Firmeza 10, Crimen De Estado, and why hardcore still matters...

"This is not music, this is shit", so claims the silk-screened cover of Firmeza 10's (named after a series of repressive measures against anarchist activism announced by the Spanish government) debut 12" 'Hardcore Radikal', and, indeed, it is. I'm not going to play the extreme music lover and hide the fact that this is a hard record to listen to: 16 songs of ultra distorted fucked up bass-less noise punk, with raging and crude female vocals, along the lines of Wretched, Shitlickers, Disorder, or the obvious Discharge, but noisier, rawer, and perhaps, angrier than any of those bands. As easy as it would be to simply dismiss them as another d-beat band, i'm glad to say F10 avoid the pigeonholing of clichés...unlike 90% of today's 'd-beat' hardcore subgenre, they do not sing by-the-numbers lyrics about war atrocities, dead bodies among the ruins, and the usual crusty fun and games, theirs is a song of personal anguish, of the barely repressed urge to scream in a claustrophobic urban setting, of being trapped within the confines of four walls built inside one's own head. It is, indeed, the fitting soundtrack to the everyday struggle that results from a modern day urban life-style, and as such is an emotionally crushing record, yet immensely rewarding.





Crimen De Estado, which features members of F10 and Destino Final as well, is a vastly different affair. Indeed, it shares an affinity for DIY, lo-fi aesthetics: silkscreened cover (amazing artwork too..), photocopied insert, and a wonderfuly raw, primitive recording, but where Firmeza 10 is the sound of inner turmoil, Crimen De Estado is the soundtrack to throwing bricks at cops and burning ATM's, ridiculously epic as it may sound, that's the feel that this little 7" evokes, pure fucking raw hardcore, influenced by all the classic Italian, Finnish, and Spanish bands you can think of, with to-the-point-lyrics. The description might sound generic and like something you have heard a million times before. And you have. Just not this good. It's hard to describe what makes a raw hardcore punk record great, but whatever it is, this has massive amounts of it, blood boiling, fist pumping, raw hardcore, the kind you'll never tire of hearing. At least i hope so.






Neither band has a myspace, book your own fucking life.