Memento Mori "Memento Mori"

This awesome Italian crust band should not be confused with the also awesome hardcore band of doing a split with Kylesa fame. This 7 inch is exactly why I love this medium for music: it gives you both awesome artwork, a nice lyric sheet for those of us who can't speak Italian too well, and a nice sampling of what this band can do. The music is your standard crust onslaught with vocals switching from high pitched screams to the type of talk-singing you usually see in Chicano hardcore. A very potent combo, and there are even more variations such as the underwater from hell sound in the album title track "Memento Mori." The lyrics are your standard crust punk topics of anti-war, heroin, and hating society. Definitely guitar driven music, but the rhythm section isn't lacking either.

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Also check out (if you can find it) their prior band Confusione and the most recent band Brigada Do Ódio.

Ugly Law "Ugly Law"

An appropriate first post as this was the first seven inch I ever bought in college. Very much my music taste at the time: Ugly Law is 80's hardcore worship that ranges from Damaged era Black Flag to early SS Decontrol. The music is dark, noisey, and blisteringly fast, very on point with its tempo changes (albeit the range is pretty much from fast to very fast). Not the most original thing ever put out, but certainly not amateur work either: Ugly Law knows what they like and they play it well. The lyrics are pretty standard suburban-genesis anti-society hatred. The record was put out by the now defunct Atavistic Records from my old stomping grounds, Richmond, VA, not to be confused with the much more mainstream and still chugging along Atavistic Worldwide from Chicago. Ugly Law has been dead since late 2010, but Richmond bands have a tendency to die and resurrect more than a Marvel comics character, so it may not be the last of them. I also have to give them credit for coming up with a song title, "Thir13teen," that gives me a headache every time I try to think of how to say it out loud. "Thir-thirteen-teen"? "Thirteen Thirteen"? Maybe that's why they made the album cover someone getting one of the most annoying and migraine producing of injuries. Oh God I just noticed how they spelled "No You Diddn't."

For Fans Of: 80's Hermosa Beach bands, Government Warning, hating the suburbs

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