Labels: Feral Kid – Warm Bath
Review by: David Giles
The insert from this 7” is a note from a member of Death Trap writing about the band’s formation in 1983(!) and expressing thanks to Feral Kid records for wanting to release this first EP more than 25 years after the band’s demise. Cool!
This was recorded on a four track and has the resultant fuzz and who gives a fuck vibe. Snotty vocals, and pretty typical teen-anger lyrics. Actually, it blows my mind how ‘modern’ this sounds – that is, with the number of throwback hardcore bands releasing EPs over the last 4 years, I would have believed it if I was told this was recorded today. I don’t know if that’s necessarily good or bad. Its unsettling to think that the type of 7” I would actively seek out and enjoy in 2011 could have – and has been – recorded identically more than 25 years previous. If those are the ‘real’/roots hardcore bands I enjoy and the ‘modern’ hardcore bands sound like Defeater etc. then the ‘evolution of hardcore’ (if you want to be a dick about it) has been pretty shitty over the last 10 years especially. Thinking about it, the majority of the bands I enjoy today have some element of throwback in them – whether that be to 80s bands like Death Trap or to heavier 90s bands.
Maybe its moot point anyway. When it comes to the crunch, there is music that I’m interested in being recorded and released today. Sure, there is a pretty strong argument that one of the main types of music that I back has been diluted into whimsical love-song melodrama… but that I can still put on an EP like this and hear some stubbornly mid-tempo Void-meets-Germs suburban snot made by guys who hate the same shit I hate is cathartic. And this band were hating it before I was even born – the fact that people are able to hate the exact same things in 2011 opens another tin of angst, but here isn’t the place for airing it.
The apeing of this style of hardcore today is a testament of its worth. And a relief from many of the more melodramatic forms of hardcore in circulation. Bottom line: hardcore ruled back when this was recorded, and hardcore still rules today.