I suppose playing the song "Mental disorder" to that epically annoying colleague constantly claiming that he loves to listen "to a bit of everything" - which always means "a lot of nothing" - and seeing his reaction of utter disbelief and barely concealed disgust could be the funniest thing to do with this Ep. Neither surprising nor curious at all: how could someone considering that listening to Marilyn Manson once in high-school is similar to living and breathing for the almighty D possibly take listening to D-Clone? If anything the band is a wanker remover. The most curious thing about this ..read more

Life on Earth is full of mystery. It seems that some things just cannot be explained rationally. Without even looking at the not so distant past when ignorance ruled mightily and people believed that the plague was a punishment from a bearded wanker who lived among the clouds or that the world would collapse on January 1st, 2000 at midnight because of a bug, some stuff do remain inscrutable, deeply enigmatic and baffle even the most clever minds of our time like mine. Who took a piss on my mate Paul's car on New Year's Eve? Who stole my shark-shaped tea infuser at work (I suspect "mean Karen ..read more

I did not realize how long Besthöven's discography was until I started writing this Pulitzer-level masterpiece. I was of course aware of the band's fecundity (it could more accurately be referred to as "a solo project", although Fofäo dislikes the term, or oxymoronically as "a one-man band" but then how do you even define what "a band" really is and what qualifies as one?) but not quite to that extent. I understood that I had not even listened to a lot of Besthöven's body of work. In general, I do check the band's new releases because I often like what I hear and because they are often split r ..read more

This split between Deathtribe and Kriegshög can be rightly considered, from a commoner's perspective, as the sonic equivalent of a bollocking of the highest magnitude on the official scientific scale (based on loudness of the riffs, aggression of the vocal delivery and sense of dread before the wall of noise), the kind of bollocking that will be remembered for generations to come. If you sold you mum's one good ring to a neighbour always rumoured to be "up to no good" in order to buy the last Fifa video game, you'd get a similarly massive bollocking. Long after you are dead, mothers will be li ..read more

This is a record I actually bought fairly recently, out of nowhere really, at a local punk gig that had rather melodic bands on the bill. I always check out record stands in case something decent got lost in the midst of all the usual crap (or fast food punk as I wittily call it) and, as the night proved it, you never know what you are going to come across. To find this Ep, 17 years after its release, was unlikely and I imagine it had been sleeping in the box since it came out after a record trade. It might seem curious but then some distros have been sleeping for ages and only see the light d ..read more

I recently listened to Hard Skin's song "Not messing around", a banger telling the story of a proper skinhead, quite likely a supporter of Millwall FC who is faithful to the traditional way of life. Most of all it's about a simple man who strives to live his better life and if it must include dancing the tango and the foxtrot, drinking whisky instead of bitter, then so be it. Once a bootboy always a bootboy as the saying goes. Inspiring shit indeed. Working-class heroes ain't messing around and if this song doesn't motivate you to get off your fat arse, what will?  Do you know who else ..read more

This Ep is so quintessentially from the noughties that playing it again after some time was a bit like time traveling to a different era altogether when the internet was not completely taken for granted yet and still felt new. At the time being on Myspace was an issue in the scene which shows how far we've gone. This Ep made me realize how much I am, too, from the 00's and how I grew, as a punk and a vaguely promising young man, throughout this decade. In 2000, streetpunk seemed to me like the ultimate way of life, a happy land where you could be happy just by drinking beer "with the boyz", wa ..read more

Being a little too young to have witnessed Scatha live is one of those regrets I have had for a while, one that will likely never fade although it is clearly not my fault (not like that time I actually gave away for free my copy of Fall of Efrafa's Owsla, a first pressing that costs no less than 100€ today). From what I have read the band was a powerhouse live with a show-stealing drummer. And it doesn't happen that often. There are usually two situations that makes one take a look and notice the drummer during a gig. It's either because he or she is excellent and you just look in awe, enthral ..read more

The first time I saw the Contravene logo I thought it was a chicken or maybe a fat water fowl or common pigeon. It was a little bewildering. Even back then, in 2003, when my doomed quest to know everything there is to know about crust, anarchopunk and patches was still in its infancy, I already knew that there were only a couple of bird species that punk bands were legally allowed to use if they wanted to earn the bitter respect of their peers. There was the dove for the anarchopunk bands, a symbol inherited from the original 80's waves and popularized by peace-loving soap-dodging teenagers li ..read more

France, Paris especially, is sometimes seen, from abroad, as a place of sophistication, of culture and of complexity, a country where love, sentiments, melancholy somehow merge romantically with existentialism and poststructuralism (and accessorily with promiscuity, then known as "free love"). Charismatic philosophers, fit and smart poets, pipe-smoking Marxist singer and profound intellectuals would all be rubbing shoulders at conferences, engage in heated yet challenging debates, smoke far too much and get angry with self-righteous passionate class.  And, even though I personally evolve ..read more