The RadioActivist

Buried in the annals of American hardore punk history is San Jose’s Executioner, who after 25 years finally put forth an official release for their 1982 demo Fix Me/Hellbound. Essentially a local band who generally stayed within eyeshot of the California coastline from their inception in 1982 to end in 1983, Executioner did share the stage with a handful of legendary acts including TSOL, Crucifix, Social Distortion, the Faction, Bad Posture, Social Unrest and Redd Kross (who were still known as Red Cross at the time) to name a few. Although alleged to be revolutionary in the release’s press materials, Fix Me/Hellbound came some six years after the formation of Black Flag (and four years after Black Flag’s “Fix Me”) at a time when hardcore had pretty much already spread across the country from the East and West coasts to the nether-regions like Minneapolis and Detroit. And while Executioner’s sound isn’t a total copy job of other West Coast hardcore at the time, it wasn't all too di...

Of all the retro styles bands are aping today and turning into their own, what sound is conspicuously absent in releases of the past few years is that of the early Southern California punk scene. No, not the SoCal hardcore of Black Flag, Uniform Choice or the Circle Jerks, but the quirky, quasi-melodic punk of bands like the Vandals, the Angry Samoans and D.I.. That’s what Adams Dagger has masterfully revisited, and it should come as no surprise that they happen to hail from Long Beach, California. At times amusing and at times disturbing, the most prevailing set of adjectives to describe Adams Dagger’s self-titled release would be “delightfully catchy yet unrefined.” Not just in their name (an 18th century slang term for “penis”) but even more so in their music and lyrics. With simple, melodic basslines and straight-ahead drumming, Adams Dagger doesn't need to soak their approach in allegiance to the past to recall the formative years of California punk. Whether it’s a brutally op...

Somewhere between raw DIY hardcore, crust and slightly slower, extended, powerviolence is Short Changed, a California quintet that lives up to its name. Resembling more the hardcore of the early 1980s than most of those claiming to represent the genre today, Short Changed doesn't entirely throw back to the past. Lyrically, many of the album’s topics address present-day issues, such as the verbal chiding of “Reinventing Against Me!” and the four-second “Morally Bankrupt,” which simply proclaims, “Two girls, one cup, ‘nuff said.” The former is a bit more derisive, lashing “Don’t tell me what to do / I've got it on my own” to a breakneck snare rhythm. The band also drops a cover of “Hard as Fuck,” an Against All Authority song from Destroy What Destroys You that came out in the mid-'90s. Still, there are plenty of themes that are just as relevant today as they would have been 30 years ago. The 45-second “Pipebomb Party” is one of the band’s more incisive sets of lyrics, even i...

Attitude Adjustment is one of those moderately obscure bands that never received the attention they deserved and stayed fairly below the radar despite their relatively high profile on a local level. Proof is in both this re-release compilation on punk archive experts Taang! and the smattering of fliers across the liner notes that document billing alongside such immortal acts in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s as DRI, Suicidal Tendencies, Circle Jerks, Discharge, RKL, Poison Idea and even NOFX. The Collection is a three-piece assemblage of Attitude Adjustment’s full-length studio discography spanning 1986’s American Paranoia, 1988’s No More Mr. Nice Guy and 1991’s Out of Hand. In what looks on paper like somewhat of a revolving-door lineup, the only constant in the group is drummer Chris K., while guitarists, bassists and even singers drift in and out. AA’s snotty thrash-punk does nothing to belie their juvenile lyrics and half-baked ideas. But this is without a doubt the charm of the 16 s...