Penis Geyser's Two Minute Tape

I was happy to be able to score some sweet additions to the Penis Geyser/Smash Music label collection the past couple of months. Penis Geyser obviously being a very loved band on this blog. One of the gold standards for American noisecore in my own opinion. This is a tape I always wanted to hear, mainly from friends talking about it and just knowing how short it was. This is the self-titled, C2 cassette they did on Smash Music, not sure how many copies were made.

Unsurprisingly, this tape fucking rules! Recorded in 2011, but released three years later according to the info in the Jcard, most likely with the trio line-up. Now what is surprising actually, is how good this recording actually sounds. Like, it sounds like they actually used more than one mic in a room, and recorded different instruments separately. This is all speculation of course, but the recording is remarkably crisp. I think I actually let out an audible "woah" when the tape started playing.

Penis Geyer's trademark noise explosions maintain their strengths here. The recording is cut up and spliced together in a very rapid pace to help it work with the very short run time, which I love. It's a super great listen, all two whole minutes of it. Maybe some of my favorite PG material I've heard. It's a great tape to play in your auto-reverse tape deck and just let spin and spin.

I'm not sure who did this great collage work, but it looks like something Colton/PMS would whip up. Pretty sure this is the same image that appears on one of their shirts that I own.

I've seen this pop up in a few distro's lately actually, so if you see one I recommend buying it. Don't be scared to pay five bucks for a two minute tape.

~VII

Cadaverlanche

I've been picking up basically every release that Sulfuric Cautery is on these days. Definitely the grind band that is impressing and exciting me the most as of late. They keep putting out new shit about as fast as their blast beasts with no slowing down, which is all fine by me. This particular tape was put out on the bands own labels, Blast Addict and Feel Good Grind. A live recording, squishily called "Frozen Daiqueri In The Urethra Of Ralph Ferrari", not sure how limited it is.

This tape has since sold out from the label, and it honestly is not something I would call a mandatory release to get from Sulfuric Cautery. If you've watched the video on Youtube of them playing St. Vitus in NYC, then you've heard this. It is however, a fantastic performance, and a good way to hear some of these tracks from the Incinerated and Take That Vile Fiend splits with a much cleaner recording. It's mindblowing to me how everyone in the band can keep up a set this fast. It's a pretty long show too, almost 20 minutes! I really wanted to make it to this show too, I can't remember what the reason was for me not being able to attend. It was a stupidly stacked show, and it's always good to see Ralph down in the city. To this day, I have still not seen Sulfuric Cautery, but this recording definitely shows that they can bring it live. As if there was any doubt of that.

I think there's a couple different cover variations for this. One that is a bit more gory. The tape 

sounds awesome, the soundboard mix is very good and it's nice to hear some more of the riffs pop out more. The Jcard is also printed on a nice sturdy cardstock.

I'll finally be able to see these guys play at Rapid Decay fest in Binghamton, NY in October. Couldn't be more excited!

~VII

No Bounds

Here's another piece of the huge stack of releases that Sidetracked has gotten released this year. A tidy and short cassette EP called "Perpetual Dissent", released by Alternatives Label. Probably in a run of 100 or so on pro-tapes.

This is definitely one of the strongest releases that Sidetracked has done this year, and will most likely be on my favorites of 2018 list.First off, the recording is fantastic, the guitars and bass sound heavy and hard as fuck! Great, catchy, warpy, angular riffs too, some of the best I've heard from them in a while. It's also a very focused EP, the songwriting in particular makes the whole thing flow very well. Repetitive yet always hard hitting. To me another example of the band's fantastic blending of noisecore and blasting hardcore genres. 

Every song starts with Jay saying the title of the track (referencing Seven Minutes of Nausea no doubt), then going in to super aggressive and powerful riffs, blasting, and vocals. For real, the recording/production and sound of the band is so on point on here. Every song also features a break of live recorded bass and drums, with a much more lo-fi recording fidelity. Every track is punctuated by a returning blast of riffs with the title screamed out again, drenched in echo and eventually dissolving into pure noise. Every song is written this way; which does get a little monotonous at just a few points. Some songs like "Never Change" would probably be even more insane is if was just blasting all the way through. But I appreciate the direct decision to sequence the EP this way. Besides, it rips so hard it could go on twice as long for me anyway.  

The tape looks and sounds great. It's loud and crisp and has a very nice layout. Brutally short as always. Probably just shy of 3 minutes, in and out. Fucking brilliant. 

This is the release that has been my go-to when I'm showing people Sidetracked for the first time these days. And pretty consistently they've all been impressed. Buy this!!!

~VII

Dopesmoker Is A Fucking Terrible Album

This will absolutely go down as one of my favorite tapes released this year. Some of you may remember an older post where I talked about the debut Cuck Dirt EP released on Uninvited Records. I was a massive fan of their composed, smart-ass, vicious take on noisecore, that whole tape is incredibly fun and a cut above the normal bunch of newer noisecore bands. Now it's a year later, and Cuck Dirt have unleashed their follow up in the form of a single track, C2 cassette, released on Doughgirl Tapes in a super limited edition of 25.

 What Cuck Dirt have done is create a diss track about one of my personal favorite albums; "Dopesmoker" by Sleep. In leu of Sleep releasing their "comeback" record so to speak, I saw a ton of people start saying some not so great things about, just all at once and out of no where. I guess it's because they released it on 4/20? I'm not sure, and I'm not here to talk about Sleep. In any case, Cuck Dirt are straight dissing that shit, and it's as funny as it is harsh. It starts out with a sample of an auto-tuned voice, talking about how "it's fucking nice out, who's trying to hang and smoke some loud?". Apparently this is taken from some sort of meme, which I'm honestly unfamiliar with. I thought it was some brilliantly weird shit in any case. From then on it's a blasting, snarling dose of vitriol for the next 50 seconds, great stuff all around. The lyrics are pronounced and rapid, in a mid-period Sissy Spacek kind of way. They're down to earth and blunt, but it's done perfectly for what it is. It reminds me of Jay Randall's lyrical style from those good ANb days. Cuck Dirt's fantastic and seamless blend of composition and complete noisecore is still strong here, no riffs but a good sense of structure.

I also appreciate how they just didn't hold back on this cover art, which is clearly just the artwork from the "Dopesmoker" reissue, with crude MS paint dick drawings. Perfectly dumb. The whole layout is wonderful, and I'm dang happy to have gotten the #1 copy, not sure how I scored that! The tape dub is just the tiniest bit murky and fuzzy, but it's forgivable.

I fucking love this tape, it's a total winner in my book. Buy this before it sells out!!!

~VII

Another Song About Dicks

This tape came out back near the end of 2016, when Sedem Minut Strachu really started propelling into their solid status as one of the best noisecore bands doing their thing. I was really happy to find it out in the wild this past April while I was on tour. At the very excellent Torn Light Records in Kentucky. Trashfuck Records is responsible for putting this tape out, not sure how many were made.

Sedem Minut Strachu as you all should be aware have been pretty much dominating noisecore over the course of several years. Consistently putting out true, ugly, proper noisecore from tape to record to tape again. And of course constantly releasing splits with many amazing and fascinating bands from all over the world. Their side here is a 163 track effort, so there's plenty of short bursts and stops on this one. Jan is really blasting hard. It sounds like one of their practice room recordings, so the bass isn't that blown out and more in the background. Not as much ping in the snare as I normally like either, it actually sounds like a real snare drum here. Pretty awesome stuff, as usual.

Bullshit Market is a long going, genre bending band from Detroit. Patrick, one half of BsM, also runs Trashfuck Records. This is some seriously whacked out noisecore fuckery. Super fast and tight blasting, harsh noise in the vein of Nikudorei, and some left in band member banter with very tight cut up/editing. The vocals too, I love how they sound on here! Not so much screaming, more like loud moaning and grunting, but with some SUPER heavy delay or echo on them in a way I don't hear very often. There's also an amazing part in the middle where there's a reverse playback of the band chatting, and then this reversed cymbal decay just starts rising up, until there's a sharp stop into harsh fucking noise blasting. This side is just great, I really really like this a lot. 

We got a proper, old school style, whole folded sheet of paper for the cassette art. Including an iamge of the poster from when Sedem Minut Strachu and Bullshit Market played together on the American 7MS tour. The tape dub sounds superb and crispy too.

This tape is long since sold out. But if you manage to luckily find it in the wild like I did you definitely should buy it. Both sides are winners!

  ~VII

Fascination Of Regurgitation

This wonderful 4-way split was on my want list for a long time. I'm turning into a big sucker for the 4-way splits, particularly ones that stick to the C20 time length like this one. What a great line-up of bands, put out by Ill Faith Records, Suicide Of A Species and Fuck Your Life Records. Limited to 200 copies.

So first up we have Haggus, undoubtably the hottest flame in the newest generation of mincecore bands. These four tracks were actually recorded back in 2015, pretty close to the beginning of the band. The vocals were recorded in 2017 however. This is more of that classic Haggus sound before they became more of a down tuned, goregrind band. Lots of major key, punky riffs, polka beats, and fun, catchy breaks and transitions. This is the kind of sound that made me really fall in love with Haggus back in the beginning, top notch mincecore riffing!
Meatus are up next. For those who don't know this is a long-going solo project from Joe of Archagathus (and Cannibalism, Violet Gorge, Raw Addict, etc). Joe is a grindore madman, constantly creating and recording some of the roughest and most real brutal music. The fidelity and volume level just fucking drops as soon as Meatus starts going. It was shockingly quiet, I had to really crank up my stereo. This stuff just sounds so gross and raw, I have no idea what kind gear you need to record on to make it sound this way. I love it. Completely raw and uncompromising goregrind, with plenty of sick riffs clawing through the muck.

I actually mainly picked up this tape for the Disemboweler tracks, to be honest. Disemboweler is a Simpson's themed, brutal grind group duo made up of Brandon Denetsosie (who runs Ill Faith records and contributes to many grind projects in the Arizona scene), and Chris Tapo, who is by far the person I trust the most to deliver the hardest gory grind I'll hear. This is the real deal stuff, it's fucking heavy, slamming, slapping grind. Just straight up, to the point brutality with punishingly heavy drums, vocals and meat-shredding riffs. Not to mention I always appreciate a good Simpson's sample. Definitely the highlight of the whole tape for me, I really dug this quarter a lot.
The Disembowler side ends with a looped sample that goes on for an almost disorienting amount of time. Which goes right into the rawest portion of this 4-way split, a band called Albratos. I had never heard anything about this band before, and according to their little bio in the jcard they were never really active at all. This quick little spurt of songs is insanely rough and sloppy. Almost like they just never picked up instruments at all before hitting record and just went for it. I can dig that a lot most of the time, but this was just a little bit "meh" for me. It didn't really have that punch in any of the instrumentation that really grabbed me, like a gross guitar sound or a sharp snare tone. Nothing terrible, just not my favorite of this whole tape.

This tape looks and sounds great, a top notch, quality job all around. The red cassette was a very nice choice of color. I also like how both side ends with the much more lo-fi sounding bands. 

There are 200 of these things floating around in the world, so you should have no problem scoring a copy if this interests you. Buy from the labels!!

~VII

Lupara Bianca

Here's just a quick post about the cassette version of the recent Deterioration EP, "Lupara Bianca". I'm not gonna go into much detail with this one, since most of my opinions will mirror Tylers from his earlier post about this release. This is the cassette version, self released on Deterioration's own label, Shattered Dreams Productions in a run of a think 50.

This thing sold out almost as soon as it went up. I got mine from Acid Redux Productions, who were thankfully stocking a few copies. This definitely ranks as one of my favorite Deterioration releases so far. Great, heavy recording, super tight and catchy riffs and drum syncopation, good flow from track to track, and a good chunk of song writing variety. The ending to the last song, "I'm Actually Wearing A Lot Of Explosives Right Now" is one of the most intense bits of grindcore this year, totally unrelenting. I definitely have found myself returning to this tape a lot out of all the Deterioration releases I own, and will probably be on my favorites of 2018 list. These guys just can't stop!

Got a nice, to the point layout without anything flashy in the packaging. The jcard feels like its made of photocopy paper. Great sounding cassette though, undoubtably a professional dub job.

Maybe one of the best/dumbest spine fonts I've seen. You don't see many bands fuck with all lower case Times New Roman. The only thing that would have made it more extreme is Comic Sans.

Great EP from one of the best American grindcore bands. I hear that this is supposed to come out on a 7" too at some point, so if you missed out on the CD, cassette, or 8-track, keep an eye out for that.

~VII

Suh Dude

HOT FIRE TAPE ALERT! Fuck, I really really wish I had picked up this cassette sooner. This thing was recorded in 2016 and I only just caught on thanks to some friendly hype from some trusted peers. I picked up this Suh Minutes of Dude tape from a recent order from Acid Redux Productions, who also released it. Released on a pro tape, my copy is obviously on a green cassette, limited to 60 copies.

So, great band name right?? Meme status aside, it's a brilliantly humorous take on the classic 7MON name. The name is honestly probably what kept me away from buying it for so long, cause on the surface this looks like it would be an enjoyable, but overall standard, stupid as hell noisecore tape. Boy oh boy is that not the case here. Noisecore; absolutely, but this is some of the most pulverizing shit I've heard in a minute. An international quartet/supergroup of heads in the scene, though I'm not exactly sure who. The only name I recognize in the credits is Rado, who I'm just gonna assume is the same Rado from 7M$.

Basically what you get here is 20 tracks in almost 10 minutes of some of the most legit and hard slapping Fear of God worship I've probably ever heard. Right down to the unchanging "Peeeaoohhhhh" growl vocals. The recording is perfect. Hard panned, dual bass assault with avalanche heavy drumming. Everything is basically low end, but with a nice amount of trebly crunch on the basses. There is some semblance of riffs that pop up occasionally, but mostly it's just noise. This is just crazy, chaotic, knuckle dragging noisecore to the max, it's incredibly aggressive and honestly makes me wanna throw objects at walls.. There's even a burp or two that they keep in. This session could go on for 3 times as long and I would enjoy every second of it. My roommate said a funny thing in regards to this. I'm paraphrasing but it was like, "You have that kind of life where you say things like "Dude, Suh Minutes of Dude is an awesome band."

Pro tape means pro volume levels, and this tape sounds destructive! Very smart to have the full recording on both sides too. With my new auto-reverse cassette deck I can just let this shit play over and over.

There are still copies of this available from the label, so you know what to do. This gets an incredibly high recommendation. 

~VII

Bathing In The Excrement That Is Your Contrarian Opinion

This is a nice and rowdy split from a couple of super sick bands that always bring a walloping amount of pure grind fury. Indiana's own Flvx Capacitor and one of Lima, OH's nastiest bands, Landfill. Released on these sick orange tapes by Riotous Outburst Records, limited to something like 200 I think!

Flvx Capacitor are up first, serving up 9 new tracks of warp speed grindcore, plus a cover of Extreme Noise Terror's "Deceived". This side is awesome, and some of the shortest and most urgent sounding songs the Flvx has made so far. I think Chris told me that the riffs were written over improvised blasting that was recorded earlier in time. This band has riffs for days, both familiar and more modern sounding, but without sounding techy. Basically these three just know what the fuck their doing when it comes to grindcore. The very high quality recording is also top notch, everything sounds powerful and clear, though their is a noticeable drop in volume and umf on the "Deceived" cover. Great side overall though, just vicious!!

If you haven't heard Landfill yet, you're most definitely fucking up hard. Spearheaded by Will Otler (Methlab Explosion/Faction Disaster/Hot Babes/etc.), Landfill has been one of my favorite projects of his yet. Their side is completely disgusting, brutal grindcore with all the fixings you would need. Deep, gurgled vocals, thick down tuned guitars, a pingy snare, and head-to-concrete riffs. Like the Flvx side though, after track 3 it sounds like a totally different recording, way more raw. Landfill is a somewhat swirling ensemble of members, so this is nothing really new or problematic. No matter what Landfill is always brutal and I dig all of this.

This is a nice looking DIY tape, I adore the orange cassette shell. My copy got just the taddest bit fuzzy in the dubbing I think. The cymbals kinda have that washed out sound. However when you're doing 200 tapes on your own it's pretty dang forgivable.

This is a sick little split, you should definitely give it some ear time. Both these bands are definitely putting out stuff you should own , what are you even doing??

~VII

Catalyst

Washington State based fastcore/noisecore mashup titans Sidetracked have had nothing short of an incredibly prolific couple of years. Releasing at least 12 individual pro-CDr EP's on Jay's own label, Problems They Persist, on top of many other split 7" records, tapes, and so on. I recently was able to snag the latest 6 (!) CD's, plus this super quick 10 track cassette EP released on Practiced Hatred called "Exile". Not sure how many this was limited to, but the red artwork variant has the lyrics included. Naturally, I had to snag that version. 

Wooo boy is this fassst. Pretty much by the time you pop in in the player and go and sit down, one side is over. Hardcore dudes will have the hardest time moshing to this. Heavy duty, super raw and incredibly stop/starty micro-jams. Long time admirers of Sidetracked will probably find a lot of similar qualities to the "Hustle" cassette, another 2 minute or so tape release if I remember correctly. Working with a heavy inspiration from early super aggressive hardcore bands in terms of riffs. Breaking them down and boiling song structure down to the shortest of track lengths. I've always thought Sidetracked was a genius band, and seeing them embrace rawer recording choices and taking on almost pure noisecore styles from time to time has been a very fascinating and wonderful thing to see.

I'm curious why the lyrics were only given to people who bought this red cover version. To me the lyrics in a Sidetracked song serve as strong a purpose as the music does. That aside, this tape looks sick. I really like the design, it's straight and to the point, and diverts from the usual look that Sidetracked releases have.

"Exile" has already sold out from the label, but I think Sidetracked still have some for sale on their bandcamp page.

~VII