on seeing Sex Vid live in Barcelona

Sex Vid are, i guess, on the verge of not being cool anymore, as they're popular with 'hipsters' (the great phantom menace of the punks) and liked by more than ten persons, but it's still one of the two bands in recent memory that make my skin crawl whenever I hear them. The sheer amount of unbelievably real bad vibes present in their songs and layouts -which somehow reek (to me, at least) of Throbbing Gristle's nightmarish soundtracks to doing cheap drugs in grey tower blocks, or the early SST Records camp's explorations of the dark side of '60s counterculture- are something I just can't help but develop a certain affinity to and identify with, whereas even the best of the rest of the bands of today are nothing but (in some -rare- cases GREAT) entertainment. And no, this has nothing to do with the retarded "modern day Black Flag" tag that's thrown around every three months to describe every other band, and no, Sex Vid don't seem to be better than they actually are because of the shitty general state of hardcore punk music of today. Sex Vid embody hardcore the way it once was, a state of mind for misfits and outcasts totally devoid of uniforms, rules or style guides, the ugly sound of mental illness way out as once executed by United Mutation, Void or Cheetah Chrome Motherfuckers. Blessed be.

The show itself was pretty much a blur of crushing noise, yet executed with tightness and precision, much like being caught inside an early Die Kreuzen rehearsal tape from the day when Dan Kubinski had a sore throat, or the feeling you get when you first listen to early Darkthrone on a shitty C60. The band played for about 15 minutes, beers were flung, drunken mosh antics ensued, authentic crusties hated their hipster asses, and we all went home drunk and with ringing ears, happy in having reveled for just a little bit in a feast of somewhat friendly psychic warfare.