M.O.G. / Murder Inc.III split tape

I recall one guy always beeing upfront during the Lärm sets in Steenwijk. That was Jan, who was a member of Murder Inc. III, a hardcorepunk band from Heerenveen, in the north of the country. Years and years later (when I met him several times when we played a gig with either NRA or Human Alert, for whom he was doing the sound} I asked him if he really liked Lärm that much. His reply: 'No, but I really thought that your singer Dorien was one of the hottest females in punk'...........
Murder Inc. several line ups and the first one is featured on the 'Punk Live In Brouwershoek' compilation lp (to be found elsewhere on this blog). The 3rd line up is the most productive one, several tapes, a 12" and appearances on a bunch of compilation tapes and the famous 'Babylon bleibt fahren' and 'Emma' comp lp's.
In the Netherlands they're most well known for their song 'Stoer zonder studs' (Tough without studs), but more on that later when I will upload their 12".
They share this tape with a band from Leeuwarden called M.O.G., which stands for Muziekvereniging Ons Genoegen (translated it would be something like 'Our Pleasure Harmony'.
The singer for MOG did a zine and I remember he used to trade tapes with Paul a lot. He would show up at their doorstep unexpectedly and would crash at their house for a couple of days. MOG recorded two ep's and an lp and also appeared on several compilation tapes.
Both bands had a hard time getting gigs in their area, venues would boycott punk bands anyways and the cops would more than often show up to stop the gig, most of the times before the bands had even started.
On this split tape, both bands play raw and fast hardcore punk. Murder Inc III did record similar stuff for the 12" and MOG slowed down and became more melodic.
There's a story about the singer turning into a dodgy person lateron, but I have to check that, I can't remember exactly, maybe someone else knows the deal?
Anyways, enjoy the tape, more from both bands later.
M.O.G. // Murder Inc. III

WINTERSWIJX CHAOS FRONT

In one of the first posts I uploaded the Winterswijx Chaos Front / Mad Rats split tape and promised that WCF was to be continued.
Here's a live recording by them from 1985 in Haaksbergen, the Netherlands. As you will hear, WCF did some really fine songwriting and it is really too bad that a lot of their songs never had a proper release.
These live recordings capture them exactly the way I remember them to be when I saw them back in the day, raw, fast and with some sarcastic statements every now and then by the singer Victor. Cynism might also be a good description for that guy's statements.
One time we played together in Belgium and when they started the song 'Kanker Tyfus Teringzooi', Victor handed me the mike and asked me to sing that song instead of him. The photo above is from that gig. That song is about being depressive and searching for answers in hard drugs. Too bad that he fell for that himself a couple of years after that. I run into him every now and then overhere and when I saw him last he told me he was clean again. I sincerely hope he can stay that way. He for sure deserves it.
Like I said in the earlier post, I have many fond memories of the times we played together. WCF were a bunch of nice and intelligent guys who really did their own thing and were partly responsible for many great festivals in the CHI CHI Club in Winterswijk.



winterswijx chaos front live in haaksbergen

Blitzkrieg

Quite some bands called themselves 'Blitzkrieg' back in the 80's and there was one in the Netherlands too.
The Dutch Blitzkrieg was from the Alkmaar area and while band like de Zweetkutten and CKN seemed to be leaning more towards the 'fun' part of punk (not meant in a bad way), Blitzkrieg was very political and had a strong anti-war stance, not unlike Crass for example. Their album (to be found in the download) is a mixture of fast hardcore with melodies and sometimes an almost military sound. Interesting for sure. Lyrics are in English and in Dutch (with one hell of an accent from that area!). The Dutch ones are really good, highly political and also cynical.
I must have seen them a couple of times and I remember that Dorien (Lärm) really had a crush on one of the band members. They were a really good live band as well.
Complete Disarmament is probably one of the few Dutch records that can be filed under peace punk (maybe even avant la lettre). For me it is one of the milestones of Dutch Hardcorepunk. The sample of an alarm clock ticking is a pretty brilliant idea, but it can also get on your nerves.
If anyone knows if there's earlier recordings of this band, please get in touch.
01 complete disarmament
02 system needs war
03 it's you
04 alles is tevergeefs
05 3,5 miljard idioten
06 dankbaar
07 ieder een taak
08 silly play
09 mannen en gaten
10 my life
11 whole world in flames
12 wat ben je dom
13 someone's gonna get their head kicked in
14 blind en doof
15 klein verschil
16 gut gut
17 val
18 twee revoluties
19 den haag vandaag
20 party punk

Blitzkrieg

Stanx

At one point Steenwijk was a very important place for hardcore punk in The Netherlands. At a local youth centre called 'De Buze' a bunch of punks started to organise punkfestivals on a very regular basis and most of them were attended really well and some of the line ups were amazing (especially looking back on it, I have seen a lot of really really good bands there).
For us Steenwijk was a benchmark for sure, the punks we met overthere did not have a 'better than you' attitude like a lot of punks from bigger cities used to have sometimes. In Steenwijk all were equal and it did not matter if you played in a band or not. We started to know a lot of people and got befriended with many bands.
One of them was Stanx, from Steenwijk itself. All members were active in organising the festivals and also smaller punk gigs at the venue and also made a fanzine called 'The Melkboer Stikes Back'. An active bunch of people indeed. After we played a couple of times in Steenwijk (also once when we attended as visitors and had a stand in vocalist) Stanx asked us (Lärm) if we wanted to do a split lp with them.
As soon as we had figured out the costs and such thing, a studio was booked and both bands recorded there (Oktopus studio in Amsterdam).
The Stanx had a really good demo tape (which is in the download) and their live gigs were really good too. Fast, distorted hardcorepunk, just the way we liked it.
Boy, were we dissapointed when we found out that they did not use distortion for the guitars on their side of the lp. They also seemed to have slowed down a fair bit. It sounded like shit to me at that time and I still prefer the demo over the split lp to be honest.
Long after they had split up they organised a reunion festival in Steenwijk. Lärm had just ended, so we played there too, amongst zmiv, vopo's, glorious death, stanx and more. The festival was nice, I remember a lot of bands being really good, but I also remember that a lot of cool people from the earlier days turned into cynical bastards who slagged everyone and everything off. Too bad.
A couple of years ago Seein Red and Staathaat played in de Buze in Steenwijk and a couple of old timers showed up too. It was good to see them again and we shared good memories. De Buze lateron became 'famous' again because the 'Trashfest' was organised there for 2 years.

tracklist:
01 I hate
02 last 5 minutes
03 oh my god
04 extra
05 cancer
06 rechts
07 justice
08 kapsones
09 i have a dream
10 el salvador
11 reagan
12 forced to a war
13 lost generation
14 no use

Stanx

Asperitys

I know it has been a while since the last post on this blog but I had some other stuff to deal with. So here's a bunch of new stuff all at once, enjoy it!
Starting off with the Asperitys from Leusden today. When we moved to a practise space in Amersfoort, we were the only punk band at that time. We got loads of shit from the other bands who did not understand what we were doing and just called it noise. For us that was a compliment.
After a while there were two more punkbands practising there: The Puke and The Asperitys. Most of the band members lived in a nearby village called Leusden and for us they were the second wave of punks in Amersfoort. We're talking 1982 now. At that time we were called Total Chaoz and the walls of the practise spaces started to be covered in more and more punk related graffitti. Nice one, especially because the rockbands got more and more pissed off.
At one point we set up a meeting with the people from the Puke and the Asperitys to get to know eachother better and that resulted in our very first tape release: 'Van U Wil Ik Zingen', which was a compilation of the Punke, The Asperitys and Total Chaoz. All of them were a couple of years younger than we were.
The Puke were more of a skapunk band at that time and the Asperitys played mainly cver versions of the UK Subs, the Exploited, the Ramones and some other bands (they also did Eisbär by Grauzone). I guess they were influenced by our faster punk and when thay started to write their own songs, they speeded up for sure.And I guess we were to blame for that.
We asked them to be featured on the second edition of the Holland Hardcore compilation tape and they recorded a bunch of songs in the practise space we all used. I just listened to some songs and I think that Paul, Olav and myself were present when they recorded their set, because I can hear our youthfull voices doing backups on 'disco's'.
They got a new singer right before the Holland Hardcore songs were recorded, his name was Rob and he added a more hardcore feel to the band. After a while I think their drummer lost interest in hardcore punk and that was basically the end of the Asperitys. Other band members did not feel to start new bands, so that left (at that time already) Lärm to be the only band in Amersfoort. The Puke had already broke up a long time before that.
The Asperitys did only a few gigs, as far as I can recall I have seen them just two or three times.
The songs in the file are from the 'Van U Wil Ik Zingen' tape (track 1-12)and 'Holland Hardcore 2nd Attack' (track 13-21)
The photo shows you the bass player for the Asperitys on the right side, Paul on the left and yours truly in the middle. This photo is from a book on culture and was taken at a big anti-war demonstration in The Hague. We did look young for sure.
Tracklist:
01 telephone numbers (UK Subs)
02 blitzkrieg bop (Ramones)
03 dead cities (Exploited)
04 de bommen vielen
05 bombblast (sample)
06 I am the leader (the Nixe)
07 tomorrows girls (UK Subs)
08 el salvador
09 ripper (Exploited)
10 blitzkrieg bop 2 (Ramones)
11 cop cars (Exploited)
12 Warhead (UK Subs)
13 rejects
14 hypocritical government
15 waarom
16 bad brain
17 they can kill me
18 laat je niet pakken
19 i hate football
20 human power
21 disco

Asperitys