REISSUES:
Autumn
The Cycle Revolves in Ceaseless Motion
Hellminded Records
Autumn were a post-melodic-style hardcore band from PA. Formed in 1994, the band released three proper seven-inches in ’95, ’96, and ’97 for a total of 10 songs after their four-track cassette demo. Hellminded Records gathered 11 songs from their first EP, Wire Hangers, comp tracks, and songs from the Glass, Bound, and Gagged EP. The intensity and dark beauty which Autumn created in their short existence is captured here with pointed delivery. Autumn explored various points on the emotional spectrum, cultivating a sonic dynamic akin or influence by Doughnuts, 108, Quicksand, and Endpoint. Each song feels raw and is relayed with heavy riffs and angular guitar work that slices.
The Catatonics
Hunted Down EP
Southern Lord
Southern Lord have done a stellar job reissuing classic hardcore punk records (Poison Idea, YDI, Brotherhood, and Uniform Choice) and continue with the classic, long-out-of-print 1984 EP, Hunted Down, by Syracuse/Central NY’s first hardcore band, The Catatonics. A deep, esoteric dive that draws heavily from Boston hardcore titans like Jerrys Kids, FUs, and DYS, along with Negative Approach (check the vocals), Poison Idea, and NYC’s Agnostic Front, The Mob, and Nihilistics, their sound was furious chaos. The textured songwriting was a foreshadowing of Bold, YOT, and Side By Side. This reissue adds nine songs to the original five, and it won’t cost the $80 to $100 the O.G. record can cost on Discogs. Voracity and intensity are exorcised through ultra-fast drumming, ripping riffs, and caustic growls, but the tracks have sections that slow down at times to a perfect two-step rhythm (still fast) that would be the foundation of hardcore for decades after through today. The band disbanded soon after this record. Belvy K would go on to do stints in 7 Seconds, UK Subs, D Generation, and more. And the most magical statement in heavy music today follows: “All tracks have been remastered from original sources by Brad Boatright.”
Savage Republic
Tragic Figures
Real Gone Music
If you love superniche maelstroms of influences strung together by hyphens, prepare for Real Gone’s reissue of 1982’s Tragic Figures album by Savage Republic. Touted as “The world’s first (and only) post-punk-industrial-trance-psychedelic-surf record.” And that descriptor is extremely accurate. The band was known for intense brooding live shows. Co-founder Bruce Licher started his own label and released this (and other) records. For the LP’s 40th Anniversary Edition, Real Gone Music worked with Licher and had Tragic Figures remastered from original analog tapes by Mike Milchner at Sonic Vision. The release will be supplemented by “unreleased rehearsal recordings taped in the bowels of UCLA Parking Garages.” It’s a tense, gripping album entrenched in dark beauty and elevated by a strenuous atmosphere
Downset
Anger/Ritual seven-inch and About Ta Blast Seven-Inch
Nuclear Blast Records
In the early 90s, four friends got together and played heavy hardcore with a groove and the swagger of the LA streets, much like Madball did in NYC, and who Downset would tour with in 1995 with Dog Eat Dog. They also toured Europe separately with Slayer, Biohazard, and Pantera, which in the mid-‘90s is impressive to be that consistent for a young band. They even toured the States with Testament. There are many MTV Europe interviews showing a young Rey Oropeza (vocalist) and James Morris (bass) providing an interesting snapshot of the time and their fire of youth. They mixed lyrics laced with loathing of injustice and a fresh perspective for their mostly suburban, white audience, with a little hip hop flavor and graffiti (Check “Pocket Full of Fat Caps”). The band disbanded after three LPs.
Now, 20 years later, Downset have signed to Nuclear Blast (again, like Madball) for a new comeback album. To celebrate, Nuclear Blast are reissuing two early EP demos—Blast On You and Anger. The music is a mix of incendiary tracks about L.A. Riots, rape culture, violence, police, drugs, and a not-so-subtle diss on a verse to contemporaries mixing rap and hardcore.
EPS:
The Juliana Theory
Still the Same Kids Pt 1
Equal Vision 
In 2021, The Juliana Theory broke a 16-year dormancy to release an eight-track reimagining of classic songs from their catalog. Now, they will release three EPs between now and early 2023. The first of which, Still the Same Kids Pt I, kicks it all off. In 1999, they released their first LP on Tooth & Nail. The five-piece helped define a genre and splinter into their own thing with emo and alternative influences, resulting in heartfelt, creative songwriting. The band are now a duo consisting of Brett Detar (vocals, guitar, keyboards) and Joshua Fiedler (vocals, guitar, bass). “Playback ’99” is the first single from the impending EP. The band notes, “Musically, “Playback ’99” sounds exactly like a crossroads. It rides along hastily on top of layers of Joshua Fiedler’s signature guitars and energetic punk rock drums […]. I think what I’ve always loved about music is its ability to NOT make us choose a road. As listeners and songwriters, we are free to be transported back to a moment while simultaneously inhabiting the present. In a song time can stand still and carry you metaphysically—almost spiritually—to another place.”
Slugfest
Lies Written in Stone
New Age
You love Terror. You love Buried Alive. Here is the band the catapulted Scott Vogel through many an angry kid’s (and adult’s!) speakers. Slugfest only released a few EPs. The band also was ground zero for Tim Redmond of Snapcase and Matt Dente who would follow Vogel to Despair. Lies Written in Stone is an interesting two track EP. Representing the final recording of the band, the instruments were recorded in the ’90s and remastered here to glorious sonic destruction (bass sounds great). Vocals were completed by Vogel in 2020, executing a harsh, forceful performance after 25 years of honing his screaming. Two tracks of crushing Buffalo hardcore preserved and unearthed without losing an ounce of ferocity.
SPLITS:
Domkraft/Slomatics
Ascend/Descend
Majestic Mountain Records
Brilliant psych/sludge/doom by two renowned forces. Apparently, the bands met at Psycho Las Vegas in 2017. The friendship birthed some jamming, but here, each band delivers promisingly on their respective sides. Slomatics have a few LPs, a litany of splits (including the classic with Conan), and a Live at Roadburn installment. They invest three tracks here. The “Slo(w)” in Slomatics is earned here, as they move at a glacier’s pace. “Positive Runes” is more spacey and atmospheric, while “Buried Axes on Regulus Minor” downtunes and hammers heavy, gnarly riffs.
Domkraft’s “The Core Will Pull You Home” is a banger with a Ufomammut-meets-Black Pyramid sound: brutal, heavy, and thick. The song pushes forth with a torturous battering of the eardrums only to give way to a sonic space trekking move, motivated by plundering the psych guitar sound. Hypnotic. “The Brush Descends the Length” is a grandiose declaration, magnificent in conception and execution. The bellowing and pulsating, grinding guitars work in unison to melt gray matter.
This is a profound adventure from two trios offering two originals of new material and each band covering a track from their brothers in mind-pummeling doom.
