Death Crisis - Death Crisis EP (2009 Too Old To Die Records)

Excellent San Diego hardcore punk featuring Alberto Jurado (Death Eyes) and Rob Logic (Life Crisis). See what they did there? 

1. Broken Spirit
2. Until We're All Dead
3. Que Interesante
4. El Masturbador
5. Sounded Like A Good Idea
6. Saddam Is Dead

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Dead Western - Witness Cracks To The Miracle (2004 Self-released)

Dead Western is Troy Mighty. Troy Mighty is a Sacramento-based acoustic-punk weirdo. Spooky baritone voice, gloomy acoustic guitars, and minimal accompaniment. Psycho-folk cowboy songs  that have been pretty unknown in its first 16 years of existence. Maybe in 16 more years this will get "discovered" and you can be the cool guy/or girl who had it way back during the great quarantine of  '20.

1. When Satan Is King
2. Our Fathers Are Fortunes
3. A Fine Invatation
4. Over Those Mountains
5. The Fire Of Life
6. My New Band Is Called The Butterfly Boys
7. Space Is Still The Place
8. The Night's Soft Grace
9. When The Wank Makes Me Weak
10. Let Your Bears Fly

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Buy

Critical Me - Promised Land (2007 Magnitude 6.19 Records)

When I'm out at thrift stores, something I keep my eye out for are CD's and records by San Diego bands that I've never heard of. Why? Maybe it's some sort of half-hearted attempt to catalog the local scene, maybe it's some perverted type of (adopted) hometown pride. I dunno. But I can't help it. Critical Me falls into that. Until I grabbed this I had never heard of them.

Critical Me is/was a melodic punk band from Jamul, out in the hilly back country east of San Diego.
This is very SoCal mid-90's skate punk, and would have fit in well on Fearless, Know or Lethal Records. While it can for sure sound dated at times, I liked SoCal mid-90's skate punk, so this hits a nostalgic sweet spot for me. There have been a lot of really bad attempts to emulate that era of punk, but Critical Me does a pretty dang good job.  "Promised Land" and "Halfway Home" stand out in particular.

1. Promised Land
2. No Escape
3. Russian Roulette
4. Halfway Home
5. Excuses
6. King Greed
7. Going Nowhere
8. Through My Eyes
9. Armegeddon
10. Waiting In Line
11. Same 'ol Bullshit

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VA - The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly (1998 Insolito)

3 x 7" compilation from Germany's Insoliti label. Some heavy hitters on this. The first 7" is AmRep style noise focused, the second sludge (although that Cavity song is much faster than expected), and the third powerviolence. As Spazz and Floor are two of my favorites, I'm much more partial to The Bad and The Ugly. The Devoid Of Faith track is one of my absolute favorites, and I can't really figure out why all their records are in dollar bins.

Here's a good backstory on La Gritona, since they have two songs on here.

Also, the 16 song is listed on this (and the mp3 file) as "Ride The Snake", but it's actually "Flaming Head-On Train Wreck".

GOOD
01. Gritona - Vitamin
02. Fork - Dung
03. Craw - Hayfield Tim's Texas Trip
04. Slughog - A Man Called Ass
05. La Gritona - 2 Charisma

BAD 
06. Cavity - Gone About
07. Floor - Dead Wrong
08. 16 - Ride The Snake
09. Toadliquor  - Praise God For Blood
10. Thug - Cancer Causes Rats

UGLY
11. Ice Nine - Steel Mesh World
12. Discordance Axis - Ashtray Ballpoint
13. Apartment 213 - Endless Killing
14. Devoid Of Faith - Cold Sore
15. Spazz - 7 Deadly Finns
16. Damad - Waste
17. Enemy Soil - Content Slavery
18. Suppression - Ebola

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Part-Time Whore - Home (1999 Battle Born Records)

Well, you'd think I'd have a lot more time for this lately, but that hasn't been the case. Working from home has somehow resulted in more work, but hopefully as I learn to do this more efficiently, I'll have more time to post stuff.

We're gonna get back in the swing of things with a Bakla-inspired post, as I happened to meet Mr. Bakla at a D4 show during this blog's unplanned hiatus. 

So Part-Time Whore. Las Vegas band started by Nate from from Boba Fett Youth. Yeah, not the most woke name ever, but it was the 90's, man. Hard to pin down style-wise. Gruff, screamy vocals, musically not too fast, kinda jagged at times. Political in a scattershot way - personal politics, scene politics, politics politics, lots of Chomsky references in the liner notes (it was the 90's, man).  In a lot of ways it reminds me of Positive State (that's a good thing). Some real strong stuff on here, I'm especially partial to "Ultimately It's All About Fucking".

PTW's singer, Chad, has a blog page that gives the the backstory on the band and this release. The mp3's posted there somehow survived the great MediaFire apocalypse of 2011, but they sound a little tinny to me. So I posted my LP rip. Apparently this was originally recorded to an 8-track cassette so it was never going to sound all that great (tape hiss + clicks and pops, yay), and there is like ZERO lead-in time on Side A or Side B, which I'm sure was intentional. So that abrupt start on track 1 and 6 is just how it has to be.

Be safe, y'all.

1. It Is To Laugh
2. This Is It (The Song That Should Have Changed The World)
3. I Haven't Got The Courage To Care
4. If Only
5. Communication Is A Weapon
6. You (Whoever That May Be)
7. Kevin Kid
8. Scream
9. Outside Of Towm
10. Ultimately It's All About Fucking?!
11. Technocracy
12. Giant Slug

DL