Fear Itself - Till Death Do Us Part (1987)

 

Fear Itself - Till Death Do Us Part 

Fear Itself are, yes, you guessed it...yet another horror themed punk band from the 80s. This time from the unlikely territory of South Carolina, USA. They put out a great demo in in 1986, featured on multiple comp tapes, and released this gem in 1987. Much like the other horror themed bands, Fear Itself were a bit too late to the punk rock picnic. However, their powerful, and sometimes frantic speeds akin to Septic Death, give them an edge over the crossover guck of the time. 

It's obvious that they were all pretty accomplished at their instruments. They swiftly change tempos with frantic grace, staying in time, and spicing up their guitar and drum parts. The guitars and drums are the definite highlights of this record. The drums absolutely blast like a mutha, while the guitars mix up between fastcore, heavy riffs, and slight metal damage! Respect has to be given to the vocal performance here as well. There's a nice snotty bite to the vocals, and some rad sneering, creepy lines to top it off!

This is some dead powerful stuff, and if that album art doesn't convince you to check this out, i don't know what will!

Pray For Death (link from the awesome Brave New World blog)

Asocial - How Could Hardcore Get Any Worse? (1984)

Asocial - How Could Hardcore Get Any Worse? (1984)

Released in 1984 as a split with Bedrovlers, but actually recorded in 1982. This is a fucking ripping set of songs. While the 1980 demo alluded towards both fast and heavy songs, this record focused solely on fast songs. There are actually many moments that sound like power-violence. Take Nar Kriget Ar Har. It has one of those breaks, where the whole band apart from the bass, stops. And then the bassist plays some sloppy line-ensuing the band to crash in with total blast-madness.

Probably because some punk fan edited a Wikipedia entry on blast-beats. Asocial have become a bit infamous with their ridiculously speedy songs. As such, some cite them as playing the blast-beat before anyone else. Yeah, yeah. I hear you naysayers farting on about jazz drummers. But i think the worlds are a bit too different. The drummers in the early extreme bands are usually just Discharge worship. So the blast-beats you hear in Asocial, Napalm Death, ENT, are just sped up punk beats. Chances are, the drummers in these bands were not jazz fans. They were probably just pushing the speed for the sake of it.

Anyway, this is a great record. A bit lo-fi, but a really cool document in punk and extreme music.

Linky, Link:
https://mega.co.nz/#!VEYU2ZTR!bdj1CAlus81zQcTwg1jTc5YbF6Fj198xvMfv0SAQH_A

SIEGE - Drop Dead

SEIGE were a hardcore punk band from Boston who played astonishingly fast for their time. This EP was recorded in 1984, basically on the tail end of hardcore's initial lifespan. I've heard people mumble about Grindcore when SIEGE are mentioned, possibly down to the huge influence they had on Napalm Death and Repulsion. From how i see it, this is particularly fast hardcore, no metal riffs here, possibly apart from Grim Reaper but then again i'd consider that Flipper worship as opposed to heavy metal.

The vocals are borderline screamy, which is always really cool to hear from this era of punk. If your a fan of thrash (as in fast hardcore) or power-violence you will probably eat this right up! If you like your hardcore melodic and catchy, this may not be your sort of thing, but, then again, there's no harm in trying. Now go fucking listen to it, dick.

Drop Dead is an insanely fast track with screamy vocals right from the get go.
You can definitely see the influence these guys had on power-violence and grindcore.

Conform has a Black Flag vibe to it, you know, very heavy and kinda 'wastey'.
If this song was a person, it would stagger into your nearest pub, puke on your girlfriend, beat you up and after that, publicly masturbate in front of a children s school...during recess, and not give a single fuck at all.
This track flip flops from the heavy Flag-like main riff to blasty hardcore. Fucking rad, maaaaaaan.

Life of Hate is one of the shortest tracks here and is typical hardcore. Not much else to say really.... urhm....how's your day been, bro?

Starvation is yet again a short hardcore track with a sloppy solo and a nice bass lead section.

Armageddon is the shortest track here and it's absolutely punishing! Aside from constant blasting we get a small break in which we get one of those bass interludes that are so popular with power-violence bands nowadays.

Walls is probably the closest to 'conventional' hardcore. Almost sounding like 'is This My World' era Jerry's Kids at moments.

Sad But True, no not the boring Metallica song from the early 90's, this is hardcore with savage vocals. And who can forget that sloppy-ass guitar solo!

Cold War opens with a d-beat and then opens the floodgates of U.S hardcore in typical SIEGE style. Did I mention it has a d-beat?

Grim Reaper is one mean-ass song, very Flipper-like with it's repetitive, slow bass line and noise guitar playing. On top of that, there is a saxophone playing free-form solos over the top, ala Sex Bomb. Vocally there are obvious delay and reverb effects, which makes the guttural pre-death metal vocals sound insane; like looking inside a tortured persons head. If the Flipper comparison isn't enough, the track length is the best part of 7 minutes...Holy fudge.

Direct Link
http://www78.zippyshare.com/v/73047754/file.html

Cut & Paste Blog
http://cutnpasteyoface.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/siege.html