Tags Matching: swedish hardcore

Total fucking Dis-fuckers

By cooch | Published 02/26/2011

I was reading some talk online this morning about Discharge — people were saying they were overrated, and that their wake of influence is better than their actual music — and my brain almost exploded. Free speech for the dumb, I suppose?

Here’s a fun example of how a couple of bands from complete opposite ends of the hardcore spectrum ape the ol’ Dis-sounds. Last Rights go the “Protest and Survive” route, while the Shit Lickers go for tuneless “Why”-esque bashing. Who’d have thunk that Boston’s most notorious sxe hardmen and some Swedish gutter drunks would be mining the same Stoke-On-Trent influences? It’s kind of like how Victim In Pain and Crucifix’s Dehumanization are essentially the same record (but no one realizes it).

Some Swede-core rippers

By cooch | Published 09/06/2010

A couple of Swedish sellers are dropping some top shelf platters from the motherland, though strangely, neither has anything else for sale.

So here are two of the top ep’s ever released from the country, with Anti-Cimex’s Raped Ass coming in tops on my list, and Absurd’s Bloodig Stad (Bloody City) rounding out the top 5*.

Raped Ass, in my (largely worthless) opinion, is the greatest example of taking the Discharge/d-beat style and cranking it up to 11, whereas other top-tier d-beaters like the Shitlickers Cracked Cop Skulls or Agent Orange Your Mother Sucks Cocks In Hell 7″s kind of dumb things down to negative 11. All five songs here are unrelenting, brutal steamrollers with absolutely perfect production, with the larynx-shredding vocals and one note guitar solos sending everything that much more over the top. Several variations of this record exist, with the copy at hand — card cardboard sleeve with printed labels — being the most common (but still difficult to obtain). I believe there are 1,000 of these pressed, but for an exhaustive archive of Anti-Cimex pressing variations and related ephemera, go here.

Next up is Absurd’s one and only release, the extremely rare Blodig Stad ep. While not quite as over the top as Raped Ass or as brutally stupid as Cracked Cop Skulls, this record still d-beats with the best of them. Various rumors abound about the band and this record… it’s believed that only 300 were pressed, and many copies were rumored to be lost/trashed/thrown out by mom/something to that effect. Also the singer is now a priest in Sweden, and supposedly he was liberated of his remaining copies a few years back. Regardless, this record is extremely difficult to track down, with original copies selling for as much as $700 in the past (though more recently they top out around $400), so that $99 opening bid is pretty appealing. Beware of recent American-made bootlegs, the original should have a machine stamped matrix number and a thin, slightly glossy, pocket sleeve cover.

* My top 5 Swedish hardcore 7″s:
1. Anti Cimex – Raped Ass
2. Shitlickers – Cracked Cop Skulls
3. Headcleaners – Disinfection
4. Bombanfall – Asiksfrihet
5. Absurd – Blodig Stad

SKITSLICKERS – GBG 1982 7″

By cooch | Published 07/02/2010

AKA the Shit Lickers Cracked Cop Skulls ep, this is (arguably) the first and greatest raw Discharge-styled hardcore record out of Sweden (and trust me, there are lots of them). They blast out four songs, lasting just about a minute each, with simple repetitive riffs and lyrics that gel perfectly with THE D-BEAT into a huge mess of loud, distorted noise. Bass player Jonsson would go on to front Anti-Cimex, the other best Swedish Dis-noise-attack (not to be confused with the UK’s Disattack).

This 7″ exists with several million sleeve variations, of which this version is the most desirable “standard” pressing, and debatably the first issued. The 2-piece cover has the band’s name in Swedish (Skitslickers) and the title as GBG 1982 (GBG being short for Göteborg aka Gothenburg, their home town in Sweden) whereas “export” versions are one piece and list the name as Shit Lickers and the title as Cracked Cop Skulls, with a drawing of a group of punks fucking up some unfortunate cops. The vinyl is always the same though, with plain white labels like most Swedish punk records of the day. See the complete bevvy of cover variations here: http://shit-fi.com/Shitlickers_sleeve_gallery. Fascinating stuff.

Low opening bid considering what dis-dis-dis record has sold for lately, so bid away. Also check the seller’s other auctions for more dis-noise classics (and more really crappy cell phone photos).

BOMBANFALL – Åsiksfrihet 7″

By cooch | Published 04/30/2010

Awesome Swedish hardcore from 1987, thick metallic Discharge-style hardcore with extremely gutteral vocals. To me, they sound like a Swedish version of United Mutation, so if you’re into the current crop of “weirdcore” bands, this might have some cross-genre appeal. The $100 BIN is decent considering the condition, but maybe someone could take this home with a good offer.

Here’s a funny band autobiography (they later changed their name to Two Moons Rising)
“Two Moons Rising started as a joke. A couple of unlikely orchestra members decided to started making music together under the influence of ideas on social upheaval. In the beginning we called ourselves Bombanfall ["Bomb Attack"] which was changed for Two Moons Rising. We practiced and practiced and after some time started to sound better. At the same time we got more serious. I played guitar, Pettersson sang and we picked him because of his ability to create full resonance in most tones. Pontus Nydal we found in a samba-orchestra, this fact alone was enough for us to understand that he would be able to find the beats we were after. Fredrik Berglin was picked because of his correct attitude and for his fair looks. Time went and in the end we managed to scrape together enough money to pay for an EP. After that everything ran out in the sand and we quit. Quite pointless, isn’t it?” 

Interesting side note: Almost all Swedish and Finnish 7″ records of the early to mid 80s have blank labels. Apparently it cost as much to print the labels as it did to press the records, so the bands used blank labels to save money.