Coffee Break

Punk and grind are hyped up music and it takes a lot to keep the adrenaline flowing to blast a beat and keep a mosh pit turning. It's something of an open secret that many of your favorite bands lean on the chemical crutch to keep them amped album after album and show after show. Despite Nancy Reagan's best efforts, drugs are just a part of the lifestyle. I'm referring, of course, to that black bitch, coffee.

I Take it Black, Like My Men



Is it really any surprise that Hank Rollins would extol the virtues of the caffeinated life, especially when you realize that excessive coffee consumption is linked to aggression and irritability? Nobody was more aggressive or more irritable than Black Flag and they delivered many of their finest tirades with coffee cup in hand. And they take it black. None of that sugar or cream bullshit. Come to think of it, that's pretty much how they delivered their screeds: no sweeteners.

The Young and the Restless



It's never too early to start a lifelong addiction and the smart ass punks Descendants were the '80s' best ambassadors of the caffeinated lifestyle. They advocate kids taking up the cause early and often. The Descendants' motto was "sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll minus the sex and drugs." Fortunately for us, caffeine slipped past their definition of drugs somehow because they have multiple excellent songs singing the joys of coffee. Thanks to modern chemistry, sleep is now optional. Kickass punk rock is mandatory.




Friends Without Benefits



Mocking coffee house culture during the mid-90s peak of Friends' inexplicable popularity is not exactly stretching your satiric muscles, but Operation: Cliff Clavin, who piggybacked on Propagandhi's wave of political skatecore, would like to express their displeasure with the ubiquity of pretentious assholes lounging around their favorite espresso bar with poetry in hand while trying to out-cool each other. Operation: Cliff Clavin were hating on hipsters before it was popular.

Playing Favorites




Sete Star Sept want you to know that this is how we sound when we don't get our vital caffeine. So fill the fucking cup, shut the fuck up, and the back the fuck away slowly.

G&P Review: Sete Star Sept

Sete Star Sept
Vinyl Collection 2010-2012
Fuck Yoga
Sete Star Sept's vinyl retrospective is not an album. It's a fucking endurance contest. Submitting yourself to 99 tracks of pure audio chaos is like sequentially running a marathon, competing in an iron man contest and then shimmying your way up Mt. Midoriyama. In a wilder and more primitive time, young boys would have skipped all that ritual mutilation, dream quest and hunting trophy bullshit and proved their masculine mettle by sitting through all 75 minutes of this record in a go.
What I'm trying to say is that Sete Star Sept's insane noise grind is not music. It's an experience. It's a bludgeoning phase shift that can, through pure sonic whiteout, force your brain into an altered--if not exactly heightened--state of perception. The deliberately obscure Japanese maniacs whip up a tympanum-rupturing racket that sounds like the infamous Discordance Axis/Merzbow live collaboration being sexually menaced by Gore Beyond Necropsy in some sleazy back alley with no hope of escape. The only contemporary band that comes close to this level of musical confrontation is thedowngoing.
Conventional notions of good or bad are completely inapplicable to Sete Star Sept's idiosyncratic noise. There will be plenty of hardened blastbeat heads who just won't be able to hang with the suffocating noise compiled here. I bet this stuff kills in a five to 10 minute bursts, but subjecting yourself to the album in its entirety will leave you beaten, bruised, sweaty and feeling hollow. Some, like me, may grow to enjoy the sensation but this just isn't a record i seeing gaining wider currency among the grind audience. The five minutes of sustained noise they pass off as "Confession Machine" is particularly piercing. All of that said, I guarantee you that you've probably never heard music that was this indifferent to conventional song structure or audience enjoyment. The target demographic for this one is going to be extremely limited, but if you have any pretensions of appreciating extremity in music, this is a band that needs to be front and center on your radar.

[Full disclosure: the label sent me a download.]

Minute Men

If you haven't availed yourself already, Blastbeat Mailmurder Records (aka Panos Agoros of Dephosphorus fame) is up with the first volume of the Monomaniac 7-inch series. The concept is Panos rounded up a handful of kickass bands and gave them one minute each to do what thou wilt. Volume one features forehead crushing contributions from 10 bangers including Cloud Rat, Sete Star Sept, Detroit, Body Hammer, Head Cleaner and three(!!!)  contributions from Australian dervishes thedowngoing in 60 seconds or less.
Panos has done a fabulous job putting this package together and I'm already drooling at the thought of volume two. I played a small role hooking Panos up with a few of the participants, so I won't be giving it a full review (but seriously, it kicks all kinds of ass). However, I just wanted to shove this one under your noses  if you haven't checked it out already. The 7-inch is gorgeously done, but you can also check it out as a pay-what-you-want download at Blastbeat Mailmurder's Bandcamp page. Do yourself a favor and give this one a listen.