May 2013
2 posts
We Appear, Again
Fellow Punks, It is with a coupling of anti-ambivalence and no small amount of disbelief to announce we have somehow managed to move both heavens and earth to make ourselves able (or, if you prefer, to Enable ourselves) to perform at least twice more in 2013. And lucky us, both shows are on home turf: Philadelphia, PA (August 11th) and Gainesville, FL (November 2nd). We will play our songs. We...
Something gets lost in the simplification:
It’s sort of about subcultural semiotics and their reproduction & commodification. But if that’s too much of a struggle you could just say, “it’s about posers.”
April 2013
3 posts
Our Vinyl Weighs A Ton
People seem to be curious about the pressing info for our new 7”, so we took a few days off work and did some intensive detective work (or, slept until 3pm and texted Var). So here it is. We sold all the pink and clear at the record release show and the yellow and white were all for mailorder. We’re told the only thing left is purple but who knows? Word is these are going fast too,...
BANDCAMP
Hey everyone, we’re excited to inform you all that we now have our own BANDCAMP page and as of this writing the entirety of our recorded output — including some songs you may have never heard before — is now available for immediate streaming and (paid, sorrys) download in your choice of high-quality MP3, FLAC, or just about any other format you could possibly desire. This is...
March 2013
9 posts
11 tags
Invisible →
I’ve got a problem with the way you see, your eyes are always trying to take something from me. I’ve got a problem with the way you hear, only listening to the bankers & the bombardiers. But for now I’m not invisible. I’ve got a problem with the way you think. Respect could keep us afloat, but you would rather sink. I’ve got a problem with the way you act. Run your mouth, confuse opinion...
D.F.W.
“Irony and cynicism were just what the U.S. hypocrisy of the fifties and sixties called for. That’s what made the early postmodernists great artists. The great thing about irony is that it splits things apart, gets up above them so we can see the flaws and hypocrisies and duplicates. The virtuous always triumph? Ward Cleaver is the prototypical fifties father? “Sure.” Sarcasm,...
LITTLE FISTS →
Good morning bright eyes. I watched you while you slept, reflecting on resolutions broken & promises kept. You know we’ve got to fall before we walk; we’ve got to sink before we swim. So have patience, stop checking the clock, and if someone locks you out, kick your way back in. They’ll tell you what you are, they’ll tell you what you’re not. They’ll surround you with mirrors, baby, dont...
christianbeale:
“Hardcore without punk isn’t music, it’s a genre of porn; punk isn’t a genre of music, it’s a thought process.” - Dominic Mallary
PROPS FOR VENTRILOQUISM →
You don’t know this song, but I caught you trying to sing along. Your mouth is moving but the words are all wrong.
False signifiers. Like little liars. Send in the clowns numb from the neck down.
If you don’t know now, chances are you never will. The pitcher’s full, but your plants are wilting on the windowsill.
You talk, and I wince, but you’ve got everybody else convinced; You’ve memorized...
HEADFIRST →
I will be heavy like stone to hold you down. Weightless like wings to lift you from the ground. I will be flesh and bone, fragile and frail, and I will be the wind when it’s time to set sail.
Headfirst, kicking and screaming. Naked and afraid into this world we’re thrown. You might feel out of place sometimes, but you’ll never be alone.
Beneath these petals, thorns. They’ll try to buy away your...
GREETINGS, FELLOW INSOMNIACS →
No sleep. We are restless pestilence. Broken promises collect like bounced checks. Never penitent. I call it “home” where I lay my broken bones. Sticks and stones, a row of disconnected pay phones. We are contraband smuggled through the tunnels under Wonderland. You’ve been sleeping on the job, so here’s your reprimand. We are breeding, multiplying in the space between the walls. What...
“Mexico 2012—60,000 human beings dead. Now go...
In light of our destination on Friday, check out this thought provoking article on some current Mexican punk by our pal Stuart :
http://shit-fi.com/tercer-mundo
February 2013
4 posts
INVISIBLE
This new record has been in the works for what feels like a long time. So long, in fact, that it seems like a lot of people, us included, stopped believing it was really going to happen. The challenges of geography, too many bands and tours, and other more mundane aspects of adult life, all conspired to delay and discourage us. But here we are, despite these obstacles, with a new record and a...
7 tags
January 2013
2 posts
4 tags
A day late. A dollar short.
(Sorry for the delay, other emergencies got in the way of posting this in a more timely manner)
Today we celebrate the life of a man who pushed us to take risks in the name of freedom and justice. Implicit in that is a critique of the psychological structures that allow us to treat people as less than human. This goes beyond race, including in its scope gender, sexuality, class and other...
December 2012
3 posts
Home For The Holidays →
Don’t forget we’re playing with the Bouncing Souls on the 26th. This will probably be our only show in the Philly/NJ area for the next 6 months, so come hang with us! It’s the 10th anniversary of the release of “The Philadelphia Sound” compilation, and all of the bands featured on that compilation will be playing. Knives Out, The Curse, and Go! For the Throat are all...
5 tags
Remembering Mitch Dubey / P.I.B. is playing...
Mitch Dubey was a good man, and a punk in the truest sense of the word. He had a set of values informed by the DIY ethos, and he lived fiercely and passionately in accordance with those values. He made music. He loved and lived it. He travelled for it and created adventures around the sounds we love and the ideas/ideals it espoused. He refused the mundane; he refused cynicism. We weren’t...
November 2012
8 posts
On Maturity
In just a few years I’ve gone from being the kid who will key your car if its parked in the bike lane, to being the man who will key your car if its parked in the crosswalk when I’m pushing the stroller.
mamastiles:
men don’t get to decide what is misogynistic
straight people don’t get to decide what is homophobic
cis people don’t get to decide what is transphobic
white people don’t get to decide what is racist
people in positions of power
don’t get to decide what is considered oppression
that’s how we move backwards, not forwards
Agreed
We sing for angels with dirty faces and clipped wings; songs for decapitating cannibals & kings.
Show
What’s up punks? We’re playing Washington D.C. on Dec. 21st, 2012, with Coke Bust, Sick Fix, Recide (Austin, TX), & Breakout (Austin, TX).
Tickets for the show just went on sale and there aren’t many of them, so move quick — http://venomousideas.bigcartel.com/
On the possibility of attempts on the part of the democrats to “tame” Senator Elizabeth Warren: “Not putting her on banking would make the Democratic Party look like a creature of Wall Street, which, by the way, it is,” Professor Johnson (of M.I.T.) said. “But they don’t like to be too explicit about it.”
News (sort of)
OK punks, we’re announcing another show on the East Coast in December tomorrow. It’s a killer. Stay tuned.
October 2012
4 posts
5 tags
More words
Sexism is an issue that we believe isn’t addressed nearly enough in the male-dominated hardcore punk scene, and the relative gender imbalance when it comes to participation in this scene is something that we struggle with constantly. At times, this imbalance threatens to call into question the validity of this whole enterprise. The biggest problem we run into when we try to address the matter in...
5 tags
The Words
Some say that words can only fail us, clumsy, imprecise, that if we’re aiming for truth, we might as well just roll the dice. But i believe these words screamed together are like prayers and invocations. Like those Hub City days making magic in the basement. We summon something transcendent. Maybe intimacy, maybe true independence. These words burn for those who yearn but haven’t learned yet....
"We won't rest until that content-free core is...
No heart,
regurgitated art,
apathetic.
We need a wake up call, but you’re selling anesthetic.
On the mend, farewell to fair-weather friends, & forked-tongued frauds playing pretend.
7 tags
Labor Day
Earlier today we posted this on Facebook:
Proof that we as a species are doomed: NFL refs strike generates more public engagement & discourse than Chicago teachers strike. Some have framed this as a national vs. local issue, but we can’t fucking believe that ‘questionable calls’ are more newsworthy than child welfare and organized labor. Fuck you, humans.
After a long day...
September 2012
5 posts
caseracer asked: hey! i run a musical collective out of new brunswick, nj (start something nj) - i'm not trying to spam you....i'm putting out a zine and was thinking one of you would like to contribute a piece if you had any time? just a crazy thought i had the other day. be in touch - JEFF
barefootsteps asked: What about a show in Mexico City? How can we make that happen?
head2wall asked: Do you guys have a contact email?
New Lexicon: A Revision →
similarsimians:
It’s just as well, you’ll rot in hell with a halo. For salvation, sub-mission is the debt that they’ll owe. Stuck between the carrot and stick, we stay sick. You let the prey bait the trap, that’s a pretty nice trick. Our heresy’s expired, why not renew it? You said that hell was underfoot,…
8 tags
A Revision
It’s just as well, you’ll rot in hell with a halo. For salvation, sub-mission is the debt that they’ll owe. Stuck between the carrot and stick, we stay sick. You let the prey bait the trap, that’s a pretty nice trick. Our heresy’s expired, why not renew it? You said that hell was underfoot, but I’d swear we’re walking though it. Pray quietly, a riot of...
August 2012
4 posts
5 tags
GOLIATH II
All of this is borrowed, shared, or stolen.
Our way of spitting in their eye, resisting their control and
all this time we strode the road less travelled on.
Still pissed, still wage war on Babylon.
This is what you missed while you were on your knees praying: Stone in sling, hatchet to your beanstalk. Giant-slaying.
If you’d felt what I feel then this wouldn’t need saying.
Well said...
“A million years ago, the cave man, without tools, with small brain, and with nothing but the strength of his body, managed to feed his wife and children, so that through him the race survived. You on the other hand, armed with all the modern means of production, multiplying the productive capacity of the cave man a million times — you are incompetents and muddlers, you are unable to secure to...
6 tags
Olympic fever?
So, to a large degree the politics surrounding the Olympics are pretty fucked up: it tends to gloss over, or temporarily forgive, despicable human rights violations, the local police dispense with the poor, homeless, and otherwise “unsightly” members of the local population in a manner that can only be described as Giuliani-esque. And of course, it amplifies some of the most grotesque dimensions...
Emails are flying this way and that about recording. In case any of you were wondering.
July 2012
8 posts
hhkal17 asked: I thought you'd get a little kick out of this - Tired Hands Brewpub in Ardmore just tapped a beer named in honor of Kid Dynamite. I can't post links so here's the text from their Facebook page - " We just tapped Hop-A-Tact. 7% American IPA with huge notes of pine and citrus. Loud & aggressive just like the beer's namesake... Kid Dynamite."
9 tags
Revolution Zine Style Now
In the early 90’s, a lot of the people in our community were working on a zines of some kind. A close friend worked the graveyard shift at Kinko’s, and virtually all of this fervent cultural-production activity went on there, in those seemingly endless hours between when normal people turn in and when the sun comes up. I used to hang out and help with cut & paste and assembly and...
thisroutineishell asked: So are you guys ever planning to play a show in mainland Europe in the foreseeable future or should I start inventing a parallel universe travelling machine of some sort? I saw you with Nico on vocals in Arnhem and I like to believe you still owe us a proper gig <3
Hate when anti-choice shit gets mixed in with veganism. It’s way too easy to be “pro-life” when you’re a dude. Get bent, then get real, please.
New Direction →
If you live in the Northwest, please check this out. Matter of fact, if you’re a punk/hardcore kid, check out their manifesto no matter where you live. The 90’s DIY spirit that was so formative for us is alive and well here.
4 tags
Can't remember if we ever posted this...
POST-
Obedience ingrained, so discreet that our chains are rendered obsolete.
Post-everything.
Feel nothing.
Ironic detachment replaces outrage. I’ve grown comfortable in my cage.
