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

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

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

Black death spreads

Before Jeff The Brotherhood decided to add Brotherhood to their name and before Cy Barkley started writing Ramones inspired songs about duster, there was The Tennessee Black Plague. In the very evil year of 2002 Jake, Jamin, and Cy grabbed an old boss sampler and a guitar and started writing noisy songs about the black plague hitting Nashville, TN. What followed were a couple great shows at Guido's and this recording released under the now Nationally known Infinity Cat label that the Orrall brothers created. The six songs on this ep are full of feedback, scratchy drum machines, distorted vocals, and a whole lot of tongue in cheek attitude (which all of the Orrall's projects were filled with at the time). From what I can tell at this point most of these early Infinity Cat recordings are now permanently out of print, so I will occasionally throw some on here so everyone can see what life was like before Be Your Own Pet.

                                      The Tennessee Black Plague

Welcome!

Hey everyone!
Since this is my first post on Internal Struggle I think I'm gonna keep it pretty simple. So for starters here is a Nashville band that I've been listening to a lot lately and remembering how awesome they were. The band is Hollywood and the album is Starving Artists. If you're from Nashville, into hardcore, and haven't heard this, you probably have been living in your mother's basement, watching all the star trek movies, and eating pizza rolls for far too long. So tell your mom you're moving out while listening to this.

                                                   Starving Artists

P.S. sorry for the awkward download. I had a bit of trouble figuring things out.