video review: 'order in decline' by sum 41

So yeah, this was a nice pleasant surprise here, good stuff.

Anyway, next up is Billboard BREAKDOWN, but what to be next... stay tuned!

album review: 'order in decline' by sum 41

I think a lot of Canadians have a weird relationship to Sum 41.

Hell, given this is the first time I'm talking about the band... I think pretty much ever, mostly because I'd describe myself as a casual fan at best, Sum 41 is one of those breakthrough punk acts in the early 2000s that might have notched a few singles in the U.S. but were damn near ubiquitous in Canada, to the point when I went through an old greatest hits compilation I was stunned how many songs I knew from memory. But that was the rub with Sum 41: for me they've always been more of a singles band who drilled into insanely catchy hooks and infectious energy more than consistent refinement, especially lyrically. And hey, a blunt wallop can be fine for a shot of adrenaline on the radio, or even for a surprisingly raucous crossover metal song, but Sum 41 also had a tendency to overreach into ballads of questionable quality or political subject matter that where the writing occasionally had more heart than focus. So when even Canadian audiences lost track of them... I'll be honest, I didn't even notice they were gone.

But by 2016, with the band now on an indie label and long out of an obligation to court radio play - plus the return of their original lead guitarist to make them a five piece act - the band regained some critical attention on their album 13 Voices that year, which signaled a slow shift to a darker, more melodic hardcore and alternative metal-leaning sound that wasn't precisely great but was more likable than I expected. And when I heard the group was getting even darker, heavier, and more political on their newest album... look, it's always a little weird to see Canadian punks write about American politics, but apparently they weren't going to snub some of the toxicity leaking in up here, so hell yeah I was interested, especially given how the band didn't seem interested at all on coasting on nostalgia. So okay, I'm intrigued and a little stunned that I'm doing this, but what did we get from Sum 41 on Order In Decline?

video review: 'morbid stuff' by PUP

I know, I'm late to this... and will be late to my next review too, so stay tuned! 

album review: 'morbid stuff' by PUP

You know, it's funny, I was talking with a fellow Canadian music writer when I was catching a few punk bands performing in downtown Toronto and mostly making fun of the label guys who are clearly too cool for any of this and aren't nearly as inconspicuous as they think they are, and I was wondering why the hell they were even here. Sure, punk can move units on the festival circuit, but that scene is nowhere close to the market share it was even a decade ago. But then she pointed out something obvious: they had to be there. Even if the majority of those bar bands would turn out to be nothing or would flame out or become the underground lifers for which music is a hobby, every so often you'd get an act like Fucked Up or Japandroids or PUP, and whatever's left of larger rock/punk labels would need to find them somehow.

And it was that conversation that leaped to mind when I went through PUP's back catalog again for this review: because man, I've heard a lot of pop punk bar acts that fit close to what PUP is delivering. Huge abrasive riffs, shouted vocals, far better guitar and drum work that you wouldn't expect from the old pop punk set in the 2000s thanks to a lingering post-hardcore influence, lyrics ripping sheets from the third wave of emo - really, the bands that blow up with this sound are the ones that actually can write sticky songs and hooks, and that's what PUP had. I'll freely admit not quite loving what PUP brought to the table - I've long felt the band had missed some tightness in their first two projects even if the hooks were there, especially on the debut which I think I like more than The Dream Is Over - but given how much critical acclaim has fallen on their third album Morbid Stuff, which many have suggested is their most refined and paradoxically raucous project to date, I really had to make time to check this out, so what did we get from Morbid Stuff?

resonators 2018 - episode #012 - 'feed us a fetus' by dayglo abortions (+interview!)

And here's the final episode of this series for 2018 - let's see what genre I hit for 2019!

resonators 2018 - episode #011 - 'earth a.d./wolfs blood' by misfits (VIDEO)

Nearly forgot to post this - but yeah, bit of a frustrating review to put together for Resonators. Eh, it happens.

Next up, time to catch up on a slow weekend where I wasn't doing much - stay tuned!

resonators 2018 - episode #011 - 'earth a.d./wolfs blood' by misfits

So in my loosely sketched out plans for this show, I was planning on covering this last month. I figured it would fit: the band many people attribute to the breakout of horror punk with a video set for around Halloween, that's almost too easy. But my plans went awry when you all wanted me to cover Husker Du and fair enough, I totally get why, but I still hoped that I'd get a chance to discuss this band in particular, especially as we're dealing with two very unique facets: not only were they band that broke horror punk, but they're also an example of a band that started in more traditional punk rock before shifting into hardcore... which wasn't really common. Normally it was the other way around, with hardcore punk bands expanding or shifting their sound either towards crossover thrash, punk rock, post-punk, or just outright alternative.

But this band was different - in the late 70s in exchange for a trademark with Mercury Records they got enough studio time to hammer out an album that wouldn't see release until the 90s, and like most punk bands around the turn of the decade they saw most of their success off of singles. But they built notoriety in the scene for an increasingly exaggerated and macabre image, along with a reputation for criminal antics and a rotating cast list of members. By 1982 they had managed to push out a proper debut that won some acclaim for solid melodies and a distinctive, schlock-horror theme in their songwriting, but the band was in mid-collapse even then and the frontman Glenn Danzig had confided in his friend and frontman of Black Flag Henry Rollins that he was planning on quitting himself. By 1983, Danzig was even including songs he was intending for a future band on the sophomore project just to push the album through to completion... and it wouldn't be enough. The band would break up two months before this album's release after a disastrous Halloween show and would not reform in any capacity until the late 90s, leaving behind what some have deemed a hardcore punk classic. That's right folk, we're talking about Earth A.D./Wolfs Blood by the Misfits, and this is Resonators!

resonators 2018 - episode #010 - 'zen arcade' by hüsker dü (VIDEO)

Well, this'll undoubtedly be controversial... eh, we'll see.

Next up, this massive project from Julia Holter - stay tuned!

resonators 2018 - episode #010 - 'zen arcade' by hüsker dü

There are folks who are saying that I should have covered this album months ago, that it is undoubtedly a seminal classic in pushing the genre forward and laying the groundwork for what would come. And that I'm only covering it now might be viewed in some camps as being a half-step behind, especially given that I've expressed a lack of familiarity with its subgenre before.

And here's my counterpoint: I see the argument for talking about Hüsker Dü earlier, but I'd argue it was more important for me to see the groundwork of hardcore punk get laid rather than jump straight to the concept album that's widely considered a classic of post-hardcore in helping define the genre, which is the biggest reason why I've put off covering this project for so long. Now some would argue it makes more sense to start with Hüsker Dü's debut album Everything Falls Apart - it was still produced by Spot even though this Minnesota group hadn't signed to SST - but at that point you could make the argument that Hüsker Dü hadn't come into their own just yet. They had never fully considered themselves a hardcore group, but the band was looking to get a lot more ambitious in their song construction and choice of instrumentation - albeit with a recording method that seemed to owe a lot more to hardcore punk, recording nearly every track as a first take within a forty hour window, and in a second forty hour window mixing and mastering it all! I mean, I've got to admire the dogged determination to hammer this out, but I had to wonder how well that would hold up in comparison to their labelmates and quasi-rivals Minutemen who put out the legit classic Double Nickels On The Dime that same year. But enough dancing around this one, let's get to it: we're talking about the critically acclaimed, concept-driven double album from Hüsker Dü, Zen Arcade, and this is Resonators!

video review: 'last building burning' by cloud nothings

So yeah, this album was awesome - hard to tell how much traffic the review will wind up getting as we're dealing with indie rock that still seems a bit under the radar, but we'll see.

Next up, either Billboard BREAKDOWN or another great project that I can knock out quickly, so stay tuned!

album review: 'last building burning' by cloud nothings

Yeah, I won't lie, I was a little worried about this one.

See, I was among the few that actually seemed willing to get on-board with Cloud Nothings making a more accessible, borderline pop punk-friendly record in 2017 in Life Without Sound - no, it wasn't the razor-sharp explosion that characterized Attack On Memory which remains their best work, but I didn't expect that to return. And by hiring a second guitarist to flesh out the melodies, I actually found a lot to like on that project, an album that at least seemed wiling to push the band out of their comfort zone, both sonically and lyrically.

And yet given the rather mixed critical reception that project got, I wasn't surprised when buzz was suggesting the band was going to wrench their sound back into darker territory - and when I say 'dark', I mean hiring Randall Dunn, a producer most well known for Earth, Sunn O))) and Wolves In The Throne Room, the last being a black metal band. And when you hear that the band was intentionally looking to go back to the scuzzy, nastier era produced by Steve Albini... well, I had high hopes, but this might wind up as a very different animal than I was expecting. But hey, what did Cloud Nothings deliver on Last Building Burning?

resonators 2018 - episode #009 - 'rites of spring' by rites of spring (VIDEO)

First video of the night... and man, it's a fantastic one. But now up for the main event...

resonators 2018 - episode #009 - 'rites of spring' by rites of spring

The tricky thing about this series was always going to be where the line was drawn when it came to genre. That's the tough thing when you're on the cutting edge and subgenres are forking off of subgenres, and considering how much music critics and fans love drawing lines, I could very easily run into trouble by covering this act under the umbrella of a series looking specifically at 80s hardcore punk. On the other hand, as I've stated a few times already it makes sense to look at what came out the hardcore scene in its entirety, and since I've gone through a fair number of the albums that set the foundations for the genre, it makes sense to examine what was built upon them.

So the year was 1985, and the setting was Washington D.C. - we've already talked about the D.C. hardcore scene surrounding Bad Brains and Minor Threat, but by the mid-80s the scene was shifting - the original wave of hardcore punks were entering their mid-20s and a whole new wave of teenagers were flooding into the scene, using the excuse of the genre to get more raucous and violent. Now the roots of that change in the scene are complicated - some of it was demographics, but a pronounced theme of that era was machismo. And to be fair, this was endemic across American culture in the mid-80s, a hypermasculine ideal reinforced by the Reagan administration and an economy that had picked up a lot of steam, to say nothing of a reactionary media climate that loved to brand punks as thugs or outlaws. This was an era of swagger, cockiness, and no fucks given, and even though hardcore had a left-leaning slant, it's always been more complicated, which meant not only did a lot of young guys push a very different ideology, they had the bravado to saunter in and use the show as an excuse to get violent. And while some punks who shied away from ideology flourished, a lot of hardcore acts were either evolving out of the genre or quitting altogether.

But in D.C., Ian MacKaye was not going down without a fight, and in 1985, he and various other members of his independent label Dischord Records began forming new acts for what would be branded as Revolution Summer, beginning an active pushback against aggression at shows and the sexism that was leaking into the scene. Many of the acts wouldn't last beyond laying the groundwork for bigger bands to come, but one has survived and has become what so many have branded as the genesis of an entire new genre just adjacent to the infant post-hardcore. That's right, folks, we're going there, we're going the only album released by the band widely considered as the inspiration of emo, the 1985 self-titled record from Rites Of Spring - and this is Resonators!

resonators 2018 - episode #008 - 'hear nothing see nothing say nothing' by discharge (VIDEO)

And yes, I know it's late, but I'm glad it's here - enjoy?

Next up... honestly, not sure what's going to get a full review yet, so stay tuned!

resonators 2018 - episode #008 - 'hear nothing see nothing say nothing' by discharge

So for this episode of Resonators, we're going to switch things up a bit, because while I've discussed at length the burgeoning hardcore punk scene across different parts of the United States, I haven't really delved into what was going on in punk in other parts of the world. And you'd think that since the U.K. was one of the main drivers of punk coming out of the 70s, they'd have a significant hardcore presence, at least in the underground at the time...

And this is where things get complicated, because in the early 80s in the U.K., punk was in a weird place. Sure, post-punk and new wave were laying the foundation for what would become the second British invasion, and anarcho-punk was curdling in its own artsy, far-left corner, but that didn't mean hardcore punk didn't have its own unique foothold, but it came from a different source: Oi! I've mentioned this style before in its adaptation of folk sing-a-long structures and working class populism, but by the late 70s the genre had gotten co-opted by skinheads and right-leaning white nationalist groups, which tainted the genre in the media discourse for decades to come despite the protests of some of the bands. But there was an offshoot of this, adapting a distinctive cymbal-snare-bass drum pattern and more blunt lyricism, that would later lay the groundwork for additional offshoots like crust punk and street punk to come in later years and even cross the Atlantic. This was d-beat, and while bands like The Buzzcocks had sparked initial interest in the sound, the band for which it was named would break onto the scene after a string of well-received EPs in the early 80s with what one could argue is one of the most influential releases of the time. And even if the band wouldn't stay in pure hardcore for long, it's important we talk about it all the same: the debut album from Discharge, Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing, and this is Resonators!

video review: 'joy as an act of resistance' by idles

Man alive, I'm so damn happy this kicked ass - so much replay value, so damn catchy, genuinely potent! 

But next... okay, Billboard BREAKDOWN first, and then Eminem. Stay tuned!

album review: 'joy as an act of resistance' by idles

When I reviewed Idles last year, I was a very different person - specifically, one who hadn't exactly developed an appreciation for hardcore punk. I had brushed against the genre over the years, but I wouldn't qualify myself as having in-depth knowledge or even a liking for the genre... and thus it was all the more startling how well Idles' debut Brutalism clicked for me, a howling, guttural grind that was also fiercely intelligent and the sort of political polemic that could hit like a ton of bricks. Both it and the song from it '1049 Gotho' wound up on my year-end lists, and I'd be lying if I said it didn't kickstart some deeper curiosity that contributed to putting hardcore punk as an option on Resonators.

Of course, now it's eight months later, and with a much deeper knowledge base around hardcore punk, I was anticipating this record all the more but my expectations were even higher. The fast turnaround time was a bit concerning, and it wasn't like Idles didn't have problems on their debut, and while embracing a spirit of riotous optimism in the face of dark times is an attitude I can get behind, I wasn't sure Idles was the act from which I wanted to hear that message - my favourite cuts from Brutalism had been some of the darkest and angriest, so this was looking to be quite the tonal shift. But hey, it was either this or Eminem, and I wanted to start on a high note, so what did we get out of Joy As An Act Of Resistance?

resonators 2018 - episode #007 - 'double nickels on the dime' by minutemen (VIDEO)

Have to say, I'm really proud of how this turned out, especially with as much work as I put into it. Definitely take the time to find this record, it's something special!

resonators 2018 - episode #007 - 'double nickels on the dime' by minutemen

So when I started Resonators my general expectation was that I was going in cold - I might recognize a couple singles from punk compilations but beyond that I wasn't really familiar with the records I'd be exploring at length... but there was always going to be one exception, and it's this one.

And to explain why it's an exception, we need to go back to 2015, when I reviewed Return To The Moon by EL VY, a side project from the frontman of the National Matt Berninger that's one of the most criminally underrated and satirical projects of the decade, not to mention one of the best of the year. Throughout that record, Berninger repeatedly made reference to the band we're talking about today, Minutemen, a signee to SST and who started putting out records in the early 80s, alongside Black Flag and with Spot on production. But it rapidly became apparent that for as quick as Minutemen were in cranking out songs, they were significantly more ambitious than most of the hardcore punk acts we've covered here, dabbling with bassy post-punk even earlier and picking up chunks of jazz and experimental rock as they moved forward. Now of course it helped that the band was really good, thanks to D. Boon's jittery guitarwork and wild, guttural vocals, Mike Watt's frenetic basswork, and George Hurley's pretty damn solid drumwork, all of which fed into songs that could be as witty and genuinely funny as they were catchy - this was a group that relied more on raw wit than bellicose presence, making their first two records, both well-deserving of their critical acclaim, really stand out amongst their peers. And yet in 1983, when they heard their labelmates Husker Du were putting out a double album, they went back into the studio to expand their single disk into what some have held up not just as a hardcore classic, but one of the best records of the 1980s - a four disc, eighty minute beast overstuffed with ideas, inside jokes and off-kilter abstraction. And it's this record for which I started exploring back when I covered EL VY... and now I'm back to finish the job. That's right, folks, we're talking about Minutemen's Double Nickels On The Dime, and this is Resonators!

video review: 'year of the snitch' by death grips

Nearly forgot to post this - there's been a lot of stupidity the past few days surrounding vacation plans, and in my next update you'll see that...