Badr Vogu, Negative Standards, DHC, and Arrastrados

The Blogspot program is being a chump about some of my photos so I'm just going to go with what I have. This show was another killer one at the Swamp. I freely admit that the proximity to my house of this venue endears it to me but they have been bringing some really rad bands there lately. I believe this was an all locals show with Badr Vogu, Negative Standards, DHC, and Arrastrados.

I don't think that this was their first show but Arrastrados are a brand new crust band from the North Bay. They have two female singers who trade off screams, one a bit prettier and the other totally gnarly. The PA was fucked up so when the gnarly screams singer was singing, she was totally blasting out the sound and it sounded incredible.

DHC played next and they were a lot of fun. The Swamp is a pretty enclosed space so Eric really got up in the crowd's face. This really is a solid band and despite the name, they keep it together. With a name like Drunken Hardcore you don't really expect much out of them.

Negative Standards are always quality. Here's an elusive photo where you can see both Wills' faces in the same shot.

Badr Vogu closed things up. They have really been playing a lot and the set is getting pretty tight. You can tell that they are a touring band now. They are getting a little theatrical with lots of feedback and adding more samples. It keeps getting better.

No Statik, DHC, Face the Rail, the Deadbeats, Side Effects

It has been way too long since I updated and there are a lot of shows I've been to that I'm going to have to give the rush job to. Like this one: No Statik, DHC, Face the Rail, Side Effects, and the Deadbeats. I'm pretty sure this happened on Feb. 5th and was a birthday show for the rad lady who runs the Swamp whose name is probably something like Allie. There's no pictures for this one because I had the pleasure of getting a ride and was partying at my house pre-show and forgot the damn camera. This was a really rad show out at Burnt Ramen, which I don't think I'd been to for almost a year.

I don't remember Side Effects at all, I probably didn't like them and hung out in the back. Face the Rail gets better each time I see them. They keep getting more garage and less hardcore as they feel out their sound more. It was my first time seeing DHC and they were a lot better than I expected. Fast '80s style hardcore with lyrics about drinking. The members of this band are people I've seen around and, for the most part, wrote them off as punk rock fuckups who were more into partying than music. I was wrong, somehow these dudes pull it all together into a pretty good band. And yeah they party. Immediately after the set, Eric the singer jumped off stage, ran to the bathroom, and threw up about 7 times.

No Statik are always awesome. I probably gush enough about them as it is but this show was fun because there was enough space in the room for people to escape Ruby when she started crashing into people. You could see the apprehension on people's faces as they shuffled backward when she charged across the floor at them, trying to look like they weren't running away and losing any punk points.

The Deadbeats finished out the night but the car I was riding in left early so I didn't see much of them. They played throwback rock 'n' roll and some kids got a little dancey. I had come to see a punk show so they were a little strange for the bill and I wasn't stoked on them but they seemed pretty good. I'll have to give them a second chance when I haven't been watching a bunch of hardcore bands.

Sorrower, Badr Vogu, Negative Standards, Burial Tide, Hellbeard

This show happened at Victory Warehouse in Oakland on Jan. 29. There were some bad bands. Like Hellbeard, they sucked. If a new metal band tried to play stoner noise it would sound like this.

Second up was Negative Standards. I see them a lot lately but they're always good. And Will is always good for a pissed off looking picture:

The Burial Tide features Greg from Thousandswilldie on drums and is a really boring ambient stoner band that sounds like there is too much bad emo being listened to by someone in the group. They have a keyboard player who plays facing away from the audience. I want to stab him in the back of the skull. I just want to see Greg's next great fastcore band or an awesome metal band. I know he's more than capable of that shit.



Sorrower from Arizona played next and they were pretty competent scumbag death metal. It wasn't fucking great but it was solid. If I hadn't hated two of the three previous bands then I would have liked them more. They had some fat dudes in the band so that's cool.

Badr Vogu played last. They are good still. I was pretty wrecked by the end of their set, probably from the secondhand pot smoke. Yeah, that's it.

Vaccuum, Occult Blood, Pig Heart Transplant, Ivens

This show happened Jan. 28 at the Five Points Art House in SF which is the cool new all ages basement in the Shitty that actually has good bands regularly. Two of the bands on this bill were cult underground heroes from Australia and one was a supergroup side project so the cred was in abundance for how small the show was.

The first band was the Ivens from Australia. It was a two piece hip hop noise thing that was kind of cool when I first started watching them but they got progressively less interesting because they pretty much did the same thing the entire set which was growling atonal rapping over simple beats and amp fuzz. Great band for a comp but not a whole LP.



Occult Blood played second and shared members with the Ivens. They played weird and crazy powerviolence with a saxaphone. It was rad and reminded me of Colored Rice Men a bit.

Pig Heart Translplant is a side project of Jon from Iron Lung. He told me about the band like a year ago and I finally got to check them out live. While they set up I noticed that on drums was Greg Wilkinson from Laudanum and Brainoil, all of a sudden people were twice as stoked on the band and they hadn't even played yet. This band is punishing. Slow in a grinding way and noisy. Word on the street is that they call it industrial music but that sure as fuck left any Coal Chamber song I heard in the '90s in the dust.


Last up was Vaccuum and they killed it as usual. I hadn't seen them in a basement before, they went off. Beards, fists, and hair were flying.

Surrender and Arctic Flowers

I don't know if I'm built to be a regular blogger, I'm so far behind it's embarrassing. This show happened a month ago on Jan. 26 at the Hazmat in Oakland. It was a peace punk show so I didn't really care much about the bands other than Surrender who play the whole noisy peace punk pretty singing/angry shouting thing really well. I would have loved this band so much when I was 19. Now I'm old and crusty and hate everything so I primarily went to the show to meet up with friends and say hi to Surrender folks. There was a band that opened but they were so great that I forgot their name and don't care.

The headlining band was Arctic Flowers from Portland. They do a less interesting and poppier version of what Surrender does. They aren't as good but competent. The best part of their set was right at the end when some douchebag moshed into a girl and knocked her over and she jumped up and belted him in the face a few times.


There were a lot of hot girls at this show. I need to go to more shows like that.

PLF,Flagitious Idiosynchrosy in the Dilapidation (FID), Bastard Noise, Capitalist Casualties, Despise You, Population Reduction

The second day (Jan. 22) of the Short, Fast, and Loud fest was even more brutal than the first. I got in for free on Yosef's plus one so no waiting in line for me. There were a bunch of taco and nacho fixings in the stoar and I ate a lot of rad tacos waiting for bands to start.


The first band up was Population Reduction. They were just kind of OK rather than fucking awesome like all the other bands on the bill that night. They did have a cool moment when Dave from PLF and Athena from Voetsek got on stage and they did a Terrorizer cover.


PLF is the best grind band in the world, that's just the way it is. They were my favorite act of the entire fest.


I never really dug Despise You that much, other than the awesome name, but this show they were on some next level shit. The last few times seemed like they hadn't played together in a long time and it wasn't on the way it was this time. The woman that they usually trot out late in the show to awkwardly do vocals on a few songs was fully in the band and going nuts with rad call and response parts. The whole band seemed way more energized and down to be playing and being on stage together. This picture pretty much captured their set, there was a lot of stagediving.


Capitalist Casualties are more of an iconic band than one that I actually like a lot. I have a few of their records on my ipod and I like the music but they just aren't one of my favorite powerviolence bands despite being a very influential force in that scene. They were better than I've ever seen them at this show. Bands generally seemed really stoked to be playing this fest and bands that I'm not super stoked on blew me away. The place was totally packed when they played and the closest I felt like getting was hanging out in the sound booth, hence the photo.


I made sure to come inside early for FID because I wanted to get up close to check them out. This was the first time they had been to California from Japan and I've been stoked on their music and the video of the set they played the first time they came to North America. Usually when you see a band with a bunch of cute girls in it, you don't really expect much out of them musically because that's kind of a gimmicky way to make a band more popular. FID just fucking tears. I don't like them because of their bone-ability, they just plain are a kickass band. There were a few hip fucks in the crowd that would shout out how adorable they were. Those people were moshed into, hard.


Closing the night was Bastard Noise which was about as different as you could get from the other bands that played while still being in the realm of a powerviolence band. They are more of a slow and noisy band with blistering fast parts. A woman that I see around and always forget what band she is in runs a bunch of sound processors to make crazy ambient noise. I hear that the box and the equipment she uses is the old Man is the Bastard rig, and so is the bass player. He seems like a pretty nutty dude. He kept yelling at Will the sound guy about the feedback his amps were making and insisting that the sound was coming over the p.a. At the end of the set he turned down his master volume before switching off and it went away. He looked kind of sheepish, but still a bit crazy. By the time they finished about half the crowd had left. I looked around and the room was nothing but the older weirdos who were really into this kind of music. All the kids and hipsters had left the building. I wish every show was like that.

Brutal Truth, Iron Lung, Plutocracy, Lack of Interest: Short, Fast, and Loud fest

I've fallen super behind. Too much partying. This show was on Jan. 21 and was the first night of the Short, Fast, and Loud 'zine's 10 year anniversary fest at Gilman. Those fucking people know how to put on a show. Almost every active fastcore band that would pack the house played this thing. Both shows were the highest grossing shows at Gilman ever, which makes it the biggest weekend Gilman has ever had. The line was long.

The first band was DHC which I literally got in the door only to see the part where they said, "we're DHC, goodnight." They sounded pretty good from outside. I'm doing a metal band with the singer and I'd imagine that any band he's in would be pretty decent since he has rad taste in music.



The second band up was Iron Lung which is lame because they are one of the biggest drawing bands on the bill. They killed it as usual, it was not an issue at all to see them two nights in a row and not being stoked. They even played the same set, but they are all really good songs.

After Iron Lung, Voetsek played. I was stoked on them when they were a thrash punk band 10 years ago. They got caught up in the stupid thrash metal revival in the punk scene and now they pretty much suck. I don't even like to watch them play. In fact I went across the street to the Pyramid Brewery where Brutal Truth and members of Capitalist Casualties and PLF among others were drinking. It was the fucking cred party at the bar. I was not the coolest person in the room.

I had never seen Plutocracy but I have smoked weed with one of the dudes who plays guitar. They had a lot of sound issues with their sampler and gave my friend Will the sound guy a lot of shit about it. They were rad Best Coast powerviolence with a lot of vato tendencies. I support this.


I've seen Lack of Interst a couple of times but I always get them confused with Despise You, who played the next night. It seems like when one of these bands plays up here, the other comes along and they have some common characteristics. Lack of Interest is better in my opinion. Brutal and fast LA powerviolence and a great show.

After Lack of Interest's set I ran into Stinkweed from Plutocracy and we reconnected on our bro-down a couple weeks before at the Hatred Surge show. He invited me to smoke weed with him and I got tore up.


Brutal Truth closed the show. They played for a long time and by the end I was ready to go. I was so messed up I had a hard time seeing the band in focus and there were so many people there I couldn't get up to the front. Hence the picture of the backs of people's heads and the Gilman heater. They are a good band but not everything they ever wrote needs to be played in one sitting, especially the family song that they closed the set with. It sucked. I can mark that legendary band off my list of acts to see but it would have been nice if the sound was working right.

I had to leave my car there and get a ride home with Chuck.