Blockade/ Wadge split 7"

Before our posthumous collaboration with Tupac Shakur drops let this beast whet your appetite.

Recorded in early 2007 and largely forgotten about the material on this split was written and recorded in the transition period we had between Turn Illness Into a Weapon and Primitive. Along with the Hatred Surge split these songs bridge the aesthetic gap between the two full lengths.

Earlier versions of some of these songs were on the Trapped in a Scene comp on 625. Most of these songs were originally ear-marked for the session that eventually became the Hatred Surge split. Not sure why all the changes occured; i'm sure there was a good reason at the time.

And much like the Hatred Surge split these songs were also recorded in our practice space.

Note to all budding home recording enthusiasts; if you tune to B and play at loud volumes you need to sit your computer on a large piece of foam so you don't keep getting disk errors due to massive amounts of vibration. Or try and move it out of the same room as the 8x10. Whichever's easier.

The lyrics to IPCR are printed incorrectly. They should read "Children call me Hungry Knife and creep silent with love for Earth" which is a line from one of many letters penned by Lynette Fromme and Sandra Goode in the wake of the Manson Family's demise. Quite which eco-unfriendly CEO or politician they were threatening to murder in that particular communique escapes me just now.

And speaking of eco-unfriendly, the first song, Pest Control, is the closest i'll ever get to writing something on a vaguely ecological matter.

For a long time i've personally felt one of the failures of the green movement to engage the general populace is its refusal to reframe the subject matter in more honest terms.

The bottom line is we aren't killing the Earth and we're actually unlikely to destroy it. The Earth however will destroy us at the rate we're going.

When we talk in terms of how we're killing the planet we're still engaging in this idea that human race is the be all and end all and that the universe revolves around our every act.

In a broad sense i believe you can tie this into the cult of individualism and some of the longer lasting destructive shifts that occured under Reagan and Thatcher's legacy in the 1980s. And in the same way that WWII is far more historically nuanced than "some bad man invaded Poland" i recognise that the "me" generation is not simply a result of the shift towards Third Way politics.

Enough. We'll see if that opens up a can of worms i'm utterly unprepared for on the comments page or not. It could go either way.

The idiotically named Regurgitated Semen Records from Germany released this one. They can call themselves RSR all they like but everyone knows they're really called Regurgitated Semen Records. I guess there's some kind of a lesson to be learned about not naming your label after a Meat Shits demo when you're a teenager in there somewhere.



On the A side of the record (we're definitely playing second fiddle here) is the incredible Wadge; Ontarios greatest video store owning Tiki grindcore one man band. Number one in a field of one.

Some people may take me to task here and say "i thought you didn't like humour in music?" Well, Wadge is deadly serious. That's all there is to it. Wadge rules; nothing more to be said.




Reading:

Tsawalk - Richard Atleo
Saints, Scholars and Schizophrenics: Mental Illness in Rural Ireland - Nancy Scheper-Hughes
Rabelais and his World - Mikhail Bakhtin
Violence in War and Peace
Only Death is Real - Tom G fucking Warrior

Listening:

Cloaks - Desolate Turves
Diocletian - War of All Against Y'all
Ride for Revenge - In the Spirit of Ultimate Sacrifice
Rudimentary Peni - Farce

Urine Cop tape/ Disgust live

Eric from Blockade/ Slaughter Strike and Adam from Winters in Osaka collaborated recently to release a 15 minute tape on Coffin Crawl.

Expect blown out noise and blast beats, like an ultra lo-fi version of One Handed Christ Destroyer from the Blockade Unearthly Trance split but with more variation in the drumming. Influenced by World and the like and the last song, which is by far my favourite is apparently an Ildjarn cover.

If you want to relive (or pretend you were there) the days of receiving obscure noisecore tapes from far away lands (hey, Ohio was pretty far away when i lived in Newcastle) then this is probably the nostalgia trip for you.

Nostalgia or not i enjoyed this release a lot.

Urine Cop also played their first and last ever show recently which was a great night out; Cannibal Ferox 35mm print on the big screen followed by a power electronics show just up the street.

Eric did vocals at the end of the set, i wish he`d do more. Every single time i`ve seen Eric do some vocals he`s totally into it, then just loses his place, laughs to himself off microphone and gives up. You can usually anticipate him wrenching all power supplies to his noise gear out of the wall within about 30 seconds of this occuring.

True Music for True Music fans.



Also playing that night were Disgust. There's been a Norton/ Disgust split tape lost in the works for a while now though i understand it's actually coming out shortly.

It was cool to hang out with Mackenzie from Disgust, he's someone who clearly understands the ritual function of art in working through different aspects of personality. I'm not refering to either of the common cliches of catharsis or the interminably crappy "if i didn't play in this band i'd go out and kill people" schtick.

Our understanding of violence in the world match up at the edges and it was interesting to hear his views on the nature of God; i hadn't considered his perspective before (we're from vastly different cultural backgrounds though which has a lot to do with it)

So far this year i think by far my favourite live experiences have been Swans (Toronto; New York wasn't nearly as good) and Autopsy; as i'm getting older i'm suprised to find myself wanting a little more spectacle at shows. Disgust is actually the third most enjoyable live experience i've had this year.




Four guys huddled tightly around a table with a handful of noise equipment; unnassuming, focused, hostile, unconcerned with anything in the room except the table and each other. I feel they would have given it as much had they been playing to no one. There was something intangibly honest about the whole thing that sat well with me.

Power violence dynamics applied to noise and it was everything that a power violence performance should be (and is sadly lacking in most).

Disgust understand the core is the intent; not the useless trimmings holding it together, they come secondary. Genre as a vehicle for greater expression.




Also highly recommended is the Constrictions tape; more power violence approaches to power electronics

Download their demo here and the Zero Discrimination tape here

Inner Light/ a small statement of sorts

New Joshua Norton Cabal release, Inner Light is out now on CD. In Europe get it from Chimera from anywhere else send me an e mail (it's in my profile).

About 80% of this one was made with reamplified metal and one and a half Trogtronic boxes (the half was a decidely busted 665). I used the Blockade backline at Audiolab studio for an afternoon and made Chris Hegge laugh like a drain as i demanded more and more ridiculous configurations of amps and devices at ludicrous volume.

The last track uses a lot of field recordings i've collected over the years and is the tale of the evolution of my occasionally disconnected mind reduced to a fifteen minute piece.

Originally i had a few vocal tracks recorded as well but for some reason (perhaps a sudden bust of self awareness leading to a lack of confidence) i cut them all and left it entirely vocal free.

Art and layout was done by Joce again (he also did the Blockade/ Unearthly Trance split)



The basic theme of Inner Light is a celebration of the irrational internal flame and how it informs other aspects of my life and thinking.

As someone with close to twenty years of involvement in DIY culture i'm often asked what keeps me motivated to stay involved? Why do i still bother? Sometimes it seems like these questions are daring me to speak to all of the ultimately petty ills we could all share about the more frustrating side of hardcore/ noise/ metal/ avant garde/ youth based cutures. Generally i don't need to do that in public too much; if you want to hear other people piss and moan i feel you can look to any cock on a message board and get your fill there.

Of the many answers i can give the easiest one is a very simple "it's pretty much all i know". It's the same with my choosing to not eat meat. Sure, i had a solid ideological reason a long time ago and for a while there i was definitely every cliche of the vegan police you could think of, but after more than two decades it just becomes normal. If pressed i could undoubtedly give you a long list of reasons why it's important to me, but it would be delivered with all the passion of why breathing air or learning to read is important.

Anyone who's familiar with anything i've written over the last five years or so will be aware i tend to fall down the rabbit-hole when it comes to discussing the symbolism and semiotics of whatever culture it is i belong to (these days i feel i'm unable to say what it is i'm attached with any degree of precision by merely saying "hardcore").

One of the questions i've mulled over a lot recently is "if we base much of our public front on rejectionism (and *we* really do, just look at your record collection) what are the values and acts that we find beauty in? What are our standards beyond refusing certain models of interaction with the world?" What is said by its exclusion in dialogue?

With that in mind an aspect of Inner Light is my ongoing quest to determine what it is i personally find beauty and value in.

One of the things i've been very aware of for a long time is the current that runs through my life that informs all other aspects of my self identity. It informs my creative urge, it informs my way of thinking, it informs my career path and pretty much every other aspect of my life i can think of. Taking every individual aspect and putting them together does nothing to really illuminate what this current is though.

Unfortunately anytime anyone ever attempts to speak to a sense of calling the connotations are often too closely linked to a religious impulse. Or worse we invoke the modern soft-agnosticism of refering to things as being "spiritual" which has become a term even less meaningful or agreed on than Anarchism in this day and age.

In this blog i've often reduced it to a necessarily simplistic reference to The Occult, which as any boring pedant can tell you merely means "hidden".

I see a lot of other pop references to The Occult in culture and in particular modern music. From some quarters there is the knowing nodding head of assent, from others the open frustration that nothing is ever really specified and from the rest either outright rejection and calls of "bullshit" or an utter disinterest.

My own feelings on the matter (like it's a single "thing"...) are that if any ideology you subscribe to in this life is not a living, evolving system/ praxis that enables you to negotiate meaning in the world then you should give it up. I don't think it matters that much how you negotiate meaning, as long as you do it.

And finally, though i reject (for many many reasons) the god awful cliche (as it's become) of the personal is political, particularly when applied en masse to the drabber ends of the hardcore spectrum in the 1990s; i think there is a huge validity in the also cliched notion of becoming the change that you want to see in the world.

Lest you think i'm some kind of yoga mat carrying hippy let me qualify that by saying that this is not an inherently fuzzy and nice concept. The change you might want in the world could be utterly hostile to the change i want and vice versa.

More people need to practice or at least understand the principles of agonism and pluralism.

Listening:

Pimp Action Slutgun - Body Scrap LP
SFN - Itching 7"
Autopsy - The Tomb Within 12"
Gunter Saxenhammer - Interstellar Overkill CDR
Universal Order of Armageddon - discography CD

Reading:

well, entering a masters program is kicking the shit out of my ability to read for fun (and also my opportunity to write music) but here's two books i've enjoyed recently

Wendy Doniger - The Implied Spider
Roland Barthes - Mytholgies

Quitting my job was the second best move i ever made in my life (the first was immigrating to Canada). School is particularly novel to me as i don't actually have much in the way of a formal education.

small victories

Last week the laws around prostitution in Ontario were changed (perhaps only temporarily). You can read the full details about it here.

Several years ago Sex Professionals of Canada launched a constitutional challenge on laws that made it illegal to "communicate for the purposes of prostitution". The argument being that if sex workers were robbed, assaulted or raped on the job then reporting these crimes was self incriminating.

The courts agreed and felt that the laws were both unconstitutional and added more potential violence and danger into sex worker's lives.

About seven years ago i wrote a song called Pimp Killer for The Endless Blockade; it's the first song on the Come Friendly Bombs ep. As ever at it's heart was a sense of frustration and inability to change things i personally felt were wrong with the world.

I recognise that language is in an almost permanent state of flux and one of the reasons that English is such a strong language is its ability to constantly adapt (obviously discussions on colonialism and language can be skipped here).

I guess my issues with the word pimp came at a time when quite by chance i was involved in several different projects that involved sex workers. I'd delivered several housing workshops to different groups of sex workers and one of the community development projects i was leading involved taking a popular education (Paulo Freire and all that jazz) approach to empowering groups to form their own coalitions and advocacy groups that included several sex workers in their numbers.

And if you can mediate a group of active drug users into politicised roles you can pretty much do any group facilitation...

Anyway, someone around this time referred to my handsome pitbull (who was at the time wearing a slightly altered child's fleece with a Man is the Bastard patch sewn on the back; it was winter time) as "totally pimpin'!" Quite what that actually meant i have no idea but at the time there was clearly a move in our society to change the word pimp (Pimp My Ride for one other example).

Having moderated several groups in Toronto involving sex workers and the amount of crisis intervention work i did in Glasgow with sex workers who'd had the shit kicked out of them buy their johns, pimps and lawyers (an ugly story indeed) i wasn't impressed by this move and wrote a completely emasculated song from this perspective.

And slightly related the song Black Economy on our first LP was inspired in part by Alan Young's book Defiling Justice (he was the lawyer for SPOC)

A music related post coming later this week, i promise.

interviews

I've always believed that you should learn theories, then absorb them so much that they become second nature so that you don't really have to think about them and you can wilfully forget them.

With that in mind i think it was Carl Rogers, chief theorist behind Person-Centred Counselling, who felt that the act of openly verbalising responses to questions was a way to get people to understand what their actual feelings were about the given topic. But like i said, i deliberately forget a lot of the specifics of most theory after a few years of using it solidly.

And this is pretty much how i've always viewed interviews; as a quasi self-indulgent way for me to work through some of my opinions on the world and how it works, though usually only in the relatively narrow (but by no means unimportant) terms of the culture of music.

In a sense this blog is really a record for me of things i've said so i can keep some kind of track of it. Almost like a diary in a way, though the Tumblr page i have is much more of a (largely symbolic) record of current personal activities and obsessions. Similar to tattoos or the more less defined in intent sigil stuff i've done, though far less serious than either of those.

Last night during a drastic lull at work i found the following two interviews from three years ago.

In the longer one some of my predictions about the state of the scene seemed to come true. All hail my mighty divination powers i guess...

In the shorter one i didn't really feel much empathy to the article or publication and the content of my responses shows this.

Listening:

Haggatha - 2nd LP
Drainland/ Grinding Halt 10"
Mauthausen Orchestra - Vernichtung Lebenunwerten Leben 2xLP
Witchrist - Ancient Tombs demo
The Damned - s/t LP

Reading:

Kevin Coogan - Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International
John Gray - False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism
Destroying Angles #10
Robert Anton Wilson - Sex, Drugs and Magick
Hans Heinz Ewers - Nachtmair

Watching:

Dog Tooth
Black Death
Valhalla Rising

interview from 2007, quite possibly unpublished

Name and role in the Endless Blockade?

Nolan – Minister of Propaganda and Information

How do you feel about ther term powerviolence?Would you consider powerviolence to be a good classification of your band? Do you agree or disagree that it is sort of a trendy subgenre of hardcore right now?

I have no problem with admitting we're a power violence influenced band. As for it being a trendy sub-genre, it really depends on how you define trendy; a tiny sub-section of a small scene (hardcore in 2007) isn't really trendy in my opinion.

Or maybe it means people playing a style of music without either the necessary skill or the proper understanding of the genre to accomplish their desired results. In which case it could conceivably be called trendy, but I don't know that the existence of obviously lousy bands is the only criteria we should use.

What is the song Haymaker Vs. Manowar about?

I have a Manowar DVD (sampled on our second demo) where Joey Dimao is talking about encouraging their fans to destroy a club during a video shoot.

Haymaker, for those who don't know, basically can't play live anymore (or rarely can) because in Ontario the audience just fucking smashes any venue they play to pieces.

So it's basically drawing a minor parallel between Manowar and Haymaker. Of course my money is on Haymaker winning every single time and I suspect Manowar fans did little in the way of any real destruction.


footage from the infamous Haymaker show at The Corktown

How long was Ryo in the band? How long has this current lineup been in existence?

Ryo was in Canada for approximately a year, we managed to record the first demo and have an abortive attempt at recording the LP with him on drums (which was salvaged as the second demo and Come Friendly Bombs 7"). Ryo also contributes a vocal freakout at the start of Island on the Warzone Womyn LP.

He can now be found mainly in Sete Star Sept back in Tokyo and probably in about eight million jazz/ noise projects. And sometimes he jams with the legendary Keiji Heino. [and sete star sept]


The current and final line up of The Endless Blockade has been together since late 2004



I didnt get to witness this myself, but i heard that T.E.B served as the backing band for Hatred Surge. How did that come about? Did you serve as the backing band for the Euro tour?How was it ?

For those who don't know, Hatred Surge is one guy playing every instrument on his recordings, so he has to get hired guns to play live with him.

The Endless Blockade is basically the Canadian franchise of Hatred Surge. We've done one show as Hatred Surge and have a few more in august 2007 on the cards. [ultimately we played a total two shows as Hatred Surge and obviously Hatred Surge is an actual full band now]

The European tour line up for Hatred Surge was Jon and Jensen from Iron Lung and Ben from The Endless Blockade with Alex and it was by far the best I've seen Hatred Surge and I think I've seen all the incarnations bar the Alex plus iPod early days.

Speaking of the European tour, how was that?

Good, if a little sedate at times, possibly due to D Beat's vice like grip around the neck of many scenes currently. D Beat in 2007 is as expected and as bland and formulaic as Youth Crew was in the late eighties and will be the death knell of hardcore over the next few years.

Playing shows is the least important part of touring for me and I consider Jon and Jensen from Iron Lung, Alex from Hatred Surge, the rest of Blockade and the others that came on tour with us as very close friends so it was a great time for me.

What was the best show on the European tour?

Mannheim was cool, as were Leipzig, Gent, Strasbourg and Groningen.

Is the name The Endless Blockade taken from the GISM song, or is there a deeper meaning?

I comes from GISM, there was a deeper meaning and like the best magick it only works when you forget the original intention and I pretty much have at this point…

Do the band members hold down regular jobs while not touring?

I manage to pay my habitual record buying debts with ease and aplomb, yes

On the split with Warzone Womyn, your side consists of an amazing, crushing near 20 minute sludge song. What was the idea for this?

It's just a natural part of our sound; we're not all fast fast fast thirty second songs. We just wanted to draw out some of slower influences a bit. There'll be some more releases in a related vein in the future. [i shit canned all of these except the Bastard Noise split]

As someone who has been involved with hardcore and diy for a while, where do you see these things headed?What bands/people do you feel are doing the genre justice and keeping this subculture breathing?

Hard to tell really. I guess the thing that keeps me going this long is by really narrowing my parameters of what I'm into; consequently I don't get burned out on punk because I don't buy every flash in the pan hyped record and go see every show that comes within fifty mile radius anymore.

Trendwise I see the D Beat thing going on longer and in certain parts of the world crushing what's considered acceptable in hardcore.

I see more and more useless D Beat bands who are merely emo bands with gruff singers and punk drummers.

I think at some point in the future discerning metal heads will start producing convincingly good black metal bands with large crust influences. I don't really see a future in punk bands trying their hands at black metal though, all the examples I've seen over the years have been pretty bad to be honest.

I think in the US audiences will get younger and in Europe they'll get older. All of which will mean is that in Europe shows will be very mellow yet financially viable and in the US the reverse; shows will be exciting, yet less easy to break even on.

Related to this I think hardcore will get safer and safer and then someone somewhere will say enough and bring back some kind of edge and sense of danger, elitism (punk really is not for everyone and we need to bring that back) and radicalism (however you choose to define that). [this might be one of the first times where i unashamedly used the word elitism.]

And people will continue to make limited tour only merch as a way of forcing people to buy the records direct from the band on tour.

I think we'll see some of the bigger distros and labels collapse for trying to please everyone all of the time instead of focusing on specific genres and ideas.

As for who's keeping the subculture breathing I'm just going to give a very very small list of punk bands I currently enjoy that others might not have heard of:

SFN from Wisconsin, Judas from LA, Suburban Disease from the UK, Grinding Halt from The Netherlands, Brain Handle from Pittsburgh, Dirty BS from Toronto, The Process from the UK, Staat Haat from The Netherlands, Black Shape of Nexus from Germany and Living in Darkness from Toronto

What can we be on the lookout for from The Endless Blockade?

In 2007 we're recording the following:

A split 7" with Wadge, a collaboration LP with Bastard Noise and Primitive, our second LP proper, to be released on 20 Buck Spin. [and apparently the Wadge split is out]

No more tours this year and we'll see what 2008 brings.

SEMEN IN THE CAPS LOCK OF ERIC WOODS KEYBOARD*

Remember 2007? That was the year Eric Wood publically proclaimed something along the lines of how the only two real power violence bands of modern times were The Endless Blockade and Apt 213.

Well holy shit did that ever

a) ruffle a lot of feathers
b) form the focus for 90% of conversations at the merch table for two years
c) give 99% of interviewers a new question i didn't want to have to answer
d) make already shit "recommend me some power violence like Tragedy and MK Ultra" message board posts even more shit for about a year or so.

After Wood's glowing recomendation Anthony Bartkewicz, who wrote the article for Decibel magazine about power violence where we received said musical reach around, also asked me for a few soundbites. These are the unedited questions and answers that they ultimately trimmed down.

1. A few years removed and on an opposite coast from the original PV bands, what is it that makes you feel aligned with PV instead of just grind or hardcore?

it's the music that really drew me in during that early - mid 90s blackspot of diy hardcore, when faux humanism, tolerance for morons, celebrations of inadequacies and screen printed manila envelopes were de riguer. It cut through the bullshit and laid waste to everything in its path; it synthesized Heresy, Neos, Ripcord, Larm, Impact Unit and many other greats perfectly, updating them for a new era and always keeping an eye on the roots that grew before.

As for being aligned with PV, i'd say we're a power violence influenced band, or a neo-power violence band.

We still feel aligned with hardcore (primarily), grindcore (secondarily) and noise/ power electronics (thirdly), we just know what makes our sound and how to filter our influences cohesively. We know that if we're going to lift an Autopsy riff then there are certain changes we have to make in order for it to fit our parameters. Look at Darkthrone: they're heavily influenced by punk and crust but their records are definitely black metal records, not mere World Burns to Death or No Security clones.

2. What (if anything) do you think separated/separates PV bands from grind or hardcore?

at the time nothing really seperated them from hardcore. In retrospect it was a very short lived moment that can barely even be called a movement (that came after the originators largely burned themselves out) that was running on total nihilistic anger, the kind of which hardcore just wasn't producing anymore.

[at the time] Hardcore consisted of too many tales of betrayed friendships and the horrors of Reagan's legacy; all delivered with the passion of a shopping list

i don't consider PV to have much in common with grindcore

3. Which of the original west coast PV bands were the most influential/inspriational to you?

My favourite record of the era is definitely the No Comment - Downsided 7", you can't fake that despondent rage. As far as inspiration goes the oppression of Crossed Out and Neanderthal appeal to us most. We aren't interested in the joke bullshit that came in the wake of Spazz (second wave power violence) or Charles Bronson (not power violence)




*cheers Dave Adelson