Anti You -Two Bit Schemes Cold War Dreams

Looking at the cover I expected some straight up dirty and raw crust or anarcho punk but in the end I got some upbeat and fast old styled hardcore/punk. I can’t say I wasn’t pleasantly surprised. The album starts off with a bang – Lobotomizer Man is a fast and damn catchy piece of hardcore with powerful, yet melodic guitars and tight beat. The rest of the songs don’t let down in intensity either, resulting in an aggressive hybrid of the best elements of hardcore, punk and rock’n’roll. This CD combines the new album, as well as Johnny Baghdad Ep and Pig City Life Ep. There’s not many musical or sound quality differences between the releases which means it’s all fun from start to finish. The true highlight of the album is the ability of the band to perfectly blend the positive punk aggression with melody. There's a whole load of catchy hooks, decent leads, crazy sing alongs and some absolutely brilliant vocals. Man, I tell you, some of these gang choruses can stick in your head for days! The tunes are ridiculously simple and catchy but far from being cliché. From the break-neck tempos to more melodic passages, this albums is pure win from start to finish. I can’t believe they’re not from Cali!

Review: Dloogi
Label: Six Weeks Records
Year: 2011
Band's website

Coke Bust - Lines In The Sand

This is first time that Lines In The Sand by a band with one of the coolest names in hardcore is available on CD format. Six Weeks Records made sure the album is worth your hard earned buck. It comes with 17 tracks from Lines In The Sand LP, and if that ain’t enough, you get 16 additional tracks taken from various band’s releases and compilations, including Fuck The Bar Culture 7”, demo 7” and The Faith cover. 33 tracks in total!

The strength of Coke Bust is that they while steadily dropping bombs of blasting hardcore, they maintain a decent level of groove. Their style can be described as an early 80's hardcore not unlike SSD or Negative Approach. The standout aspect of this album is that the band makes sure that the action never dies down. While most of the songs doesn’t even reach the 1 minute mark, they pack them with enough hooks, leads, breakdowns and neck breaking speed to keep things interesting and maintain a very high energy level. The lyrics is other thing that I like here. They touch many topics, both on socio-political and personal level, and ale delivered in a little bold, but always smart way. Far from preaching or cliché, but at the same make you can relate to the stuff they sing about.

Ok, I might not be into couple of the songs, but the majority is great. As the CD includes material from different releases from the band, song vary in terms of sound quality. And while it’s certainly a style of music that needs to be that slickly recorded, overall the production is decent with every instrument hearable most of the time. While I’m not the biggest fun of this type of sound, I appreciate seeing a band that knows their strengths and stick to what they’re best at.



Review by Dloogi
Label: Six Weeks Records
Year: 2010
Band's website