Year End Top 10 from #358

lists are stupid but being a fan is the coolest thing.

12’’

Sickoids – Self Titled (Residue records)

Talking about punk perfection. Sickoids were the first band that made me want to do a list this year, they are that good it has to be said as many times as it’s possible. Cause they rise above almost all the other records from this year. This record has everything that’s good in punk it’s raw, desperate, melodic, angry, unstoppable, filthy, smart, ugly, young. And while it’s everything you have already loved they are using the old tools to create a new shape. To stay just what we all like: total sonic destruction that hears like love songs written by kids whose hobby is burning cop cars.

Rat Columns – Sceptre Hole (Smartguy records)

Winter is cool. No one’s out on the streets, lights are on due to the early darkness, mist clouds everywhere and all the time, nice cloths. Rat Columns is the soundtrack for me for these amazing days but will be for the upcoming seasons as well. And I feel like it’s a soundtrack for a documentary about my life. About our lives, it has so many different sounds and emotions it’s like this all. It’s like music that has to be made cause it’s in everybody who is a beautiful loser. This is what I’m listening to when I gaze in my everyday daze. Amazing stuff.

Merchandise – Children of Desire (Katorga Works)

I reached a point with listening to this record that made me put them into the guilty pleasure category cause it was embarrassing how much I played their record. I played this when friends came over, when I went on wet summer nights to get drunk at islands, when I went to dates, when I came home after failed dates. When we were just hanging out, eating spaghettis after midnight, all the fucking time. Even at work where people started digging it. This is just beautiful and ugly, a whole universe under a blanket, where people who maybe pushed down in and by life go into their strange rooms and they create something among their four walls that is bigger than life. New Order plays Beat Happening songs which are as serious as Angels of Lights with a Neu! sound. Eat drugs and dance love.

Creem – Self Titled (Deranged records)

I remember when glue sniffing punks were opening for bands like Terror. When i was 16 i thought Bridge 9 is the best label ever. Then there was a growing ditch between punk and hardcore but at one point in the recent past bands started to appear who could grab both the punk and the hardcore scenes’ attention. I mean those who are way deep in their own subgenres. Creem is a perfect example for this cause they are fucking amazing. Skinheads with sneakers, edge people in smoke stink shirts. They are disgusting in a way Life’s Blood or Negative Approach were, mixing that amazing blocked rage clockwork orange violence of the Blitz sound with filthy new york trash era hardcore. This band proved me that room moshing could be fun.

Baader Brains – New Era Hope Colony (Empyre Records, Clean Plate Records, Ebullition Records)

Sometimes it bums me out how some bands who actually sound pretty good have nothing to say. And sometimes I get bummed out cause I’m dumb to understand everything Baader Brains is saying. This band is amazing cause you could feel and hear and read that these people put their time and creativity and message and power into these songs and expanded them to their fullest capabilities. And the result is some unique record that is everything that is good in punk and the overall message is everything that’s good in being an intelligent mammal. And there’s a United Mutation cover!!!

Criminal Code - Cold Thought (Inimical records)

Criminal Code had a word about them before their sounds have reached me. Most of the times this triggers high hopes in me and the higher you go the harder you could fall. I put this record on for the first time and it was just beyond my imagination. Bands like Criminal Code: i can only call them punk cause they are bringing the essential of the genre as much as there is only this single word to describe them the best. They sound modern but timeless modern, they are powerful but melodic, raw but smart. The wall of sound guitars with their everyday life gloom. There’s tension in every of their songs which is constantly rising, it’s like brilliant punk through an overdrive. Every sound is killer on this one. This was probably the best guitar centric record this year. 

Neon Piss – self titled (deranged)

This record had to grow on me. I loved their demo and their live performances and while the record is almost the same it sounded so monumental in their final studio form that it was too much to digest in the first couple listens. They not only put their melodies, desperation and anger into these songs but the overall record is just full with the well thought construction of punk awesomeness. It just makes you find friends and while you skate around a smashed cop station’s parking lot you could sing along to these amazing anthems of the strange youth.

Puffy Areolas - 1982: Dishonorable Discharge (Hozac records)

Ordinary thing about smoking weed regularly is even when you are sober you imagine how better things were if you were stoned. Ordinary thing about Puffy Areolas is they make you feel you are stoned and it’s 5 am but you still just want to fuck your brain up with more materials. This sounds like if some crazy scientist drugged Void and made them into a creepy psychedelic hardcore jam band. Perfect background music for garden parties where you smoke your night in burning plastic among bile puking punks.

D-Clone - Creation And Destroy (540 records)

They said no emotions or memories in this list but I first heard this record at a filthy basement when two noise-not-music head friends were blasting it with making silly faces and satanic hand signs. Music like this has always depressed me in a way but then I have realized it’s more than fun. This record is amazing. It’s so distorted and loud and noisy and fast beyond being able to keep up with them it turns into something grotesquely beautiful that’s like funny or happy while it’s not. It’s the evil baby their parents love but everybody else hates. This is music what your grandma thinks you are listening to when you tell her about punk. Full blown noise terror which makes you spill your beer on leather jackets. I could say punk and hardcore but seriously this sonic madness is in another universe.

Uv Race – Racism (In the Red recordings)

For some reason I always just end up listening to Uv Race and their new record is maybe their best to date. I like it when music sounds like it would be fun to hang with the people who are making it. This record is just fun cause post punk supposed to be fun. Whatever, this is the only time that racism were cool in history.

7’’

Coffin Pricks – Group Home Haircut (Stationary (Heart) Recordings)
Shaved Women – Static (Pass Judgement Records)
Dark Times – Girl Hate (Fysisk Format)
Lower – Walk On Heads (Escho)
Shoppers / Panzram – Split (Feeble Minds Records)
Homostupids – New York Jammin’ (hozac records)
White Lung – Self Titled (sabotage records)

Tapes

Piss Crystals – This is crazy. Hailing from Budapest, Hungary Piss Crystals is mixing kraut rock, noise, hardcore punk and black Sabbath-ish jams. And they end up sounding like Dinosaur Jr playing deep wound songs. Soooo good.

Replica – this band is a total fucking rager and there was no question they were the band of 2012. Angry people creating amazing noise. My vocabulary is not enough for them so I rather just bang my head to their totally awesome sounds.

Spiritual Warriors – now this is what makes me happy. Some stoned hippies blasting distorted love hardcore. How the fuck did it happen that the live recording on their tape is way better than the studio one? Anyway, this is the music that I like.

Caged Animal – I was at a hardcore show where the singer said “the next jam is a stomper”. No idea about what that is but listening to this demo makes me wanna kick myself in the head with a boot it’s that good. Delete me from facebook if you disagree.

Index – Reverbed fun punk perfection for dreamy cool bedroom dance parties. The sounds are fitting shitty tattoos, awesome haircuts and midnight parking lot skate jams. This band is just so effortlessly cool listening to them will make you cool as well. In the punk way.

Proxy – if you like drinking beer, hanging with friends, wearing nice cloths and yelling oi too much this will be your band. Nah, they are way better with melodies and overall music that it’s like oi music for everyone. Anyway This is a crazy good demo even for closet skinheads like myself.