barrel scraper

links to good hardcore and punk music.

[shacklefunk-deactivated20220623]

the dogs wouldn’t stop getting in my dads gross chair so he carved this weird sculpture of his own frowning face with a chainsaw and puts it on the chair when he’s not sitting in it. the dogs are scared of it

[barrelscrape2000]

Burning Spirits hardcore... you gotta love it, right? That’s actually a command not a question

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i added this song to a playlist and basically forgot it. then i was listening and i was like, okay, screamy italian hardcore, like raw power right... then there’s a fucking disco breakdown, with some kind of frantic post-punk guitar. then a crazy end riff! which is actually the start of their song ‘commandos’, but on the recording, it just fades out... why? anyway, sick band, i have to go buy a pizza

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Can’t remember the context of hearing about this band, just that I felt I should check this album out. Maybe I already did. Anyway, it’s good - they seem to have vanished though.

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Back in the early tenties, I got pretty sick of punk bands who channeled classic rootsy rock - Springsteencore, Heartland Punk, Late Period Orgcore, whatever you’d like to call it. Restorations, though, are inventive and ambitious, the first rural-sounding post-hardcore band. That’s the best I can describe them. Their first album is still an all-time favourite for me.

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This is a very straightforward punk album really - it’s got shades of post-punk and country, and melodic basslines. What does this mean? Well in this case it means it’s the good shit!!

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Now known as Swain, and not as good, This Routine is Hell put out a really, really great and underrated album back in 2013. I saw them live and the singer asked me if I was feeling down during a talk about suffering. I lied and said I was okay, which I regret (I may have said ‘just kidding’ afterwards). I didn’t get it, but now I do. Their music at the time reminds me of screamo, but more straightfoward and hard-hitting.

[barrelscrape2000]

I downloaded this album not too long after it came out and wasn’t that impressed with it. In the past couple of months I’ve gotten into their newer one, and I’m revisiting this now. Once again, I was wrong. Youth Avoiders have a quite unique style - kind of like that poppy garage punk that the Marked Men and such did, but if it were made faster, more frantic and screamy. Long story short - sick band.

[barrelscrape2000]

I came across this band when this release came out, back in my zine-writing days. This EP is among the best hardcore releases... fuck, probably ever, definitely of the last decade. Sick riffs, sick vocals, sick mosh parts, sick lyrics... just so sick.

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I remember listening to this at uni while trying to study. Surprisingly helpful. Sick EP too, so bare-bones and stripped back.

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I talked about Rats Blood (NOT Rat’s Blood or Rats’ Blood!!) on this blog recently. This whole EP by them is excellent, and its title track is a modern punk anthem. But this cut is incredible, it sounds so desperate...

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Dunno if they were really crusties, because they showered, but anyway some crusty mates I had got me into this band. I get the impression they like the really raw early stuff, as crusties are prone to - but I like their slightly more metallic stuff more.

[barrelscrape2000]

Eric, the singer of both this band and the better known d-beaters Rats Blood, is fucking great - he’s got a very distinctive, guttural, raspy bark, with Irish pronunciation coming through. Is that weird to comment on? I’m a bit ignorant of Irish heavy music, but I like it a lot... anyway, Putrefaction are more metallic and atmospheric than their brother band, but share their gloomy outlook.

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Just got into this - a one-man act mixing garagey punk, melodic new wave, goopy synths, and freaky vocals. Extremely good stuff.

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Dawn of Humans helped kick-start that whole freak-punk (or whatever you want to call it) trend, but they sound more bizarre than any of their contemporaries and followers. I honestly find them unsettling to listen to alone. I can’t find a stream of their 2010 EP, which is one of my all-time favourites. They were weird then, and as this 2012 release shows, they got much weirder after that. And live? I’ve never seen anything quite like it... where else could you get to see a singer who’s naked except for pieces of broken mirror tied to him lurch into a crowd to hand out scrawled notes from what appeared to be a nappy?

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Someone’s already said so, no doubt, but Kaleidoscope sound like what would happen if you took crust-punk apart and rebuilt it in a new way. Very off-kilter, unpredictable hardcore from NYC, with lyrical fixations on technology and geopolitics. The hyperactive drumming makes me think sometimes of jazz legend Max Roach, and sometimes of Sepultura’s Igor Cavalera... but maybe that’s just me.

[barrelscrape2000]

I was sort-of friends with a couple of Jackals members, so I’m biased, but they really were extremely good. Their mini-album No Solution is a great slab of grindviolence, but their final release, which they sadly never took on the road, is pulverising, noisy d-beat hardcore, which sounds - and it’s hard to say exactly how - weirdly textured and complex for that particular style. Great lyrics too. Check it out.