Gang of Four

Taliking Heads

Bush Tetras

Pylon

ESG

Maximum Joy

Glaxo Babies

Minutemen

Big Boys

PIL

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Fell Voices
Their microphone-less screaming alone would have been enough to consider them one of the bands of the weekend, as those inhuman howls could be heard from the hallway outside. The fact that their black metal fury even outclasses what can be heard on their records helps, too.

Ash Borer
Hypnotic and deeply atmospheric but still with enough black metal bite to their performance to provoke furious headbanging, Ash Borer were a much needed dark cloud of evil looming over the more psych-oriented line-up.

Godflesh
Performing the whole ‘Pure’, with Robert Hampson joining them on stage and everything. Does one need to say any more?

Antisect
Just like the other crust/d-beat legends, Doom, Antisect played the Patronaat and nearly torched the place with their fiery, remorseless attack. Projecting various thought-provoking messages, questioning what the revolution really is and what we are doing with it, Antisect proved that all these years later, the relevance both of their music and message is as intact as ever.

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Masterfully compiled by Joe Truck Kasher and Greg Fasolino (of NYC’s deathrock band The Naked and the Dead), this compilation has the added benefit of being produced by folks that were active in NYC’s postpunk heyday. In other words, it comes from scene participants themselves; not outsiders. And while California’s and England’s gothy postpunk scenes have been exhaustively documented, an adequate cataloging of NYC’s similar scene in the 1980s has been much overdue. This compilation remedies that longstanding problem.

In reality, starting with the Velvet Underground, dark music has been no stranger to New York. The city’s shadowy concrete-and-steel canyons seem to breed bands with darker inclinations. The no-wave scene that produced Lydia Lunch and The Swans should be seen on the same continuum as the bands featured on this anthology. NYC’s mid-80s dark postpunk band Of a Mesh, in fact, resemble a lot of earlier Swans (mixed with maybe some Bauhaus) material at their best.

The opening track is Scarecrow’s “Blood in My Dreams,” an atmospheric gothic rock song that recalls Join Hands-era Siouxsie and the Banshees. The second track is a heavier, stompier number also by Scarecrow, a kind of strange cross between Siouxsie’s “Spellbound” and the UK gothy postpunk (or so-called “positive punk”) of bands like Brigandage or Blood and Roses. Lots of flanger effects on the guitar and tribal, heavy-on-the-toms drumming, as was common in the UK’s dark postpunk scene at the time.

The amazing Of a Mesh (see the video at the beginning of this write-up) are probably the most direct sonic link between New York’s deathrock scene and The Swans, or 4AD bands like Mass. Sludgy, dark, and depressive vocals echo out over a musical landscape that is at turns melodic, dissonant, and dirge-y. Of a Mesh have always been one of the most fascinating US dark postpunk bands to me — they really seem to have never gotten their day in the sun. As the internet has enabled a retroactive inspection of a lot of this style of music — music that in the 80s could only be found by being supremely in the know or by scouring record shops or zines for hours — I hope that Of a Mesh’s profile is raised as an important US postpunk band. Hints of Killing Joke (check out the awesome drumming!) and the Sisters of Mercy permeate the band’s sound.

The Naked and the Dead chime in next with female vocals slightly reminiscent of Gitane Demone. Again, a mid-tempo beat featuring flangers on the guitar and tribal drumming — done to very excellent and creepy effect. Sometimes, location is key; if The Naked and the Dead’s particular style of gloomy postpunk had occurred in London at this same time, they would be much more appreciated than they are now. Most folks now think of NYC’s contribution to deathrock as being mainly from the horror punk innovations ofThe Cramps, and (from New Jersey, actually) the Misfits, Mournful Noise, and The Mad. The Naked and the Dead are a key band that show that, as one branch of the original 1977 punk scene was going off into thrashy NYHC, another segment was absorbing the influences of Sex Gang Children, Killing Joke, Virgin Prunes, et. al., and was producing top notch gothic rock and roll as a result. It is as an important development from New York’s punk scene as the much-vaunted hardcore of Youth of Today and Gorilla Biscuits was. Again, this compilation documents this trend magnificently, and is much overdue.

Children’s Zoo weigh in next with “Turnabout,” which is musically like a an early PIL song, and the vocals are done in a very echoey, dramatic Christian Death/Rozz style. The music overall is what is now called the “trad goth” style — basically, a Sisters of Mercy-esque style of gothic rock. The vocals are echoey and front and center. If you are looking for 80s New York City gothic rock, well — here you go.

The Ochrana feature one song near the end of the comp, and yet — as the video below makes abundantly clear, this was a serious gothic punk band, who deserve serious attention. The Ochrana song featured on this compilation, “Turnabout,” is actually a classic early Joy Division-style somber postpunk number that explodes during the chorus, but then quietens down back again for the “verse.” A “complete discography”-style release of the Ochrana’s material is certainly in order. The Ochrana were an amazing deathrock/goth-punk band, and their “discography” is traded as a bootleg and floats around on mp3 filesharing networks among fans of deathrock. They need a proper, holistic release. Also, I absolutely LOVE that they tout “tribal drumming” in the interview below – yes! They clearly know what they are doing. Tribal drumming was a feature of a lot of early 80s gothic/deathrock/goth-punk bands, from Killing Joke (see: “Unspeakable”), to Christian Death, Southern Death Cult, to New Model Army, to even the early 80s Cure. It’s a lost art. Work those floor toms, you bastards!

To get this vinyl-only comp, here is the info Joe Truck Kasher himself gave me: $18.00 POSTPAID!!! PAYPAL- TRUXDIX@AOL.COM

Tracklist ▼
A1 Scarecrow (21) – Blood In My Dreams
A2 Scarecrow (21) – Mother’s Crawling
A3 Scarecrow (21) – Concrete Is My Pillow
A4 Of A Mesh – C.I.T.
A5 Of A Mesh – Burning Bride
B1 Of A Mesh – Candy (Is An Axe Now)
B2 Naked and the Dead, The – Taboo
B3 Naked and the Dead, The – The Gate
B4 Naked and the Dead, The – Godfather Grimorie
B5 Children’s Zoo, The – Back Of The Boat
B6 Ochrana, The – Turnabout
B7 Concrete Witchdoctors – Public Flesh

Dark New York deathrock compilation

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If there was any music that articulated the feelings of hatred towards Margaret Thatcher in the early 80s, it was anarcho-punk. Fiercely underground and independent from the rest of the music business, the genre was a grass roots movement that delivered on punk’s original promise to actually be politically threatening.

Over thirty years on, it’s stronger than ever, with more bands taking up the torch and citing anarcho-punk as an influence. Chris Low was there at the beginning, drumming for a number of the seminal acts while barely into his teens, with his current band, PART1, scheduled to make their first reformation show at Rebellion, the world’s largest punk festival, this summer. Following a year playing anarcho-punk DJ sets in Tokyo, Low’s compiled a monster mix of his favorite tunes and answered a few questions about the whole thing. Scroll to the bottom for the tracklist too.

Noisey: So how does anarcho punk differ from the gazillion other variations of punk that have come along since 1977?

Chris Low: I think the characteristics that separate it from the other sub-genres of punk is that punk usually has ‘rock’ appended to it. With anarcho, that element was removed. Crass’s “Feeding of the 5000” was the first record I ever heard that sounded from start to finish like I had always imagined punk would, and should, sound. No pub rock riffs, fifties R’n’B scales or wanky guitar solos. It was angry, brutal, uncompromising and a total aural and ideological attack on the senses. Listening to that LP and reading the lyrics at the age of nine or ten felt like a bomb going off in my head. Even though there’s loads of different music I’ve been into since the 80s, there’s still something about the raw energy and sheer diversity of anarcho punk that no other sub-genre of punk can equal. Even though the majority of the tracks come from 1980 to 1984, the ‘golden age’ of anarcho punk, I hope that comes across in the mix.

You really, really wanted us to publish this mix. Why is it so important to you to publish right now?

I spent the late 1980s and 90s DJing at techno and house clubs and as no one had ever really done an anarcho-punk mix before I thought I’d just go for it. It was recorded in my bedroom with a few bottles of wine and a mate pulling out the records from my racks so it might be a bit rough around the edges but I think that keeps it in the spirit of the music. “DIY not EMI,” as we used to say.

How did you become involved in the scene yourself?

I started playing drums when I was eleven and had already played two gigs before the drummer of another band pointed out that my kit should have a kick-drum and that you didn’t just crash the hi-hat like a cymbal. Also, around that time Crass played my local town hall and after picking up a couple of fanzines that night I did my own one, conducting postal interviews with all these bands who you could send questions to and would actually write back replying to them. There was a strong element of communication and exchange of ideas and music unique to the scene. Every week I’d receive letters and packages of records or tapes from America, Poland, Finland…. some places I’d never even heard of but somehow they’d got hold of my ‘zine or heard my band. It was an incredibly exciting secret world and alternative reality for a kid stuck in a small Scottish town to be part of. As years went on I got more involved with the scene, playing in bands, publishing my fanzine. At the age of 14 joined the Apostles, drumming on their first few singles and spending half my time staying in squats in London when I should have been studying for exams at school. They were one of the bands who were involved with the running of the original Anarchy Center, which was founded from the proceeds of Crass’ “Bloody Revolutions” single. That was where anarcho-punk originated from: it was the term given to the anarchist punk bands that played at the Anarchy Centre.

Why do you think there’s all the interest in anarchy-punk today?

While you could argue it was a music and subculture that was a part of it’s time, anarcho-punk has great parallels today. Anarcho-punk and much of its aesthetic form referenced post-cold war anxieties, where-as recent generations have had Iraq and Afghanistan; it emerged out of the depression of the late 1970s and our economy isn’t much better today, plus then and now Britain has been under Conservative government. Right up to her death, Thatcher remained the consummate symbol of hatred for the anarcho-punk movement, which is why there have been so many of the songs in my mix posted up on Facebook over the past few days.

Was anarcho-punk ever commercially successful?

There were more commercially popular sub-genres that came in the wake of anarcho punk, like certain strands of hardcore and crust. Anarcho-punk may be raw and basic but there’s an integrity to it you won’t find in many other styles of music. Above all else, it’s in opposition to mainstream culture and anti-establishment. There’s a clear and direct blood-line from the anarcho-punk movement of the early 80s to the anti-globalization movement that sees people rioting against their governments and leaders throughout the world today. If that’s the legacy of anarcho punk I’m pleased to have been part of it then, and I’m pleased to be part of it now.

Tracklist:

Antisect – “Four Minutes Past Midnight”
Flux Of Pink Indians – “Take Heed”
Rudimentary Peni – “Farce ”
The Mob – “Witchhunt”
Honey Bane – “Girl On The Run”
The System – “Dogs of War”
Discharge – “Decontrol”
The Apostles – “Mob Violence”
Zounds – “Can’t Cheat Karma”
The Ex – “The Sky Is Blue Again”
Six Minute War – “Nurses”
Part 1 – “The Corpse”
Sinyx – “Animal”
Dirt – “Unemployment”
Conflict – “Berkshire Cunt”
Oi Polloi – “Hands Off Nicaragua”
Ad Nauseam – “Crazy World”
Flux Of Pink Indians – “Neu Smell”
Flux Of Pink Indians – “Tube Disasters”
Crass – “Banned From The Roxy”
Anthrax – “Capitalism Is Cannibalism”
Antisect – “Tortured and Abused”
Discharge – “State Violence, State Control”
Rudimentary Peni – “Rotten The The Core”
Fallout – “Tell Me About It”
Crass – “Shaved Women”
Amebix – “Belief”
Exit-stance – “Mankind’s Hand”
Born BC – “Dear Jesus”
Discharge – “Ain’t No Feeble Bastard”
[Martin Wright speaking at 1985 class war rally]
The Apostles – “Pigs For Slaughter”
Oi Polloi – “Lowest Of The Low”
The Rondos – “A Black and White Statement”
The Intestines – “New Recruit”
Fallout – “Democracy”
S-Haters – “Research”
Lack Of Knowledge – “The Uninvited”
Soldiers Of Fortune – “Stars”
The Clefts – “Red White and Blue”
The Ex – “Weapons for El Salvador”
7th Plague – “Rubber Bullets”
Counter Attack – “Don’t Wanna Fight For You”
The Apostles – “Stoke Newington Eight”
Amebix – “Curfew”
Discharge – “Realities of War”
Crass – “Big A Little A”
The Mob – “Another Day, Another Death”
Crisis – “Holocaust”
The Mob – “No Doves Fly Here”
Poison Girls – “Persons Unknown”

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