Punk | Hardcore 288 Items

From Johnny Thunders’ personal tape archive, this recording is among hundreds of live, studio and writing session tapes he stored away for safe keeping in a box simply labeled “Thunders Tapes”. Cleaned up and mastered, the attempt is to reveal the recordings Thunders felt worthy of keeping and to release only the best audio quality and performances that live up to his musical legacy. In this debut release, Live From Zurich ’85, one hears Thunders and his band performing at a Swiss radio station in 1985. Spectacular sound. Great set.

This year marks almost 20 years since Shawn Foree has been making music under the alias Digital Leather. Yet even with releasing numerous albums and working with some well-known artists during this time, Digital Leather has clung to obscurity. The project, which began in Arizona with Foree and his childhood friend, Ryan Rousseau (Destruction Unit), was initially just an experiment, a toying around with some dusty synthesizers, the Cold Wave aesthetic, and a subversive disregard for audio clarity. Rousseau left early on to pursue other music, but Foree never stopped, and his writing game kept growing stronger. With New Wave Gold, Foree has shown creative maturity, and has proven himself to be a master songsmith as well as a competent producer with a penchant for sound texturing and a “mid-fi” aesthetic. Recorded in Foree’s apartment in Nebraska over the last couple of years, during which time Shawn also traveled the country doing environmental work, New Wave Gold is its own genre; something uniquely wonderful. Lyrically, each song is crafted of deceivingly simple lines, but the words soon reveal their true identities: culprits to a dazzlingly moody manifesto. It’s a mid-life crisis and a global crisis smashed together and thrown onto tape. Scattered with analog synths, acoustic guitars, and a fully operational DIY approach, New Wave Gold is also reminiscent of work from groups like Sebadoh and Psychic TV. References aside, New Wave Gold is a trenchant exploration of a self, coexisting with an often bleak and doubt-inspiring outer setting. It is the battle of the subject versus the all-consuming, fiery leviathan, the object, the world.

This Halloween Total Punk will be releasing the third LP by misanthropic shed dwellers True Sons OF Thunder. Featuring members of Manateees, Oblivians, Mangina, Rat Traps...TSOT has turned not caring into an art form and even unknowingly submitted a track from their second LP for inclusion on this one. Sour tunes for sour times by sour dudes. Lurching low end, two guitars and a banjitar that make a cacaphanous symphony which can only be described as amp torture. Southern brutality at its finest. Dad rock for deadbeats! This was the record Total Punk was made to put out and it only took us 8 years to get here. Loud, broken, out of tune, and 100% Total Punk!!!! Limited TO 400 Copies.

Travoltas' nothing less than amazing hit album 'Teenbeat' turned 20 this year! Congrats guys! It was never released on vinyl though, can you believe it? Until now that is, because we are celebrating this album's 20th anniversary with this reissue. Comes with brand new liner notes by Kurt Baker too! Get ready to enjoy some summertime goodness in October!

For the first time on vinyl. The Aggrolites delivered a third album that completely busted the myth that surrounds this often difficult time in a band’s career. In 2007 they released this phenomenal record, containing what many consider their best ever track “Free Time.” This explosive album just built upon a momentum and trajectory that just continued to build steam and take them to new heights. Some of the real burners on this record still remain in the band’s live set, but for whatever reason, this one never made its way onto vinyl, until now. Using what could be unearthed of the original design, Pirates Press Records is proud to give this fantastic album new legs, and to give fans and collectors alike something very special to commemorate this period of the band’s history.

Ever since the hugely successful “One Family One Flag“ (3lp comp, celebrating Pirates’ 200th release), the outright demands from fans (& punk DJs!) for more compilations has mounted steadily. Partly to quell the masses, and equally to satisfy our own desire to curate a playlist of our favorite newest additions to the Pirate catalog, we proudly introduce “For Family And Flag“, a new compilation series aimed at more regularly promoting music from across the spectrum of bands representing the Pirates Press Records family. Amongst these tracks you’ll find new and unreleased material, hits and favorites from recent records, and everything in between. Together, it demonstrates the diversity of bands flying the same flag, coming together to celebrate their music and contributions to the community as a whole… It’s a damn fine playlist too, start to finish. Having so many great bands and great songs together, it doesn’t get much more fun than this! Grab a copy online or down at your local record store. Aaaaarrrrggggh!!

The mysterious man behind the stamped 7 inch single returns with a full album of punk anthems "dubbed out to extended versions" for Cassette Week 2020. Misfits. Dead Kennedys. Stooges. Clash. Ramones. Sex Pistols. J card designed like a mixtape you would have made in high school!

Limited A5 digipak, 500 copies. Svart Records has re-issued some of the very finest classic Finnish Post-punk albums such as Musta paraati, Kola kestää and Nolla nolla nolla, alongside being known for discovering modern underground classics such as Beastmilk. Now we turn our ears towards a new wave of sound from Sweden, to Pågå and their wildly original new album The Evil Year.

Limited To 300 Copies, FirstTime On Vinyl. 1982 Punk Rock From Bologna Italy. One Time Press!

For The First Time On Vinyl, The Demos From A Cult Roman Punk Rock Band Formed In 1985.

East London record shop World of Echo debuts on the other side of the counter with a reissue of Two Wishes, the solitary 12" by Anglo-German collective, Mutabor!. Seemingly lost to time, Mutabor! were first brought to World of Echo's attention when drummer/singer, Gary Asquith, played at the shop's first birthday celebrations while promoting one of his other bands, Rema Rema. And so the story goes... Mutabor! emerged wraith-like from the monochromatic grit of Berlin's art punk underground late in 1981 when Asquith left London to set up temporary residence in the city following a chance meeting with Malaria's Bettina Koster backstage at a Birthday Party gig at the Lyceum earlier that year. Beguiled by the possibilities of collaboration, musical and otherwise, he was soon to make his own contributions to what was an already fecund scene. Partnering with Koster, and Gudrun Gut and Manon Duursma also of Malaria!, Mutabor! were publicly birthed via an impromptu performance at punk rock polestar the Risiko. Asquith found himself playing percussion in what would be a first, while the rest of the band ossified in front of him in typically idealistic post-punk democracy. Little documentation of the performance survives beyond that which exists in the memories of those playing - that itself shaky enough - though there was clearly sufficient encouragement for them to commit to a recording session. Later that winter, the four booked time at Music Lab, the studio operated by Harris Johns, for what would ultimately be their only studio visit. Two songs were laid to tape, and soon after a photoshoot was to take place at Koster's flat, resulting in a handful of images that, along with the music, comprise the sum total evidence of the band's existence. 1001 Nights and Treats both found their way to Peter Kent, a co-founder of 4AD who had recently left the label with the ambition of starting his own imprint. Entitled Two Wishes, the two track 12" was to be the first and only release on Loaded. It seems that Mutabor! were to represent a series of firsts and lasts, a trend that continues now as they open the World of Echo imprint. It's fitting to think of Mutabor! in these prescient terms given how they sounded. Berlin at that time shared a spiritual axis with New York, the conceptual & aesthetic discordance of no wave and a nascent off-beat dance culture underpinning much of the respective creative activity. There are shared signifiers, but even in that context, Two Wishes sounds oddly out of step, moving to its own unusual rhythm. 1001 Nights stutters along on a tribal beat that seems to run independent of skronking sax, spidery guitar lines and deadpan vocal incantations, the ghosts of two songs meeting in some kind of incompatible voodoo union. On the reverse, Treats slows down and dims the lights further, as Asquith sardonically recites desirous threats as an increasingly malevolent sax and guitar grinds behind him. No surprise the darkness within the music given the parent bands and the backdrop of a crepuscular early 80s Berlin, though there remains a complex compositional element to these songs that suggests a broader spectrum of emotion - desire, romance, and ultimately, infinite possibility. Recut and mastered, Two Wishes is now presented with the original front cover artwork alongside additional imagery, including a 16 page booklet, all culled from Asquith's own archive. A brief bolt of energy at a crucial juncture in music history, Mutabor!'s story is emblematic of the mutli-verse of post-punk and the creativity its ideology necessitated.

New York's Brandy (Ex-PAMPERS, Running) are back with their sophomore LP and first on Total Punk. The Gift of Repetition is an eight track study in just that. Loud plodding and rhythmic. It will have you bobbing your head till it breaks off your neck. They all share vocal duties often chanting over each other and the lyrics are singular in vision. Bleak with a grin. Synth is added on a few tracks with mind-melting results. When the only other bands that come to mind are A-Frames, Lamps and Mayyors you are obviously doing something right. Pulsing, throbbing, and 100% Total Punk!!! Limited to 350 copies.

During these strange times of Coronavirus, Covid-19, whatever you want to call it, and due to social distancing, bands can't play gigs and no-one can go to gigs; so we are bringing the gigs to you!

When Mark E Smith died in January 2018, an era ended with him. The Fall were an English post-punk band, formed in 1976 in Prestwich, Greater Manchester. They underwent many line-up changes, with vocalist and founder Smith as the only constant member. First associated with the late 1970s punk movement, the Fall's music underwent numerous stylistic changes, often concurrently with changes in the group's line-up. Nonetheless, their music has generally been characterised by an abrasive, repetitive guitar-driven sound, tense bass and drum rhythms, and Smith's caustic lyrics, described by critic Simon Reynolds as "a kind of Northern English magic realism that mixed industrial grime with the unearthly and uncanny, voiced through a unique, one-note delivery somewhere between amphetamine-spiked rant and alcohol-addled yarn." They were always at their best on stage, and this collection, recorded at the Assembly Rooms, Derby in 1994, captures them in full flow!

When Mark E Smith died in January 2018, an era ended with him. The Fall were an English post-punk band, formed in 1976 in Prestwich, Greater Manchester. They underwent many line up changes, with vocalist and founder Smith as the only constant member. First associated with the late 1970s punk movement, the Fall's music underwent numerous stylistic changes, often concurrently with changes in the group's lineup. Nonetheless, their music has generally been characterised by an abrasive, repetitive guitar-driven sound, tense bass and drum rhythms, and Smith's caustic lyrics, described by critic Simon Reynolds as "a kind of Northern English magic realism that mixed industrial grime with the unearthly and uncanny, voiced through a unique, one-note delivery somewhere between amphetamine-spiked rant and alcohol-addled yarn." Live recording of legendary band THE Fall performing at TJ's, Newport in 2001!

THE Cowboy are back with a new EP pressed to high quality flexi disc at 45 RPM! Three tracks here from the Cleveland group, following in the vein of their much lauded Wi-Fi on the Prairie album that dropped in early 2020. "Feel the Chi Releasing from You" clocks in at exactly four minutes, pushing simple, yet brilliant and almost jazzy arrangements into snappy guitar rock that actually lives up to the early SST and Pink Flag-era Wire comparisons that have been bestowed upon The Cowboy in the past. Pressed to convenient one-sided 7" clear flexi disc with another dose of breathtaking artwork from B. Gaffney appearing underneath the transparent flexi & lyrics on da back. One-time edition of 275 copies.

I’m not living my life so good, tell me, how about you?’ What can we really say about 14th Wish, how did this band even exist? This record and band were Completely unknown up until the last couple of years, when we were approached by a notorious record fiend who was looking for more info after our official release of David Peel’s King of Punk LP. Here we have a band with no paper trail, zero online search results, and released in a tiny quantity on Orange Records in 1980, right alongside the first GG Allin and Eddie Criss Group LPs. But instead of a stylized gutter glam workout with a hot-shot studio guitarist, 14th Wish trip over themselves with a snotty/sloppy amateurism that veers farther into the beloved ‘Killed By Death’ arena, with it’s sweltering TAPEWORM-style lead guitar freak-outs.
Fronted by the mysterious figure known as Halo Peace, both 14th Wish tracks offer a refreshing mid-tempo crud-punk slop-take on the sounds swirling around the drain of the Lower East Side at the end of the 1970s. Although both tracks aren’t lightning fast, their instant ominous catchiness and absolutely sordid and squalorous guitar tone suggests a more murderous background, as well. Mention of this record just drew blanks across from the board, from all of the rare punk record dealers, to the most avid international collectors, and even NYC scene members from the time. Never even turned up in a Mike Bastarache Want List! And of course, the internet was no help either. Was this really one that Everyone missed? Recommended If You Like: Tapeworm, GG Allin & the Jabbers, Freestone, The Trend, Mentally Ill, The Gears, Killed By Death compilations.”

Brand new studio album from original punk legends The Lurkers!LP Limited to 1000 copies (500 Pink / 500 Green)!THIS IS THE Original LURKERS:PETE Stride - Nigel Moore - ESSO!We asked the band a few questions...There's still a big audience for punk rock, why doyou think the music has stood the test of time?Pete: At the most basic level I think it comes down tothe energy, brevity and sheer catchiness of the bestpunk tunes.Nigel: Because it lacks pretention and as it did back in'77 and anyone can have a go. Also__It's Good.Esso: It had a definite identity maybe - it was amovement that attracted people who didn't feel part ofthe mainstream, and so once finding a home didn'twant to leave it, in fact remaining loyal to that thingthat they felt saved them.When you formed the band back in the `70s didyou expect you'd still be making records 40-oddyears later?Pete: no not at all, I think i imagined i would be retiredand living in a mansion by the age of 30.Nigel: No, I thought I'd be living on my country estatedeciding whether to drive the Aston or the Bentley andthrowing rocks at the neighbours.Esso: Not at all, twenty years old - 40 years was adifferent world.

When Quaker Wedding songwriter Marco Reosti moved to New York City the first thing he died was get a band together. The goal was to simplify things. Three-piece, keep the songs driving like Jawbreaker with a touch of melodic hardcore. Over the first year and a half of being a band and writing this debut record, songwriter Reosti transition to living in New York City fueled a record that's raw, searching and at times angry. The stalled train, crowded busses, small apartments and busy streets fed into a unique alienation that can only come from feeling isolated in the largest city in the country.

'The Fountain was supposed to be a full length album but as the songs took shape, I realized that there was something cohesive going on with a smaller batch. They all focused on the theme of platonic love with a sense of gratitude. I think that traditionally, I had mostly written yearning, romantic odes and it was nice to focus on what was right in front of me,' says Justin Sullivan, who records as Night Shop and also plays with Kevin Morby.

Fittingly, The Fountain is a family affair, with friends and collaborators bringing the songs to life. The E.P. features Katie Crutchfield (Waxahatchee) on backup vocals, Meg Duffy (Hand Habits) on guitar and bass, Sofia Arreguin (Wand) on piano, Jarvis Taveniere (Woods), engineering and playing a host of instruments, Anna St. Louis on backup vocals, Tiffanie Lanmon (Jess Williamson) on drums and Flat Worms bandmates Ivy and Hellman.

Misantropic are back! You know what to expect: fast d-beat and double bass drums, metallic thrashing, punked up riffs, bulldozing bass lines and angry, pissed off vocals. A hardcore holocaust. This stuff just reeks of circle pits and chaos, it’s as much classic FU hardcore as it is Grind/Death/Thrash metal. For intense riff-a-holics, fed up with the idiocracy also known as the human race, this is the anger management program that your surrounding companions have been pleading with you to get involved in. In this tumultuous album you get to throw your blows, scream obscenities at the top of your lungs, and destroy things without ever having to be held legally accountable for your actions. Rebels rejoice and Fucking make some noise!

Hope and Defiance, the new album from political punk outfit Life Force! A straight-edge hardcore band out of Texas/Oklahoma. The group was formed in 2018 with a clear focus: the mission of paying homage to the sound, aesthetic, and spirit of classic youth-crew inspiration, albeit with a darker modern twist, while expressing pertinent socio-political themes and opinions through engaging lyrical content and a poignant on-stage message.

While Sleeper & Snake pairs up the great Al Montfort (Total Control, The UV Race, Dick Diver) and Amy Hill (Primo!, Constant Mongrel), who’ve both found themselves in league as band mates in Terry, this album isn’t quite the pop pairing that it seems on the surface. Accompanying the strums, jangles, and geniality there’s also present offbeat electronics and free jazz fizz.

Re-release of the second The Ex LP from 1982!Completely in the original version. With all artwork, posters, booklets and flyers. All on the `different' The Ex record labels: History IS What's Happening on `More Dirt per Minute Records'. Released nearly 40 years ago, but still up-to-date and exciting! "20 short songs, and this music is not pogo, but, hm, rather unusual. A signpost diversion from punkrock."History IS What's Happening (EX008)Recorded in 1982 at Joke's Koeienverhuurbedrijf, Schellingwoude, Netherlands. Produced by Dolf Planteijdt.THE EX: Terrie (guitar), G.W. Sok (vocals), Bas (bass), Wim (drums).

Though they hail from the deepest Norwegian bible belt, punk band Daufødt surely is a beast. Like no other band of today, they create an energy of power and liberation through their iconic live shows where the valkyrian stage command of front-woman and visual artist Annika unites us all in a brew of blood, sweat and hair.