Imagine one of the only weird hardcore bands from your hometown (you know, the one that listened to Crucifucks and Flipper coming up more than the usual suspects) gets bored with hard fast rules and were always into stranger music and the possibilities of sonic extremes in experimental industrial music and noise and makes a band you think would be good on a bill with Chat Pile, Mclusky/The Future of the Left or The Jesus Lizard. Or all three (four if you want to count The Future of the Left separately). TRAUMA KIT is that band from Boise, Idaho, a town that has a lot of secret talent. “PLATEAU” is the first song on the group’s new album TRAIN WRECKS TAKE TIME (which dropped February 23, 2024) is a caustic and seething bit of work that sounds like the story of dead end lives in dead end towns in dead end countries in a dead end civilization. It also sounds like what you do to express the pain of living through those situations and coming into the harrowing disillusion of having the realization of what you’ve inherited as a human in this time crash into you. It also comes across like the next searingly dystopian science fiction film made by Brandon Cronenberg if he teamed up with Harmony Korine for a story idea and really nailed what future looks like for most of us but the story of someone struggling to find some meaning and dignity in the detritus of world history yet not being completely hopeless and finding some glory in the struggle against the level best attempts of late capitalism to crush us into nothing. Musically you’re going to hear the aforementioned but also a bit of late 80s Voivod and maybe more than a little Shellac and a shred of Naked City. No complaints. Listen to “PLATEAU” on Spotify (Apple Music or Bandcamp) and you may recognize some of your own intrusive thoughts in the words and thrilling collisions of sound.
Slutavverkning bring a blunt menace and aggression tempered by an elegant artfulness to the songs from its new album Levande Charader. Perhaps most exemplary of the harrowing and mind-altering listening journey you’ll undertake can be experienced in the music video by Richard Lukacs for the song “Grisar,” which is Swedish for “Pigs.” We see various sorts of pigs looking like they’re the subjects of a menacing horror movie even when nothing explicitly horrific happens during the course of the video. The guitar riff is cutting and clipped like something you might hear off a Shellac album that compliments perfectly the distorted, shouting vocals. But underneath is a haunted drone and toward the end of the song is a maddened free jazz saxophone section that heightens the sense of urgency and disgust that runs through the song. But that disgust isn’t the predictable, judgmental sort one might expect from some sort of nihilistic, misanthropic noise rock band that many of us know and love. No, the lyrics delivered in savage chunks in Swedish are about how there are many pigs around us including ourselves and the ways in which we can be encouraged to abuse each other and declare others an undesirable but in the end we’re all animals who are equal on a ground level no matter how many airs we might choose to put on in a pantomime of some elevated existential status. The song is so stark it really does suit the subject matter and fans of This Heat and modern noise rock/post-punk bands like Meat Wave and Sex Swing will appreciate Slutavverkning’s wild energy and uncompromising intensity. Watch the surreal and colorful video for “Grisar” on YouTube. Levande Charader is now available on digital and vinyl.
Snailbones is from Portland, Oregon but from jump “Dead Inside” sounds like the trio has been steeped in Chicago noise rock and early post-punk hardcore. Think Shellac (and of course Big Black), Articles of Faith, Naked Raygun and more recently Meat Wave. That angular, caustic guitar sound and scrappy spirit that made a lot of the aforementioned so compelling. And yes, the group has had some of its music mastered at Electrical Audio in Chicago with some tracks done by Bob Weston and Snailbones plans to record with Steve Albini in March 2023. So those bonafides check out. But none of that wouldn’t matter if music didn’t measure up. “Dead Inside” is almost accusatory in tone regarding the source of what leads to feeling dead inside and the song dynamics go beyond choppy, cutting, mutant punk aggression. The lyric lines and the music paired with it sound like they’ve been rough cut and stretched out with the jagged places left in place so that the potential danger hangs in every moment. Listen to “Dead Inside” on Spotify and follow Snailbones at the links below.
Jawbreaker at Fillmore Auditorium 4/8/22, photo by Tom Murphy
When Blake Schwarzenbach of Jawbreaker said at some point during that band’s set said something about how this is probably the punk tour of the year it seemed obvious. Even if one were inclined to contrarian impulses the fact that it was Jawbox headlining a bill that included Samiam, Face to Face and Descendents makes that more challenging to refute.
Samiam at Fillmore Auditorium 4/8/22, photo by Tom Murphy
Samiam started very early in the evening around 6:30 p.m. and its melodic punk sound had some unexpected grit to it live. There was an underlying catharsis of personal pain and loss the seemed to inform the songs and upon closer listen songs like “Dull” and “Capsized” in the set list hit hard and heavy yet in doing so made the need to make music to uplift without trivializing those feelings so urgent in a way that translated directly to the live performance.
Face to Face at Fillmore Auditorium 4/8/22, photo by Tom Murphy
Face to Face’s own anthemic punk while not as gritty as that of Samiam before them sure delved into topics deeper than one might expect from a band that is so closely associated with pop punk. But its songs exploring personal integrity and the core meaningfulness of life informed by a self-effacing humor and poetic insight were undeniably effective. “Walk the Walk” and “It’s Not Over” really made that obvious and how Face To Face injects some inventive guitar work into a style of music that can be a bit predictable three decades in. Trever Keith also gets points for throwing some friendly shade in saying how he enjoyed his Dodgers handling “your Rockies.” Fortunately people laughed and didn’t take the comment too seriously.
Descendents at Fillmore Auditorium 4/8/22, photo by Tom Murphy
Descendents walked on stage and without a lot of preamble launched the set with “Everything Sux” like the legends of the whole pop punk world they are. Although there was a spirited joyfulness to the Descendents’ performance and they performed silly songs like “Wienerschnitzel” what became very apparent from the live show is how this music makes life’s everyday problems and struggles seem manageable by humanizing them, by pointing out the humor value and poignancy of it all even when it feels its most painful. Setting those moments of peak emotional turmoil to energetic and tuneful punk songs fortifies the mind. While it may not be saying it’s all going to be okay or something unrealistic like that it at least suggests these experiences don’t have to sink you and that has been an important thing to hear for years and even now which is part of why Descendents and the bands it influenced remain resonant and relevant. And it wasn’t all songs about being a young, angsty person, and material like “Global Probing,” “Clean Sheets” and “When I Get Old” transcend the adolescent mindset while staying rooted in a spirit of youthful exuberance and a willingness to feel all those feelings and not hide from them in the name of growing up. Like burying your emotions just because you reached a certain age or have a “real” job and a mortgage and marriage really worked for anyone anyway.
Jawbreaker at Fillmore Auditorium 4/8/22, photo by Tom Murphy
After Jawbreaker split in 1996 its cult following seemed to increasingly expand for over twenty years. Its anthemic pop punk songs infused with literary yet accessible lyrics found a wide audience among fans of pop punk but follow the creative threads even from its debut album Unfun and there’s more thoughtfulness, inventive guitar work and unconventional rhythms than one might expect given its general legacy as one of the star bands of 90s pop punk. And live the sharper edges of the music and its more experimental instincts were starkly obvious. The infectious melodies and emotionally vulnerable vocals that have made it a massive influence on emo were there to be sure. One was struck by how much The Clash probably influenced the songwriting not to mention an obvious inspiration like Descendents. But in its most stretching out past the boundaries of standard punk moments, when the band engaged in noisy soundscapes mid-song or near the end it felt like getting to see a Steve Albini band though more Shellac than Big Black. It had that combination of focused intensity and wildness that you don’t hear in much punk that got too popular. And that’s when Jawbreaker was at its most exciting from a musical standpoint.
Jawbreaker at Fillmore Auditorium 4/8/22, photo by Tom Murphy
For just three guys on stage Jawbreaker unleashed a lot of energy all while maintaining a stance of self-deprecating irreverence that you’d hope to hear. If you include the encore the set consisted of almost all of Dear You with some choice tracks from 24 Hour Revenge Therapy thrown in (“Boxcar,” “Condition Oakland” and “Jinx Removing”) and before performing “Basilica” to close out the show, Schwarzenbach told us something like how they would leave us with one last psychedelic mindfuck to take with us before retreating to the comfort of our everyday abodes. Given the extravagant sonic freakout that blazed out the show, at least the band delivered as it did the entire performance.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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