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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HARDCORE NEWS 15.5 "Demo Zone II"

More demos more demos more demos more demos more demos more demos more demos more demos more demos more demos demos more demos more demos more demos more demos... from the year 2021

BURNING LORD - Demo #1 (Tribe Dream)

Unsurprisingly, once again a huge amount of newer bands are being drawn by 90's metalcore and the beaten ol' path TERROR/Hatebreed formula, kids holding guns in the usual gang photo cover, the whole shenanigan repeating itself, like it was widely discussed in Zack Nelson's podcast: in the end of the day, it's a fun and easy to be attracted to style. So when bands like BURNING LORD come along and keep it raw and simple, in the true old school hardcore essence, not unlike that LAYBACK band featured here last time, they usually stand out from the pack. Demo #2 scheduled for 2022 with already a certain anticipation building.

S.M.I.L.E. - Just S.M.I.L.E. (Delayed Gratification)

These dudes, reppin' Rubber City hardcore (Ohio), also tried something slightly different in their sound and boom, I got hooked! Got me thinking of 2010's Detroit hardcore and the whole Ghoul Gang collective. Tapes can be ordered here.

BIG SHOT - Demo (Tambores De Guerra)

Hudson Valley group bringing the right amount of metal in their hardcore, rooted in the 80's, almost Crossover Thrash like Dead Heat. It would be a shame if they stopped here, more please!

SMASH N' GRAB - Buffalo Hardcore (Edgewood)

Edgewood Records managed to build a name around them with not many but steady solid releases over the years and their newest signing by these newcomers from Buffalo keeps it going strong, demo tape out now.

STEDFAST - Willing To Give (Core Club)

Crunchy guitars check, mean Mike Judge-ish vocals check, gang/sing-a-longs check, you moshing check, hooded edgeman drawing check, Tampa Youth Crew into 2022 and beyond check. 

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HARDCORE NEWS 15 "Demo Zone"

Who remembers the great DEMO ZONE section hosted at Straight & Alert Records' website? In only a few minutes you were exposed to a bunch of cool new stuff coming from all corners of the globe. To save some time and sort of paying homage to Alex's label, here's a mini Demo Zone 2021:

LAYBACK - Demo (England)

I got a strong feel of NYHC: Where The Wild Things Are meets Leeds HC with this one, also couldn't help to compare them to fellow countryman in MASTERMIND. This project has the full old school hardcore package, including the raw production demo, very promising.

SUSPECT - Demo (Germany) 

 

Man... there's a new label/zine in Germany and they mean business! I'm talking about Collective Memory Records and their sick debut release with the also german dudes in SUSPECT followed by Tides Denied and Exhibition newest dope records, all killer no filler.

COSMIC JOKE - Demo (USA) 

 

This demo rocks hard, fast/short hardcore with slightly melodic parts not unlike Gorilla Biscuits and Kid Dynamite under a more modern take, it's COSMIC JOKE from Los Angeles.

OUTFACED - Demo (Germany)

From the same label that brought us Powerage comes OUTFACED, more quality raw pissed german hardcore. This one got me thinking of ALLxILL, fast with mean breakdowns.

SOUL HARVEST - "S/T" Demo (UK) 

 

Closing up this Demo Zone revival a tasty 3-song Crossover offering by SOUL HARVEST from Newcastle upon Tyne because Crossover bands are never too much... never enough!! All hail riffs galore!

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PEST CONTROL - Infestation / Rat Race

Location: Leeds, UK

Release: Self-released, 2021

More PEST, more THRASH!! New single out in April.

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POWERAGE - Demo MMXXI

Location: Düsseldorf, Deutschland

Release: STTW Records, 2021

POWERAGE's 2019 full-length Introjektion was a real blast I reckon, feels like storming through a minefield during an air raid, trying to grab your limbs and shit as they fall apart. Just recently they presented this new DEMO with a glimpse of what's to come, an ugly af future that is!

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NEKROMANTHEON - Visions Of Trismegistos

Location: Kolbotn, Norge

Release: Hells Headbangers, 2021

Behold the beast of 2021, bringing inspiration from ancient Egypt and Greek mythology to their old school Death/Thrash harder-than-ever sound, NEKROMANTHEON is on top of their game after 9 years since the last album came out.

This thing is so damn evil that it can blow a priest's head off just by listening to the opening riff, a true shredding machine working 32 minutes at high voltage. It's even more maddening to think they're just 3 dudes raising all this hell, so how they came up with this monstrous album "all the sudden" you may wonder?

They first appeared on my radar after they were featured in the sick SPEED N' SPIKES split series by Relapse Records around 2008 alongside other select Thrash acts such as Abigail, Rammer and Toxic Holocaust. Besides the killer music, all 5 split 7-inches forms a nice zombie-themed cartoon painel.

After that they recorded 2 stellar full-lengths and won the Norwegian equivalent to Grammy in 2012, the Spellemann Awards! Taking in consideration this background plus the fact they started in 2005, it all falls into place when you listen to Visons Of Trismegistos. In 2019 Duplicate Records came forward and re-released their awesome first EP We're Rotting with a bunch of extra tracks from splits and compilations, which is the version you'll be getting here.

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[We're Rotting LP + Speed N' Spikes Series]

NO LONGER AT EASE - Demo

Location: Charlotte, USA

Release: Self-Released, 2021

Artwork: Haleigh Cunningham

More demos coming your way! This one was suggested by Devin from Rejection Pact, I'm talking about North Carolina's NO LONGER AT EASE and their 4-song debut work.

As the first track progress my expectations about the band's main influence (due to name choice) were confirmed, you get strong vibes of late BEYOND and BATTERY.

Their background consist of 2 bands: the youthcrew band Substance and the fast and pissed Fading Signal. They took a bit of that rage out and added some melodic riffs, a formula that had a secure home in labels like Rivalry Records, thus bringing a lot memories back.

Such a strong start always raise the bar for whatever comes next, let the folks at React! hear it to see it skyrocket!

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WRECKAGE - Both Demos

Location: Connecticut, USA

Release: Scheme Hardcore, 2021

Representing Connecticut Hardcore into the new decade comes WRECKAGE and their second demo playing fast and to-the-point hardcore with strong Youth Crew influences! The good stuff are starting to pop up in 2021.

Tape out on Scheme Hardcore, first demo got a limited run by Dead At Birth Fanzine.

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