CACOFONIA / PUTRID SCUM - Split 7"

Two seconds in to the record the Lollipop Guild welcomes you CACOFONIA land.  Yup, two seconds in to a noise grind  song there is a munchkin voice mocking the guitar riff.  I suppose that is to set the platform for blast beats and dog growling vocals that come next???  This is some of the best grind growl vocals ever.  Completely indecipherable.  I started to think this whole thing was just a joke.  CACOFONIA is nothing more than a parody of grind noise, right?  Farther down the yellow brick road the munchkin voice comes back, sounding like a little man doing a white knuckle job on the shitter this time, while they are playing Darth Vader's theme song (The Imperial March)!  The first mock gindcore/noise band in history, maybe?  A little Google Translate of the lyrics say otherwise.  I think the case is CACOFONIA didn't check their humor at the door while still covering topics of censorship, religion, environment, the human condition and the media portrayal of minority groups needing a good beatdown by authority like police and military.  I have some respect for knowing there is some bad, fucked up shit in the world but not having an unmovable stick up your ass all the time.  CACOFONIA are raging lucha libre fans too, posing as headbanging luchadores on stage.
Forming in Mexico City, CACOFONIA seems to have had two constant members since their inception in 1988, Thrasher and Pancho.  They started as side project by members of ATOXXXICO, HISTERIA, AK-47, MASSACRE 68 and ANARCHUS with various stand ins on vocals at live shows because the singer (pancho) didn't really give a crap about live performances.  The band has remained active since, in 2007 with a big to do about their 19 years together as a band and just this May they were playing out.  Now just sit back and see if they can hit a quarter century of noise making.
On a more serious note, PUTRID SCUM's side is not so comical.  Primitive grindcore and more melodic than their CACOFONIA pals.  There is a lot of gorilla drum abusing.  Beauty is in those minimalist Thonk Thonk Thonk Thonk drum beats.  The first time behind a kit sounds like that for everybody.  Anybody can play that, it's punk as fuck.  Singing lyrics in English, PUTRID SCUM is easier to understand vocally, only if you are following along with the bouncing ball in the lyric sheet.  Even then those grumbling barks are hard to follow.  Two songs are dated topically, "Courage For Peace" and "Post Nuclear" are the last of their kind.  (A quick history lesson for all that didn't experience this first hand.)  At the end of 1989 the Berlin Wall came down,  a few months prior the Tiananmen Square protest had happened, two years later the USSR was completely dissolved and this record came out in 1990.  Communism took a severe beating.  With the Iron Curtain and the USSR gone so were the Cold War, the nuclear arms race did a 180° turn, mutually assured destruction wasn't at the front every persons mind and because I mentioned Star Wars once...  why not slip it in again (wacka wacka)  Then they have a wily stoning of Catholicism, now that's a timeless one.  Toxic waste disposal is lamented and for good reason.  Mexico's brilliant maquiladora idea was jumped on by American companies.  It was a win win for them.  Cheap labor and Mexico's virtually non existent environmental laws made toxic waste disposal a breeze.  Anencephalic babies wasn't a trend anybody wanted.  For good measure they incant Mahatma Gandhi and dedicate their side of the record to him.  Courage for peace man.
There doesn't seem to be a lot of information on PUTRID SCUM.  They are from Mexico City and I assume they started playing around '88/'89.  They did a demo in 1990 called "New Songs" implying there was previous demo but I can't find any record of one.  There is discography cd, Premonitions Of War, that includes some live tracks.  The most recent activity I can find by the band is they logged into their Myspace page last in 2009.



FIRST WAVE GRRRRR RAAAAH RRRRRRR AAAAAHHHHH




Puro Pinche Ruido records (PPR) in Mexico put this out in 1990.  The cover is printed on some of the thinnest paper.  It's basically tissue paper.  I bet a lot of these copies have the cover just wrecked.  The insert is printed on regular card stock though, go figure.  Roughly translated on CACOPHONIA's side of the insert this record had a pressing error and was junked.  When the new ones came in the center labels were on the wrong sides.  This was released with the labels reversed.  Reading that sooner would have saved me some time putting two and two together and getting 5.  "PUTRID SCUM is all about Gandhi, their side is the Gandhi label...  uhhh wait a minute, something's wrong here."

Two interviews with Thrasher and Pancho

Did another rip of NETJAJEV SS ep.  This one isn't as loud but there is less unwanted distortion.  It sounds clear enough that the pops and crackles stick out even more with less background noise.  Larvae Mammoth's G-Spot is the most noticeable.

EPILEPTIX - Greatest Fits LP

Fumbling through the punk selection at a local shop notorious for selling bootlegs of anything and everything, that from what I understand got them shut down...  Ohh yeah, this is right when this record came out in 1999, and, well, fascist Adolf E. Newman kind of jumps out to your face.  I didn't know who the Epileptix even were.  Flip the record around, do the inspection and not only is this cover awesome (so awesome my cat chewed the corner off) it is local.  Must buy pile it is.
You might be thinking Epi-who? and why do they need a greatest hits lp?  Honest truth, they don't need a "Greatest Fits" and this isn't a compilation of previous material from their EP EP or Self Hate ep or the Druggies split either.  These songs stand on their own with this LP and were released after the Epileptix were wandering the empty corridors of Detroit making snot nosed noise with a finger in the air.  Then there is the burning question of who the hell are the Epileptix?  The members have a reputation for their post Epileptix projects like Clone Defects, Piranhas, Human Eye and Timmy's Organism.  Those names probably ring a bell.  If you desire to get with the maturation process of these songsters this is where you begin.
As you travel backwards from current Timmy Vulgar projects and Piscis Clangor the spectrum of sound narrows as you pinpoint the Epileptix sound. What emerges is some well crafted KBD styled punk with the attitude to match.  I mean they put a live recording of "Bummer Bitch" that fits in like part of the camouflage.  If you have grabbed Timmy's Orgamism's recent LP, Raw Sewage Roq, Timmy channels the punk fury of Epileptix with "Poor And Bored".The track might even be a shelved Epileptix tune.  Jumping back 15 years you get some unbridled juvenile lyrics and angsty vibes.  "Pep Rally Massacre" addresses every young punks favorite establishment gripe, the social hierarchy of high school and it must be brought down.  Frighteningly vivid ultra violence is the tool to destroy the system too.  Murder, rape and cannibalism!  Add another tally to the offensive column.  Suicide is a recurring theme that is paired with
shoveling psychotropic chemistry down your
throat and, a Timmy staple, alien experimentation.  Vulgar is still spewing out these ideas and solutions to this day.  Aliens are all over Human Eye and check out "Brain Zip" for mental and emotional torture that pills will
erase.  Self destructive death wish carries on in
"Wastoid" where they sobered up just long
enough to write down the lyrics.  Blackouts,
puking and fighting.  All that's missing is glue
 huffing for the crowning reckless abandon of
 punk.  Despite all of this destructive hedonism
there is a negative viewpoint of the junkie
lifestyle in "She's A Junkie".  Everything the
Epileptix hate in the punk scene is called out in
"Homo Core Riot Girls".  Everything they are
disillusioned with is damn near everything.  Pop
culture taking abite out of the underground,
hypocritical behavior that is unchecked simply
because it is PC, a lack of enthusiasm from the bored look from emo and straight edge and self righteous trend hoppers without an ounce of integrity.  The year each song was written is in the liner notes.  Maybe it's not that interesting, but I appreciate that addition.
There could be a trademark put on Ian's guitar work.  If you subtract the keyboards from Piranhas' Garbage Can EP the end result is a hop skip and a jump from Epileptix.  The take here is more primitive and punches a little more punk rock attitude.  Quicker tempos and straight forward ballsy riffs and pounding drums add even more furious punk style with the occasional use of a little melody.

SEIZURE

I don't want to cry wolf but a couple years ago Timmy put out a call for people with Epileptix photos flyers to get in touch.  Possible rumblings of a discography.  It's been some time since I have heard any mention of this and is probably on the back burner indefinitely.  Keep your eyes peeled none the less if you like what you hear here.