If The World Didn't Suck We'd All Fall Off

Issue #5 of Incremental Decrepitude out now

Mountain Movers interview (from 2016), the usual photos and reviews,
and a "Favorite Bands" feature on Breaking Circus


18 pages, 8-1/2" x 11", corner-stapled

PayPal your address and $1.68 (as "family") to rock_in_my_shoe @ yahoo.com
or, if you're not a peckerwood, you can ask for a free copy
in person if you see me at a show or something sold out

I've also posted some for sale on the Cheat Prick Tapes store (cheatprick.storenvy.com),
along with some back-issue copies of Inc Dec #3 from 2014, although Storenvy will
add another fee to your order which is kinda sucky.

I Used To Work At The Laundromat But Then It Folded

Some Christian rock, for the holidays.

Wormdoom -

"Blessed Assurance Part One"

Fake Best Of 2015

Flemmings -

"Get Away From Me Right Now"

TV Ugly -

"QC"

Surveillance -

"Horrible Morning"

Estrogen Highs -

"Lover Lover Lover"
(Leonard Cohen cover)

Disipline -

"Sanctuary of Pain"

When Everything Is Coming Your Way It Means You're In The Wrong Lane

I was pretty psyched to find this at Deep Thoughts (record store in Cambridge) the other weekend -- "Early Singles", a collection of Bimbo Shrineheads (aka Shrinnirs) stuff that I'd otherwise hadn't heard, for the most part, or even had any idea that it had existed. The package is pretty funky -- an LP jacket spray-painted black so heavily that it became soggy and warped, a tape reel box affixed to the front with a booklet and some papers inside, and almost no mention of the band name anywhere -- so it's no wonder that most people wouldn't know what this was, even if they saw it in a store. For a near-20-track LP, pretty much everything on here is fairly prime avant-rock; now that I'm finally getting the chance to hear all of this stuff, I'm realizing that this is a band that carried a really high on-base percentage, for sure. Figures that I had to go record shopping in Massachusetts to find out about a Connecticut band.


Bimbo Shrineheads -

"Implosion"

"Slabs"

"How To Get Fucked Up The Ass With a Flag and Smile and Be Really Happy and Grateful"

"Separating Your Face From My Windshield"

I Might Not Have Any Pants But I Have A Few Other Things

A couple of Estrogen Highs tapes came out recently, "Unfortunate Chronology vols. 1 and 2", which include a bunch of live tracks, outtakes, demos, and assorted eroded matter from the last few years of the band's existence (Estrogen Highs is no more, apparently). I bought these along with Stefan's new solo tape, and while I've only had time to listen to "vol. 1" and the first side of the solo tape so far, I can say that everything I've heard so far is amazing and excellent... you can pretty much shelve the first two or three E.Highs LPs and listen to these tapes exclusively, and still be doing alright. (I won't, but you could.) Covers of Ego Summit and Marshall Tucker Band, too. I've posted a poor-quality tape rip of one of the Stefan tracks on my Tumblr, over here. Also, nobody really asked me for them, but here are scans of the ten-page Estrogen Highs interview from the first issue of Incremental Decrepitude, back in 2010. Clicking on them will help you read them, which isn't to say that's not a ridiculous idea.

My Grave Makes All The Other Graves Look Like Shit

To my ears, CIA's "God, Guts, Guns" is easily the best '80s hardcore 7-inch to ever come out of Connecticut, especially if you don't count the Youth Korps demo, which I sorta don't because the Youth Korps EP was only released as a bootleg after-the-fact (the list kinda goes 1. CIA 7", 2. Violent Children 7", 3. Can't Close My Eyes or Hit Squad for God or No Milk on Tuesday or something, 4. Reflex From Pain. I dunno, it's kind of a rough draft, maybe I'll keep working on it). I think makes the CIA 7" such a classic record is that the sound is fairly hefty -- you almost can't beat the mix between all the elements, guitar drums vocals bass, it's practically perfect -- plus all of the songs totally rip and are way catchy as far as hardcore songs go. Bones has always been a very underrated vocalist, or underrated by me at least since I was never the biggest fan of 76% Uncertain (FYI: CIA and Reflex From Pain eventually morphed into 76%), but Bones could carry a melody and his voice had a lot of grit to it, which overall made "God, Guts, Guns" sound relatively tough and on the level of some of the best Boston and NY records from back then. The lyrics are some clever horseshit, too.

"God, Guts, Guns" was re-issued a few years ago as a 12" with some bonus tracks, which is what I'm posting here; if you want to hear the original EP, or the Youth Korps EP while you're at it, then it's pretty easily found on the internet (Erich Keller's "Good Bad Music" blog is usually good for that). Admittedly, the bonus tracks aren't all that great, especially the covers and live tracks on the flip, but the Audio West demo tracks and the outtakes from the 7" are pretty useful. "Violence" was originally released on the Fartblossom Enterprises "Empty Skulls" compilation, I'm pretty sure, so you might've heard that one before. Todd and Kenny from 76% have a new band now called Watchlist that just released an album that's surprisingly very solid, comparable to Off! and stuff like that, and you can peep that stuff over here --> https://www.cdbaby.com/cd/watchlist


C.I.A. -

"Violence"

"Gangland War"

"Waste Product"

I Killed Byron Coley With My Big Fuckin' Thread Title

Issue #3 of Incremental Decrepitude out now

PayPal your address and 94 cents to rock_in_my_shoe @ yahoo.com

or see me at a show and ask for one

There's only one staple, because staples are what The Man uses to hold us down
--copier paper

The Rock Is In The Wrong Cradle

If you haven't already picked up Birth of Flower's "Deity" in any of its earlier incarnations -- shitty CD-R, Bandcamp files, half-formulated cassette tape -- then now's your chance to own it on vinyl, and you really should try to get a copy of it somehow (whichever format you chose) because it's definitely one of the best recordings to come out of Connecticut in the past whenever-years or so, or since any of you can remember at least. I realize that my saying Birth of Flower are Connecticut's best band (circa 2012-2014) doesn't carry much weight anymore, now that I no longer live in Connecticut, but maybe I can say that they're one of the best live bands coming out of New England right now and still get away with it. You can buy the alb from them for ten bucks in person, or from any of the better record stores around CT (Redscroll, Willimantic), or I think they've even figured out how to sell you a copy of the vinyl through the 'merch' tab on Bandcamp now. If you go to their Bandcamp page -- google 'The Horrible Truth About Flower', it's not the actual best way to get there but it's funny -- you can even swipe a free download of the album (and all of their other records, too) while you're visiting, which is a pretty easy thing for you to do right now, seeing as you're already on the internet. I mean, have I ever steered you wrong before? Probably, I guess.

Birth of Flower -

"Cosmogony"

I Run Into The Woods A Lot To Lick The Toads

It took me long enough to get around to posting the Kitty Badass CD, mostly because I'm full-on dumb and lazy and partly because CDs are just pieces of boring plastic. Well, they're nice for the car, I'll give them that, only just not as fun to take pictures of when you've got a blog, or something. I'm pretty sure "One Cell At A Time" was pressed up as a 12", too, though for the life of me I've never seen one. Kitty Badass were definitely one of the better Connecticut bands of their time, only to have mostly escaped notice as the years have passed; their ability to meld off-kilter melodies with tempos that effortlessly shifted gears (from almost indie-pop to almost-thrash) lead to some killer hooks, and the first six tracks on this album, as a group, match up fairly evenly with anything else that came out of CT in the last half of the '90s. Of course, I'm going to be a dick by only posting four of the six songs here, though this CD shouldn't be a hard one to track down (I think Elevator was having a fire sale not too long ago, you can pick up that J.C. Superska 7" while you're at it) anyway.

Kitty Badass -

"Brand New Vampires"

"New Vow"

"Tilted"

"Untangled"

I Will Not Do Anything That I Do Not Want To Do

The other month I made my way down to 33 Golden St. in the middle of a total Nor'easter to check out Wolfghost, which in the end was kinda worth it because Wolfghost freakin' slayed, making up for having to drive back and forth to New London both ways without being able to see 15 feet in front of me. I never really caught The Royale Brothers but Wolfghost is a sort-of offshoot/evolution of The Royale Brothers in some ways, though maybe harder -- sounding like prime-era Blackfoot fronted by Nick Cave or something. (I wonder if Joey's gotten sick of being compared to Nick Cave all the time; just for laughs, I googled it and it came up like 50 times.) Anyway, they had a couple of loose demos on their Bandcamp page a while ago, which they've since upgraded with two new recordings (including a faster, tough-boogie version of "My Woman") which you can listen to on repeat all day and then buy for two bucks if you want. Heck yes, you want.

Save Your Bullshit For Somebody Else

When I'd say "best band I've seen at The Whitney House all year" it used to mean something, except now it means a lot less seeing as this was only the second Whitney House show I've been to in the last 8 months, unless I just don't know how to count (which is possible). It's not to hard to figure out that the quality of the coverage on this blog is heavily tied to the quality of bands that both The Whitney House and Popeye's Garage bring in, and now that both places are slowing down or have gone under over the past couple of years, well, you see what happens. Downhill fuckin' city. Anyway, Catholic Guilt are from New London -- if you remember Mike from atrilliongallonsofgas (who was also in Ferocious Fucking Teeth for a while), he's in this band -- and yeah, they were pretty impressive. I've been hearing about them for a while (from people in bands who have played The Orphanage), but hardcore isn't the first thing that pops into my head when I think about New London, so I kinda let the talk just wash right over me, but they pretty much tore things up. Seth would probably help me out with the names of a few bands that Catholic Guilt sounded like, only Seth wasn't there that night, so I'm on my own. Maybe powerviolence with some extended heavy stoner/psych parts and a crazed motherfucker of a singer, I guess. Similar to what a bunch of bands Providence and Boston sound like, if that helps you at all.

This was the second time in two weeks that I saw The Excrementals, who're made up of a bunch of New Haven people who've been in a bunch of other bands I've seen before (although for the life of me I can't remember the other band that Joe used to sing for, maybe when I remember I'll edit this) (oh, wait, it was Loach, I think). They're your basic no-frills punk band, not crusty or street or anything like that. Here's a video you can watch, from a show that wasn't at Whitney House:


Sorry that it's so small, but we're way over budget on our video streaming this month.