DAMNATION (ad) - On A Pale Horse (7") Tidal Records #?? 1994

I will post all Damnation (ad) singles minus "the mortal" so that da Brummel does not sue me. "On A Pale Horse" was still recorded as duo but the inlet tells us that they became a full band now and took over the "ad" in their name. It's also printed on the cover already which is not correct concerning the recordings.
It's 2017 and this still moves me. I still get the same goose bumps as I had when listening to Godflesh or Pitchshifter the first time.

If I should post the songs from the old Lost And Found Records compilation - just let me know via the comments. Also feel free to comment anytime or give additional information which I can include in a posting. I sadly had to delete my contact information on the site: I was receiving spam mainly and had to delete about 1000 mails a week to find one or two concerning the blog.
Thanks to all those who wrote in the past years - especially the band members of Don Martin 3 and The Hated and the friend of Dismay's singer! I will add parts of the ancedotes to the original postings!

DAMNATION - On A Pale Horse 7'' Tidal Records 1994

side a:
A1 Damnation

side b:
B1 On A Pale Horse
[MP3, 320 kbps, mirror 1, mirror 2, mirror 3]

DAMNATION - The Hangman (7") Lost & Found Records #LF 090 1994

Speaking of a hanged man. Here is Damnation's first 7" - still kills today. In my opinion they should have kept the lofi industrial touch while running Damnation ad as band too - Damnation was a two man studio project prior becoming a real band. Although the later fulllength is da bomb, the harshness, tinny industrial sound and coldness are not caught with the monstrous production and wall of sound. On the Lost & Found compilations several early versions of later classics can be found while Ken and Mike were acting as duo first. So if there are more recordings in this vein please make them available.
And of course: this vinyl record has a direct metal mastering! It's funny that this label put so much effort in good sounding vinyl records. Something hundreds of metal and hardcore label are not doing nowadays - many records do not even get a vinyl mastering today (a frustrating experience as listener). Layout contrary to the sound as always: topnotch L&F style. Dit is "Artcore", Alter.

DAMNATION - The Hangman (7") Lost & Found Records #LF 090 1994

side a:
A1 The Hangman
side b:
B1 Sleep
[MP3 320k, link1, link2, link3]

BACK OF DAVE - Glory of... (Picture 7") Thick Records #THK-012 1995

A careful reader refered to a blog, where both demo tape versions and the first 7" including the tape version with an additional song can be found (thanks!):

BACK OF DAVE - 1993 demo / two versions
BACK OF DAVE - Dirty Boy 7" plus the bonus song from the tape version
BACK OF DAVE - a live set which is not online anymore

Thick Records had a picture 7" series for a while, I think they stopped around 2000. The most well known release of those singles might be the At The Drive In/ Burning Airlines split. The label's best release to this date is The Bomb's "Indecision" which was later released on vinyl by No Idea!

Honestly I do not like picture discs, most of them sound shitty, no discussion: the layer above the picture is thinner, it's like a flexi glued to plastic and we all know how flexis sound (okay, does not count for Ripcord's "The Damage Is Done" - I didn't care about the sound). And many of them look like shit (people who bought Lana Del Rey's "Video Games/ Blue Jeans" picture 7" might skip this part)!
Advice for record labels and bands: if you are ever going to make a picture disc or worse combining it with shape, make sure you use the format wisely!!! Metal labels, hardcore bands, pop monsters etc. they all had a right touch for ugly picture discs. One might ask: you actually play your picture discs? Yeah, since most of them look ugly what's the use other than playing those records? I used to be a bit ambivalent towards The Stalin's Mushi LP, but man, that changed fast.

Here is a nice little chamber of horrors worth to check out:

Terry's Picture Discs

If you post on forums or Tumblr you might start a best of!

Okay, back to the posting, back to Back of Dave. I think their picture disc was the first in the series by Thick Records. It looks nice which is not the band's or the label's credit but Van Gogh's and da Vinci's. But while they got better technically their sound got a bit too hail-fellow-well-met in my opinion. It was the heydays of bands moving towards the popular radio rock. Initial Records, Doghouse, Jade Tree, Revelation, Caulfield Records and so on and their roster paved the path. Do not get me wrong: I dug all that stuff! I have all the records, but still: something was missing. I think "hail-fellow-well-met" is what describes it best, I do not want to claim that for Back of Dave of course, but I do for that period of time and the direction many bands were going (for some: boring rock music).

Scanner has been cleaned/repaired (although I broke some plastic parts while doing so it still works! Planned obsolescence my ass) and I started tagging the files properly.

BACK OF DAVE - Glory of... (Picture 7") Thick Records #THK-012 1995

side a:
1. Glory of...
2.  Pick Up Atredes

side b:
1. Springloaded
[MP3, 320 kbps, mirror 1, mirror 2, mirror 3]

BACK OF DAVE/ PROZAC MEMORY - split (LP) SubFusc Records #SFC-005 1995

 

Okay, my scanner is fucked up, there are serious scratches on the class and it's even smeared from inside (who or what is living inside a scanner?). I will fix that later by opening that thing, hope that will work out.

This 12" record is one of the many hidden gems of the early/ mid 90ies emo wave. I am not quite sure, but I think SubFusc had only little distribution (I know you can't image a pre-Bigcartel time), their "most well known" release must be the "How the Midwest Was Won..." compilation, which I will post too.  But still it seems that the record slipped the attention of many listeners.
Prozac Memory slowed down a bit compared to the 2nd 7" which still had some pop punk, Lookout, Jawbreaker etc. feeling to it; those five songs are somehow more rockish, better in musicanship. And again: there is this bass player I'd like to cuddle. The production really does him justice: dry and voluminous.
Back of Dave who even did a one time reunion show in 2003 already ogled with what many people might call the "Chicago sound" a bit and there is even a slight touch of Unbroken/San Diego in their sound (listen carefully to the guitars in the first song). The second song was also co-written by Dave Claibourn, Unbroken's singer.
Looking back the past 10 years many emo bands from that era got nicely done discograpy CDs or even double vinyl versions with with great efforts concerning layout, packaging etc., neither Back of Dave nor Prozac Memory haven't! Why is that?

BACK OF DAVE/ PROZAC MEMORY - split (LP) SubFusc Records #SFC-005 1995

side a:
Back Of Dave
1. quickie
2. automatic drip
3. rifle arm
4. plankton
5. digger

side b:
Prozac Memory
1. beneficiary
2. meniscus
3. drawn into
4. blind ascension
5. seven
[MP3, 320 kbps, mirror 1, mirror 2, mirror 3]

PROZAC MEMORY - chisel tone/ mapmaker (7") Faye Records #F04-12 1994

First of all: I hope the rip sounds fine. I had some problems with background noise and even muffled radio sounds due to a cheap RCA connector in the past and bought a new needle for the record player. I also hope the volume is alright, I stopped using the normalization! Otherwise drop me a line.

I will leave the password from now on (or as a start) and the Winrar-file includes all scans (for the future: maybe assembled in a PDF document).

Way better than their first 7" as far as I can remember - since I can't find it anymore. But I think it already had those great bass lines but the singing was weaker. If you can provide a good rip and scans of the 7" and you want to upload it for the blog: please contact me.

Anyway their second 7" is great. I stumbled across them through the XXX compilation by Ebullition (worth a posting? Maybe the unreleased Via stuff is, for which we all were hunting in the Audiogalaxy days!).

They really learned their Verminscum etc. lesson well. "Chisel tone" is topnotch: I was listening to the song about 30 times in the last few days. The bass is just brilliant.

I do not know anything about them, but their drummer was in Wintergreen later and sadly I haven't heard the Breaker Morant split album yet.

PROZAC MEMORY - chisel tone/ mapmaker (7") Faye Records #F04-12 1994

side a:

1. chisel tone

side b:

1. mapmaker

[MP3, 320 kbps, mirror 1, mirror 2, mirror 3]

THE NOTORIOUS LOVE AFFAIR - rough mix (Tape) self released 1996

Two years ago I did a The Notorious Love Affair posting and now another member contacted me about the unreleased song - acutally there are two unreleased songs!!! Old-timer Markus Haas from Per Koro1 has sent me a huge box with old demo tapes, rough mixes etc.. Among those was the cassette I was longing for: the rough mix of their recordings including two songs which did not make it onto the 7" record. As good as the four songs on the vinyl just the mix of all songs is still a bit weaker and less powerful than on the actual release.

Nice start to reactivated the blog again. Two years after the mentioned posting, one year after the last posting. Next one is in about ten years... ah, and sorry, I didn't see Total Abuse on Berlin's streets but it's a comical story anyway.

THE NOTORIOUS LOVE AFFAIR - rough mix (Tape) self released 1996

side a:
1. Autist
2. Blutlicht/ Erntedank
3. Panic
4. Wundenlecken
5. I am the song my enemy sings
6. T.G.A.
[OGG Vorbis, maximum quality, password: antithesis, mirror 1, mirror 2]

Links
The Notorious Love Affair @ Indiepedia.de


1 how's the shithole?

4 000 000 TELEPHONES - French Girls (12") Summerhouse #Sums 02 recorded 1986 released 1987

Finally I could get my hands on a copy of this record. It was released after their brilliant debut LP. It's a pity that they never got the attention they deserved.
The title track is way more catchy and pop than the songs on their first release, but still unique. But the other tracks are a fine frowardness in a time when it simply wasn't cool anymore to play that sound. Especially the saxophone is very driving here giving it all a bit The Pop Group or James White & The Blacks feeling. While when it gets more way out in those three tracks The Contortions and La Société Des Timides à l' a Parade Des Oiseau come to my mind. 4 000 000 Telephones even learned some Sun Ra and Art Ensemble Of Chicago lessons here - can't go wrong here.

Is that a xylphone in "Mrs. Brown (The Clown)"? Totally corrosive!

Now: Funk you!

4 000 000 TELEPHONES - French Girls E.P. (12") Summerhouse #Sums 02 recorded 1986 released 1987

side a:
1. French Girls
2. The Same Thing

side b:
1. Mrs. Brown (The Clown)
2. Icebox
[OGG Vorbis, maximum quality, password: antithesis, mirror 1, mirror 2]

ANASARCA - self titled (7") Yuletide Records #04 1995

Again: please do not confuse them with the Death Metal band of the same name!

I was just uploading their split 7" again and I thought it might be nice to post their 7" too. Maybe their two best songs with a lot of mid phase Shotmaker and Thumbnail in here, although I think that those bands weren't an influence to Anasarca. On the other hand the flip side was a huge influence to Blue Water Boy - a band that was better than Anasarca in my opinion just suffering from the European underdog status.

Released on the small label that brought us Frail or Four Hundred Years and produced by no one else than Ken Olden from Battery/ Worlds Collide/ Damnation a.d./ Farcry and and and.

ANASARCA - self titled (7") Yuletide Records #04 1995

side a:
1. East Bunk Hill

side b:
1. Eugene Debs
[OGG Vorbis, maximum quality, password: antithesis, mirror 1, mirror 2]

Links:
Livetrack at The Sound Of Indie
Video at The Sound Of Indie
Liveset at The Sound Of Indie

BLACK VELVET FLAG - come recline with... (LP) Go Kart Records #GKLP008

I have sent Erich a digital version once and he answered with "the perfect nails into the coffin".
Yes, here it is: the nails into hardcore punk's coffin. A big "fuck you" towards exaggerated nostalgia and historiography. It's like the end scene of "American Hardcore" with Keith Morris' statement.

Black Velvet Flag were three guys covering the Westcoast classics they grew up with with their definition of lounge music. Lounge music, a music that is used for non annoying1 background sounding in bars, hotels or malls, is in every way the total opposite to those originals. And it just fits! It sounds like late Frank Sinatra, muzak, lounge and elevator jazz and new bossa jazz with horrible 80ies pop themes.
Although the record got some attention in many magazines and the band having articles in well known newspapers (some of them are featured on the Black Velvet Flag movie homepage) only a few seem to know this record. I always have to copy it to friends, when I try to share my joy with them. Go Kart Records even do not list the record or the band any more on their homepage! Why?
There is even a movie in existence documenting their tour experience but I have never seen it. It was finished in 2003 and it never was up for sale as DVD. The homepage works but there is no contact address etc.. If anyone can help me out here: please drop me a line.

Back to the record - one of the best Go Kart Records ever did: the cover is a wonderful rip off of the The Decline of Western Civilization compilation LP cover with Jeff, Black Velvet Flag's singer, doing a perfect imitation of Darby Crash. I am not sure if the interviews in between are just fake or if they are from the filmed material, I did not rip them separatly unlike the CD version.
When I first got it I tried to find out who did "I shot JFK" for weeks until I was told that this is their own song. I didn't get it since the lyrics easily could have been by Angry Samoans, White Flag, Vandals, Fear or even the Minutemen. My favourite tracks are the Suicidal cover and an overwhelming, mind blowing "I Don't Care About You" by Fear. A fucking highlight, it just blows: Everything brutal and cynical in the original it comes back here, intensified and like a suckerpunch. The lyrics in combination with the music of Black Velvet Flag and Jeff's sublimial staginess, sorry, but it doesn't get any better. The whole album was recorded live at CBGB's.

There is a crack at the end of "Institutionalized" and I tried to remove it but it didn't work. I washed the record but it still isn't gone - no scratch on the record at least not visible to me. Sorry.

They never recorded their second album, and this is their only output known to me - besides their own song being on the "Go Kart vs. the Corporate Giant" CD compilation. The vinyl version does not pop up very often but you all should get the CD version easily at Amazon etc..

Enjoy this big middle finger now!

BLACK VELVET FLAG - come recline with... (LP) Go Kart Records #GKLP008

side a:
1. Wasted (Black Flag)
2. Amoeba (Adolescents)
3. Group Sex (Circle Jerks)
4. I Shot JFK
5. Institutionalized (Suicidal Tendencies)

side b:
1. No Values (Black Flag)
2. Media Blitz (Germs)
3. I Don't Care About You (Fear)
4. Code Blue (TSOL)
5. Stepping Stone (The Monkees)
[OGG Vorbis, maximum quality, password: antithesis, mirror 1, mirror 2]

Links:
Black Velvet Flag - The Movie
Go Kart Records


1 I found it very annoying - ever been in a mall where they played Chet Baker or Nuyorican Soul? Don't think so.

JUD JUD - no tolerance for instruments (7") Victory Records Fan Club Swingin' Singles #02 1998

That was a surprise to me: a hoax interview in the first Victory Megazine following a 7” for the Victory Records Fan Club single series (someone remembers the ugly shirt that came for every member?!). This might be one of the best records Victory has ever done – just kidding. The plastic sleeve is screen printed or sprayed and the record was recorded “on the straightest days of 1998 at the straightest place by the straightest person, Thanxxx to straightness.” And please always keep that in mind: “Jud Jud can only be contact by those who are at least as straight as themselves. From this it follows that Jud Jud can only b[e] contacted by Jud Jud. Sorry, any outside communication would certainly jeopardize our status as the world’s straightest band and we cannot allow this, we are too straight.”

JUD JUD - no tolerance for instruments (7") Victory Records Fan Club Swingin' Singles #02 1998

side a:

1. we're back
2. wah wah song
3. harmonics song
4. speed picking song
5. tune down song

side b:

1. bass in beginning song
2. double bass song
3. grindcore song
4. hammeron song
[OGG Vorbis, maximum quality, password: antithesis, mirror 1, mirror 2]

JUD JUD - x the demos x (7") No Idea Records #57 1997

First of all: thanks to my sister Simone who gave me her USB record player until I buy myself a phono preamp again.

Here they come: the only two straight edge records which ever mattered. Jud Jud are nothing then Steve Heritage from Assück, Bombs Of Death and Anthem Eighty Eight and B. Rouse from End Of The Century Party and Scholastic Deth (Bookstore Core!!!!) doing human beatbox straight edge anthems. Total deconstruction of every cliché, riff, chorus etc. you expect from a drug free hymn. Beside those two singles they had several tracks on compilations (403 comp., Blindspot mailorder compilation, Back to Donut etc.) which are on the singles too. Everything’s a winner here. The Side By Side mocking cover, the flyers and yes, the lyrics. If there will be a “incredible strange music” compilation for the 90ies Jud Jud will be on it.

JUD JUD – x the demos x (7”) No Idea Records #57 August 1997

side a:

1. high hat song
2. gallop song
3. slither song
4. divebomb song

side b:

1. fast song
2. rounds of jud song
3. tuning song
4. backmasking song
5. turn around song
[OGG Vorbis, maximum quality, password: antithesis, mirror 1, mirror 2]

Links:
Jud Jud @ myspace
Jud Jud @ No Idea Records

DISFEAR - self titled (7") Finn Records & Rødel Records #17 1998

Sorry, for this nonsense posting. This is the rerelease by Rødel Records - supposed to be a bootleg, but I don't think so. Maybe just some misunderstandings, lack of communication and crustpunk paranoia. The repress must have been done in the same pressing plant: the etchings are the same like from the No Records release just adding the Rødel catalogue number. I just know that Finn took over No Records after only a few releases. The main reason for posting this is that my copy of the rerelease is just better sounding - no surface noise etc.

Rødel Records is one of the most likeable labels in this whole grind, crust and hardcore universe: still no homepage, no myspace page and I can remember him writing down his e-mail address on paper flyers by hand. You won't sell that many records in this way like others do, but you also won't have to deal with a lot of shit that comes with the www.

DISFEAR - self titled (7") Finn Records & Rødel Records #17 1998

side a:
1. religion
2. min elegi
3. undergang

side b:
1. vietnam idag
2. det sista kriget (Svart Parad)
[OGG Vorbis, maximum quality, password: antithesis, mirror 1, mirror 2]

DISFEAR - self titled (7") No Records #02 1992

Since the band is nearly existing for 20 years - if you include the Anti-Bofors - now I will celebrate this with their first 7"; okay I am lying, I was just going through my 7" records starting with "dis" for the Dismay 7". Since there are a lot records starting with "dis" in my collection, I didn't know what to pick first but I choose Disfear's debut released in 1992 by No Records, a short lived label which was "taken over" by Finn Records then.

Disfear became quite huge now due to being on Relapse - I even wonder if their wider audience knows "soul scars" and "everyday slaughter" - and having a more popular sound now (thinking of Mötorhead, Turbonegro and Entombed etc.), which still rips anyway.

This single can't be compared to the new Disfear sound: d-beat with this typical Swedish sound that made me buy hundreds of records blindly at that time (do not just blame it on Anti-Cimex and Mob 47). The worst part - maybe the blog indicated earlier that I had (have?) a huge love for d-beat/dis-core and crust - I listened to those records daily and now the vinyl of all those records is totally shabby. The Disfear 7" is no exception here - but no match to my fucked up Discharge singles - and I tried to polish the sound with Steinberg's Wavelab, but it just made it worth, so I kept the 1:1 recording I did. The last song is a cover tribute to Svart Parad - maybe known to some of you tape traders (a species becoming extinct).

DISFEAR - self titled (7") No Records #02 1992

side a:
1. religion
2. min elegi
3. undergang

side b:
1. vietnam idag
2. det sista kriget (Svart Parad)
[OGG Vorbis, maximum quality, password: antithesis, mirror 1, mirror 2]

Links:
Disfear
Disfear@Myspace