Not Your Scene

Category: Review

  • Earth Crisis – Destroy the Machines (1995)

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    Bobby D.
    in

    If *Destroy the Machines* didn’t change your life, you were either too drunk to care or too scared to listen. When Earth Crisis dropped this slab in 1995 (not 2001—Victory repressed it later, but get your history straight), it hit like a cinderblock to the teeth of the hardcore scene. Straight edge had existed, sure—Minor…

  • Converge – Jane Doe (2001)

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    Bobby D.
    in

    *Jane Doe* is the sound of a body being dragged through broken glass—agonizing, relentless, and beautiful in its own vicious way. This isn’t your cool guy’s metalcore playlist fodder. This is teeth-on-concrete, heart-on-fire chaos that dropped like a pipe bomb in 2001 and still hasn’t stopped echoing through basements, squats, and busted headphones ever since.…

  • Acrid – Sea of Shit (2000)

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    Bobby D.
    in

    Just when you thought Canadian hardcore peaked with Shotmaker and Union of Uranus, Ontario’s Acrid crawls out of the Great Lakes rust belt to deliver the most pissed-off slab of millennium-end fury since Capitalist Casualties’ “Disassembly Line.” This isn’t your polite Canadian stereotype bullshit – this is 28 minutes of pure, unfiltered rage against everything…

  • Aftershock – Through The Looking Glass (1999)

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    Bobby D.
    in

    Some records hit like a punch. Through The Looking Glass by Aftershock doesn’t hit—it claws, twists, and drags you into its world, then spits you back out wrecked and wide-eyed. Just dropped on Devil’s Head in ’99, this is a scorched statement from a band that’s long outgrown the shadows they started in. Forget the…

  • Arkangel – Prayers Upon Deaf Ears (1998)

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    Bobby D.
    in

    If you thought Europe couldn’t produce hardcore as apocalyptic and unrelenting as the States, Prayers Upon Deaf Ears by Arkangel will rip that smug idea straight from your skull. This 1998 scorcher out on Released Power Productions is a hate-fueled, metallic sermon delivered from the crumbling altars of Belgium’s brutal hardcore underground. It doesn’t ask…

  • Acme – …To Reduce The Choir To One Soloist (1996)

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    Bobby D.
    in

    This thing doesn’t play nice. Acme’s …To Reduce the Choir to One Soloist, just out on Edison Records, isn’t here to win over the crowd. It’s here to annihilate it. This record is a bomb—detonated and still ringing in your ears days after you drop the needle. It’s violent, raw, and intentionally ugly, like a…

  • Review: Abhinanda – Senseless (1996)

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    Bobby D.
    in

    There’s a certain kind of desperation that only comes from isolation—the kind that births movements, not trends. Senseless, the 1996 full-length from Sweden’s Abhinanda, bleeds with that desperation. Not the kind you pity, but the kind that makes you clench your fists, bite your tongue, and run headfirst into whatever wall’s in front of you.…

  • Ascension – The Years Of Fire (1996)

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    Bobby D.
    in

    Cleveland’s underground just delivered another crushing blow to anyone stupid enough to think Ohio hardcore peaked with Integrity. While everyone’s jerking off to the latest Victory Records bullshit, Ascension has been quietly perfecting the art of controlled chaos in the same basements that spawned Confront and Face Value. Don’t underestimate Cleveland’s current crop of bands…

  • A chorus of disapproval – Truth Gives Wings To Strength (1994)

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    Bobby D.
    in

    Hardcore needs a wake-up call every few years—a slap to the face when it gets too comfortable, too predictable, too full of posers saying all the right things but doing fuck all. Truth Gives Wings to Strength is that slap. A Chorus of Disapproval didn’t come to play nice or stroke your nostalgic fantasies of…

  • Abnegation – Extinguish The Sickness (1994)

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    Bobby D.
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    Holy shit, Erie fucking Pennsylvania just delivered the hardest punch to the gut since Integrity’s “Those Who Fear Tomorrow.” While everyone’s been circle-jerking over the latest Victory Records nonsense, Abnegation has been quietly perfecting the art of pure, unadulterated hatred. Don’t sleep on Erie’s scene just because it’s not Cleveland or Syracuse. This rust belt…

  • Afghan whigs – Gentlemen (1993)

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    Bobby D.
    in

    What the fuck happened to Cincinnati? First we get the goddamn deal and now Greg Dulli’s selling his soul-baring confessions to major label suits. But hold up before you write this off as another indie sellout story. The Afghan Whigs always operated on the fringes of our scene anyway. While bands like Bitch Magnet and…

  • Black Flag – Damaged (1981)

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    Bobby D.
    in

    If you want to know what it feels like to get your face sanded off by a record, drop the needle on Black Flag’s Damaged. This isn’t just an album—it’s a declaration of war, a middle finger to the mainstream, and a sonic punch in the gut that still leaves bruises four decades later. Forget…