The RadioActivist

Formed in 1979, the Varukers were one of the first bands to immediately follow suit after Discharge paved the way for the waves of D-beat soundalikes thereafter. This release is a remastered version of the 2004 compilation that combines the Varukers’ 1998 LP, Murder, along with the 1994 EP, Nothing’s Changed. Those familiar with D-beat probably fall into two distinct categories: devotees to the style, and those who find it preposterous to base an entire genre off one drum pattern. I guess I’m somewhere in between, because I find myself enjoying most of this album despite the less-than-groundbreaking approach. Murder is fairly thrashy and faster than what one might expect, save for a few more mid-tempo tracks (and I use that term loosely) like “Genocide” and “Eradicate the Problem”. The lyrics are pretty much the standard, gloomy left-wing rhetoric of the crust punk and anarcho-punk lore, like “Nightmare Vision”: “Here lies our earth / Its dead in torment / The cancers been caused by ou...

Hellbastard emerged from their 15-year dormancy in 2009 with the simultaneous release of The Need to Kill and Eco War EP. While the former was a fairly decent studio full-length, Eco War comes off as an unloved and inferior little brother, slightly resembling the full-length but not given the same level of care and attention in songwriting the LP received. With just five tracks including a reprise of “Going Postal,” whose original was on The Need to Kill (and the reprisal appears here in lower-grade form), Eco War is pretty scant. The second song, “Sea Shepherd” is probably the best of the bunch if only for its advocacy of the activist conservation organization, and despite some fairly mediocre lyrics and cheesy vocal effects: “In tune with Gaia, in tune with Gaia / Stoke the fires / Of the whalers' pyre.” “Woe, the People” enters with tired butt-rock metal riffs before morphing into more of a swamp-boogie jam, and at five-and-a-half minutes is just way too drawn out. The followin...

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...

Despite being often recognized for their role in helping shape the budding crust punk scene of the 1980s, it was the metallic crossover thrash style of their 1990 LP Natural Order that garnered Hellbastard the accolades that have stuck through two decades despite a 15-year hiatus. As such, it only makes sense that upon the band’s 2008 reunion and subsequent revival, the same approach be taken for their comeback album, 2009’s The Need to Kill. Opening with a brooding “Enter Sandman”-esque guitar lead and rather unsettling series of labored whispers, Hellbastard spends the entire three minutes of their first track building into the following song “Going Postal.” With its flittering double-bass and piercing metal squeals, Hellbastard shows little resemblance to their anarcho-crust upbringing while describing the forces that push people to the brink of homicidal insanity. “Anthropological Angst I” is a strange 20-second hillbilly-sounding interlude that leads into the thrashy “Stop Your Wh...

The grinding cacophony of crust punk and playful upstrokes of ska have rarely joined hands, and even more rarely done so with any semblance of style or skill. Despite their squatting lifestyle and poor hygiene, the crack rock steady of Choking Victim and Leftover Crack generally gets shut out of the elitist crust punk scene while the Subhumans and Citizen Fish are really more anarcho bands with some ska tendencies. So for all intents and purposes, Mouth Sewn Shut marched into a new territory of checkered dumpster divers and nihilistic rude boys with their debut Pandemic = Solution. If the title of the delightfully fatalistic Doomed Future Today isn't any indication of what to expect on this record, song titles like “When Is it Going to End,” “World War 3” and “I Hate It” should leave no doubt. Featuring half of Toxic Narcotic (including vocalist Bill Damon), Mouth Sewn Shut play a combination of about one-third faithful crust punk, another third grimy, distorted reggae, and the las...