ALL THINGS OLD SCHOOL AWARDS - The Best Of 2021

Ugly music for an ugly year... yet a very prolific one for many bands despite all the shitstorm pouring non-stop onto our heads through 2021 and that transpires very well in the music you will hear here, a selection of 47 rabid tracks that will drill your ears and melt any old wax that has been stuck for who knows how long!

This edition won't be featured on Spotify, there are too many bozos doing it already there, besides who needs another damn playlist? Back to what's important, this selection features bands hailing from all over (Indonesia, Morocco, Brazil, Russia, Germany, Norway, Spain, Greece, Australia...) with a decent variety concerning the Hardcore Punk and Metal spheres. The highlight goes to The Chisel, Arm's Reach, GAME, Tower 7, Jalang and, once again, DEAD HEAT.

To make your quarantine experience moshier, you can stream on YOUTUBE or download (below) to meet all your offline needs... and now, without further ado, the "winners" are:

SIDE PUNK (Total time 1h05m)

01. HEADCOUNT - Stolen Time

02. ARM'S REACH - Time

03. FIREWALKER - Forever

04. INTERNAL - Terminate

05. HACKER - MDK

06. GAME - Shard

07. STIFF MEDS - Under The Boot

08. SCOWL - Trophy Hunter

09. THE CHISEL - So Do I

10. OCCUPATION - Beware Of The Light

11. CRUCIAL RESPONSE - S.K.I.P.

12. HEADCHEESE - Kick The Bucket

13. DESCENDENTS - Nightage

14. STINGRAY - Feeding Time

15. GOODBYE WORLD - At The Graveyard

16. C4 - Health Freak HeadStomp

17. FANTASY WORLD - Rules Of The Game

18. XCELERATE - Life's a Risk

19. WRECKAGE - Face In The Crowd

20. STEDFAST - Wrong & Right

21. TIDES DENIED - When Worlds Collide

22. METHOD OF DOUBT - One Million Copies Sold

23. AGE OF APOCALYPSE - Ghost (Hart Island)

24. LIFE'S QUESTION - A Prayer For My Old Man

25. BIG BOY - A/X

26. DARE - Hard To Cope

27. THE OTHERS - Living In Fear

28. COMBUST - Pull The Hammer

29. EXHIBITION - Adapt Or Die

30. JALANG - Cops N Klan

31. SPY - Negative Mind Power

32. ACADEMY ORDER - The Glow

33. CHAIN CULT - Always A Mess

34. TAQBIR - Aisha Qandisha

SIDE METAL (Total time 47min)

35. TOWER 7 - Green Piece

36. SKOURGE - Metal Up Your Ass

37. EKULU - World Of Uncertainty

38. PEST CONTROL - Rat Race

39. FACE FIRST - Visions In Hell

40. CERBERUS ATTACK - Combatir Al Fascismo

41. KILLING FROST - Midsummers Eve

42. HEAVY SENTENCE - Capitoline Hill

43 . HITTER - Hitter

44. WRAITH - Gatemaster

45. NEKROMANTHEON - Seven Rules Of Fate

46. ANGELUS APATRIDA - Indoctrinate

47. DEAD HEAT - AGE OF DH

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HALFMAST - Together (LP Version)

Location: Buffalo, New York

Release: Conquer The World Records, 1995

Nowadays, when revisiting and old obscure band you never know what you will find on the internet, a new record? High quality rips on main streaming services? Unreleased material? Usually nothing much. Well, in this case here, for HALFMAST basically all of the previous!

Bandcamp has become a great outlet for independent music and it often surprise us with long forgotten bands/records, mostly due to the effort of the ones envolved in those groups, likely here the works of Nick Baran, singer of Halfmast, Poison Planet and the guy behind Third Party Records.

HALFMAST was already featured here in the Ambassador Records write-up, now they ressurected the Together EP in its original intended length with 16 songs, most of it unreleased!! If it wasn't enough all the bands rare Demos and EPs were also uploaded, including an unreleased split 7".

Musically these newly uncovered songs are a bit rough on the edges, but given the time/period they were conceived they represent the resistance of the old school hardcore into the 90's where most were going post-hardcore or metalcore. I chose to upload here only the LP and the unreleased stuff, visit their site to fill your needs and donate at will.

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CASTIGO - Tu Caída

Location: Madrid, España

Release: Tambores De Guerra Discos, 2021

You may know Yoshi from Tambores De Guerra channel, but he also runs a label and plays in CASTIGO.

Boston hardcore by the way of Madrid, since 2017 they've been feeding us short blasts of rage sang in castellano, their debut EP Tu Caída just came out a few months back, 7 songs under 10 minutes. The title track taken from the 2020 promo was selected for last year's All Things Old School spotify thing.

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