Pills, injections, and psychosis

Named after a anti-psychotic, Haldol is definitely manic to say the least. Featuring members of Karoshi and Brainwreck, Haldol plays a mixture of crust, goth, surf and what ever other influences pop into the head of Geoff Smith late at night while he reads Dostoyevsky. This is only half of their upcoming EP titled "Contradictions" but from what I hear from these three songs it is something you will wanna pick up for sure when they finally press it. "Conversations With Holy Men" is the song that stuck with me the most, mainly because of the cool slide guitar part that shows up mid song. But saying that all three songs on this sample of what's to come are very unique, especially if you consider all the boring cookie-cutter stuff that Maximum Rock 'n' Roll is calling crust these days.

Contradictions EP Sampler

Angels Of Darkness

Here is something for all you poor souls that missed out on Earth last night at The End. It may not be as good as standing in front of Dylan Carlson and Co. as they put you into a hypnotic trance, but on the upside of things Carlson said they would be back next year and plan to tour more regularly. Until then, listen to this album to ease the pain.

Angels Of Darkness, Demons Of Light I

Outerspace

The Self-titled first release by Marj was a breathe of fresh air. Not saying that I don't love hardcore, Punk, Metal etc. but at the time there were practically no bands with a melodic tinge to their music in Nashville that I cared about. Taking influence from post-punk, math and other genres they started the foundation for what they wanted to sound like. Crowd favorites "Outerspace" and "Prophet Omega" (though "Nerve Impulses" is my personal favorite) are still asked for consistently and this came out in 2007, so obviously you can see the staying power this album has . The music may not be as Mathy and erratic as their second release "America's Latest Emotional Problems", but what this album does have is songs that will get stuck in your head for days and days. Absolutely crucial.

Marj

Mankind

This is one of those Nashville bands that a lot of people who didn't come to shows in 2008 probably missed out on. Mankind was a band that was centered around The Anchor. Some of you might not know what The Anchor is/was (not sure if it's still open) and for many non-christians that makes perfect sense. The Anchor was a church that happened to have awesome shows from time to time, thanks to the lead singer of Mankind. The fact that this band has some christian overtones going on might turn off a lot of you young Jebus-hating punks, but you would be missing out on a great hardcore band if you stopped reading now. The truth about Mankind is that yes, they had some christian themes thrown into the mix but what is said on this demo is not overtly preachy or over-zealous and falls more into questioning conforming to stereotypical christian beliefs. The music on this demo is crushing, and very energetic, with some obvious influences from some bands from this area that closed up shop and moved to Portland, along with some more current hardcore influences. As far as I know this was the only thing released by Mankind, which is a huge bummer. So to anyone who wasn't dumb enough to be scared off by the word christian and is still reading this post, enjoy and relish the fact that you weren't such a closed minded jerk-off to pass up some awesome music.

Demo '08

Black

Underneath the shiny facade of scholastic achievement in Knoxville lies a rumbling of something much less wholesome. That rumbling is coming from the amps of Argentinum Astrum. Bleak and noisy, with tortured screams that sound like they come from a man that has become all too frustrated with the daily trappings of life. This is the type of doom that Argentinum Astrum plays. The one song offered on this album is a 26 minute long assault on your ears, going from drone-heavy doom to a blistering black metal pace and then back to the doom. This is the bands first self titled album put out on Anti-Corporate. Listen to it, enjoy it, and I promise the next post I put up won't be an Anti-Corp band, for diversity's sake. 

Argentinum Astrum

Dawn

The time is finally upon us, The Dawn/Brainwreck 7" release show is in a mere sixteen hours. I know I'm late on this and probably should of posted this already but I've been slacking, I admit that. Anyway as I said the show is today so I felt it necessary to post the Dawn self titled album to show how this band has evolved (for the people who never saw this period of the band or were too stoned to remember). I'm not gonna go on too much about this album because for most of you it needs no explanation. For those of you who don't know, in this phase Dawn was much more of a straight ahead hardcore band than they are now. Ripping through nine songs in fourteen minutes (Their new stuff goes by even faster) this album is a quick listen, so enjoy the album and come to the show to pick up the new 7".

Dawn

Dawn/Brainwreck 7" Release Show, Skate Session, and Kegger

Sept. 11th 2011

Dawn

Brainwreck (Official last show)

Thetan

Guide

@ The World Trade Center

Skate sesh starts at 6pm show starts at 7pm

ALL AGES

Show is free!

Humilitate

For those of you who check the very informative Nashville Shows blog that Shibby curates you will probably have already downloaded this, but this post isn't for those aforementioned people anyway so just go ahead and disregard this post. Now that I've gotten that out of the way.

Humilitate is straight up Spanish thrash from members of Violent Headache, and they are playing The Little Hamilton Collective this Sunday. If you are the type of person who doesn't like the idea of not knowing/understanding what someone is screaming at you, maybe this isn't for you. But if you are the person who understands how great foreign hardcore/thrash can be you will immediately understand how mandatory this is.

Humilitate

Sunday August 14th

Humilitate 

Guide 

Fucked Ethos

@ The Little Hamilton Collective

8PM Sharp       $5       All Ages

Be There.

Way too busy, please stand by

Hey everyone, I have been way too busy from work and moving to update this blog currently. By next week I should have all my stuff unpacked and Internal Struggle will start back up. Sorry to anyone who has been checking frequently only to see the same old tired shit, I have some good music for you when I return.

Us//Them

With a name meaning "death from overworking" you kind of already know what mood Karoshi was going for and they pulled that mood off very well. Ichi was Karoshi's only full length release as a band, though they also released a 7" ep that you can still get from the Anti-Corp distro. The music is a mixture of crust, screamo, and much more (if you truly want to know every single influence, ask Geoff I'm sure he will tell you in great detail if you sound truly interested). This music is not just a whole bunch of eco-political ranting with music thrown over it, unlike most crust you hear coming out these days. In this music you can actually feel the pure emotion running through it, and that was why Karoshi was so refreshing. If you liked what you heard on this album, expect a posthumous release of the last songs that the band wrote sometime in the near future.

Ichi

Let's start a forest fire

Have you ever seen every musician at a show look on very confused as the band crushes your hopes and dreams? Well that's what happened the first time Clinging To The Trees Of A Forest Fire came through town. This grind band out of Denver are definitely one of those bands that you need to see to experience fully. Lucky for you they are playing here July 31st at The Little Hamilton Collective.

Omega Drunk On The Blood Of Alpha is CTTTOAFF's second album that was released in 2008. On this they continued on in the style of their first ep Harmonies From Bleeding Mouths, but honed that style to a sharp point of grinding terror. In the last year or so these guys have been pretty busy, they signed to Prosthetic, released an album, and have gone through a slight line up change. Don't worry though, they might be super busy these days, but they still won't be too tired to grind your face off when they hit Nashville.

                                    Omega Drunk On The Blood Of Alpha

And remember.

July 31st @ 1318 Little Hamilton

Clinging To The Trees Of A Forest Fire (Denver)
Transient (Portland)
Yautja
Fucked Ethos

7PM $5 ALL AGES

To worship an ass

Today I'm taking it all the way back to 2001. Have you ever looked at the Nashville punk scene and thought "man all this punk is dark as hell" well when I first heard this band and some of the other bands (such as From Ashes Rise) from the area that's what I thought. Asschapel just blew me away end of story. This is straight up thrashy crust that hates you and all of your friends. Highlights of the album are "Burn The Eyes" and "Total Worship", but the whole album is killer. At this point you might ask me what a Moog synthesizer is doing on this album, and my only response is that this is Nashville and our scene is in the business of messing with the boundaries of genres, and business is good.

                                               Total Fucking Worship

Hang real hard and answer to no one

I know what you're thinking, "Why would I want to listen to a band that took their name from a referee in the NFL?". Well I'll tell you why. Edhochuli is one of my favorite bands to have ever come through Nashville. These four Pittsburgh dudes music is a mixture of math-core, screamo, post-punk, and so many other things I can't even really compare them to anyone. With all these interweaving styles you would think it would be hard for stuff like this to be catchy, but god damn! I find myself frequently humming one of their many great riffs that I wish I had been smart enough to come up with myself. The heaviness is there, the melody is there, even the song titles like "I told that motherfucker he better have a god damn mustache" are there! So what I'm going to ask you now is, what more could you want?

                                                         

                                                         Is One Word

I am the light

First off, sorry for the lack of posts these last few days I've been all over the place mentally and physically. So now that I got that half-assed apology out of the way, now I can get back to what I'm really meant to be doing on here, posting about music.

It's kind of hard to decide where to start with this one considering that most people in the Nashville punk scene already know this band and the people in the band, so here is my attempt. Moral Decay was a Nashville band playing Thrashy punk with little hints of pretty much the full spectrum of metal (you can tell by listening to them that they pretty much like it all) I'm pretty sure most people reading this know the well respected/total sarcastic asshole by the name of Dan Emery and most of you probably know that he is/was a member of Sanctions, Karoshi, Meka, Thetan and a bunch of other side projects that I'm not going to mention, well anyway before all those bands he was in Moral Decay, and Moral Decay was great. They were really, really great, even if they did have a song with a goofy ska part in it (seriously what were they thinking??). But anyway honestly there is not much more I can say about this band other than check out Anti-Corporate music Inc. (www.audio-rat-poison.com) to find stuff by all the bands I just mentioned and listen to this great Nashville thrash record.

                                                             I Quit!

Well actually one more thing. This would be a good soundtrack for you while you are blowing shit up tonight, Cause you know... It is the 4th of July and all. America blah blah blah blah..

Dusting for decibels

To show that Internal Struggle likes more styles of music than just hardcore and metal I felt it was my duty to put the very under-rated Dewey Decibel up to throw some beauty into this mix of patches and angst. The now defunct Dewey Decibel were a a rare thing, a rock band with pop sensibilities from Nashville that I was actually impressed by. Alex Baker's vocals alone are amazing enough to make you turn your head and pay attention to what he has to say, but then add in the great composition that this band formulates and you have something truly great. It saddened me so much to see this band die away especially because they mainly played small house shows when they should have been playing Next Big Nashville, SXSW, Pitchfork, and fuck it, every other music festival in the world. To add to the bummer wave this is the only release the band put out, so if you want more of these jams then you're completely shit out of luck. With all that being said you should totally download this.

                                                        The Dusting

Premonitions

Since there is still no ModernHell full length out yet (though their second 7" Black Sermon is coming out in July) I came to the conclusion that their first ep Premonitions should get some attention on Internal Struggle. This very short ep is only three songs and clocks in at just under four minutes and it shows the band in their infancy though I don't mean that in a bad way at all. The sound on this ep is much more straight ahead hardcore (with hints of early AFI) than their current sound which takes that hardcore attitude and throws in some mathy goodness to confuse you 4/4 head-bangers out there. I'm pretty sure they only made around a hundred of these so I figured some people missed out on this ep or maybe you just lost it in that crevice in your car that eats things. So here it is, and if you still don't have a copy of their most recent ep Cult Hazing you should probably do yourself a favor and pick that up, you cheapskate.

                                                      Premonitions

Also, you should go to the release show for the Black Sermon 7" on July 29th at The Little Hamilton Collective, But I guess that's all up to you isn't it?