Southern Lord – 28th July 2023
Christopher Nosnibor
Southern Lord are at it again, with an archival release of a cult hardcore act whose legacy is larger than its output, following the BL’AST and Neon Christ releases. It’s truly a joy to see the label move beyond its immediate back garden of drone and doom to use the platform its created to showcase the bands without which it likely wouldn’t exist. Originally released for Record Store Day, this second issue comes on vinyl and digital formats, it’s a comprehensive retrospective, which contains ‘all of the out of print 7”s and 12”s, compilation tracks, as well as the session the band recorded at the infamous Inner Ear Studios in Washington, DC, and never heard before unreleased songs.’
Existing for only four years, releasing just eighteen songs in that time, they’d called it a day before most people even heard of them. Like so many short-lived bands, their impact and influence only began to spread posthumously. There’s something genuinely cool about this, with bonus point for not having reformed, staying true to the original hardcore ethos.
As the accompanying notes observe, ‘the fact that the band’s entire output plus unreleased material, numbering thirty songs in all, fits – quite comfortably – on a double LP speaks for itself in many ways. Yes, this is hardcore, and you know the score: fast, furious, faster, more furious.’
Listening to Discography, it’s not pretty, and some of the recordings are pretty ropey. And ropey isn’t just ok, it’s good. It’s raw, it’s real. If it’s clean and polished, it ain’t hardcore.
This is indeed fast and furious, and utterly brutal, and triumph of bass and raging guitar-driven noise, The thing that’s hard to assimilate for me, being the age I am, is that 1993 was thirty years ago. Hardcore exploded in the mid-80s and was still in its heyday early 90s, parallel with the emerging grunge scene. Nirvana’s Bleach espoused the same values. And listening to Discography, what’s remarkable is the sound. It’s no-fi, it’s dirty, it’s gnarly. With the exception of perhaps black metal and crust punk, there aren’t really any other genres that hold such low production values in such high esteem. The gnarlier, the more authentic. And this is gnarly alight. Some of the tracks are barely above four-track portastudio tape quality. But too look at the context: four-track cassette portastudios were still hugely popular until the mi-late 90s. The world has changed beyond recognition in the last thirty years, meaning that recordings from the late 80s and early 90s feel like they’re nor not so much a lifetime, but another world.
Of the thirty tracks here, only three extend beyond three minutes. And yet, within these concise packaged of noise and fury, they somehow find room for some gentle, even borderline experimental passages. Heroin had range, and texture. But of course, first and foremost, they had fury and they had fire, and they had rage and volume. And Discography is essential listening.
AA
Aural Aggravation 