Hail Fastcore

I've been on a serious, serious fastcore binge lately. It's been wonderful. I've had a ton of fastcore splits, 7"s and 12"s come in recently, and I've loved every single one of them. The next few posts are gonna be focused on some of these blasting gems, starting with this one; the xBrainiax/Dead Radical split 7", black vinyl, 33 RPM.

Dead Radical are my newest fastcore love, I'm definitely gonna try and get all the releases I can from this band. 19(!) songs on their side, seamless transitions of blasting, tempo changes, technical hardcore futzery. It basically sounds like one long song, and I greatly admire this bands skill. The bass player especially, he pulls out some super interesting bass licks all over this beast. This is definitely the type of release that you have to "study" to fully pick it up. There are tons of things that you'll miss the first time you hear it.

Same goes for the xBrainiax side, definitely one of the reigning titans of fastcore(though there were rumors of them breaking up, but I also heard they just changed some members). They're side is definitely has more distinguishable "songs", but still beyond crazy and intricate. They also pull out the cliche slow song at the end. Still awesome.

Typical Dead Radical aesthetic on this. Smeared ink artwork and messy fonts. They also have a thing for hand stamping the center labels of their records, which is kinda interesting. 

This last picture is the xBrainiax side, for some reason I looooooove looking at all the "rings" of the record. Really cool and striking, maybe I'm alone in this. Who cares...

~VII