something to suck on you whores

Got some awesome shit for you.

First up: the last 108 album, 18:61. I'm glad that they aren't breaking up and hope they record another album because it kind of sucks that they recorded a shitty long acoustic closing track for this one, and it would be a pretty weak farewell.  Besides that ill-advised move, this is a killer hardcore record full of trapped-in-a-cage vocals and mad postpunk groove parts. I like the way this is mixed a lot better than "A New Beat From a Dead Heart" was, it sounds a lot less moshy and modern.  Hopefully that means Kurt Ballou is getting better at not making every band sound the fucking same.  I'm hearing a lot more 90s and a lot less deathwish sound in this shit, a lot of it reminds me of the Monorchid or Jesus Lizard, even Crimson Curse in spots.  If you want to hear noisy 90s style hc about some next-level spirits and shit, welcome to the next 23 minutes of your life.

108 - 18:61

No other band embodies the spirit of Venom's "Black Metal" quite like Midnight does to me.  These guys play rock and roll the way its meant to be played:  Loud as hell, fast as hell, and about how stoked they are to be on the same team as Satan.  Here's a bunch of their demos and b-sides and live stuff, which isn't the most consistent batch of rockers on the planet but I'll take Midnight drunk and sloppy over any of that bullshit new indie rock with wussies who don't play loud.  TURN UP THE HELL!

Midnight - Berlin is Burning

Speaking of wussies who don't play loud, here's an album from the only guy on the planet who can play a pop show with just a classical guitar and still blow me away.  Jonathan Richman has matured so perfectly over the years from an attention-seeking young man into the most whimsical musician on the planet, and this is probably his late-career masterpiece.  Truly, if you've never felt like this then you might just be a sociopath.

I was waiting for affection, but I was looking in the wrong direction; what I needed was not so much to be loved, as to love

I can't leave you with such a nice mellow piece of music so here's a raging fuckin 6 song rager from Talk is Poison.  This is what hardcore is supposed to sound like.  If you ever catch one of their infrequent reunion sets you should probably do it, if you ever see one of their records you should probably buy it.  Fuck yeah for Talk is Poison.

RAGE TO INFINITY ep