The long awaited debut LP from NYC’s FLOWER “Hardly A Dream” is finally set to arrive.
FLOWER’s tedious approach to writing/creating/drawing their debut LP was carefully thought out and the result is a monumental anarcho punk /crust record.
“Hardly A Dream” Takes us on a bleak journey through the dark side of society. As soon as you drop the needle a dark atmosphere is immediately created with a slow intro featuring arpeggio guitar work that builds into pummeling d-beat crust. The albums vocals then leave you with a feeling of being crushed by the ever-present weight of living through our modern world of late stage capitalism that was built on the falsehoods of the so called American dream, religious hypocrisy’s, nationalism, and the greed of humankind.
FLOWER take many cues from predecessors and are most often (and rightfully so) compared to NAUSEA but they also take a heavy influence from ANTISECT, SACRILEGE & other greats. The artwork has a very RUDIMENTARY PENI feel and the record comes with an amazing 24.5 X 34.75 CRASS style poster jacket. All art work was meticulously hand drawn and overseen by the guitarist Willow in true DIY style and spirit. Willow was also cool enough to draw up a special shirt for the record release featuring an alternative PROFANE EXISTENCE backprint!
Dark, heavy, galloping crust from the streets of London. AGNOSY is back to present us with a ferocious beast of an album that can only be forged by the anger and frustration of living in today’s world. “When Daylight Reveals The Torture” aggressively attacks evils such the current rise of fascism and animal abuse. It intelligently and passionately touches on the Afrin invasion and the revolution in Rojava and shows nothing but utter disgust toward the arrogance of humankind’s lust for greed and power that will inevitably lead us down paths of war and environmental devastation.
AGNOSY – Live at SCUMFEST in London. 2011
While lyrically AGNOSY are much more politicly straight forward this time around than on previous releases, musically they have expanded on their sound to create a dark and moody atmosphere while at the same time staying crust as fuck. To say they know what they are doing would be an understatement from this band of vets whose members have played in HIATUS, HEALTH HAZARD, and BEGINNING OF THE END.
Long galloping intros are followed up by traditional d-beat, fierce solo’s are then meet with vicious vocals and pulverizing bass in a brilliant recording captured by Lewis Johns at The Ranch Production House and was mastered by Brad Boatright at Portland’s legendary Audiosiege. We then pressed on deluxe heavyweight 150-gram vinyl, printed on reverse board jackets, and included an 11in x 22in gatefold insert to bring you a high quality and truly epic record.
PROFANE EXISTENCE – PO BOX 647 – HUNTINGTON WV – 25711 – UNITED STATES
The legendary crust classic is now available once again!
Authorized and released in cooperation with MISERY, S.D.S., & MCR Japan & Remastered by Jack Butcher at Enormous Door Studio we are beyond proud to make one one the most rare and sought after crust records available once again.
Fuck the scavengers charging punks exuberant amounts of cash on ebay and discogs. We worked meticulously with both bands and with Jack at Enormous door to bring you an updated version that kicks major audio ass while maintaining the original authenticity.
Released on deluxe 150 gram vinyl. With an 11×11 inner sleeve. Black Paper Jacket. Reverse Board Jacket.
Earlier this year we re-issued this legendary LP and sold over 950 copies in just 4 short months. For this second pressing we pressed 490 copies on Krystal Clear & 485 on Grey Vinyl with Black Mist.
Crystal Clear (Bullet belt no included) Grey With Black Mist (Bullet belt no included) PROFANE EXISTENCE – PO BOX 647 – HUNTINGTON WV – 25711 UNITED STATES
Stench crust the way it was meant to be played!
The UK crust scene of the 1980’s inspired band after band but no other band has ever reincarnated the sound of that time as well as SWORDWIELDER. Quite simply if you like crust, then this the album you have waited decades for.
Review by Craig Hayes from “Your Last Rites”… Swordwielder – System Overlord Heavyweight punk fanatics take note: System Overlord is a fucking triumph. The long-awaited sophomore album from Gothenburg stenchcore band Swordwielder is a brooding behemoth, constructed from the filthiest and heftiest strains of punk and metal. System Overlord shimmers with apocalyptic visions, and it’s overflowing with all the grim atmospherics and intimidating intensity that defines consummate crushing crust.
Too much hype? No way… And no apologies, either. Swordwielder deal in definitive stenchcore on System Overlord, and much like their full-length debut, 2013’s Grim Visions of Battle, the band’s latest release is a knockout. Swordwielder’s harsh, gruff and dark sound owes a significant debt to old school icons like Amebix, Axegrinder, Deviated Instinct, and Antisect, and they mix and mangle their influences and leave ’em to rot on the battlefield.
Plenty of hammering rage drives System Overlord tracks like “Violent Revolution,” “Savage Execution” and “Cyborgs,” and thundering epics like “Corrupt Future” and “Northern Lights” exhibit subtler strengths, mixing guttural growls and clean vocals with crashing percussion and dirge-laden riffs. Connoisseurs of corpse-dragging crust will love the brute-force belligerence of “Absolute Fear,” “Nuclear Winter,” and “Second Attack,” which rain down like merciless mortar barrages. As a rule, all of System Overlord‘s mammoth tracks chug and churn with grinding muscle, while reeking of squalor and decay.
Swordwielder exudes tightly coiled aggression from start to finish here—songs rise from the ashes of desolation, and resounding calls for action and resistance ring loud. If you’re a fan of heavy-hitters like Fatum, War//Plague, Carnage, Zygome, Cancer Spreading or (insert your favorite hefty crust crew here), System Overlord‘s trampling tempo and strapping sound are bound to appeal.
WILT combine old school metal and crust in a perfect hybrid that very few others have ever achieved. Prepare for a LP thats equal parts galloping d-beat crust reminiscent of bands like HELLSHOCK, and INSTINCT OF SURVIVAL, meets old school death metal in the vein of BOLT THROWER, MEMORIAM (old) SEPULTURA.
Here is a track from the upcoming LP
“Sermon for the Bootlickers”
Despite the inculcation of helplessness within each there remains great power. Ill at ease with such makes us ill. Learn to see the hand that feeds for what it is. You’ve been fooled if you think you’ve got no power. Refuse to be reduced to a consumer you’re a human being. Define yourself by more than wealth. Define yourself as a human. You don’t need what you’re being sold. Bend your knee to no authority but your own mind. You have the power to avoid the gilded trap. Avarice is what you’re conditioned for. Break the mold discover what’s really valuable to you.
WILT will be on in Europe this July / August will ELECTROZOMBIES From Chile
Wed, July 12 Hanover / Germany / Confirmed Thu, July 13 Bremen Fri, July 14 Mulhem / Germany / Confirmed Sat, July 15 Gent, Belgium / CrustPicnic / Confirmed Sun, July 16 Paris / France or Amsterdam / Nederland July 18 North-East France or West Germany July 19 Freiburg / Germany TBC July 20 Winterthur / Switzerland Fri, July 21 Zurich / Switzerland Sat, July 22 Biel / Switzerland July 23 Lausanne or Geneva / Switzerland
July 24 Geneva / Switzerland or Grenoble france
July 25 Treviso (or Milano or Bologna or Verona) / Italy
July 26 Ljubljana Slovenia Confirmed
July 27 No Sanctuary chilling day
Fri, July 28 NoSanctuary Confirmed
Sat, July 29 NoSanctuary Confirmed
July 30 Ilirska Bistrica/Slovenia or Vienna/Austria or Budapest/Hungary.
July 31 Wiena / Austrai or Budapest or / Slovakia
August 1 Brno / Czech Republic.
August 2 Prague / Czech Republic
August 3 Finsterwalde / Germany TBC
Fri, August 4 Leipzig / Germany TBC
Sat, August 5 Berlin / Germany / confirmed
August 6 Dresden
August 7 Wroclaw / Poland
August 8 Warsaw / Poland
August 9 Poznan / Poland
August 10 Szczecin/Poland TBC
Fri, August 11 Rostock / confirmed
Sat, August 12 Hamburg TBC
For this in the Seattle or surrounding area you can catch WILT this Saturday April first at Highline Bar with NOOTHGRUSH from Oakland.
I was 16, had just turned. It was my second time on the streets that year. Edmonton Alberta, living in a squat house just off Whyte avenue, 107 st. Now a Condo sits where the abandoned house we called home use to sit.
There was about 7 of us living in one room, the youngest was a kid named Small Fry who was 13 and on crutches. I liked him. I had only been at the squat a few days, or maybe a week; a guy I hardly knew named Justin had shown me the way there a few nights before and I stayed. I crashed hard that night, sleeping through everything that was to happen
Devon wasn’t a very popular guy, in part cause he was one of those guys who can be hard to like. In part cause he was openly bisexual in a very homophobic place. A case of wrong time, wrong tastes. I liked him though, as he was nice to me. About an hour or so after I fell asleep, Devon came ‘home’ quite drunk and ready to pass out. There was a young girl visiting us, I can’t recall her name, but she had a home yet would come to the squat to hang out with the street kids. Everyone liked her. She was drinking with the others when Devon came in. She was using the pallets he slept on as a chair. This is what lead to the argument. I slept through it all, so all I know was from what i was told after I woke up.
When I woke up, people were practically celebrating, partying and bragging about how fun it was to kick the shit out of Devon. They told me “you missed all the excitement!” Glad I did. I was told that Devon had pushed the girl to get her off his bed after she refused to move, and so Justin attacked him, and everyone else jumped in to help in the assault; everyone that is except me and Small Fry of course. They bragged about how he had “turtled like a coward”, and drank in celebration of their assault. They pretended that they beat him for “pushing a girl”, but the real reason was more a mix of homophobia and a desire for violence.
I asked where he was now, and was told quite gleefully how after beating him unconscious, they had drug him outside into the alley way. They left him there then walked to the near by Mack’s store and claimed to the worker that they had found a guy beaten badly in the alley way. They left before the cops got there.
Months later I heard rumor that Devon had been in a coma for a few months, and when he woke up he had no memory of what had happened. I never saw him again, and can;t verify if it was true or not
I feared Justin, and no one dared to stand up to him after that. None the less every so often he would find an excuse to attack someone, turn on someone.A few months after the assault on Devon, Justin beat another kid into a coma for breaking a alcohol bottle in the park and refusing to pick up the glass. He justified it by saying that people bring their dogs there and the dogs could step on the glass.
He left the squat, luckily, and I lived there until police busted it some months later when the parents of a girl named Sarah who had been kicked out decided to claim she had run away because she wouldn’t stay in the shelter where her parents had left her. So they came to find her, apparently knowing for months that we were squatting there. A while after that I was in a car accident, along with that girl, and had to return ‘home’ to Kitscoty do to my injuries. Her parents refused to take her back and told her on the phone from the hospital “It’s just like you to get yourself in trouble.” So she moved in with me and my mom and after she healed enough she went to school with me in the town I had tried so hard to run away from. The town where I had been bullied nearly to suicide.
A year later I heard Justin was convicted of attempted murder after pulling a knife and trying to stab a Sikh guy in Gazebo park.
I was 16 then. I am 33 now.
just over half my life ago.
This is how I remember it. There is not a single person from that scene I have talked to in over a decade. But I remember most of that year like it was just weeks ago.
In recent weeks there have been a number of mass shootings throughout North America which is becoming increasingly normalized in modern society. John Zerzan has written and spoken extensively about the phenomenon of shootings, never shying away from the difficult subjects and questions that many others actively avoid.
John Zerzan (right) with PE writer Comrade Black (post-Left)
PE: I remember you once saying on your radio show that when the media talks about mass shootings they use a set of buzz words and often present it as though these acts are incomprehensible. Can you explain what you meant and why this is problematic?
Zerzan: First, let me say that my focus has been on the unprecedented rise in what are commonly called “random” multiple shooting; those that, as you say, are presented as incomprehensible. Of course they are not incomprehensible and speak to the nature of modern mass society. They are deeply symptomatic of the growing isolation, a product of the disappearance of community. Society becomes rapidly more technological and – contrary to the propaganda claims of the tech agenda – people are ever more adrift and lonely. With less and less to hang on to unspeakable things happen.
PE: Often mass shootings get blamed on mental health, yet many of these killers had no history of known mental illness?
Zerzan: Yes, most of the shooters have no history of mental illness. More often one reads what has become a kind of cliche description: ‘he was the quietest guy, very nice, never missed work or made trouble, etc’
PE: A while back there was an article about kids being bored by mass shootings. Do you think they have become part of the spectacle? Or are they the cracks?
Zerzan: It’s possible that as these multiple homicide acts become almost daily occurrences events they are tuned out or even become boring. Think what else is routinely tuned among the common horrors of civilization…
PE: I saw a feminist blogger recently write that all these shootings have one thing in common, that the perpetrators are all men. What’s your take?
Zerzan: Not all the shooters are male. A horrible part of of the phenomenon in recent years has been family slaughters, including mothers murdering their children.
PE: I have heard you say that mass shootings are a phenomenon that appears to be unique to both the modern times and certain parts of the world? What is the connection between privilege and this type of violent act?
Zerzan: Roughly speaking, these rampage killings happen in the more technological societies and are spreading from the US to other technologically advanced countries. Thus one wonders how ‘advanced’ or ‘privileged’ these places really are. In terms of individuals it is less often poorer people committing theses acts, more likely white suburbanites, with some exceptions.
PE: Ever since Chris Dorner opened fire killing a couple cops, more people are beginning to target the police. As an anarchist, what do you make of this?
Zerzan: Police brutality and the militarization of the cops seems to be increasing. So, not a big surprise that more folks would strike back.
PE: Another interesting aspect of the more recent shootings, starting with Dorner – is that the killers used facebook or other social media to post statements before committing their killings. I am certain this will justify increased profiling and surveilence. What’s your thoughts on this?
Zerzan: Social media usage is of course extremely widespread so we see more use of it by shooters e.g. the Isla Vista killer recently.
PE: Layla AbdelRahim writes about how politeness and manners are a form of civilized violence that helps to hide the violence of our society. We live in a horribly violent culture that pretends the violence doesn’t exist; what do you make of these outbursts of very public violence in the spectacle of polite society?
Zerzan:Layla refers to how domestication represses the violence, if less effectively these days, eh? The violence is less hidden than ever but denial reigns and the ‘solutions’ put forth are very superficial. For example, gun control laws which miss the basic reality. That is, guns have always been very prevalent in this country, since colonial times in fact. But the shooting rampages as a common phenomenon is quite recent historically. A year before Adam Lanza killed twenty-some children at a school in Connecticut he called Anarchy Radio to tell of a chimpanzee who attacked its owner. The chimp had been dressed in human clothes, fed human food, provided with TV – and snapped because of the degrading domestication it was subject to. The bitter irony was that Lanza himself snapped and killed two dozen people about a year later.
PE: When Ted Kazcinski was arrested as the Unabomber, you wrote him letters and visited him in jail; how do his acts of violence differ from these others? Is it simple a difference in ideology?What can we learn from “Uncle Ted’s” actions?
Zerzan: Kaczynski’s acts were in no way random. They were part of an exclusively anti-technology campaign.
PE: Is there a connection between how we as a society treat animals and the land with this type of violence?
Zerzan: I think it’s quite reasonable to see the mass cruelty of industrialized agriculture – to use a big example of how animals are treated – as cheapening life in general and thus contributing to these explosions of violence among humans.
PE: I remember when the Columbine shooting happened which seemed to be one of the first; followed by another highschool shooting in Taber Alberta not far from where I grew up only a week or two later. As a kid in a highscool that was tormented and bullied nearly to the point of committing suicide myself; having a couple kids pick up guns and shoot back was something I paid close attention to. But things didn’t seem to get better in the aftermath, rather kids like me were treated like we were all potential psychopaths and nothing else really changed.
Zerzan: Bullying is one triggering factor in some of the mass killings. But bullying is nothing new whereas there is something unprecedented going on as mass society shows such pathologies. I went to a rough high school where, in addition to beatings by some of the priests, there was a fair degree of bullying. No-one brought a gun to school and started blowing folks away.
PE: Fredy Perlman described civilization as a monster that keeps growing and consuming, while telling the story of people who either resisted by running away until the monster caught up to them or by fighting back – often becoming more like the monster they resisted in order to stop it until it collapsed and they took it’s place as the new monster. How do we resist without becoming recuperated into the machine we seek to destroy?
Zerzan: Civilization must be attacked at a deep enough level to hit its target. Activism that lacks critique, lacks a qualitatively different vision or paradigm is doomed to be quite limited in my opinion. This means, among other things, that we must not shrink from embracing property destruction, which is hard to co-opt.
PE: You have argued that technology alienates us further. Are these shootings a symptom individualism? Capitalism? Lack of nature? Or something else?
Zerzan: It’s all these things even if technology is major – and generally overlooked. Domination is a totality and needs to be seen as such to avoid single-issue reformism.
As Adorno put it, in terms of causes: “It is idle to search for what might have been a cause within a monolithic society. Only that society itself remains the cause.”
PE: You have written about hope, where as the trend seems to be moving towards nihilism. Where do you find hope in times like these?
Zerzan: I am hopeful because I see the energy of resistance alive in many places. It has not gone away. And because I think that the system of domination is actually quite hollow and weak. It is plainly losing the allegiance of many on many levels, has no answers to the myriad problems it has created.
If you are interested in more of John Zerzan’s work check out his radio show Anarchy Radio, live every tuesday at 7pm PST. You can also read many of his writings at: http://www.johnzerzan.net/articles/
My head bounced – one -two- three times off the pavement, as the ringing in my ears silenced all other sound. I laid there motionless, unable to move as I watched the world in slow motion through open eyes; for what seemed like hours. I honestly have no clue how long I laid there.
I often think I was both quick thinking and lucky to have managed to at last second moved my hand quickly under my head before his boot came down full force. But in reality it was him who was lucky. While I ended up with a severe concussion and probably some small degree of brain damage which took years to heal, he ended up with all my money on a nice sunny day – instead of a prison sentence for murder.
I don’t often tell this story; in part cause it leads to some uncomfortable questions. But primarily I don’t tell it cause it tends to make people uncomfortable to know it happened. Even worse, to know it happened to someone they actually know. Especially people who come from a background of comfort and privilege, who never had to deal with real violence other than on TV.
Most days I love my life, I look forward to my next day, my next week. But it wasn’t always this way – and there are some days where I think about these brutal experiences from my past which most people don’t know ever happened. The part of me very few people know about, or even want to. In some ways it helps me to keep a positive outlook and to love life, to know it as a gift. In other ways it alienates me from others who don’t share any understanding of violence and this type or level of trauma. This incident I describe was far from the only time I experienced extreme violence, but it stands out in my head.
As I lay in bed, my head resting gently against a soft pillow; I can not sleep. Thoughts of concrete keep me awake. I am not sure why, but I felt like I needed to write this, to share it, before I could rest tonight. Lately my memories of these experiences have been on my mind, hovering in that skull that only never cracked because of a last second reaction to protect it and put my hand under before the boot came down. I don’t know why this is on my mind or what I will get from sharing it with you – but maybe now that the words are typed I may finally sleep.
Goodnight
Gord Hill is probably one of the most sought after speakers, writers and artists in regards to anarchism, militancy and Indigenous sovereignty in our area. His style is unique, drawing on his own cultural traditions and combining them with radical militant analysis of capitalism, colonialism, civilization and the state, presented in a format we would understand as a comic book. I have for years admired and been influenced by the work of Gord Hill, and on a few occasions have been lucky enough to organize events that he has taken part in.
Gord is a member of the Kwakwaka’wakw nation on the Northwest Coast.
I am very greatful that he accepted my request for an interview about his work and his latest comic book.
PE: I remember you saying once that your first comic was meant in part to help Indigenous people teach their children about their history. Who did you intend to reach with this new book?
It’s pretty broad, any one who is anti-capitalist, or who thinks the system is oppressive and unjust, who question the values and ways of life of capitalist society. It’s meant for militants who may have participated in militant actions as well as those who question the validity of such tactics.
“Uncle Ted’s” actions?
Profane Existence 