V/A, No Banger Left Behind (No Label, 2020)
Remember all that nonsense about "the search for the perfect song”? It used to be the founding myth for the post-rock’n’roll music world. “Brian Wilson lost his mind looking for the perfect song”, they used to say. Punk and DIY helped get rid of the idea of perfection. But the bangers stayed, scattered throughout the messiest, most fucked up, most clueless underground landscape you could imagine.
The fact that that punk rock magic can be conjured by misfits, sociopaths and outright morons is what makes it so special. We listen to a shitty tape recorded in some basement by kids who have no clue, means or interest in how to make an aurally pleasing product and we innately can read between the lines, under the tape hiss, through the bum notes, and find gold.
So this is exactly what it says on the cover: 17 lost tape punk hits. Who knows who did this and where they found these things, but it compiles tracks from forgotten bands from all over the world, maybe bands that never really existed, but still managed to accomplish something that I, for example, still haven’t: they wrote and recorded a stone cold punk banger.
They’re not even in the same style, but it’s just a great punk party mixtape, from crust to classic HC to synth punk to punk rock. Every song sounds like the mysterious stand-out track from that otherwise useless local punk compilations you used to buy at every show when you were just starting to figure out what punk was.
My favorite numbers are, well, almost all of them. But if I only have to mention a few I’ll go with Makhnovcina’s “Uniformi”, Solstice’s “Race With No End”, “Soweto Slaughter” by Organix (from the island of Guernsey of all places!), German band Blockade’s track (title and year unknown)… and the opening track, which is just Midwest punks The Worst being perfectly bratty and stupid during an interview. As it says on the back, this is “solo para maniacs, not for music lovers”—but I’d be surprised if any were reading this right now.
Click here to listen to “Soweto Slaughter” by Organix on YouTube.
Click here to listen to “Uniformi” by Makhnovcina on YouTube.
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