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