Distort #14

Distort mag started in 2003 to document kvlt hardcore and World War III. The contents of Distort have been dominated by impulse, excess, insomnia, stimulation. No editor, no proofread, no nerd.

Out of the 2000+ pages published over the past couple of decades I am skimming the C.R.E.A.M. into an archival book.

I'm raising funds to print this by making backissues available again via PDF.

You can also purchase a onetime subscription to all Distort here which this issue is part of.

DISTORT #14 (2007) - Cold Sweat / Subversion / The State / Distroy / bullshit on Black Flag

At this stage, I was starting to see patterns behind my eyelids that corresponded to figures from Greek amphoras. I would sit and listen to records before I went to bed, tapping out the beat with each of my fingers in turn against my thumb, and if the record didn’t finish on my little finger I’d play another one, sometimes sitting there for hours tapping away in compulsion, staring at my spastic hand movements as I tracked the beats of GISM, thinking about AIDS and nuclear war.

I’ve always had these absurd compulsive gestures that no doubt contributed to my attraction to and immersion into hardcore music, a music of afflicted people… a music of vitality and strength, but a music you could not say was especially “healthy”… do you know the difference between health and vitality?

This issue contained one of many Black Flag tributes that Distort hosted over the years. This band was important to me in my teenage years and somehow even more important in the early years of Straightjacket. I’d read Get In The Van and listen to Damaged and My War with a religious fervour, thinking of the excruciating shows this band had endured and their devotion to making music. Then, the band got back together in two separate lineups called Black Flag and Flag, and toured somewhat simulatenously. Greg Ginn’s Black Flag released a record called OOPS or something silly, which seemed like an elaborate troll on people like me who took them seriously, when nobody else, including past and present members, gave a fuck. I had a huge tattoo on my arm of the Everything Went Black shears with a Black Flag logo underneath, and immediately when the band did this I got the bars covered into a black box. Total negation.

Subversion was a Sydney hardcore band from the 90’s.

The State were a hardcore band from Detroit, and their first 7” is excellent meat and potatoes hardcore. In 2007, after 25 years, the band reformed and started playing shows again and released a terrible 7”. At the time, bands like this reforming and older guys getting back into hardcore was something gratifying – I’m guessing there was something inspirational there for a young man, to see that this music wasn’t about or for young people…

Today, I very rarely go out of my way to watch a reunion band or listen to a reunion record. I went and saw Circle Jerks with an ancient Keith Morris singing and while entertaining, I have always been suspect about the magic lost when a band’s approach and interest are solely about money. You need to be an obsessive psycho to make hardcore work beyond a couple of years, and that obsession burns people out… I don’t want to see recovered burnouts doing karaoke… it isn’t about any ethos of purity, some good music and art have been made with the ambition of fame and money… but hardcore is a music that, at its best, is not about that middle class striver nerd mentality to be noticed, approved of, and financially stable.

 Cold Sweat are one of the better bands featured in these early Distort. Their LP Blinded retains its mystique. Tortured hardcore.