straightforward punk rocks with riffs to last you the rest of the year (with the action on “Larmes de Crocodile,” I’m good through summer at least) and, ugh, those vocals are just fukkn perfect!! I know everyone is gonna compare them to CRIMINAL DAMAGE, and they are surely going to fill that void for a lot of punks, but Paris rockers RIXE are dirtier, and dare I say punker? Seriously, this is so fukkn good.
(La Vida Es Un Mus)
— Robert Collins
