[Check out some of Dissonance's music HERE]
Dissonance, from Flint, Mich., know how to catch Gumshoe’s eye: with pizza. YEAH! Or at least a pizza box. Their now-Out-Of-Print “Pizza” box set is a sloppy, saucy mess that stomps, grinds and SHITS all over your living room floor. Hardcore, brother!
This is as lo-fi as it gets, yet most of the instruments occupy a distinct tier of the mix. The bass is immediately apparent as the dominant force, the one element that never slips out of time or pitch. The vocalist? He’s out of tune eternally but in a Punk way (so it’s OK; no, seriously, that’s how it works).
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that my experience with true hardcore is limited. Old AFI, DFL (a personal all-time favorite), Black Flag, The Germs (a punk band that still sounds like the skeleton of a ton of hardcore bands to me), Eight Bucks Experiment, way-early D.R.I., Minor Threat, Bad Brains — those and a few others constitute what I know of the genre; as such, if you’re a true-blue, old-school hardcore fan you’ll be able to spot that.
The dirtier the better right? Well, sure (and never fear: Dissonance pushed to the razor’s edge in this regard), but the production’s gotta be just right. It helps if you know nothing about producing commercial music or even anything that doesn’t wade around in its own disgustingly fuzzy juices. Then find the angriest HxCx band you can find, one with a poor-man’s version of the vocals from Bad Religion‘s 80-80-era recordings, slap a few beers on some wooden tables (knock-knock, bitch) and you got yourself 20 songs at LEAST if the band is worth a shit.
If these guys weren’t drunk when they wrote and recorded these songs I … then I’m billionaire puff Richard Branson. So, that settles it, I guess — they were WASted, and I love the way dudes playpunk when they’re flat-wasted, especially if they were around when hardcore enjoyed its golden age (in the early ’80s, of course), as Dissonance were. Though this box set was released in 2006 or so, most of the material was branded to tape much earlier than that by what sounds like either a boombox with a small mic in the back of it or a minicassette recorder.
Whatever they used, they succeeded in stinking things up just enough to make it matter. Thick black boots; hard, ass-scuffed leather jackets; disgusting hair that smells like the floor of a tour van; ugly tattoos … you know, the Good Stuff …
Oh, and before you go, check out this Repulsion cut via YouTube (the only way to really share certain things, mind you) … Totally insane track that I have in my collection SOMEwhere …
