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Category: Radness

0 Doomed Society Radio #84

March 24, 2014
by damieninbred
· Doomed Society · Podcasts · Radness

doomedsociety84

Well golly gee, I’m a bit late this time around! You see,I was having too much fun celebrating the death of the world’s most hated homophobe, and time just got away from me!

Thankfully I even remembered to put a new episode together! And let me just say, this one’s… this one’s pretty good. To celebrate Phelps’ death, I start off with some LIMP WRIST, a bit of RAPE REVENGE, and BEYOND PINK – to name but a few! But that’s not all! I have brand new tracks by AHNA and CETASCEAN to help celebrate their brand new split (co-released by PE, by the way!), and classics from G-ANX, STATE OF FEAR, and SCORNED. Oh, and a UK82 set, a modern punx set, and some post-punk goodies. All this and more in the least-worst two hour punk podcast of the week.

Go have a closer look and download it!

0 Sitting Targets: A Glimpse of Dial House – by Andrew J. Wood

March 18, 2014
by Comrade Black
· PE Web Zine · Radness

Punk rock cultures are rife with radical potential, aesthetic shock, and a diversity of visuals, sounds, ideas, spaces, and people. As is often the case with interesting cultural scenes, aesthetic movements, and political ideas, punk is also rife with contradiction. On such perplexing contradiction is the incredible diversity of people and places that punk occurs in. In my participation in various punk scenes in the U.S. and U.K., I usually inhabit a plethora of the putrid, damp, overcrowded basements, abandoned, dilapidated, and repurposed warehouses, the many hidden scabies-infested squats, and the piss-covered floors of pubs usually associated with punk’s underground. Yet, punk exists other types of spaces as well, and Dial House is one such example. I visited Dial House this summer because it is one of the most central, iconic sites of the anarcho-punk scene in England. For the benefit of anyone who may not know, a group of radical artists and writers has lived in this Victorian cottage in Essex on the edge of Epping Forest for over forty years, but Dial House is undoubtedly most widely known as the headquarters and home of the anarcho-punk group Crass, which existed from 1977 until 1984, and their record label which still does. They have also maintained what they call an ‘open house’ policy, inviting all travelers in need of shelter and food for a night to their home. This is the story of my first trip to Dial House and the wonderful reception I received there.

I set out from London early in the morning after a breakfast of soggy toast, a banana, and some horridly stale instant coffee. By mid-morning, I had become thoroughly lost, and I thought to myself that I couldn’t be in the right place. I had spent all morning trying to find this place, beginning with a walk from my hostel bed to the nearest Underground station at Bayswater, two transfers, a central line train to its northernmost stop in Epping, and a bus to the King’s Head. I walked through the door of the plain white building under the wooden sign labeled “Library,” a happy accident, and found myself in a dimly lit room half full of chest high bookshelves. There was someone that I couldn’t see seated in an office around the rear corner and conversing with a portly middle-aged man standing in the office doorway. “Yessah? Can I help you?” he said as he noticed me walking in.

“Uh, yeah, I’m looking for Dial House. Do you know where that is?” I answered, somewhat reservedly, keeping my figurative fingers crossed.

“Right,” he said, leaning back into the office with his torso to address whoever was inside, “there was another chap earlier looking for Dial House, yeah? That’s back uh…” His voiced trailed off and I couldn’t make out the rest. He emerged confidently a moment later, and pointing his hand said, “You go down this street here, take a right, and when the street ends there’s a little path between the gardens. Then you’ll get to the highway that it’s on.”

“Thanks,” I said with a nod.

“Cheers,” he responded as I left.

I walked outside and eventually found my way to an old road, comprised of a compacted dirt and gravel clearing between two tree lines, about two car widths wide. There was no one else on the road in either direction. All I could see as I walked along this hidden road were empty fields covered in meter-high beige/yellow grass underneath an ashen grey sky. Luckily it wasn’t raining that morning, but in England dryness is only a temporary condition. Looking up, I saw the sky was so full of clouds that they all seemed to run together, creating one giant smear of grey across the canvas of the sky, as if the natural color of the sky were not blue at all. The occasional bird chirps added to my sense of isolation, as not a single car or other sign of people could be heard.

Up a little ahead I heard a rustle in the bushes, like a badger or a deer that I had startled. Instead, I saw another backpacker, dressed in black jeans, an old tattered hoodie, and disheveled asphalt-black, curly hair, in some places matted and pressed, and in front hanging down to just above his eyebrows. The matted, clumped hair suggested that he hadn’t washed in a while. His pack looked even heavier than mine (no small feat to be sure), packed full of who-knows-what, bursting at the seams, and creating a noticeable amount of stretching tension on the shoulder straps. The rustle I heard was his struggle to put it back on after having a rest. His aesthetic immediately messaged to me that he was an ally.

I noticed on his right forearm, just below the rolled up black jacket sleeve, what appeared to be an anarchist tattoo. I peered a bit closer and saw that it was indeed a circle “A”, a peace sign, and a circle “E”, the trifecta common among anarcho-punks, i.e. standing for anarchy, peace, and equality. From what I could see, his tattoos looked old and sun-faded, a sort of charcoal color of splotchy grey rather than bold black, and the colors were shaded in a more disconnected fashion than smooth black. When I looked at his face, I could see a glistening flash of metal from his nose, a thin silver ring in the left nostril. His Anglo-white skin was thoroughly tanned, like the golden brown of a well-oiled baseball glove, the color of which blended into the lines on his forehead, suggesting a lifetime in the sunlight. I called to him, “Hey, uh…are you looking for Dial House?” I was simultaneously hoping that he spoke English, and that he too was going where I was going, and perhaps even knew the way.

“Yeah, you are too?” he replied with a cough, and in an U.S. English accent, “I think it’s just up that way,” and gestured to his right. As it turns out, we had been spending our morning the same way, including stopping in at the same library to ask for directions, not ten minutes apart. He introduced himself to me as Tom, an anarchist punk from Baltimore, and a musician like me. He had even played bass in A.P.P.L.E. a few years back! On the one hand, it may seem strange that two Americans would run into each other thousands of miles from home, in the middle of a country road in Essex (imagine how the librarian must have felt that morning!), but here we were, fellow travelers on what you could call a punk pilgrimage.

“You been in England long?” Tom asked me, keeping his eyes ahead on the road, but glancing out of the corner of his right eye at me.

“About a month. You?”

“Just a couple of days, I was staying in a squat in London, but it got evicted.”

“Shit, so you really need a place to stay, huh?”

“Yeah,” Tom answered, “I got a tent, but it’d be nice to stay for a least a few nights.”

“Do you know if it’s still an open house? Will it be weird, us showing up?” I asked Tom, as now the stakes had been raised.

“I don’t know, but I think so. Even if its not, it’s kinda a bucket list thing for me, you know? Have you read The Story of Crass?” Tom asked quizzically.

“Yeah, it’s really good,” I said, wondering how much might have changed at Dial House since the book was written.

“Yeah, I just re-read it, sort of get ready, you know? What about Shibboleth?” he asked, referring to the autobiography of Penny Rimbaud, co-founder of Crass and Dial House.

“No, I’d really like to though. I can’t find it. I think it’s out of print.”

“Really?” he asked with a surprised tone, a sort of verbal octave change, seeming to suggest that he had no problem finding a copy. As we walked discussing Crass, I began to wonder what Dial House would actually be like, compared to how it is discussed, understood, and symbolized in punk cultures. Stories around their open house policy, answering all fan mail, refusal to play commercial venues, dedication to underground distribution channels for their records and maintaining low prices (i.e. they consistently listed prices on their record covers, always far lower than was typical), coupled with their espoused anarchism has lent them an air of authenticity within punk circles. Beyond the establishment of Crass’s authenticity, they have also become a metric for comparison, the gold standard for how other punks’ authenticity is often measured. With all this in mind, I was teeming with anticipation to see if their home and their lives matched both their ideals, their visual and sonic aesthetic, and perhaps most importantly, their reputation. Seeking some reassurance, I asked Tom, “I wonder if a lot of punks still come here. Do you know what’s been going on here for the last 30 years? I haven’t really kept up with their music after Crass, I don’t really know much about Last Amendment.”

“I bet people still come, I mean, look at us!” Tom answered confidently.

Looking beyond a vast open field, we could see a line of trees in one direction, but couldn’t make out what was behind them. In the opposite direction, we could see a few buildings past a rusted brown and auburn sign that read “Private Road, No Pedestrians” in scrawled, sloppy white letters, not the most promising of signs when seeking an anarchist house. Neither direction looked inviting, and my feet throbbed with each step. Along the road we passed a tall, bald man standing next to an overgrown fence. He was easily thirty years our senior, and was more expensively dressed in clean khaki slacks and a flannel grey coat. He had a backpack at his feet, and was carefully avoiding the snags of the fence that some vines were wrapped around to pick blackberries, tossing a few into his mouth every few seconds. I averted my eyes and lowered my voice when he paused briefly from his berry picking, in the event that he owned this land and would not be welcoming to two crusty travelers. We kept walking towards the cluster of buildings, hunched over from the weight of our packs, as if there was an invisible cord connecting our foreheads to our feet. With each step, we could not only hear the crunch underneath our boots, but also the sounds of stretching fibers in our shoulder straps.

“Which way? Does this look right to you?” Tom asked.

“I’m not sure. I don’t really think it’s close to any other buildings though, do you? I’ve only seen pictures of it from the back. I guess I always thought it was pretty isolated,” I replied, as I pointed to a cluster of tall farm buildings fifty feet ahead. I had started to wonder silently if this was such a good idea to come here.

“No, I don’t think that’s it,” he replied with a slight, dejected sigh.

Now a smell of dampened air joined the cloudy sky and increasing wind; yes, rain would be upon us shortly. And we were in the middle of nowhere. We were looking for a place neither one of us knew how to find, and I’m not even sure I could find my way back to the King’s Head bus stop. We turned back the other way, followed the road back to the fork, and went the other direction past the trees. Roughly thirty minutes later we decided we had made a mistake. We stood in the middle of the road, looking at each other with blank, disappointed faces.

“What about that guy we passed earlier?” Tom asked, “Maybe he knows.”

“Good call,” I replied, “worth a shot.” We turned back down the way we came, and in a few minutes, saw the older man walking towards us.

“Are you looking for the same place we are?” I inquired, somewhat reservedly.

“Probably,” replied the older man.

“Dial House?” Tom added.

The man responded with an affirmative groan, “Mmmm.”

“Us too,” said Tom, “What’s your name?”

“Bill.”

“I’m Tom.”

“Andrew,” I added.

“You’re American, yeah? Where you from?” Bill asked.

“I’m from Baltimore,” Tom said.

“California for me,” I interjected to answer Bill’s questioning gaze.

“So,” he paused his speech and slowed his stride a bit, “you don’t know each other?”

“No,” I said with a muted laugh, “we just met.”

“What about you, where are you from?” asked Tom.

“Well, I’m English, but I live in Morocco,” Bill answered.

“Have you been here before?” I asked, secretly hoping that he knew where the hell he was going.

He raised an eyebrow, gave a quick cluck of a laugh, and said, “hmmm…I’ve been coming here for forty years.”

Our luck seemed to have picked up, and we had now inadvertently found a guide to follow! He could tell we were exchanging surprised looks and Tom said, “Wow.”

“I was with Gee at art school,” Bill explained, referring to Gee Vaucher, a Dial House resident and co-founder.

“I’m gonna shit if it’s right behind where we just were,” I whispered to Tom.

“I know, right?” he replied.

As it turned out, just beyond the cluster of buildings we had turned away from, Bill led us to our destination. We arrived at an old, lop-sided and unpainted wooden gate gate adorned with what appeared to be a 19^th century gear spray painted red (though with a rough and wrinkled texture underneath the recent coat of paint that suggested rust), emblazoned underneath with the cherry-red stenciled words “Dial House.” We had arrived. I had seen dozens of pictures in books and zines, but always from the back garden. I suppose my affinity for Crass and my knowledge of how many people had lived here had colored my mental image of Dial House, and I’d always pictured this house as much bigger in my imagination. Bill just walked in like he owned the place and barked, “Close the gate!” to me. He walked in the door with a quizzical, “Hello?”

I couldn’t hear any response, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to simply barge in. I know this is an open house (or, I should say, I’ve read as much), but it’s still not my home, and I suppose the confining categories of private property are inescapably imprinted in my mind. Perhaps this feeling was also a product of the very isolation of the house, and I began to question just how ‘open’ a house could be when it was so difficult to find. I waited to be invited. While waiting for an invitation, I peaked around to the plush rear garden, full of characteristically English green shrubbery and trees, and there was also an explosion of reds, purples, whites, and yellows in the blooming flowers. At first glance, I noticed that many plants were overgrown, ascending the side of the brick building, and the grass was knee high. The more I looked, however, the more the signs of intense labor jumped out, in the cleared path between the tall grass, potted plants, neat rows of veggies and herbs, and the arrangement of a dark wooden picnic table, a reddish rusted fire pit, and various other rusty benches and chairs.

The house itself was an old yet sturdy Victorian cottage of brick construction with a shingled roof of various dark burgundy reds and browns, wood framed windows each slightly ajar for ventilation, and brick chimney with an orange clay top. The house had clearly been subject to various repairs, as none of the windows matched, and there were areas of brick that stood out as more brightly orange than the surrounding older, blood maroon wall. The house stood in jarring tension with the avant-garde and post-modern paintings and sculptures that populated the garden and the walls of the property’s buildings. Nude dolls covered in mold and green moss nailed to tree stumps, painted ocean waves of turquoise and white on a side of a dilapidated shed, and a sphere made from broken tiles interrupted the otherwise bourgeois country visual of the garden. Some of these pieces were faded and rusty, while others were freshly painted. The past and the present blended into each other in these clashes.

Inside the house I could hear approaching voices, and then a woman that I instantly recognized from photos as Gee Vaucher walked to the door. She had long, flowing hair of solid, almost metallic grey, and deep-set, piercing eyes softened only by the gently protruding bags of freckled white skin underneath them. We entered through the low door after being invited in, engaged in a somewhat awkward round of introductory pleasantries in the narrow, unlit kitchen.

“Should I make some tea? Coffee? Or…” Gee asked and her voiced trailed off. The offer of tea seemed to be an automatic response to the appearance of visitors, as Gee had asked without any hesitation. There was clearly a ritual for how people were welcomed into this house.

“Tea’s great for me,” answered Tom.

“Yeah, I’m good with tea, thank you,” I added.

“Sure,” Gee answered.

We went outside to the garden and set up the seat covers on the picnic benches that Gee had indicated. The sky still threatened rain, so if we were going to enjoy the garden it would be while we had this tea. I definitely wanted to spend a bit of time in the garden, and it seemed like the place most conducive to talking. The house was laid out in such a way that if we all went inside, we might lose track of each other. Winding, twisting hallways, unlit rooms, and multiple floors and stairways sprawled out from the doorway. If we went inside for the rest of the afternoon, I worried how isolated my visit might become. In a few moments, Bill appeared in the doorway, slightly hunched over, and carrying a tray loaded down with a kettle, four mugs, spoons, and a few small milk cartons. We all sat down, fixed our tea, and began to talk.

“What have been up to today?” Bill asked Gee.

“Oh, I’ve just been working in the studio. I was rather hoping no one would come today,” Gee replied, “been working on a new book about knots,” and she paused to place her hand softly on Bill’s forearm, “I’ve got a few pages you can read if you’d like.”

Bill nodded a reply while sipping some tea with a slight slurping sound.

I, on the other hand, gulped down a large mouthful, and felt the hot tea burn all the way down my throat. I suddenly felt invasive and uninvited (which, I suppose I totally was), so I rushed to tell Gee, “Well, I can finish this tea and move on. I certainly don’t want to impose.”

“Oh no, it’s fine, don’t worry. The house is open, so we’ve got to always be ready for visitors,” she replied, “we have lots of empty beds, no one else is here now, though we are expecting a few people tomorrow. A workshop for kids’ art. But you can stay for one night.”

“Well, ok,” I answered somewhat sheepishly, “do you still get visitors often?”

“Nearly everyday, yeah,” Gee answered, nodding her head slightly.

“What about fan mail?” Tom asked.

“Ah…” Gee’s voice grew soft, “some, yeah. I’ve been writing recently to this American in prison about Crass, and he just got out, so I’m going to send him some stuff. But nothing like the old days when we’d get bags and bags. We used to have a whole day once a month when we’d all sit in the kitchen and answer it all.”

“Well, I mean, that what it’s all about isn’t it? I mean, that showed that Crass was for real,” Tom said.

“I just think it’s rude not to answered a letter. It’s different with email when you get loads of nonsense, but letters are different,” Gee answered, sounding more pedagogical than radical.

“Does anyone mind if I smoke?” Tom asked as he removed some crinkling loose papers and a small bag of tobacco from his pack.

“Sure, as long as it’s not drugs,” Gee answered, “we don’t allow drugs here.”

“No, no, just a cigarette,” Tom said as he opened the bag to display the golden tobacco inside, and began rolling a cigarette.

Gee explained further, “Yeah, we don’t allow drugs here because we’re really sitting targets, always have been. If we’d had drugs here during the Crass days they would’ve shut us down in five minutes.” The imposition of rules at a proclaimed anarchist space is striking in its contradictory oddness, yet she did have a point. Crass had been the subject of state surveillance and meetings of British Parliament in the 1980s.

“Do you still have anything from the Crass years?” I asked hopefully, for this was why I’d come.

“Not much, except the paintings. I’ve never sought commercial success, and I can’t bear to sell any of my work, so I’ve got it all. Would you like to see them?”

“I love the painting for the Feeding of the 5,000 album cover. It’s a painting right? For years I thought it was a collage.” I said, growing more eager about the chance to see the original art for the replicated images I’ve seen thousands of times.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s a painting,” Gee said, “Oh wait, I don’t actually have that one right now, it’s loaned to an exhibit on Crass’s influence on, oh what’s it called? Not punk, but another music sort that’s just fast and loud, well noise really…what’s it called?”

“Grindcore?” I offered.

“Grindcore,” Gee affirmed with a laugh, “Yeah, that’s it. Anyway, that’s where the Feeding cover is. But I’ve got Bloody Revolutions if you’d like to see it later.”

“Of course! I’d love that.” I replied.

We sat enjoying our tea and the conversation switched to mundane consumer politics as Bill, relaying his recently travel woes stated “these bastard airline companies charge you a fortune, and now they not only make you pay for bags, I heard they won’t even allow bags much longer.”

“No bags?! How will people travel then,” I asked.

“Just carry-ons, that’s what we’ve heard,” Gee answered, getting up from her chair, “I’ve got to let the chickens out.” She walked around to the coup, opened the door, and with a burst of youthful energy ran out into the garden, flapping her arms, and saying, “Come on girls.” The chickens clucked happily as they followed her, seeking all of our attention by running underneath our legs. Again I was overwhelmed with more farm vibes than punk vibes.

“Can you watch the chickens, I’d like to go work in the studio a bit?” she asked me.

“Sure.” And so I sat there, reading Dostoyevsky, occasionally looking up at the hens. What, if anything, could I comfortably call ‘punk’ in this setting? Was there any similarity I could draw with the punk spaces I typically inhabit? Could I even imagine the thousands of crust punks, street punks, and anarchists I had seen wearing the Crass logo on their stud jackets, jean vests, and tattooed skin in this scene? Perhaps I had unintentionally been engaged in problematic and uncomfortable essentialism, flattening out my own understanding of what punk was and could be.

“This is luxury with a capital L,” Bill said as he reclined further in his lawn chair.

“Yeah, it’s really nice here,” said Tom, “exactly like I imagined.” I didn’t respond, but started to remember all that I had read of the place, the people who live here, and the politics represented. I couldn’t say that what I found was entirely surprising, yet there was opulence I hadn’t expected. Aside from Gee’s paintings that she had dug out of crates to show me, there was no visual indication of punk. Crass seemed to be a distant memory at Dial House. Nor was there any signs of radical politics aside from the words that dripped out of the residents’ mouths. I was mistaken to expect them to be wearing their politics on their sleeves.

“How do you know about this place? Just from Crass?” Bill asked.

“Yeah,” Tom answered, “when I was a kid I was listening to a lot of punk stuff, but I had really bad taste in music, like the Casualties and stuff. Then some older punks started showing me some better stuff, and introduced my to Crass, Christ: The Album actually. Since then I’ve been a big fan of Crass.”

“How old are you?” Bill asked, raising his eyebrows and leaning forward as if to tell a joke.

“25,” Tom answered.

“Well…” Bill said, but then his voice failed for a moment due to laughter, “they stopped playing in ’84, before you were born.”

“Yeah, me too,” I said, “but they’ve influence so much within punk.”

“They did so much, changed so much, I don’t think there will ever be a band that influential again,” Tom added.

We sat chatting for a while about punk, prisons, and Angela Davis, when suddenly Gee reemerged from the house, asking “Would anyone like to wash some spuds?” Tom and I washed fist size potatoes from the garden while Bill snapped green beans.

“There’s far too much bean being wasted here!” Gee exclaimed as she picked up the discarded ends, “Waste not, want not.” Bill must have been surprised at Gee’s use of this cliché.

“What?” Bill asked in a high tone.

“You don’t need to do the bottom, just the top,” Gee answered, demonstrating on a couple beans for Bill’s benefit.

“Mmmm, alright,” Bill replied in agreement, seeming more surprised than annoyed.

Once the beans and spuds were prepared, Gee put these all into the oven, and lead us back outside to assemble firewood. While Bill, Tom, and I were finishing the assembly of the fire, Gee appeared sheepishly in the doorway, “Andrew, would you like to see these paintings?”

“Aw yeah, that would be great!” I exclaimed.

She led me into a large room with a bare, exposed concrete floor. Overtaking one entire wall of the room were two large wooden desks, covered with miscellaneous sketches, papers, and open books. The rest of the room was open, with only scattered easels and a few filing cabinets. Cans of paint and brushes were scattered in disarray on the floor. There was no lighting in the room aside from the faint yellow beams of sunlight that snuck through the windows.

Gee dug for a moment in a dusty box, pulled out a framed painting, and set it on a counter for me to see. I leaned over the familiar image of Bloody Revolutions to look closely at the brush strokes, and see all of the contextual details that were cut out of the reproduction of this image on the 7” record that was released. It was a black and white painting that from a distant had the realistic quality of a photograph. Queen Elizabeth, the Pope, Lady Justice (from the Old Bailey in London) and Margaret Thatcher stood in street clothes on a graffitied street corner. The building they were leaning on had a graffiti stencil painted on it that had the Crass logo and said, “Who do they think they’re fooling, you?” This stencil was distributed in some of their earlier LPs, and the band encouraged fans to paint them over advertisement. I pictured the album art to Stations of the Crass, which was a photo from a London Underground station that had several Crass graffiti tags on it. The image in Bloody Revolutions, however, was not only political and playfully disrespectful of institutional figureheads, but also turned a critical eye toward punk itself. The four figures are positioned and clothed in reproduction of a famous Sex Pistols band photo from the time, only with the heads changed to the political figures. The song itself was an indictment of the totalitarian left, a bold stance for punk at the time, but a stance that Crass took in conjunction with their attack on the conservative right.

“Wow, the detail…” was the most intelligent comment I could offer, and with a laugh, “I’ve always liked the dog here.”

“Ah, the Queen’s corgi?” Gee asked and joined in my laughter. “I also have this one,” she continued as she pulled out her Oh, America painting. This image was a small painting, no larger than a sheet of notebook paper, and was of the famous Statue of Liberty in New York. Only, in this painting, Lady Liberty has her hands covering her face in sorrow while destruction and disarray signified by black, blue, and pink smoke and clouds surround her. It was the cover art for a Crass record that was never released, a recording of a poem imploring the U.S. to cease their warmongering and engage in actual politics of peace. I stood admiring the paintings a bit longer, and finally Gee asked, “Do you do much with art?”

“Uhh,” my voice went up as I hesitated, “I play music, that’s it really. As far as painting and drawing go, I mean, I’ve tried it, I’m just not very good at it.” I had said these words through uncomfortable chuckling, and when I was finished, Gee laughed at my response.

Eventually, our dinner of beans, potatoes, and vegetarian pies was ready, and we sat in front of the fire eating. Aside from the peaceful deep, relaxing breath of the rustling of the leaves blown in the trees, the hissing and popping of the firewood, and the gentle buzzing of bees, there was an occasional sonic interruption that violently imposed itself upon our conversation. Loud bangs rang out in a short sequence, and each time they did I expected to see a bird fall into the garden, or morbidly into my lap.

“Now that it’s dark, I’m not walking back to the bus stop. With all these damn hunters, I don’t wanna get shot!” I said.

“Oh, they’re not hunters, those are bird-scarers. When you hear one, wait just a minute more and you’ll hear another. Yeah, the farmer puts them out there.” Gee explained.

I breathed a sigh of relief that we weren’t actually surrounded by guns. It also provided an interesting metaphor for thinking through aesthetic experience, i.e. the visual splendor of the unspoiled fields brought about in part because of the sonic violence of these devices.

“What is it you’re writing, about anarchist music?” Gee asked me, to which I responded that week’s version of my project, some amalgamation of Nietzsche, Foucault, Marx, aesthetics, authenticity, resistance to normative power relations, etc. She told me she didn’t know Foucault, but had read some of the other writers I mention, but with some reluctance.

“I don’t like just believing any writer. Not entirely anyway. Just like history, I don’t believe in history,” she told us. “For if you look at accepted history, it’s all bollocks. Just like I don’t believe in revolutions, because, well, they always go wrong don’t they? They aren’t about the people when it’s all said and done.”

“As far as I’m concerned, you have to start with your own life,” I replied, “but when I read Kropotkin, I have to admit I still get excited about revolution.”

“Sure, yeah, you do have to start with yourself, but then you have to look to the people,” Gee answered, getting up to discard her plate on the far end of the table.

Bill had fallen asleep on his chair, but jerked awake as Gee walked by.

“Oh, sorry love,” Gee said, “didn’t mean to wake you.”

“It’s alright,” Bill answered, “I think I’ll turn in.”

“Would you like to stay in the caravan, or would you like a room inside?” Gee asked.

“I’ll have a room inside thanks,” Bill answered, “is my old room available?”

“Yeah, and there’s some books in there if you want,” Gee said.

“I do have some trouble sleeping sometimes. I usually only sleep three-four hours a night,” Bill said, “but I brought some books as well. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” was the chorus that Gee, Tom, and I answered.

Bill went inside while Tom and I began to gather soiled dishes and carry them inside the house. We washed the dishes and turned in, and the rain never did come.

In a way, my visit seemed very similar to seeing old friends or distant relatives. I was welcomed, given a meal and a bed, and had some chores to do (voluntarily of course). Yet, this was not the home of people I knew, but only knew of. I had been welcomed just as the reputation of the place had promised. I felt hopeful, if perplexed, upon leaving. It seemed like a sort of sanctuary more than a radical space. I certainly could not see any societal changes coming out of here. The residents of Dial House had certainly changed their own lifestyles, though they weren’t as ‘off the grid’ as I had imagined. They still had utility payments, which I was made aware of when Tom asked to bathe and was told that hot water was too expensive. But, they had avoided the corporate world as much as anyone I had met. They seemed to live on their own terms, even if these terms were offensive to others or inconsistent with what more hardline anarchists might accept. I began to wonder how many countless other visitors had come here and felt similarly, and I wonder how many anonymous lives may have been changed by the simplest of country pleasures at Dial House.

Yet, as I was riding the train back into London, I also considered what a privileged space it was, for Dial House was owned by the residents. This was no small house, nor small tract of land. Authentic living as defined by these folks would be limited to those with access to an incredible amount of resources, support, and let’s face it, money. How available would this type of lifestyle resistance be to anyone that doesn’t come from a privileged, wealthier background? I sat in the Tube pondering Murray Bookchin’s critique of lifestyle anarchism, and tried to figure out ways to reconcile such anarchist withdrawal with the goals of revolutionary societal change.

0 Oi Polloi plays Minneapolis April 25th!

March 17, 2014
by leffer
· Events · On Tour · PE Events · PE Records · Radness

0 An Interview With AHNA

March 16, 2014
by damieninbred
· Interviews · PE Web Zine · Radness · Uncategorized

AHNA are a force to be reckoned with, combining elements of sludge metal, grind, death metal, crust, with a heavy dose of anti-authoritarian politics.They have never fallen into any trend or relive-the-past nonsense. AHNA are truly doing their own thing, making a hell of a lot of noise, and keeping it super real. Profane is proud to be a part of their new split 12″ with Winnipeg crusties CETASCEAN. To celebrate this new record, Damien Inbred sat down and had an email exchange with AHNA drummer/vocalist Anju.

First off, can you give me a bit of the history of AHNA?
We started as a two piece doing doom-drone and later had Graham on bass, Anju on drums, and a vocalist for a bit doing primitive doom stuff. We decided to go back to being a two piece and take on vocal duties ourselves and wrote our demo “The Confederation of the Cult of One” which led to our first record (s/t) that we also just recorded among ourselves. We have been a band for about 6 years and our focuses as musicians and writers has grown and changed throughout those years, with right now it just being an obsession with a variety of crust, old school death metal, primitive black metal, and other stuff in that realm. We basically just try to execute the ideas in our heads as best as possible and obsessively work on it. This might be why we started playing music together, we are both really committed and constantly work on music pretty much every single day. And I think this is also why it might seem that our music is often evolving or changing, since we are always challenging ourselves to do what we are inspired by. There is rarely a time when we are not writing.
Right now Graham and I write all of the music and lyrics and that’s fine for writing and even recording, but we feel that being just a two piece is really limiting in terms of what we can do live. Traditionally, we have always played all instruments on our records ourselves and Graham and I would do all guitar etc.. overdubs, but live it would be challenging to do what we managed to achieve in studio. Now Graham has moved onto playing lead guitar and we have a bass player (Derek) and a second guitar player (Taylor) to try to get a sound that is as close to what comes out on our records as possible for when we play live. The people we have playing with us are our friends and the lineup might change from tour to tour based on who is available for what tour or recording and this lets us continue with the level of commitment we both have while getting some help live and in the studio from friends who are stoked and wanna do that stuff with us. On this split with CETASCEAN, our friend Taylor played bass on the recording which meant that Graham could focus on guitar and then guitar overdubs and it was definitely way less pressure and allowed for more interesting guitar parts to come out. Having a third person record with us was a totally new approach and it worked well. It was great to have him there and he will be playing 2nd guitar on our LP and Derek will be on bass.

Aside from the split 12″, what releases do you have coming out in the near future?
We have a split 7″ with raw d-beat punks CONTORTURE from Sweden that is later than expected, but should be arriving any day now. We also have a split 10″ with Canadian gore-grinders G.O.D (GROTESQUE ORGAN DEFILEMENT), and then we will be recording out next full length LP that we hope will be out in time for our tour in late July. A Danish label is also going to be doing a Discography cassette of our stuff in Denmark ideally for when we get there for our tour.

You did a tour of Europe last year with ISKRA – how did that come about? What was the tour like? What were some of the positives and negatives?
ISKRA are good friends of ours and we wanted to tour with a band that was like minded so we all talked about it and it happened. As a band they are incredible to watch, night after night they played crushing sets. They are one of our favorite bands going right now and I believe they act with integrity and their music shows their sincerity and dedication. Everyone in that band is great as people and Wolf (guitarist) is someone who I respect and have learned a lot from. The tour was long and we had a total of 2 days off in 45 days or something and it went really well. The best part of that tour was watching our friends play to receptive crowds every night and having the chance to see them over and over. It seemed that people all over Europe really appreciated ISKRA and of course it’s the best feeling when you see your friend’s bands do really well. It’s hard to pinpoint any negatives, I guess not having any time off sucked but the idea that tour is a vacation is a misleading concept that even after many tours we have to remind ourselves is not the case. That said we wouldn’t be able to handle not playing music for longer than a few days very well anyway, so the lack of time off isn’t a huge deal for us. It’s hard to find negatives on a tour when we already spend our regular life playing music everyday, taking work out of the mix is the only real change and that’s always awesome.

What are some of the differences that you’ve noticed between touring in Europe, and touring in North America?
We haven’t toured the US yet due to a criminal record but Canada versus Europe is quite different. First the music we make seems to have stronger communities all over Europe. Smaller cities in Europe have a longer history of DIY squats and venues where that seems to be rare and newer in Canada. Quebec is probably the best province for that stuff here. And of course when planning a Europe tour we can tell our bandmates that they will probably be fed, get some drinks and a decent place to sleep whereas in Canada that mostly only happens when you plan ahead or know people. This all said, touring Canada is important to us since we now have a lot of friends and a strong community across the country. And especially since a lot of our friends and punks have moved to spaces off the grid, we visit and remind ourselves that there are options to live without being a wage slave.

Vancouver has long had a vibrant and active punk scene of all stripes. Where does AHNA fit into the Vancouver scene?
We have a strong connection to a lot of different bands and communities in our city. Genre is not the defining point of how we participate since we appreciate punk and metal from a variety of genres and perspectives. We have a strong community of friends in bands in and around the city including ISKRA, HAGGATHA, HOOPSNAKE, MASS GRAVE, COOKED AND EATEN, FAMINE, SIXBREWBANTHA, OSK, WAR HERO, OBACHA, SHOOTING SPREE, CHAPEL, RADIOACTIVE VOMIT, KOSZMAR, HYPEREMESIS, POOR FORM, and so many more. Just based on that abbreviated list it’s clear that what’s happening here is really diverse, and so it’s hard to say where we fit in when we participate in a lot of it. It’s kind of a small scene so it’s crucial to support everything from raw punk to grindcore to black metal to crust if you’re into it, otherwise that shit dies out and then there’s nothing interesting left in the city. People in bands in our community tend to end up at shows you might not expect to see them, because people are supportive across genres. And obviously we have a lot of respect for our friends bands that we play with who have been keeping punk/underground metal going in this town for 10+ years like MASS GRAVE, ISKRA and HAGGATHA and I think that helps keep punk “vibrant and active” as you described it here, or “alive and thriving” as someone has described it in town before, ha.

Since we both also do harsh noise we also have a strong connection to local projects like THE RITA and RUSALKA as well. As a drummer, Anju’s main influence was Matt Wood (HAGGATHA/BISON) from when she first saw GOAT’S BLOOD years ago and that really totally started a path to where we are now. Now she takes a lot of influence for drumming from Nick (BAPTISTS), Brett (MASS GRAVE), Goat (EXPRESSION OF PAIN) and Bina (CAMBODIA). There is a lot of dialogue between musicians in Vancouver because we all love what we do. MITOCHONDRION is another local band that is slightly outside of the community we usually connect with but their originality and unique approach has inspired us though we end up with a different sound in the end. Of course close neighbours being Kamloops, we have a strong connection to bands like BRIDGEBURNER, SKUFF, CHANGE and also a new anarcha-feminist space in Kamloops called The Femme For All Collective which is run by Athena, Freja and Sian, all of whom now play in bands. It might be easier to ask how we fit in the BC punk community rather than just Vancouver since it’s pretty much impossible for our band to separate ourselves from the influence and relationship we share with Squamish, Kamloops, and Victoria.

Is there much of an anarchist punk scene in Vancouver these days?
We strongly support anarchism and play fundraisers with our band and our other bands and harsh noise projects often. All of the bands in our community may not identify explicitly as anarchists or political bands but the people involved all have an interest in maintaining a non oppressive community. People like Brett from MASS GRAVE, and Dave Mccrea from OSK have always shown me a lot of support and respect as a female drummer in a predominantly male dominated genre. Tommy Wilson who runs fastcore fest has traditionally supported politically focused bands like RAPE REVENGE and opens up that dialogue within the fastcore community by attempting to bridge those gaps. I bet these people may not even be aware of the importance of their subtle contributions. That said, we don’t have a unified specifically political punk scene here but I don’t believe that labelling something makes it more legitimate. If you listen to bands like SIXBREWBANTHA’s lyrics you will definitely find strong political ideas, though they do not identify specifically as a political band. So, I guess I would say that while we don’t have a labelled anti-oppression community in Vancouver, it’s happening and co-operation between people with slightly different viewpoints and perspectives is important to us.

Aside from AHNA, are you involved with any activist or political organizing?
We have been/are part of a couple projects that are focused on expressing anti-oppression ideas in punk and underground music by running physical spaces or events. The newest project is a radical space that is opening in the city in early March. We support political organizing in the city by working in collaboration with groups who are interested to have our band or projects play or contribute in a specific way.

Where did the idea for the split with CETESCEAN come from? Will there be a tour to coincide with the split?
We are about 27 hours away from Winnipeg and yet both of our bands have made efforts to tour back and forth between one-another’s cities and play together. This created a strong friendship and we have influenced each other’s bands in the process as well. I don’t remember exactly how it happened when the decision was made to do the split, but it made absolute sense and it seemed to be at a good time while we are taking a break to record a few records before our next tour. They are an incredible band and we have a great personal relationship with all of the members.
We are not touring together to support the record, but we will be going to Kamloops and Edmonton on March 21st/22nd to play with CETASCEAN and HEAD HITS CONCRETE, and then doing a record release show in Vancouver on March 28th. We are touring ourselves on the way to the ROAR festival in Montreal in August and then we will head to Europe in late August to tour starting with a festival in Denmark. Our tour dates are approximately late July to early October and go from Vancouver to East Canada and then to Europe and back.

The split with CETESCEAN is called “Imperial Decline”. Who came up with the title, and what does it mean in the context of this record?
It’s hard to remember who exactly came up with it, but i’m pretty sure it was collaborative between the bands. The themes that both of the bands are interested in relate to the title directly, which is that people and systems in power are fucked. Both of our bands have had lyrical themes about oppression, genocide, and treatment of humans by other humans on other records as well. The title seemed fitting to sew the two sides of the record together.

On this split with CETESCEAN, what subject matter do the songs tackle?
The first track War Games is about a person at the top of the colonial food chain. Master of War was another title we were considering for this track, and it might explain some the ideas behind the lyrics. The song is comparing the war mongering person’s role to someone playing a chess game and not thinking about the lives they destroy, only ever thinking about it as a game because they never have to deal with any consequences.

The second song, Massacre describes the use of “total war” as a common tool in colonizing efforts throughout history in many countries. Graham was especially inspired by a particular event in a biography he was reading about Goyahkla (Geronimo) when writing these lyrics in which it was described how the army would wait until the men were out hunting and go in and slaughter all those who were unlikely to be able to fight back. There is also General Custard and the massacre at Wounded Knee. American history made this man a hero for going in and slaughtering woman children the sick and the old. The last lyrics are about the soldiers marching on to glory but actually marching on to their own massacre like the one at Little Big Horn. “March on brave soldier your penance awaits…..”. When we wrote about hell and penance we were talking about the reality of the payback that is due for such cowardly acts: the violence that begets violence and the nightmare of retribution.

The third song (Death Sentence) specifically uses anecdotes from victims and observers of the effects of the use of White Phosphorous by the American army on Iraqi civilians in Fallujah. The chemical would burn its victims and cause incredible pain, suffering, and damage. In the lyrics the “rain of fire” refers to a common description made by residents of Fallujah of the day that the US army dropped WP on the city. The vision of the chemical dropping was described as being surreal and horrifying, and the aftermath showed that the only function the chemical had would be to torture, harm, and destroy. Most of the victims were civilians, many of whom were unable to evacuate the city in time before the chemical assault. Many of the victims were children. The lyrics don’t focus only on this particular event since they are a more general description of the use of fucked up weapons like this, but images and descriptions from Fallujah have stuck with us and were used in the lyrics.

Check out AHNA at http://ahnadroneviolence.blogspot.ca/

0 Nation On Fire: Doomed Society 83 Has Arrived

March 16, 2014
by damieninbred
· Doomed Society · PE Web Zine · Podcasts · Radness

doomedsociety83 And here we are. Another bloody Sunday, another step towards civilization’s inevitable demise. I don’t have any easy solutions, but I do have a cracking soundtrack to help ease the pain, and get us through the mounting mental trauma of the end of life as we know it.

Always a cheerful show, this.

Go find it HERE

FEED THEM FUCKING GLASS: pipeline
AXIOM: impaled by chaos
ANOTHER OPPRESSIVE SYSTEM: wings of destruction
LEGION: exhausted
NAPALM RAID: dead cities
DOOM: suffering in silence
APPLE: double standards
HARUM SCARUM: break out
WITCH HUNT: a war on reality
BALLAST: direction askew
CALLOUSED: human structure
HUMAN INVESTMENT: 500 years
THE SYSTEM: thought control
ANTISECT: yet they still ignore
SUBHUMANS; subvert city
ALTERNATIVE: warfear
THE CRAVATS: i am the dreg
TEARS OF DESTRUCTION: death of a nation
ACROSTIX: awake!
DEVIATED INSTINCT: through the looking glass
EXTINCTION OF MANKIND: pray for the dawn
MISERY: soon be gone
NAUSEA: self destruct (live)
SACRILEGE: blind acceptance
BEHIND ENEMY LINES: politics of hunger
DETESTATION: a big white pat on the back
WORLD BURNS TO DEATH: the same old lies
APPALACHIAN TERROR UNIT: they’re all the fucking same
DRESDEN: blood red sky
GARMONBOZIA: breaking the silence
CODE 13: cities will burn
LOS CRUDOS: tierra de libertad
CONDENADA: promise of destruction
SIN ORDEN: otro dia
VARIX: madness
IN DEFENCE: don’t call me a moshist
DEFIANCE: fight the real enemy
BLITZ: nation on fire
KNUCKLEHEAD: shelters
IMPERIAL LEATHER: something out of nothing
ZOUNDS: dancing

0 WAR//PLAGUE – “Temperaments of War” 12″ e.p.

March 10, 2014
by leffer
· Features · News · Organize and Arise · PE Events · PE Records · Radness

In collaboration with Organize and Arise, Profane Existence, Scream records and Mankind Disaster records.

0 Cetascean Are Invading Your Town!!

March 6, 2014
by damieninbred
· Events · On Tour · Radness

CETASCEAN will be pairing with political grinders HEAD HITS CONCRETE to head out across Western Canada to blast your eardrums with terrible noise. CETASCEAN will have copies of their brand new split LP ‘Imperial Decline’ (EXIST 149). Head Hits Concrete will be touring for the first time in nine years in support of the “Noose for a Family Heirloom” cassette on Mercy of Slumber Records. Support DIY underground music!
http://headhitsconcrete.bandcamp.com/
http://cetascean.bandcamp.com/…
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Mercy-of-Slumber-Records/215386231881530
————————————————————————
Friday, March 15th (tour launch/LP release)
Winnipeg @ Frame Gallery w/ Electro Quarterstaff, Ceremonial Shrouds
https://www.facebook.com/events/1450943891790628/

Friday, March 21
Saskatoon @ Amigos w/ Narcissistic, Denogginizer
https://www.facebook.com/events/546210458809680/

Saturday, March 22
Edmonton @ Club House (Stabmontonfest) w/ Six Brew Bantha, Ahna, Soot + more
https://www.facebook.com/events/254510471379294/

Sunday, March 23
Calgary @ Tubby Dog w/ Sea of Dead Serpents
https://www.facebook.com/events/466367353467230/?ref_newsfeed_story_type=regular

Monday, March 24
Kamloops @ FFA w/ Bridgeburner, Change, Leeches
https://www.facebook.com/events/242584422571284/

Tuesday, March 25
Vancouver @ Astoria w/ Dead Again
https://www.facebook.com/events/517163915069005/

Wednesday, March 26
Victoria Early show @ Mirancave w/ Not A Cost
https://www.facebook.com/events/793021014059978/

Thursday, March 27
Squamish @ Gun Club w/ Shooting Spree, Subsist, Waste Away, Throat Slitter
https://www.facebook.com/events/220564084790133/

Friday, March 28
Vancouver @ Rainbow Connection w/ Ahna, Cooked & Eaten, Soot
https://www.facebook.com/events/1396512383928330/

Saturday, March 29
Edmonton @ TBA w/ Begrime Eximious, Disabler, Horrendous Miscreation
https://www.facebook.com/events/1450943891790628/

0 An Interview With CETASCEAN

March 6, 2014
by damieninbred
· Interviews · PE Web Zine · Radness

CETASCEAN play anarchist crust and organize d-beat damage parties in the north. When they were first getting asked questions, all they would say is that they dismantle corporations and send pure hatred to homophobes, racists, misogynists, and christ-heads. Further probing revealed them to be located in Winnipeg (Canada). Profane Existence is co-releasing their third record Imperial Decline, which is a split LP with Vancouver’s AHNA. They have released two other records, a s/t 7″ (2012) and the Crows 10″ (2013). Here is what they had to say about a variety of things.

(interview by Anju)

PE: How did CETASCEAN start as a band? Who are the current and past members?
Surgeon: CETASCEAN’s been around for about three years. Esmerelda and I were in a band called DEAD DOGS together and wanted an excuse to keep d-beating in dank basements and discussing anarchism. Drogo, our first bass player, helped write our first two records but then ended up getting really into photocopiers and kind of disappearing… Liz joined us about a year and half ago. He listens to a lot of grind, so we’ve definitely incorporated that style more into our new songs. Now you know everything.
PE: What are some of the main ideas behind your lyrics and music?

Liz: mainly our lyrics touch on social ills and other fucked up things happening around us. There is lots of racism, sexism and gentrification around us where we live and we try to critically and emotionally respond to that which see I guess.
Surg: Yeah…I would say we are fairly angered and sickened about the things that we see and due to our privilege, often directly benefit from. That translates into what we write. Without that approach, this band would cease to exist. I feel that the values are what drives CETASCEAN as a project.
Ezmerelda: maybe we’re a pretty typical punk band in many ways, trying to push certain registers that many people have pushed already for decades in punk. We’re not trying to do anything new, but we’re also trying to do it thoughtfully I guess.

PE: How does the song writing and lyric writing process work for your band? Is there one writer or do you write collaboratively?

Ez: For the music a lot of the time Surgeon comes to us with ideas and we work them out over many months, changing stuff infinity times before somewhat settling on a certain arrangement. Although not all ideas originate with him, it’s only fair to say that he spends more time writing riffs and thinking of arrangements for our songs. Lyrically, again it’s mostly Surgeon, though we’ve all written lyrics to at least one song. In this area we mostly stick to one person having control although input is always welcome and sometimes alters the final product.
Liz: Yeah, a few riffs usually become a song pretty quickly.
Surg: I do a lot of the initial writing, but do so with both Ez and Liz in mind. I feel like those two are what shape the style of this band, because what would come out would be drastically different if I was doing this without their input at the forefront. Pretty sure if I just wrote the songs we’d sound exactly like a worse AVSKUM. Ezmerelda brings what I would call a post-modern approach to this shit…he asks the question ‘why?’ when I’ve written things that are typical or cookie-cutter in terms of d-beat style or timing. He pushes us to progress and write different styles of riffs, to do something harder to define. Liz brings a delivery vocally and instrumentally that is both earnest and devastating. The riffs he has written are among those I am the most excited to play and record.

PE: Have you ever disagreed about your lyrical content?

Surg: Yeah that’s actually how I lost this finger (holds up hand with partially missing finger). Just kidding (laughs), but not about disagreeing though, because that happens and is important. Just because we are friends doesn’t mean we share exactly the same perspective, and we don’t sometimes. Dialogue about the lyrics is an important process to this band. When a song’s lyrics come together, we elicit and provide feedback. Each of us wants to write about things we have feel strongly about. Since our perspective is unique to us as individuals, dialogue is necessary to figure out what the position of our band is on the subject matter. Through these discussions our perspective becomes better informed. I really value both Ezmerelda and Liz’s perspective which have both challenged and supported my own at different times. Liz: the three of us talk about the general idea or theme of a song before attacking the lyrics, so we’re generally on the same page. Fine tuning is a normal part of the process, when we really want to be clear with what we’re saying though.
Ez: I think most people can benefit from some editorial feedback, no matter what it is they’re writing.

PE: Your album art steers away from some traditional punk themes; can you explain where the ideas for your album art come from?

Surg: Adam Kindred from CONTAGIUM/ABJECT PAX has provided us with our cover art up to this point. He has a beautiful and crusty mind (as well as nice glasses). We converse with him and provide him with ideas, he then runs with it in a way that is completely his own. The idea behind the crow ouroboros that donned our aptly named Crows EP grew out of the lyrical concept on the album. I find crows very fascinating as a species. Many have probably read how incredibly intelligent they are, in terms of societal development, facial recognition, and tool usage. I wanted to draw a parallel between two sentient species and make the connection to humanities inability/unwillingness to alter our clearly all-consuming destructive path. Crows still flourish in the face of our decline. This planet, no matter the destruction we cause, will continue in some form after we have disappeared. There will be no salvation for humanity. We procreate and destroy. The duality of our nature fascinates me.

PE: How do the tracks on this split differ from the Crows release?

Ez: We’ve moved away from the d-beat centered stuff from earlier records a little bit, incorporating traditionally more mince and metal rhythms. That’s the main diff to me.
Liz: Yeah, we like to sound punk sometimes too. Surgeon and I are playing simpler, heavier riffs in the stuff we’ve written recently.
Surgeon: I think anyone that listens to “Crows” and then to our new split will notice a bit of style departure. Although I feel that crust/d-beat will stay the backbone of this band, we’ve also been interested in bringing in elements of hardcore punk, sludge, stench, and blackened raw punk. Like if DEVIATED INSTINCT were swimming with DESTINO FINALE at NOOTHGRUSH’s 50th birthday party. Everyone’s just partying, having a good old time up in the pool with those floating pool noodles and then BONE AWL gets busted inside the house stealing someone’s VHS collection. Classic BONE AWL, amirite? The next 13.5 minutes is what our side of the new split is like I guess. Well not really. It probably sounds closer to Bristol squat-era AMEBIX tongue kissing “Hear Nothing…”-era DISCHARGE on top of an erupting punk volcano… a couple of goats watching, probably smoking weed and drinking root beers being like, “Woah – check that out. You don’t see that very often when you are in jail”. I guess in this scenario the goats just got released from prison. Also we are trying to be mindful to write simple progressions because I hate when a punk band begins over-producing and over-thinking their songs. This becomes a danger when you become more adept to what you are doing (not so much of an issue for me! Ha!), and want to keep progressing. Just because you can play more complex songs, should you? (Everyone take a second to think about this). We want to stay away from melodic or ‘epic’ sounding crust because none of us listen to that shit or find it interesting. We want what we are doing to be earnest at all times. We want it to be punk in both intent and implementation.

PE: What’s your next release?

Surgeon: we are currently working on our next release with Neanderthal-Stench, a label based out of Belgium. We are also releasing a tape to coincide with our tours this year which collects a lot of our unreleased material and hit singles.

PE: Why did you decide to do a split record rather than a full release of your own material? Why did you choose to do a split release with AHNA?

Liz: Splits are great. That’s no secret to anyone, I don’t think. It’s the opportunity to collaborate with another party, to create something that’s shared, but also complementary to each band’s offering. In some cases you meet new friends and cover new ground with splits; in this case we get to share this record with good friends of ours who we’re all massive fans of musically.
Ez: I think we first met AHNA when Anju booked us a couple shows in Vancouver almost 3 years ago and we really hit it off. I had been hearing some good things about AHNA already and was stoked to see them play. Since then we must have shared bills almost 10 times or something. I think we share a lot of common ground in terms of our approaches to doing music and doing being punk.
Surg: I was actually thinking, once all this LP/punk volcano bullshit gets sorted out, we should all get an apartment together. I’ve heard Squamish is lovely.

PE: You’re from Winnipeg. It rules for music, why do you think this is the case?

Ez: Egh. That’s your opinion.
Liz: Winnipeg has a handful of really great bands but it’s no punk utopia or nothin’.
Surg: I think it has been in a lull for about 3-5 years, roughly since we started, actually! I have definitely seen more exciting times, but I feel like every late 20s/early 30s punk has said that and it’s a fairly boring/unproductive sentiment. There are definitely way less women involved with our scene, which is disheartening and points to bigger issues to what is going on. It is not that women don’t like playing brutal music. It is the dynamic of our community which is continually pushing women out. As an all-male identified band we realize we are playing a part in that. I do miss the days when people gave a shit about their lyrics and everything wasn’t a fucking joke all the time. So doing this tour with HEAD HITS CONCRETE and this split with AHNA is exciting because I feel like we are doing shit with bands that care about what they are saying.

PE: Why is Ezmerelda such a sick drummer?

Surg: Well, funny story about ol’ Esmerelda here. Esmerelda stole part of his first drum kit from a POLICE cover band when they were playing a police BBQ outside of a police station. It was kind of like the Oscar nominated film The Perfect Storm. He just slow danced in and then slow danced out with two cymbals and a snare stand. Since that moment, Ez has been like I CAN DO IT with every new riff and problem with his punk house. I don’t use the word hero very often but…

PE: What are some of the political/activist activities you take part in?

Liz: Does reading stuff on the internet count?
Ez: I’ve only recently become involved in stuff other than taking vacations to Montreal to run amok. One group I’ve taken part in that I’m stoked about is the Prisoners’ Strike Support Network, which formed to support and raise awareness about the federal prisoners’ strike to protest wage cuts. This happened in the fall of 2013. We raised money for them and organized other shit aimed at raising the profile of the story and connecting with the strikers. Me and Surgeon were also involved in a DIY feminist venue/art gallery over the last few years called Negative Space.
Surg: We just finished doing a fundraiser for a long-standing anarchist bookstore that was going out of business. Other than that, I’ve been mostly trying to stay informed and support friends and family that are having hard times.

PE: When is Cetacean going to tour next?

Ez: End of March 2014 with HEAD HITS CONCRETE and our new record!
Surg: we’ll also be doing three weeks throughout eastern Canada and the US in July. Take us to your rich parents place and feed us their organic vegetables. We won’t tell anyone you have rich parents, don’t worry.

To listen to CETASCEAN’s new LP Imperial Decline (EXIST 149), check out:

www.cetascean.bandcamp.com

0 K R A N G – ” M I R R O R P U N C H E R ” (preview to upcoming “BAD MOON” LP)

March 3, 2014
by selfgovernyourself
· News · PE Records · Radness · Video

Here is a preview of Krang’s 5th musical project: “Bad Moon” LP. 35 minutes of new material written over the past year. Here is the 3rd track: “Mirror Puncher”. The album is out this spring on 150 gram random color vinyl with 8 new Krang tracks. Presented by Profane Existence (MNPLS), Sacred Plague Records (PDX), Occult Whispers (CHI), & Shaman Records (CHI).

0 Doomed Society Radio #81

March 3, 2014
by damieninbred
· Doomed Society · Podcasts · Radness

Hey there! Sorry it’s been forever since I posted here. Rest assured that I haven’t been idle.

You may remember that Doomed Society Radio got its start in late 2009 right here on Profane Existence. Four and a half years later, we’ve expanded into a record label (more on that later), and the shows are now two hours long. Holy shit! You can catch new episodes live every Sunday at 4pm EST on Brutal Existence Radio.

I’m going to post my new episodes here to get the word out a bit more.

What the fuck did I play this week?

WHOREHOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES: die by myself
WITCH HUNT: sick game
KAKISTOCRACY: slogans
DIRT: tribal dreams
HARUM SCARUM: fear
HEVN: all the same
SCHIFOSI: half lit world
PUTREFACTION: drown them in their blood
FEMACOFFIN: stockpile of fear
DEVIATED INSTINCT: blunt instrument
BHOPAL: doomed to consume
STATE OF THE UNION: song number one
(A)DELITAS: communidades seguras
AUTONOMIA: bandera negra
BURNING KITCHEN: emotional cripple
LOST WORLD: scream all time
OPER(A)TION: new age
PROVOKED: trapped
THE SYSTEM: dogs of war
ICON AD: trident 1/trident 2
OMEGA TRIBE: picture
YOUTHANASIA: power
CRAG: voice your protest
ATTRITION: in your head
A TOUCH OF HYSTERIA: the rulers
CHUMBAWAMBA: poverty knock
CHUMBAWAMBA: rappaport’s testament (i never gave up)
CHUMBAWAMBA: stitch that
CHUMBAWAMBA: give the anarchist a cigarette
CHUMBAWAMBA: on ebay
CHUMBAWAMBA: wagner at the opera
CHUMBAWAMBA: waiting for margaret to go
GBH: the prayer of a realist
DISCONVENIENCE: nazi pope
MENSTRUAL TRAMPS: cursed
HARD SKIN: we are the wankers
ONE WAY SYSTEM: stab the judge
INEPSY: who’s next
AHNA: war games

Go download it HERE

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The legendary crust classic is now available once again!

We are happy to announce our next new release

WILT – “Self Titled”

Here is a track from the upcoming LP

“Sermon for the Bootlickers”