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- One more glimpse into Charles Bronson power violence madness.
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- Another fantastic image, to close out a visually jarring booklet.
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- The other side of Real Reggae’s section. Notice how the song titles, also, sorta hint at a true “reggae” sound.
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- A classic Charles Bronson piece of art. They always had it down …
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- Notice “I love fast core” … More Fuck On The Beach-ery.
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- Oh my god, this is my favorite image by far. It spoofs the design of reggae cover art and sorta outdoes a lot of it at its own game. Offers absolutely NO glimpse into what Real Reggae actually sound like, which is probably what I like most about it. Almost Sublime-ish.
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- You just know Fuck On The Beach are going to be interesting based on the art alone.
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- I love this Spazz piece (notice “Mayonnaise the Bastard aka” and “Bastard Praise” above and below.
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- I’m pretty sure Slayer ended up with a sleeve a lot like this around the same time Hellnation unleashed this image on the world.
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- These can barely be made out but they’re appropriately vulgar so I must show you. From Flash Gordon’s side.
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- Strangely black-metal vibes coming from a Capitalist Casualties section.
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- A nifty piece of art from Flash Gordon, a heavy-ass band.
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- The front cover of the “Tomorrow Will Be Worse” compilation. 45 & 33 RPM mix.
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- Four slabs of grey, marbled vinyl. It’s important to pick collections like this up when you get the chance.
Hellnation – “War Report” MP3/download
Hellnation – “Cycle of Shit” MP3/download
Cyness – “Stein Not Stein” MP3/download
Sayyadina – “My Say Shall Be the Last” MP3/download
Massgrav – “Killar Med …” MP3/download
I’m gonna go ahead and christen Real Reggae my favorite new discovery via the Tomorrow Will Be Worse compilation — a 4X7-inch on Sound Pollution Records — simply because they came first and I don’t see how any subsequent band, even old faves Charles Bronson, could eclipse them. [UPDATE: Hellnation come damn-close to eclipsing them. I'm just going to call it a toss-up.)
It's a joy to be toyed with in this fashion. Real Reggae's section of the cover art (shown above, gnarly) hints at a Bad Brains-bashing group of white retards, and "Injustice" starts out with tired reggae groovin'. It's all a ruse; they turn out to be yet another power violence group, albeit one of the best I've managed to hear.
Blast-beating thugs they are, there's something genius about the way they unknowingly blend Spazz (also on this comp) with Dystopia with Assfactor 4 with Man Is The Bastard with ... who knows, really. A lot of bands pop to mind here but none stand up as a dominant touchstone. They hit the punk side of the pit a lot more than many p-v bands, too.
The vocals even remind me of Brujeria, for christ's sake.
Gotta move on. C. Bronson, time to RAWK. Charles Bronson's side of the 7-inch is supposedly recorded live, but I, at first, suspected it was canned as tuna. I was wrong; according to the liner notes, this was set to tape at a festival in Belgium. I stand corrected.
They sound great; wish I coulda seen 'em back in the day. The tragedy is that groups like Charles Bronson don't seem to reunite. That's also what makes it so special, too, I suppose ... Those well-versed in CB won't find too many surprises here. Most of the tunes are on that monstrous retrospective album Bronson put out (I remember a dude burning me a CD of Charles Bronson and Usurp Synapse retrospectives, and I just couldn't put those goddamn discs down. Life-altering ...)
OK, I'm going to have to cruise through the rest of this monstrous undertaking. A few observations:
- Hellnation and Flash Gordon absolutely sock the HEll out of Nice View and Capitalist Casualties.
- Hellnation are possessed. Their music is somehow louder and fuller than the rest of the bands. Can't believe I've never heard these guys before but I'll be keeping an eye out for old, late-'90s 7-inches and 12" blasts with black-and-white power-violence art.
- It's getting tougher and tougher to move beyond Hellnation. They are simply devastating in their loudness. Speaking of Usurp Synapse, this might just be the next-best thing (along with that first Racebannon record) ...
- OK, now that Fuck On The Beach are playing, I can do it, I can move on ...
- Fuck OTB bring the baddest vocals to this mix, possibly; it's tough to say for sure because this comp is rife with screeching of all manor. Regardless, sections of "Spook" and "It's Buh Buh Time" are intense enough to make yr heart seize up. In fact ... I gotta take a break here ... [gulp] Devastations and 1UP ended up sounding a little bit like this, no? Bad Brains were this RAw once. Not for the faint of fuck. I thought Capitalist Casualties were going to sound like this, and ended up disappointed in their punk acumen.
- I’ll never GET Spazz like I’m s’posed to. It’s just not going to happen. But I appreciate their uniqueness to the bone.
Alright, time to get up outta here. Take another look at the INSANE-o sleeve art for this thing before you go. Yes, I just wrote “INSANE-o” …
[OOh, on a separate note, I just found the following note on Sound Pollution Records' Web site (where it looks like you can get their stuff super-cheap as they try and sell their remaining stock:
"The end is here. After nearly 20 years, Sound Pollution is going to end. There are still plenty of records to sell, and everything will still be up and running until all the stock is gone. A few releases that have been in the pipeline might still happen or may move to another label. I’ll keep everyone posted on it. Over the years, I’ve put a ton of time into the label and have loved it. Sound Pollution has been a one-person operation since inception; that plus working a "real" job doesn’t leave me with a lot of free time. I’d like to see what else I can do with all the time I currently spend on the record label. I’ll still be setting up tours for friends’ bands and playing in Hellnation. Many many thanks to everyone all around the world who has supported the label over the years. The label wouldn’t have amounted to much without the help of so many great people. I’m really amazed at how many absolutely great records Sound Pollution was lucky enough to release. So don’t miss out on them. Once they’re gone ... they’re gone."
RIP; wish I had done more to support while Sound Pollution was around ... ]
