Robyn Writes

Dear hardcore – we can do better.

Dear hardcore,

There’s a few things we need to talk about. A couple of months ago, when Kate and I went to the Emmure show, the age difference between us and the average hardcore fan hit us harder than ever before. I had to keep double checking that I was admiring dudes with facial hair as that seemed to be a surefire guarantee that they were above the age of 18. There was something that struck us far more though. As Chelsea Grin hit the stage, I glanced over at the moshpit. Around the edge stood three girls who were wearing lace bandeaus and nothing else on top. Now, if those girls were just feeling super confident about themselves and thinking ‘fuck yeah, I’m rocking this joint’, then I’ve got no beef with that. Their body language suggested something rather different. I watched them for a few minutes, maybe. They spent most of that time consciously pulling up the little bits of lace, staring nervously around the room. When they weren’t doing that, they were tentatively moving closer into the pit before moving back out again, unable to keep up with the furious slam dancing. Later in that evening, we went to the merch stand. On the way back up to the front, Kate had a slight wardrobe malfunction. Nothing major, just a little bit of bra showing, but the amount of disparaging glares from male members of the audience was shocking. The truth is, there’s not a lot of respect among young hardcore fans today. Misogyny and general disrespect runs rampant through a genre that was once a community of anger. Sure, you hated everyone else in the world, but all of the people in that room were your family for a few hours. That’s not the case any more, not by a long shot.

Lyrically speaking, there’s a few instances in today’s hardcore/deathcore/metalcore/insert-your-favourite-core that make my stomach turn. It’s funny when we’re driving along in my car and Kate yells “I want to watch you suck his dick!” in my face, but when Palmeri is snarling it out to a crowd, it takes on something a bit more sinister. The first Chelsea Grin EP is laden with violent fantasies about revenge on an unnamed woman. One song about a cheating ex-girlfriend makes sense, but the entire record is jam packed with references to diseased vaginas and choking on dick. Admittedly, it’s a trend that drops off very quickly in their career – the band start to delve into Biblical metaphors and general feelings of discontent in their later record. That first EP is a product of the follies of youth; rough and raw around the edges. Is that the only kind of anger the youth can possess though? There’s been plenty of young bands that I’ve seen around the scene at tiny shows, screaming out against bitches and sluts. Skinny, pale boys barely past school age looking wildly around a room, desperately trying to find camaraderie in the other guys in the audience, cry out that this song is dedicated to anyone that’s ever been slept around on before launching into their diatribe. These are kids that are stuck in suburbia, faced with a profound boredom that only comes from sleepy little towns where everybody knows everybody. If they’re angry about anything else, they don’t yet know how to express it past those initial feelings of being wronged, and it breeds a certain contempt. Some of this is general fuck-the-world kind of stuff. The rest is a disturbing hatred for the women who have wronged them in some way or another. And if it’s not violent, it projects the message that women are nothing more than sex objects. Although Fight Paris’ Paradise Found is a scuzzy blend of southern rock and hardcore that sounds incredible played loud, the opening line goes “Damn right that slut’s my bitch, she fucking sucked my goddamn dick”. And it pretty much goes on from there.

Yet, this is the kind of music that I love, and hardcore has been a ‘boys club’ for a long, long time. There are more female vocalists than ever before, and there’s a good number of ladies that play other instruments, but it’s still an overwhelming minority. Magazines still do polls on the ‘sexiest women in rock’. Merchandise is overwhelmingly sexist. Drop Dead Clothing’s collection is far less visceral than it used to be, but they used to have sweaters featuring dismembered girls and the phrase ‘sluts get cuts’ plastered on the back. Alternative club nights end up with guys being hailed as heroes because they get a blowjob on stage. But we get used to it. We nod and smile and go along with it all, because it’s just music, right? It’s ironic to wear the shirts plastered with ‘ask your girl what my dick tastes like’. This in itself creates a community of acceptance with no tempered awareness that actually, maybe, this isn’t that cool. I believe that we should celebrate the differences in gender, but we shouldn’t put one or the other down, or perceive that the other is weaker or lesser. We shouldn’t use women as vehicles for anger and aggression. We shouldn’t project our anxieties and our fears onto them, not when there so much else out there to be angry about. The worst part? Women are then conditioned to put each other down in these scenes. Not every girl that enters the moshpit has an agenda, but there’ll always be one who feels that she has to prove herself, to show that she’s better than all of the other women. There’s the scene queens who stand at the bar and scoff at the girls in oversize shirts and Vans. I do my best to be polite and pleasant because I just can’t stand the frostiness and the bitchiness that shouldn’t even exist in the first place. Instead of dragging each other down, we should be building each other up.

Not every band needs to be political. You need only look at Black Flag, Minor Threat or Gorilla Biscuits to know the cry of disaffected youth. Not all disappointment and upset comes from within your core. It’s okay to be angry, but we need to be responsible with it. We need to take that anger and make something better with it. And maybe use the dismembered girl metaphors a bit more sparingly.

xoxo – Robyn

Shout out: Fights and Fires Make New Album ‘Pay What You Want’

Yo! Little thing here for you – if you’re into noisy Worcester lot Fights and Fires, all of their back catalogue, including latest album We Could All Be Dead Tomorrow, has been made ‘pay what you want’ on their Bandcamp. In essence, you could pick up all their stuff for free. Or you can donate as much as you feel like, and we would certainly encourage you to.

Check it out!

J-Pop Sunday – The Telephones

Right, hello! It’s summer. That means it’s unbearably hot. Which means my motivation to do anything plummets to zero. Summer also means festivals. You know, live music? And these four guys from Saitama city have a sound and energy that would shine when played out in a field on a sunny day. Well, I think so anyway.

Wizards!

Quick Guide:
Act Name: The Telephones
Line-up:
Akira Ishige (石毛輝) – Vocals, guitar & keyboard
Ryohei Nagashima (長島涼平) – Bass & chorus. (He’s kind of cute…)
Nobuaki Okamoto (岡本伸明 ) – Keyboard & chorus
Seiji Matsumoto (松本誠治) – Drums
Years Active: 2005 – Present
Genre: Um…Slightly electronic, shouty Engrish new-wave indie rock? I don’t even know any more. We’re pretty far down the rabbit hole by this point.
Kaito’s Choice Tracks: “Love&DISCO” (2008) “Yeah Yeah Yeah” (2011), “Keep your DISCO!!!” (2013)
Favourite Word: “Disco”

The Telephones formed in 2005 and for their first few years performed at venues local to their hometown of Saitama and nearby Tokyo. Their sound took off and in 2007 they released their first mini album. By 2009 the band were known across the land having performed at major Japanese music festivals including “Rock in Japan” and “Summer Sonic” as well as television appearances.

Right, let’s dive into the music. One thing that I find quite novel about The Telephones is that – although it might not seem like it – a lot of their songs are English. (Wait… Does that mean I can’t class them as J-Pop?!) Although just because they’re in English it doesn’t mean that they make any sense. Take note of the opening line for “Yeah Yeah Yeah”.


Oh Japan! Stay Japan-y.

Yes, the opening lyric to “Yeah Yeah Yeah” was indeed “I want to be your shoe box.” It could be some kind of mad metaphor. Or a parody, the video for “Keep Your DISCO!!!” demonstrates the band’s fondness for parody. The video is nothing more than spoofs of Japanese television programmes and advert tropes. The song itself falls into the Japanese rock safe zone of “Head-nodding riffs and easy to learn and shout chorus.”


The [Well Known Chain of Japanese Electronics Shops]* parody is my favourite.

“Love&DISCO” is a much mellower track. Again with a silly video. And I like it. I’m sorry, that’s all I can think to say: The Telephones are very much a band that speak for themselves in their music and in their videos anything I could say would be somewhat redundant. So I ask you just to listen and enjoy.


The video for “Love&DISCO”

More from The Telephones:
Official website: http://thetelephones.net
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thetelephonesjp
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thetelephonesjp
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/thetelephonesjapan

*I’ve given Yodabashi Camera more than enough free publicity over time. They’re not getting any today!

Review: Senile Crocodile – s/t [EP]

From England’s post-industrial chip shop heaven of Hull emerges a strange, multi-coloured beast sporting three equally frazzled heads to whom the concept of ‘bizarre’ is an end in itself. Through every abstract hook and outlandish riff, Senile Crocodile make it impeccably clear that weird is what they strive for. Citing influences as disparate and oddball as Captain Beefheart, White Denim and, um … Gong (who are up there with the likes of Yes etc. as one of the least cool bands ever) there seems little possibility that their debut E.P would turn out to be anything other than an eyebrow-raising curiosity.

Foremost, the record exists as a refreshing blast of unrestrained musical dexterity, unperturbed by any sense of self-consciousness and wrought with an abundance of humour. It exists as the antithesis to the warbling drivel and XX derivatives that spew unceasingly from Radio One – all striving for some degree of poignancy through a trite reverb inflicted minimalism that exudes all the carefree joviality of an accountancy conference in Kettering.

At the core of Senile Crocodile’s adventurous musicality lies a paradox, a conflict of interest that exists between the two sonic palettes the trio have flung together with wild abandon and a juvenile mischief. The foundations upon which the band build their wonky, unorthodox dirges are pure garage rock – the genre that celebrates rawness and simplicity, with pretension and overt-embellishment as subject of scorn. Meanwhile, Senile Crocodile’s ingrained oppositional stance melds the rough-hewn primal howl of garage rock with prog’s excess and penchant for fantasy. The jumbled array of reference points are further twisted resiliently into a pop context that ignores traditional song-structure in favour of a songwriting approach that seems to view any repeating motifs or outright choruses as a kind of weakness.

Somewhat predictably, everything sounds incredibly disjointed, with varying sections seemingly placed next to each other on a whim, riffs pasted together, lurching between ideas. ‘Five Year Plan’ mutates from up-tempo garage pop into a psychedelic haze, the apparent quirkiness of the intro dissolving into bleary-eyed noise-gasm via a detour into off-beat indie-dance drums. ‘Voyager’ and ‘Modem’ each seem to consist of two short songs that have been unwillingly joined together- the first section a squirming pop-infliction, the second an instrumental piece that descends into expansive psychedelia. The pattern recurs on ‘Terms and Conditions’, the first section amounting to a perfect little pop tune before being subjected to Senile Crocodile’s favoured method of splicing together disparate riffs, to questionable effect.

The trio seem to suffer from a serious case of ADHD, always fiddling away and unable to focus on a particular mood or motif for longer than twenty seconds before shooting in the opposite direction in recurring bursts of energy and incomplete ideas. Senile Crocodile are certainly an acquired taste, the group’s insistence to cram as many riffs into the songs sees most of the tracks beset by exhaustive fret-based tomfoolery that yearns for an ounce of self-control to be instilled. Yet Senile Crocodile manage to remain more than simply a sum of their influences – idiosyncrasies are certainly realised, but their overall impact, coupled with their disorientating song-layout is hard to latch on to. Ultimately, a curiosity that fails to hit a nerve.

2 out of 5 high fives!

Where did all the good comps go? – A lament for the CD compilation

The internet is brilliant, isn’t it? Almost everything is there at the touch of a button. Stores reside within programs, ready to cater to your every need. In this age, we are the media, and Twitter and Tumblr and Facebook tell you what to listen to. There’s sites like us, trying to do our best to showcase what we love! But sometimes, I don’t half miss a good Punk-o-Rama CD.

I grew up on Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. We picked up the first game when I was ten and I dove into it with glee. And while it was extremely fun trying to get a mega high score in two minutes, the best part of the game was the soundtrack. Tunes from Goldfinger, The Suicide Machines, Rage Against The Machine and Powerman 5000 were unlike anything I’d ever heard before. Before then, I’d been a Steps fan, occasionally subjected to my dad playing The Offspring in the car. Combined with a certain AFI video hitting the airwaves in 2001, Tony Hawk’s provided the necessary impetus to throw me into the punk subculture. I haven’t ever looked back. Thanks to that carefully curated soundtrack, and further ones, kids like me found our way into a world unlike any other.

You might have forgotten that record stores exist. With the slow death of HMV (it’s clinging on but you know it won’t last) and more and more indies disappearing, some of you won’t truly know the thrill of going in and picking something up that you’ve never ever heard of before. Why would you go and buy it when you can download it (illegally) for free on the internet, or listen to it on Spotify? Throughout high school, I would save up my allowance and go into my local indie every month, choosing one record that I’d never heard of before. But being cheeky, that would inevitably turn into a compilation to maximise my chances of finding something good. I picked up plenty of label samplers, including Epitaph’s now legendary Punk-o-Rama comps. Label samplers still exist – but they’re online, and disappear as rapidly as they appear. Some labels are doing really sweet stuff to make sure you know their bands – Paper + Plastick, for one, offer a free digital subscription service in which they provide a few tracks from a release each week, and occasionally, a full release! But there was something about picking up those compilations, poring over the inserts to see which album each track originally appeared on and copying it for all your friends. Making a Spotify playlist just doesn’t quite cut it.

So now, we find out about bands in different ways. This can mean that our music tastes are far more eclectic – we’re exposed to so many different types of music online these days. This zine, which was strictly punk to begin with, has moved on to cover all kind of music in the alternative spectrum. Nevertheless, there was something magical at seeing what all those bands had in common. In Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, it was generally a disrespect for authority and a quick tempo that led to their inclusion. For Punk-o-Rama, especially in the latter comps, it was figuring out why From First To Last could be on the same record as Refused. In the few Drive-Thru comps I have knocking about, it was how each band could write songs about effectively the same things but in completely different ways. And I could always find something to relate to.

I suppose we curate our own soundtracks now. I’m really into NBC’s Hannibal at the moment, and I follow a few fan blogs on Tumblr. Every day, there’s at least one fan mix, based around a character’s emotional state, or the mood of a certain episode. I kept the mix CD tradition alive at university – as president of the punk society (yes, it was a real thing), I invited people to bring their own CDs and swap them with each other. But there’s no big communal influence any more, far less of a shared experience, or at least, so I’ve found. This isn’t something that I bemoan, but have learned to accept. Magazines like Rock Sound still put comps out every month and I still listen to them in my car, but now, word of mouth is more important than ever. So keep telling your friends about your favourite bands. We’ll keep telling you about our favourite newbies. And pray to the gaming deities that they release a new Tony Hawk game.