I know these guys have been around a while, but the only time I can recall hearing any of their previous stuff was a track off one of the Warped Tour “Floyd” comps (and to be completely honest, I can’t remember the song at all). According to the sticker on the front of the jewel case, the band features Joey and Derrick of Lagwagon and Marko of Sugarcult. Beyond recognizing the band names, this really means very little to me as I’ve never heard a single thing Lagwagon’s done and I only know the one Sugarcult song. So approaching this CD with virgin ears and no preconceptions, what can I say? Well, to sum it up, this sounds like veteran ‘90s era Epi-Fat pop punkers making music that melodically seems to owe a lot to the song “Hotel California” but with all the production flourishes from a later day Flaming Lips album that seem to make a few dozen new things pop up every time you listen to the album. In short: very interesting. It took a few listens to take it all in, but it’s growing on me. The songs are all pretty uniformly strong, but for some reason, the only one that really seems to stick out as a whole is “Stillwater, California.” It’s a pretty touching tribute to departed band member and drummer Derrick Plourde, along with Jason and Bomer. I believe all three were in RKL at one time. At any rate, definitely solid and interesting, if not necessarily an immediate adrenaline rush. And seriously, this must be some of the best production I’ve ever heard on an independent label record.

Bad Astronaut make bad Foo Fighter music. Jeez, with a name like that, you’d expect at least one robot voice.

Late at night, I pop this into to the CD player after a hard day at work and the night before my surgery. I get overwhelmed with a time warp of deja vu. I feel like I am listening to the lost track of Sgt. Peppers or am listening to an obscure Alice Cooper track?  Maybe I’m listening to an experimental Tom Petty track?  Maybe Bowie?  Track two is equally as confusing. I am back to reality after the start of track three. A No Use for a Name meets Husker Du mood. The more I listen, I hear elements of R.E.M.College radio is the best description. I am confused...

Absolutely crazed Japanese hardcore that finds its power not in blast beats but sheer intensity of delivery—understanding the lyrics ain’t essential to figuring out they’ve got a serious bee in their bonnet. Some white-hot listening, here.

Sweet mid-tempo hardcore that gets the blood pumping and the aggro a-buildin’. Best of all, no whiny emo lyrics. Dang good listenin’.

Anthemic, profanity-sprinkled street punk/hardcore that kind of sounds like a cross between the Bump ‘n Uglies and Sick Of It All. And judging by the title and the dumpy barroom photos, I’d say they have a pro-alcohol abuse agenda. What’s not to like? Five songs and a whopping eleven minutes and thirteen seconds of strong, no-bullshit rock'n'roll. Unlike some of the other discs I’ve reviewed this time around, I will not be burying this one in my backyard.

I’m still pretty gay for Rivethead even though they broke up. I think they outdid Screeching Weasel at their own pop punk game. Nate, Rivethead’s bassist, and a guy who’s name I just like to say—Ganglehoff—was an incremental part of what made them great. On this demo, Nate’s bass talents are as evident as the difference between shit and chocolate pudding because I like the songs on here and they’ve got a drum machine. No, not a "We’re techno. Start humping the fridge," drum machine, a "Fuck, dude, we can’t find a drummer, but we have all these songs, so hook up the Casio" variety. And the songs are solid, bouncy, forlorn, and full of promise. Reminiscent of Rivethead, but not in a depressing, creepy, get over it way. Cool shit.

It’s pretty easy to bag on modern punk rock. Lots and lots of people have embraced the superficial aspects of it while ignoring what’s important. Lots and lots of people have taken a visceral, powerful kind of music and glossed it over, clipped its nails, and purtied its hair up real nice. Somewhere along the way, it got turned into a cool police badge. Not to put too fine a point on it, but that really sucks. As much as that sucks, it doesn’t mean that great punk rock doesn’t exist anymore. Just because some bondage-panted future accountant is bitching about his deli tray backstage doesn’t mean that two falling-down drunks from Ohio can’t bash their instruments and howl their guts out. It’s the blues, the cockroach blues, the hell blues, the goddamn blood red blues that can’t be faked. It’s music for music’s sake, not to show off fancy sleeve tattoos. It’s everything that’s great about America condensed like soup into an hour of Bassholes singles and outtakes. Familiarize yourself with it

This is well-produced noise music. It borders on trance and dance at times. It’s one of those CDs that can be listened to in one foul succession without one ever being able to recognize a transition from one song to the next. I was disappointed when I realized Bee Hat Ch’s first song, “Edison Medicine,” was not a Tesla cover song. My father would have been happy to get a copy. –N.L. Dewart

Art-punk with a serious nod to the Birthday Party and bands of their ilk. Not bad at all.

Of all the End Times eschatologies being promulgated out there these days, none seem more befitting our worthless species than the one based on the murderous rampage of an enormous disembodied humanoid skull with wings and its insatiable appetite for human bodies, which it munches on like so much screaming Jiffy Pop popcorn. Seems to me as plausible as any of the pudding-headed apocalypse scenarios that have grown up like stink weeds from Jehovah’s Bible and it’s certainly as colorful. And giving us a blow-by-blow account of it as it all unfolds in it’s blood-slopped beauty, is not some shrill, multi-chinned toad of a televangelist, but a group of mean-spirited, real life Clockwork Orange-type thugs in skull make-up with unabashed tastes in ultra-violence and bench pressing. This compact six song sampler comes across like a pair of brass knuckles right in the choppers and it almost seems to laugh at you as you gag on your own broken teeth. This is Misfits style street punk complete “whoa-oh-oh” backing vocals and plenty of cool fuckin swear words that Danzig’s Scientology etiquette would never allow him to utter. Cool fuckin shit. Now how about if you guys take some time off from randomly beating people up and finish up that full-length we’ve been hearing about for the last few years?

The vinyl on this record is fucking amazing. It's about as thick as like four regular LPs all Krazy Glued together, like a bright blue (with radiating white bowling ball streaky things!) poker chip blown up to like 8x or something. I actually can't put the fucking thing down, i spin it on my finger, twirl it around, just sorta heft it – it's funner to play WITH the record than actually play it, although immediately after the unreasonably brilliant opening track, "C'mon C'mon," i was thinking things like "I HAVE SEEN THE FUTURE OF STONER ROCK AND IT HATH COME IN THE FORM OF A GIGANTIC BLUE POKER CHIP!" and other pimply hyperbole. I mean, during the first song, i was, no shit, beginning to entertain notions of getting the TV/UPC/eyeball-headed brain-stomached tentacle-appendaged alien life form depicted on the cover tattooed on my back, so great was my blown-awayment! I shit you not: One would swear it was the Figgs playing grunge. In point of fact, i was, for a time, so SURE that it actually WAS the Figgs playing grunge, as some sort of prank side-project (just as the Hanson Bros. occasionally masquerade as some other trivial band, just to show they can do it), that i scoured every inch of the packaging for some tell-tale fingerprints to indict Gent and Donnelly with, only to find that if you hold side A so the label name reads left-to-right, "Boss Tuneage" is at the top and the song titles read down-to-up, but if you hold side B so the label name reads left-to-right, "Boss Tuneage" is at the bottom and the song titles read up-to-down (if you can figure out how that's my smoking gun, i'm all ears, Watson). In any event, by song two, my enthusiasm (and surety of Figgs-involvement) was beginning to dampen slightly, and i thought that perhaps i'd merely have a contest whereby OTHER people would get the alien tattooed on their back, and send me Polaroids™, and win a prize or something, and by track three or four i had lost interest entirely, never to return. I mean, dude, it's GRUNGE (unless they don't call grunge "grunge" any more [for all i know, they call it "hardcore." nothing can surprise me where that term is involved these days after i heard it applied to fucking Snapcase, who are about as hardcore as... oh, i don't know, Bionic i guess], in which case i guess it's whatever they say it is), and has anyone besides me ever noticed that grunge bands (or current contemporary variant thereof, God save us all) never "quote" (used here in the newfangled postmodern sense of "knowingly evoking stylistic similarities to") anything other than those things that, by their mere inclusion in the genre, they are PRE-SUPPOSED TO QUOTE MERELY BY DINT OF THEIR VERY EXISTENCE? I mean, think about it (if you want). BEST SONG: "C'mon C'mon"  BEST SONG TITLE "Peavey Youth"  FANTASTIC AMAZING TRIVIA FACT (apart from the fact that they spelled "Peavey" correctly): Track #6 is, in fact, called "Six." It's genius in our time! (or is it merely the Circle Jerks fifth album??)

I think it’s the Buddhists who see life in death, that the end is really the beginning. Sweet J.A.P., one of the best bands to come out of Minneapolis, broke up on their ascent, like a deprogrammed missile. Two butterflies to come out of that roughed-up cocoon of blistering New Bomb Turks by way of Japanese foreign exchange students are Hideo (guitarist/vocals) and Yuichiro (drummer/ vocals). The Birthday Suits are a more spurty, surprisingly full, angular two-piece. Think Wire vs. Melt Banana, but shorter songs. Yeah, more art than previous, but—thankfully—they’re slashing and discomforting, like fast dreams you can’t quite catch up to mixed with the feel of rust crumbling between your fingers. Life after death; it’s not quite Sweet J.A.P. reincarnated, and I’m relieved that it’s not.