I bought a record once...

I've been listening to this next record all week. Fuck it's good. Let's find out how I got it.

The Unlovables - Heartsickle (Crafty Records, 2007)

A1. Leave Me Alone
A2. Let You Go
A3. Samantha
A4. Let's Not Fight
A5. Disaster
A6. Everything's Overrated
B1. Dance Party For 2 (Your Room, 3 AM)
B2. What You Want/What You Got
B3. No Way
B4. Never Saw It Coming
B5. Have You Ever
B6. Sweet Sweet Boy
B7. Crazy Tonight

This is the second full-length by New Jersey's The Unlovables, a band that basically still exists but haven't put out anything since 2007. Their first album, Crush Boyfriend Heartbreak, is one of the best pop punk records ever. Heartsickle is actually equally good, though maybe overlooked sometimes? I don't know. I fucking love it.
This record is on blue vinyl, which is cool. I got it through the Stardumb Records webstore a few years back, back in 2009. I got it together with a whole bulk of cool records, mostly pop punk classics and soon-to-be classics (Queers, Weasel, Ergs, Leftovers, Apers, Manges, ...). I remember spinning this a lot when I got it. And it's definitely grown on me through time. Solid record.
This records is not so different from Crush Boyfriend Heartbreak either. Thematically, it's about crushes (Dance Party For 2 (Your Room, 3 AM) or Never Saw It Coming), boyfriends (Let's Not Fight or Sweet Sweet Boy) and heartbreaks (Let You Go), but the whole thing is rather on the negative side, at least when Hallie sings about boys. The most positive song is Samantha, about her friend Samantha (I guess). Musically, poppy punk with a couple of chords, a whole lot of melody and the best harmonies you'll hear in a while.

It's cheesy but I like cheesy.

Utreg

Sometimes I take swift decisions.
On Sunday local and international hero Jare asked around on Facebook for company to drive to Utrecht to see some bands play. I agreed to go, as 1) it's a punk rock show and I had nothing better to do (well, maybe study) and 2) I would see the lovely PJ Bond again, and as I won't go to Groezrock, this was my opportunity.

We missed Harsh Realms, a cool punkrockband from Breda/Roosendaal, because de Jare thought Utrecht van Tilburg. No worries, I'm pretty sure we'll see them another time. Great band!

PJ Bond was up next and he played an amazing set with his friend Marko Casso on the electric guitar. 2 radical musicians, fucking love PJ and his songs. Nicest dude as well.

Then, Versus The World. We decided to go eat Indonesian food, een brrodje Ramdung or something like that. Spicy stewed meat in a sandwich, with runner beans. Good food. I saw the last 2 measures of Versus The World's set. Sorry.

Astpai killed it. I was getting a klopke from the afternoon-beer-drinking so I started drinking coffee and that resulted in 5 coffees and the opposite of a klopke. Good shit. Astpai ruled, great band, I'm not convinced by everything they played but most of it was good and they play with so much heart and passion for the genre/scene, and they work so hard it's really admirable.

Smoke Or Fire was great. They do their own thing. I mean, I could probably draw a lot of comparisons but in the end they have a proper Smoke Or Fire sound. Great set, the dude mooning the band and showing his star was probably the funniest thing I've seen all week, holy shit. Dude was pretty weird, I couldn't tell if he was a real fan, a common fan being somewhat ridiculous or just a 15-year old kid fucked up on drugs who got lost and ended up at a punk rock show. Cool, though.
Great band, older stuff seemed to please me better, though.

PISSFLAPS AND DICKFOAM

I just wanna take an opportunity to thank Petit, Rikkerd, Pie and Adriaan AKA Outline for taking me along on their recent UK tour.
I'll probably write a sort of tour report in the next zine, but I just wanna get it out there already.

The trip was fucking amazing. I got to see my favourite current Belgian hardcore band play 5 times in a row, I discovered a shit ton of UK hardcore bands, met some amazingly nice people, had a ton of good laughs, and generally had one of the best times of my life. Fuck I love those guys.
I miss Ari saying dirty/funny stuff in his British accent, I miss Pie's rants on everything that makes him mad, I miss Rikkerd's crazy ideas and his love for Monkey Forrest, and I miss upping the punx to a whole new dimension with Petit.

The only regret I have is that I didn't eat a pulled pork sandwich. Everything else was top notch. Jolly good times.

Anyway, here's some pictures to prove it:

Morning Ed Wood

I just got back from an amazing trip to the UK, but before that happened, the UK came to me.

Ed Wood was on tour in the continent last week and I got to see them a couple of times. Let's recapitulate fast.

Sunday in Roosendaal. Pigteeth was pretty cool, Bite Down fucking kills, Tarantino was cool, Cracks In The Wall was Cool and Ed Wood was rad. Played a Ceremony cover, and Thomas, my buddy, was wearing a Ceremont shirt so he co-sang Kersed. Good times. i think I moshed. Their own songs are really cool as well, solid band, great songs, good show. So, yeah, I reviewed their split with Monolithian before and now that I've seen 'em I like 'em even more.

I began to like 'em so much I went to the show in Antwerp as well. The show was with Cheap Drugs and the Fuck Ups, who both played pretty solid sets. Ed Wood played in between. Same shit, different night. Great, great band.

And so I went on the show in Leuven, because why the fuck not? Rockcafé show with The Redundancy Department, who play music I did not like, and Balances, who were a ton of fun. I moshed, lifted the singer in my shoulders and dropped him (sorry!), lifted the guitarist and didn't drop him, joined the (British-inspired) human pyramid and just enjoyed the show. I was a tad drunk, so that makes things more fun mostly.
The Wood shredded again, played a rad show, de Vjee even filmed a part of it.

Ed Wood was supposed to stay at Vjee's house I think but he had to get up early so he suggested I put them up for the night. So I did. So after a couple beers more we headed to Casa Karel/This Ain't Noise HQ/my dorm room and busted some more cheap beers, good tunes and fun hangs. There a video of that as well, hahaha. Fucking awesome dudes, be sure to check 'em out at http://edwarddwoodjr.bandcamp.com/.
It's a bit tight fitting 6 people into a student's dorm room, but it worked. The only shitty thing is that they were breaking down the house next door and they started making noise at 7 am. Fuck. Hangover punx.

So yeah, good band, good fellas, really hope to see them again. <3>

(mentally add Damo in that picture)

 

I bought three records once...

Last year I started a series of blog posts about records I bought. Because I'm an idiot I only did 4 posts, you can barely call that a series. But today I wanna pick it up again, with three records that have been on my to-do-list since I wrote the first 'I bought a record once' post. Here it is.

This time I wanna talk about three 7"s that I picked up sometime early in my hardcore/punk career.

Nuns Go Riot - Damaged Guts 7" (Seasons Records, 2008)
A1. New Born Rage
A2. Frontline
B1. Numb Fight
B2. The Beating Sound

Black Haven - The Cleansing Storm 7" (Holy Shit! Records, 2007)
A1. The Cleansing Storm
A2. My Haven
A3. Thoras
B1. Hel
B2. Gloom
B3. Growing In Grace

Ritual - Wolves 7" (Blacktop Recors/Drastic Action Records, 2006)
A1. The Dead In Disguise
A2. Stone And Glass
B1. If There's A Hell, We're All Going Down
B2 . Wolves

These records are 3 of the very first 7" records I bought, at one of my first shows. The show was July 31st of 2008, and the line-up was Nuns Go Riot, Teenage Lust, Daggers, Black Haven and Ritual. Pretty cool show, huh? It was the Den Eglantier, that was the first time I fell in love with that venue. I've been there countless times since then.
Anyway, the records. The Nuns Go Riot Damaged Guts 7" was out recently so it was cool I was able to pick that up. I still love it. I only saw them play two times I think, the second time being at the Groezrock small stage. Pretty weird, actually, haha. They played a kind of angry hardcore/punk among the lines of Lifetime or Comeback Kid. Really cool, I actually haven't heard this in a long time (say, a couple of years) but it sounds great! Too bad they disbanded with only a 7" (and a (split?) demo tape?) on their repertoire. Great band, great record, and it reminds me of 5 years ago, when I was a punk kid with no punk friends, checking out a show that was up my lane, going there on my own, being blown away by the music and the attitude and thinking "well, yeah, this is cool.".
Black Haven played the same show, as mentioned. I guess I knew who they were, I guess maybe through Lieven, who was my hardcore mentor back then, and he came from that area of Belgium. The Cleansing Storm was their first 7" EP, and it slays. It's not as distinguishing as their full length. It fits right in with a couple of other West-Flemish bands. Kinda metallic hardcore vibe. Their follow-up 7', Lazarus, and the full length Harmbringer take it all to a whole different level, but this 7" sounds pretty safe. It's really good, yes, but it's a safe bet. The artwork is absolutely stunning, the entire feel of the band is dark and carries a negative atmosphere, and I totally dig that.The bass tone is fucking filthy. Love it.
Then, the last 7" I bought at that particular show, was Ritual's Wolves EP. Ritual was a German band, they recently split up after 2 more full length albums and one EP. That show was my first encounter with them, although I probably had heard of them somehow. I remember they amazed me by only having one guitar player, and still sounding loud as hell. The show was alright, but they really did leave an impression on me. They played hardcore with certain melody, which I thought was awesome. Oh, and of course the band introduced me to the popular German hardcore trend of not having sleeves or rolling up your sleeves or simply wearing shirts that look kinda odd.

For the record, Teenage Lust ruled as well that night and I reckon Daggers did too. Here's a show review I did for my old (personal) blog, it's in Dutch but I guess no one outside of Belgium would care anyway. I'm not sure if anyone inside of Belgium would care to read this. It's pretty bad, almost embarrassing:

31/07/2008: show at Den Eglantier
Nuns Go Riot, supercoole set, seveninchke gekocht. Grave band.
Teenage Lust, ook een enorm coole band, keek ik wel naar uit, maar hadden niks van merch bij. Grave zanger, bassist en drummer ook wel! De gitaristen waren op’t einde van de set nog ‘ruzie’ aan ‘t maken of den ene nu vals speelde of niet en al. Achja. Wil ik zeker nog eens zien, en 'k ben benieuwd naar de 'Fuck'-release. Zanger zat vroeger in In Arm's Reach, ook heel cool!
Daggers: ook cool, maar iets minder.
Black Haven: heel hard, heel ruig en heel cool. Zotte basslijntjes, ik heb daar echt naar zitten staren, naar dien bassist, zo cool. Rrraw, bass. Seveninchke gekocht.
Ritual: verwachtte ik veel van, en de verwachtingen zijn ingelost. Ne keer nen hardcoreband met maar 1 gitaar, maar steevast keihard! En den drummer had een At The Drive-In shirt aan! Zot! Het minste volk in de zaal van alle bands, denk ik. Maar wel het meeste sfeer, hoewel er sowieso over ‘t algemeen niet veel sfeer was, behalve een beetje headnodding en af en toe ene die zot begon te doen. Achja. Cool. Seveninchke gekocht.

skramz?

Fuck I hate the word skramz. I don't understand it, I think it looks ridiculous, it sounds ridiculous and what does it even mean?
Apparently it's a musical genre, and I like a lot of bands that are labeled skramz. But fuck me, I hate the word.

That being said, June Paik apparently is a skramz band. Why not, huh?
I had never heard of them either, but convinced by the good people at Mendville Shows I went to check 'em out, last Friday at Den Eglantier in Berchem.

I had to eat pizza first so I missed Depths (new band who were apprently pretty good, melodic hardcore kinda stuff) and Atlas (who I remember not being into last time I saw them, but that was a year ago so what do I know?).

Ik did manage to see King Terror. They played a good set. Extreme stuff. Angry hardcore, the same riff a few times, doesn't matter. King Terror is more about the message and the intent than musicality or originality. Cool band, sometimes it gets a bit annoying but sometimes it's really interesting how they combine their music/ethics/ideals and all that.

June Paik played a short set. Like, 5 songs, I guess. Okay, their songs are pretty long, but I still expected some more. To be honest, I was kinda bored at the beginning. I didn't get it. It was the opposite of King Terror. Long songs, weird chord patterns, crazy song structures, wacked out drumming, contrast cynamics, all that. As they played some more I got into it some more but they didn't fully convince me, though. Very talented, skilled and passionate, but seemingly didn't transfer that passion all the way to me. A fair amount of peepz seemed into it though, so I guess they were doing stuff right.
Well, anyway, it was worth the trip, I bought a split 7" with Battle Of Wolf 359 and decently enjoyed the show.

Friday nights rule.