Speak Loud, Speak Truth

I was away on holiday in France for a few weeks, hence the lack of updates. To make up for it, here's some footage I came across recently on youtube of one of the greatest (and often overlooked) hardcore bands to have come out of Washington DC in the 1980s: Ignition. I strongly recommend everyone who isn't familiar with their music to seek out their 'Complete Services' discography Cd. Also, Dischord records recently did a limited repressing of the band's second Lp, The Orafying Mysticle of... which you can still purchase through the label's webstore. In all fairness, I prefer the first Lp and both 7"-es over this Lp, but their entire output is amazing. Enjoy!

Spectres - Last Days Lp (Whisper in Darkness records)

Not having heard anything from British Columbia's Spectres after their two decent 7" EP's on Whisper in Darkness records from a few years ago, I wasn't sure whether this band was still active. With this new release (their first full-length Lp) I'm glad to find that they are indeed still around.

Those first two 7"-es presented Spectres as a band heavily drawing on post-punk/new wave as their main musical influence (especially the much heard and obvious comparissons to Ian Curtis' vocals). Stylistically and lyric-wise, Spectres is more in peace-punk territory. Together with several other bands from Canada and the Western part of the United States (most notably The Estranged, Surrender, Signal Lost, Complications, and recently also Arctic Flowers) Spectres seem to be part of somewhat of a peace-punk revival going on in recent years (though on a very small scale I might add). Fans of the aformentioned bands should definitely check this out as well.

On this new Lp, the two aforementioned influences are again overtly present. As on their EP's, the obvious comparison here is Joy Division, but also The Mob and Crisis serve as pretty good indications of what Spectres sound like. On their myspace page they also list as their influences (amongst others) The Sound, The Cure and Killing Joke: influences which I also definitely hear in their bleak and melodic brand of punk. In fact, I would say Spectres follow the blueprint of the aforementioned genres pretty much to a tee. Does that make 'Last Days' a bad record? Surprisingly: not at all. Though somewhat formulaic, the songs on 'Last Days' do manage to keep my attention throughout the record, and after quite some listens over the past two weeks, they're starting to comfortably nestle themselves in the back of my mind.

Of the 8 songs on this Lp, stand out tracks to me are the anti-war tune 'Our Time' which features dual screamed and sung vocals that add some extra agression to the song. ("we've seen it twice before / soldiers on the front lines won't come home') Also, the last two songs on the record 'Standing East' and 'Nazca' are personal favourites here.

You can download the entire record from the collective blog run by Taken by Surprise records and Sabotage records, of which the latter will be releasing the Lp in Europe, together with New Dark Age records. For those of you who are interested, you can also find the entire new The Estranged Lp on there, which will be released later this year.

Note: the picture of the cover of the record used here, is a picture of the European pressing of the record. My copy on Whisper in Darkness is largely the same, except for the fact that the bandname and title of the record are both set in a different type than on the European version shown here.

Talks is Poison - Rage to Infinity 7" (DIY)

People, pay attention! After more than 10 years, here it is: a new 7" by what is probably one of my favourite bands of all times: Talk is Poison.

To me, T.I.P. managed to create some of the best hardcore songs of the late 90ies/early 2000s. They did so by setting up camp in that space between crust and hardcore: the space carved out by bands like Crucifix, Citizens Arrest and Econochrist, and they updated the sound slightly without losing any of their punkness. Their two 7"-es and split EP with (the equally great I must say) Deathreat are absolute classics in my book. I can still listen to 'Control' or 'They Call it Law' and just want to smash everything to pieces. All three records were originaly released on Prank records, and a year or two ago they nicely re-released them as a 12" under the title: 'Condensed Humanity: The Prank EP's' 12". This should be easy to find, and even the originals shouldn't be too hard to track down.

The band has been back together for a little while now, and recently played the Chaos in Texas fest, as well as some show in the Bay Area. Included below are some recent videos of the band playing live. The first one is them playing a place called Knockout this past May and the other three are C.I.T. fest videos. I would have loved to see them live, but financially and time-wise there really wasn't any way for me to make it to Austin to see them play. Hopefully someday T.I.P. will make it over to Europe.

Now, the reformed T.I.P. brings us their first recorded output in the form of this 5 song 7" which was recorded in a single day sometime in March 2010. Fittingly, the first lines of the record are: "It still feels the same after all these years." And by listening to these songs, it does indeed feel like the band hasn't been away. A worthy addition to the T.I.P. catalogue in my opinion, and a record I for sure will be playing a whole lot the coming months.

You can order the 7" through the Bad Skulls webstore, run by the band's bassplayer Brian.

On the 'Do not resuscitate' blog I also came across a download version of it for those of you who can't control their curiosity. Needless to say: this little scene of ours exsists by the grace of people supporting their community, so support DIY bands and labels and buy a copy (!) of the record if you like what you hear.