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

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

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?

Fuck Yeah

With the eminent release of the Brainwreck/Dawn split on the horizon I thought it would be appropriate to post up some Brainwreck for anyone who has never heard them (if you're from Nashville and have never heard of them, shame on you) or for anyone who never got a copy of the great No Power ep. Brainwreck is one of the few straight up hardcore bands that came into the Nashville underground scene in the past few years and were welcomed with flailing bodies and clenched fists when they played live. Their style of Hardcore was a mixture of fuck everything hardcore and power violence that made their shows erupt into a frenzy. When people went to a show that Brainwreck was playing they always knew they were gonna wake up with a bang-over the next day at the least. This ep is short, loud, pretty lo-fi, and is filled with all the energy that goes into a good hardcore album. Honestly I could talk about how great this band was for days so I'm gonna let the music say the rest. The last thing I will say is that they are planning to have an official last show/reunion show (date is still TBA) for the release of the split, so put that on your to-do list right above going completely ape-shit.

                                               

                                                        No Power

The children are our future

To keep things rolling here I'm gonna follow up with a newer band out of Nashville. Fenris are a group of young dirty kids playing dirty music, so there for I think they kick ass. I can never stress enough how much I love it when I get to see the next generation rise up into the scene and these kids are definitely  doing it. Very heavy stuff tinged with melodic clean parts and vocals that keep the mood just under complete misanthropy.
enjoy.

                                                          Animals EP

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.