Back To The Land Punks
Over the last several years I’ve talked with punks who would work on organic farms through the summer, and I listened to their tales of farm life. I’ve since met people who have gone further with that desire to leave the cities and all the trappings of the modern world. Some have gone to work on farms, some just left the city for smaller communities, and there are those who made the leap and are truly living off the grid.
Over the next several weeks we will feature some of their stories. Here it Gretchen’s.
Escaping the Cesspool
By Gretchen Fawkette
What’s so punk about living in the bush? Sitting around twiddling your thumbs in isolation. The city is where the fun is. It’s where the action is. There’s shows, bike rides, dumpsters, Food Not Bombs, people to bum change off of, people who share your ideologies about Anarchism, Feminism or Equality, plus there’s lots and lots of punks.
On the other side, there’s also cops, yuppies, pollution, gentrification, drug problems, cops, pavement, landlords, garbage, and way too many cops. And if these things start to get you down, you can just drink your worries away. And if shit gets hairy you can always take to the rails, blast through some nice scenery and go hang out in another city for a while.
That’s what I did. It’s all I knew. Where I grew up, Nashville, I just saw the country as full of deliverance-style rednecks and meth labs. Why would I ever go there? And when I escaped that place I just travelled from city to city. Sometimes I would settle down for a bit, but soon enough I would get itchy feet and have to take off again. Rural living for me was living on a train for 3 days as I went from Minneapolis to Seattle.
VARIX Interview
This interview was done early this November in Minneapolis by Mandapocalypse. We drank coffee and beer, and chatted and laughed in a grimy basement before their practice for the Midwest Doomsday Festival. All photos are done by Twin Cities punk photographer ADAM DEGROSS.
PE: Varix! I remember your first show, and how ready, excited, and nervous you all were to be a band. Since then, it seems like you’ve all exploded with creativity, confidence, and punk ambition. Knowing you all personally, I’ve just got to say what stand-up, rad womyn you all are, and how stoked I am to know ya! Alright…. enough of the flattery, time to inform the punx about VARIX! First things first, who are you, and what do you do in the band?
Emily: I’m Emily, and I play the bass.
Angie: I’m Angie, and I play the drums.
Stacey: I’m Stacey, and I…. sing? (laughter)
Ashley: I’m Ashley, and I play guitar.
PE: How did you start up VARIX and come together as a band?
E: Very drunkenly….
Ash: Interesting question, don’t really remember, you were there, Manda! (laughter)
Ang: Well, I learned how to play a D-beat. Then Emily had a riff, and Ashley had power chords and distortion, and we were drunk, and that pretty much did it.
Em: We wanted to sound gross. Nasty.
Ash: We accepted early on it was going to be nasty.
Em: We embraced the nasty. (laughter)
Ang: But then at a point we worked on it and realized we had some songs and should get a vocalist. We really didn’t want to have a girl vocalist because we didn’t want to be a “girl band. J.P. Toulon (RIP) was actually going to be our singer early on. We saw Stacey could do it and we realized we were being sort of sexist not wanting her to do it at first because she was a girl. (laughter.)She came to a practice, yelled, and it was really great.
Warcollapse Live in Minneapolis (Full Set) December 18, 2010
Profane Existence is proud to present a special video presentation of Warcollapse captured live in Minneapolis on December 18, 2010. The was the finale of Profane Existence 21st anniversary party also featuring RESIST, APPALACHIAN TERROR UNIT, WAR//PLAGUE, PYROKLAST, DRESDEN and IN DEFENCE . The entire gig was recorded with multiple cameras and sound board audio and portions will be edited and released on this web site as time permits.
Cheers to Leffer for stitching this together from the raw footage!
Ben Axiom’s Column (originally slated for PE #64)
The Joy of Survival Sprouting
Seeds are technically biologically alive, slowly consuming their energy reserves waiting for the right conditions to sprout. Many seeds will still germinate for many years if stored properly. Recently, scientists successfully sprouted a record breaking 2000 year old date palm seed found in Israel.
Sprouting is the practice of germinating seeds (usually herbs, grains, legumes, oil seeds, and nuts) to be eaten raw or cooked. In the right conditions of air, temperature, and moisture, most seeds will grow a little tail that pushes out of the seed shell or hull and burns up the energy stored in the seed to break through whatever is in its way to reach sunlight. Once it reaches sunlight, it can begin to photosynthesize the energy it needs to grow into a mature plant.
As a dietary practice and survival strategy, I believe sprouting is the most important thing we could all be doing. It’s cheap and easy. It allows you to cultivate crops with a 3 day harvest time that increase vitamin and mineral content availability 300-500 times that of unsprouted cooked grains, seeds, and legumes. Also, relative to the parts of the mature plant, there’s often more nutrient density in a sprout as it’s filled with all of the material and vital energy needed to burst forth into life as a plant.
PETTURIN PALKKA Kaikellaista Harmia 7” – REVIEW
Shit howdy do I love me some Scandinavian crust! These folks have it all: raging dual female/male vocals belting out seven bleak anthems of the hopelessness of being human in today’s society from the conditioning we undergo from an early age in public schools to the illegal political prisons and all of the gloominess in between. The buzz-saw guitar and grinding bass accompanied by blistering drum work catapult each bit of dreary political poetry into your eardrums at around 2 minutes or less. At times I’m reminded of DISKONTO and STATE OF FEAR. Each songs drives straight to the point with out distractions like noodley guitar solos or long atmospheric intros or outros (not that there’s anything wrong with that!). All of the lyrics are presented in Finnish and then in English on top of very grainy b/w photos of war images, nooses, skulls and the like, just in case you forgot that this wasn’t about kittens and rainbows. This was originally released as a cassette with 10 originals and a cover of CONSUME’S The Cycle Continues (limited to 100, but sold out), but was finally pressed to vinyl with just 7 of the original tracks. Not pushing any boundaries, just powerful raging crust. (Jake)
Tuska & Ahdistus Records / Kannaksenkatu 6 as. 7 / 33250 Tampere / Finland //
tuskajaahdistus[at]netti.fi
PANACEA Under Blackened Sky CD – REVIEW
What a truly moving album. Very minimal at times, and very complex at times. This work has a sound that nods towards ANTISCHISMbut has much more complex and diverse sound, not unlike NEUROSIS’ Souls At Zero.This album constantly has a surprise around each bend, but remains consistent conceptually and sonically.
Does anyone remember a band from Germany called ZORN? PANACEA and several other bands as of late remind me of that band, who was way ahead of their time. Drawing from punk, crust and metal, these bands have managed to create thought provoking and emotional masterpieces that could very well be a sound track to a movie. It’s nice to have a change from the overtly political (not that I do not like that kinda stuff) to stuff that reaches into the depths of the human heart and soul that is still intelligent and not selfish or cheesy in concept. (more…)
ORDER OF THE VULTURE Martyr for Nothing 7” – REVIEW
Starting from the outside, this 7” is totally eye catching. It’s done in black, grey, red and white in a black metal-ish font. The cover has a robed skeleton and the back has the bands logo splitting the sleeve open down the middle opening up like shutters. The inside has a few old morbid photos and a separate full size lyric card. The first two songs seem to be written from the perspective of the undead, while the third is a tad more living, personal and emotional. All three tracks are fairly old, coming from a recording session in 2004 that were recently re-mastered and unleashed upon the public. Their style isn’t fresh and new, but it’s a rock solid, foot up on the monitor, head banging, throwing up the horns in your favorite black jeans, patched up vest and wrist to elbow spiked gauntlets sort of kick ass slab o’ pressed petroleum. If brutal driving crust with vocals that are heavily influenced by first generation black metal is you’re cup of tea, then you should grab this. There are only 550 pressed: 440 on red, 110 on black and somewhere in there are 50 that come in a hand crafted boxes with all sorts of bells and whistles that would drive any collector nuts. (Jake)
Aborted Society Records
OILTANKER The Shadow of Greed LP – REVIEW
These dudes hail from Connecticut, and they serve up crust exactly the way I like it. Stuff like this always reminds me of the ‘90’s because that seemed to be the age of great crust punk, and when I fell in love with the genre, all the best bands were from that era. This is heavy, pummeling, raging, fast paced, and crust-as-fuck. Their sound definitely follows the great tradition of awesome crust bands from the CT. area, and the closest band comparisons I can conjure is STATE OF FEAR or CONSUME, which is not at all a bad comparison, and tells you exactly where these guys are coming from. Although you could compare them to other bands of their ilk, they definitely throw in plenty of their own style. Heavy guitar riffs filled with ripping leads and wailing solos, multiple vocalist gruffly screaming at you, sometimes overtop of each other, and drumming that is so fast, constant and intense, that my wrist and ankles have sympathy pains for the drummer, but my neck is also sore from head banging along. This is crust to the core, done to perfection, which is just how I like it! And the art work on the sleeve is pretty fuckin’ rad looking also. (righteous)
oiltankercrust[at]hotmail.com
BROOMIGNORANT demo cassette – REVIEW
It’s too bad this is so short, because it rips pretty damn hard! There are three songs of D-beat based hardcore with a noisy edge added to give it some original flavor. And, even though it’s a live recording, the sound is really good. No information came with this aside from some show flyers and a black and white photocopied j card with the song titles, band member names and an email address. I couldn’t even find much about them online. Well, if you want to take a chance on some fast and chaotic Japanese hardcore, search these guys out. (Jake)
Reality Reality / reality0122[at]yahoo.com.jp
VULVALARD Demo CDR – REVIEW
I have to admit that I was put off by the cover art, which did absolutely nothing for me. You know that old saying about judging a book by its cover, right? Well, that saying also works for demo CDs. Thankfully the music contained on this slab of plastic was significantly better than its cover. VULVALARD hail from Oakland, and play a slightly epic form of crust that seems to fit into the Bay Area very nicely. I’m reminded of bands like BORN/DEAD to a certain degree (not so much the sound, but the feeling I get. It’s very familiar to me) and maybe a significantly-stripped down FROM ASHES RISE. I’m also hearing some very early NEUROSIS (like – Pain of Mind era, ya dig?) sounds, too. Yeah, this is definitely something I can get behind, and would like to hear more of. Don’t let the Viking riding the unicorn on the cover scare you off like I almost did! (Inbred)
VULVALARD
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