„your chaos days are numbered“

(Sound Pollution, 1997)

Back about ten years ago from today a new breed of harsh, fast, brutal, fast, distorted and unbelievably fast hardcore trash errupted on the most underground DIY hardcore / punk scene and this is one of the albums that set the record straight for this one. This temporary side trend of an underground strait of a singular musical genre was called „power violence“ for no other reason than – and this is my guess – the heck of it. The bands and music and most prominently the shows weren’t as political as other breeds of hardcore / punk, which means that they were political for the environment and the scene they happened in and the sentiments put forth in the lyrics, but to be honest: how political can you be when screaming syllabels and trashing on the drums and guitars in 64th timed beats and as fast as humanely possible without stopping for longer than two secons between songs to catch breath? Anyway, this record was the highpoint of the first wave of power violence, with the guitars and vocals relatively clean in comparison to the distortion washed and over the top amplified noise that came afterwards and then slowly melted into something new that would be called „screamo“.

A lot of listeners and people at shows came for the sound. I might have been the only one enjoying the sheer power and force of the volume and velocity, but at least there was a general feeling of experiencing something new and an overall attitude of left wing politics. I mean, if you check these pages further you will find that I still put forth a few viewpoints and sentiments that are still radical to say the least and, yeah, I still think that anarchy would be the best form of living together for peaceloving people that treat each with respect and fairness (I think you will find something on the similarities between the basic christian gospel [do not onto others ...] and the basic idea of anarchy [by respecting each other no laws or hierarchies would be necessary], but I also learned that people are fucked up and the anarchist revolution probably won’t happen in my lifetime, so with age I am taking a more pragmatic viewpoint.) But in 1997 things were still a little different. There were, and probably still are, stands with political magazines and books at shows and people were talking about taking action and so on. So, even though „power violence“ was completely inept at transporting a political message to its listeners, don’t even mentioning the broader public, it was nevertheless a driving force in a more and more structured and spreading out global movement of DIY punk. Most of the people in bands on doing labels were in their twenties and they had a good mixture of political agenda and wanting to enjoy life as much as possible. And after all, these were still all minor enterprises in comparison to even the bigger punkbands and labels back then.

Amongst bands such as Spazz, Capitalist Casualities, Slight Slappers, Short Hate Temper and a whole bunchload of others – the legendary „Bleeeaaauuurrrgh“-compilation 7“ on Slap A Ham records boasted about seventy bands on just two small seven inch vinyl sides – Hellnation stood out for the sharpes and most focused vision, for leading the bunch so to say and also for being about the most original, creative and technically proficient band. On „your chaos days are numbered“ the trio trashes through 37 songs with the longest clocking in at 62 seconds and the shortest and 13 seconds. The album runs on 45rpm, by the way. Of course, short songs is not basically any measure for greatness, but comparisons to the two first albums by Napalm Death are welcome. With guitar, bass, drums and one main vocalists with two side vocalist– the main one having those higher, yelping kind of screams and the others the deeper, more grunting style in different timbres, they set out in the basic set of band formation.

The most remarkable thing to most people at first listening was that the hyper-speed trashing cleared itself up with time and after a few songs, when you got used to the power and the velocity, the guitar riffs cleared out and the melodies came to light. Yes, Hellnation had their own unique sense of melody. And with other bands, lesser bands, hacking out monotonous e minor riffs while trying to be as fast and evil as possible, this sense of melody seems to be a good factor to differ between the good and the bad (they are all ugly). To me there was another thing which I always liked with Hellnation, and that was the fact that they had a groove. Their rhythms and riffs, as fast as they might be, never sounded like staccato or machine gun fire. They had a certain swinging groove that was a lot like playing Wipe Out, where you fast speed was also one of the main attractions to the game, but also the aesthetic movement which was in line with the race track. So fast isn’t enough, control is just as important to make it pleasing. And Hellnation had that and they sharpened it to perfection on this album.

The song-lyrics, if everybody ever read them because they certainly didn’t understand them when the band was live, dealt with everyday shit of the underdogs in (US-)society such as low wage workers, workers in general, but also they typical issues of war, racism, apathy, capitalism and of course the always apparent issue of backstabbing in the hardcore scene and some promise of violence against hippies. Want to have an example? Here we go: „before you start pointing fingers at those you blame for over population , look at your consumption and waste, first world finger pointers make me sick, ignorant of cause and effect, your consuption creates this mess, lifestyles are a big problem, arrogant people who want to blame others and not accept theirresponceability in this giant problem, there’s no easy way out of this mess.“ These are the lyrics to „Cause and effect“ in full (40 seconds), with the typos kept in for verite. Not too differentiating and elaborate, right? Well, they had 36 more songs on here to get other points across. But a more detailed text analysis will only bring out that they basically perused the formative and current political issues in the scene back then, that either focused on a more general viewpoint („War Parade“) or adressed people personally („you don’t mean shit“).