Fuck Authority: Boohahart - My Turn collaboration (surfboard art meets punk!)

OK so as most of you know, hardcore and punk have always been close with extreme sports. It is not only skateboarding that blends well with our favorite music, but also surfing. Yeah... surfing is surely on the rise in Greece and Europe in general, so me and my band My Turn thought we'd cash in on the opportunity... Just kidding.

This is a video my friend Jim from Boohahart did (a graphic design company that does ONLY cool shit), for his custom work on a surfboard. He wanted to rep My Turn on it, so there you have it. I think it fits pretty damn well to be honest! His video is called "Fuck Authority" and it obviously pays respect to the kings of skatepunk / melodic hardcore, Pennywise!

Thanks for watching and enjoy!

An avid skateboarder and surfer himself, Jim aka Hoppa is currently surfing in Morocco with the Cohete Surfboards team, but be sure to check his work out, say hi, and if you need any custom work tell him TYS sent you!

One X Choice "Forever War" Video (w/ Karl from Earth Crisis)

We never hid that we are big fans of all things youth crew, positive and anything Karl Buechner of Earth Crisis is involved in. Therefore, today we have posted a video that includes all of the aforementioned things!

Once X Choice is a hard hitting, Southern Californian straight edge band which carries the - almost forgotten - tradition of rad Californian heavy straight edge hardcore. That means that they might look like sun-tanned, chill out bros, but they are heavy on the thinking side and very serious about the edge! Various members of the band have been active in hardcore and skateboarding for years, so you can tell they are no rookies who discovered hardcore as the flavor of the month. Check out the following video featuring Karl from Earth Crisis, mosh around to it, get psyched, make yourself a vegan smoothie!

The band has a CD out called Forever War and it's just heavy youth crew meets mosh that you will definitely like if you're a straight edge kid or even just a hardcore music fan! It's also filled with guest appearances by Earth Crisis, H20 and Outspoken. Dig it!

Check out:
http://www.myspace.com/onexchoice
http://onechoice.bigcartel.com/

This Time The Keys Are Broken - "What About Tomorrow" EP Review

Yeah! Here at TYS we are down with the Greek hardcore bands who dare to follow a fresher approach of the music we love. TTTKAB is one of those bands, a bunch of young hardcore fellas whose influence by newer forms of hardcore definitely shows in their sound. What is important, however, is that they still keep the energy levels running high, which is the mostly essential aspect in hardcore music. So let's see what's up with this awesomely named 'new wave' hardcore outlet and the fuss they've created since their brief existence!

What About Tomorrow is the band's first recording, a 4-song EP which blasts through some very good melodic, melancholic modern hardcore. Fans of Modern Life is War, Comeback Kid, Give Up the Ghost etc take note! This band is a serious force to be reckoned with! The production sound is awesome and can easily be compared to US and whatever bands. And to be sure, this band is not some soft-ass hardcore like the type that is circulating a lot these days; their solid breakdowns are mean as hell and heavy as fuck, while the majority of the vocals are pretty harsh (not in the metal but more in the screamo style)! So forget what you might be thinking about pop parts, feelgood college style pop punk etc. This is hardcore, even if it is new age!

I could do with a bit more memorable and catchy tunes in this EP, but I am confident that this is something that will spring up in their next release for sure! After all, this band has members who might be young of age but they have all played (or play) in other notable bands, so they have a lot of potential to make a good name for themselves. At the end of the day, they pioneer a form of hardcore that's pretty much unheard of here in Greece, so thumbs up to them. We'll be here waiting for their next move!

Heavy Sh*t: Trail of Lies, Abysmal Dawn, Doomsday Mourning, Without Remorse

Yeah so as the title shows, we have quite a few releases from some heavy as hell bands waiting to be reviewed. Light hearted punks and people with pop sensibilities might want to skip this one! This post only deals with death metal/deathcore/brutal hardcore etc.

Trail of Lies - Demo

I will start this off with Trail of Lies and their amazing new demo. This brand new band from Syracuse do one thing and do it well: they fuck shit up. Their brand of heavy hardcore is reminiscent of the good old 90s, when bands actually wanted to do some damage with their core. This is the type of hardcore that is coming back: no BS, pissed off and straight to the point. TOL mixes the heavy NY sound with some old school hip hop attitude (check the artwork) and just punishes the listener with heavy, phat guitars, distorted metallic bass, heavy hardcore vocals and some relentless - but not overused - double bass drumming. Fans of Neglect, One Life Crew and other 90s metallic hardcore need to get this [9/10].

Abysmal Dawn - 'Leveling the Plane of Existence'

Moving on to some clean death metal territory, we got Abysmal Dawn's killer new album amazingly titled 'Leveling the Plane of Existence'. Fans of Krisiun, Malevolent Creation and Suffocation gather round these new kings of brutal death metal. These perfectly technical metalloids also mix some dark, black metal elements to their sound as well as some black metal vocals, thus making the outcome all grim and disgusting. Hail! Everything is done with such perfect precision that you can really admire the music amidst the brutality. At some points, I can even make out what the singer is saying! If someone asked me what I am listening for metal these days, this is the album I would play them! All killer, no filler, seriously blackened technical death metal. You bet [8/10].

Doomsday Mourning - 'The Science of Exploitation'

I can't say I am overly excited with Doomsday Mourning's downtuned deathcore. It sounds a lot like Emmure and despite 4 out of 6 songs featuring well known personalities from today's metal scene, I'm afraid this doesn't cut the cake. It's all mid tempo with a lot of beatdowns and I guess it does have some head nodding quality to it, as well as some cool psycho, stress-inducing guitar work over the heavy riffs. But every song is kind of repetitive and there is really nothing innovative musically to keep things really interesting. In times with so much good stuff coming out from everywhere, another downtempo deathcore band with nihilistic rap stoner attitude giving it all on the open chords doesn't do it for me, I'm afraid. The kids out there do seem to like this for some reason (maybe cause it's all brutal with no melodies whatsoever), but what do the kids know, really [4/10]?

Without Remorse - 'The Truth Hurts'

Moving back to more familiar and more worth talking of territory, we have groovy hardcore kids gone death metal, Without Remorse. Here is a band that knows what it's doing, by delivering 8 songs of heavy ass, unforgiving death metal with strong hardcore elements. The vokills are not exactly death metal, but bounce back and forth between DM and hardcore (and some gore-metal), while the guitars create a huge wall of sound which is led by the ongoing double bass drum action. This is the new millenium's death metal sound: groovy, phat, jump up and down, let's fuck shit up music. Just utter craziness and grooviness for fans of death metal and brutal hardcore alike. No matter if you're a metalhead who's shaved his head or a hardcore kid that gets carried away listening to Job For A Cowboy and Dying Fetus, you will like this record. The only downer with this record are the tiring cannabis references, but that seems to be a tie-in with a lot of modern death metal for some reason I cannot understand [7/10].

The World/Inferno Friendship Society - "The Anarchy and the Ecstasy" (Review)

And now for something completely different... WIFS have created a record that crosses the borders of punk rock as we know it, wandering far into different musical territories that will broaden the horizons of the unsuspecting listener. It is just great when bands take the punk ethos and run with it unconfined by the dictating music boundaries. WIFS seem to do just that in their new record (their 13th record to date), as they deliver a lovely concotion of punk, folk, rock, soul, ska and something else that is totally their own.

Frontman Jack Terricloth and co have assembled to create a masterpiece of modern revolutionary rock that might not be very heavy, but it is Revolutionary and it is Rock for sure, and therefore will go down very well with fans of later DOA, The Clash etc. In fact, we could say that the WIFS is a modern-day reincarnation of a Joe Strummer inspired ghost. The players are all skilled and throw in their solos, musical ideas etc just perfectly in order to create that amalgam of bittersweet, cynical and sometimes melancholic piece of modern rock n roll music. There are guitars, basslines, trumbets, trombones, xylophones, and a sweet back up female voice that will inevitably warm even the coldest of hearts out there!

WIFS: Embracing the Chaos

I am glad to see independent music like this coming out in these 'by the book' times. I mean, when you're faced with such a piece of innovative music, there comes a point you just can't resist and you get into it even though if it's more rock than punk and doesn't fit into any specific music category or lifestyle choice. Another last thing I wanted to mention about this exceptional record is that even though it creates a pretty emotional and personal relationship with the listener, it does it in a subtle and friendly way.  Therefore, it an be enjoyed over and over without becoming something too emotionally charged that you can only play under specific circumstances (like maybe The Pogues, Social Distortion etc). This is real music for all times, from the Friday night mayhem to the quietness of your living room and the morning after.

Congrats to Chunksaah Records (run by Bouncing Souls members) for putting out this pieceof 'chilled anarchy' molotov cocktail of lyrical and musical ideas!