Publication:
MaximumRockNRoll

Author:
Felix Von Havoc

MRR #180
The time has come to Stop the Violence! The Minneapolis versus Chicago Hardcore Wars have gone too far. Too much blood has been shed. Lives have been ruined. Some people may never be able to walk or play guitar again due to injuries received at the last rumble. For those of you who don't know a state of war has existed between Chicago (Charles Bronson, Los Crudos, MK-Ultra etc) and Minneapolis (Assrash, Code-13, Civil Disobedience, State of Fear, Murderers, Servitude) for some time now. After the recent Los Crudos, MK-Ultra show at the University about forty of us strapped on our steel toes and went down to defend the faith. A stand-off ensued in the parking lot after the show. There was a whole mob of us Minnesota punks facing some skninny hardcore kids from Chicago. Pignose stepped up and said "We'd like to have a word with you Chicago cats" Just then Martin opened the door of the U-Haul trailer their van was hooked up to. "Have a word with this Motherfuckers!" he shouted. A bunch of dudes in Ninja suits came out swinging. I ducked as a throwing star whizzed past my head. I put on my brass knuckles and clocked Kirk from MK-Ultra square in the jaw. My triumph was short lived however. I heard the swoosh of nun-chucks and the smack of breaking jawbones, the thud of unconcious bodies hitting the pavement. One gaunt ninja suit clad figure rose above the fray. Nun-Chucks sweeping arcs of crimson destruction over his head he laid low every member of Civil Disobedience and Assrash in a matter of minutes. That parking lot was a scene of carnage and fury straight from a Homeric epic. The gutters ran red with blood. It was ultra-violence o my brothers. I your humble narrator fought as boldly as Beowulf to defend my hardcore pride but it was all for naught. Before I knew it my back was against the wall and all of comrades had fallen. I unhooked the bullet belt from my waist and prepared to take as many Chicago kids with me to Valhalla as possible. My arms were seized and I was pushed to the ground. "One must be left alive to tell his comrades what has happened here!." The head Ninja strode toward me and removed his mask. It was that skinny emo-lookin kid who sings for Charles Bronson. "De Kalb Youth Crew Sucker" was the last thing I heard before I was knocked cold. I awoke to a different hardcore scene than that which I had marched forth to defend. State of Fear, Civil Disobedience and Assrash all broke up. Many members of those bands have left for exile in Mexico and France. The Murderers have kicked out all their native Minnesota members and plan to move to Indiana as soon as Dennis can walk again. Servitude now claims they are a "Wisconsin Band" and had nothing to do with the whole thing. It is left to me to beg for the right of Code 13 to continue to play hardcore music at the courtesy of Charles Bronson. Please be merciful. We are not worthy.

<blockquote>
War is the necessary activity of the strong. -Neitzche
</blockquote>

We are often taught a version of history, which shows western civilization as a gradual upward progression to a more enlightened and prosperous future. The history of western civilization is shown as the story of man's gradual mastery of science and technology and conquest of nature. We are told that the ills of the past slavery, epidemic disease, urban slums, and starvation were eliminated by "progress" and "reform" with help from technology and the public will. We are taught to accept the increasing power of government over our lives as necessary to ensure our security, safety and the onward march of progress. We grow up surrounded by rapid technological change which we unquestioningly accept as good and necessary. The future is going to be bright and we will all work together to ensure peace, prosperity and plenty.

I would offer a few different views of this picture. We live in a period of history where the pace of life and technological advance are faster than anyone could ever have imagined. Yet, with all our technology and science we are still humans with the same passions, will and desires of our ancestors in Roman times or prehistory. The Amebix once said "technology is nothing new." Our view of technology as a force which will free us from misery and toil has another side. Technology is just as often used to enslave or murder us as it is to free us. The two largest killers in America today are cancer and heart disease. Both were unheard of at the turn of the last century. Our so-called progress is the creator of our own destruction. The pollution and unhealthy lifestyles that are the by-products of our advances are killing us slowly but just as surely as the plagues which laid us low in medieval times. Where has the fruit of most of our scientific and technical labor these last few hundred years gone? Primarily, to create more efficient means of exterminating one another. Does our technology really make us free? Does it just make us into slaves, working to pay for conveniences we have no time to enjoy? Becoming less independent and less self sufficient every day. Playing into the hands of the corporate bureaucracy and the consumer society. The computers that have become such a big part of our lives in last few decades are tools not to free us but to monitor us and control us. As we walk down the street cameras are watching us, computers track every transaction we make, ensuring we pay the system its taxes and fees. We are assigned numbers and manipulated like tiny bytes in one of their great machines. Yes, Man is born free but everywhere he is in chains! In our march to conquer nature we ensure our own doom, like Captain Ahab in his maniacal quest for the White Whale. Our rapacious consumption of resources and social inequality have so damaged the earth that our own continued existence is in question, even if we do not annihilate ourselves with our weapons of mass destruction.

A more enlightened and prosperous society of the future. Balderdash! There is just as much poverty, inequality, disease and starvation as there was a hundred years ago. Indeed, some studies show that there may actually be more persons in conditions of slavery today than at the height of the African slave trade. We live in the same world our ancestors did, ruled by the same sort of petty despots, only now they have more subtle means to control us and a greater technological arsenal at their disposal. Why has society "progressed" to this point? Perhaps the Will to Power. A drive to conquer nature, to conquer fellow humans. Let us not forget that we live in the most violent century in human history. The horrors to two world wars have left us with a heinous record of genocide and mans inhumanity to man. We construct gas chambers and ovens to eliminate populations and call the Huns barbaric? Pol Pot's piles of skulls and Stalin's death camps give us little ground to stand on when we condemn ancient rites of human sacrifice. In my view the last few centuries of human evolution are oriented around one thing. War.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Europe was was "the sport of kings." From the middle ages to the late eighteenth century war was largely the province of a professional warrior class. That is not to say that civillians did suffer and society as a whole was not affected, particularly in the thirty years war. It was the rise of nation states over traditional feudal loyalties as well as and explosion of population and urbanism which drove Europe closer to Total War. The Napoleonic wars saw the first mass armies, conscripted from the general public. These were unified and motivated by potent new forces of nationalism. It can be argued that what we call the industrial revolution was kicked into gear by the demands placed upon manufacturers to equip and provision these great armies. The nineteenth century saw rapid growth of populations, advances in military technology and mass production and the continuing rise of nationalism. This led of course to the mass slaughter of the First World War. It was in this great bloodbath that many intellectuals of the day realized that civilization, despite its achievements in science and technology, was not advancing inexorably to a more perfect and rational future. The new weapons, poison gas, the airplane, the tank, the machine gun, and improved artillery led to a massacre undreamed of as generals attempted to fight with the tactics suited for Napoleon's day. As we all know the unrest after the and great depression led to the rise of Fascism and Communism and the stage was set for another world war. It was in the period between the wars that many began to talk of Total War. Not making war on armies and soldiers but on the entire nation and its productive capacity. It was thought that "terror bombing" of enemy cities could cow a population into surrender. (wartime experience in London and Berlin proved the opposite) This line of thinking of course culminated in the most fearsome of man's creations: the atomic bomb. The wholesale slaughter of the Second World War left tens of millions dead at the four corners of the earth. All of human progress and enterprise was bent towards domination of rival nations and destruction of fellow man. The potent liquor of nationalism was drunk deep resulting in a mad frenzy of extermination leaving cities laid to waste and populations exterminated. Since the Second World War the arms race continues as nationalism and economic competition drive wars around the globe.

Is the waging of war not the raison d'etre of the nation state? What is the purpose of nationalism if not to create an abstraction to motivate members of the same social class from different parts of the world to kill each other for the benefit of another social class? How many of realize how militarized even our contemporary society is? Our public educational system is considered necessary to produce potential soldiers and war industry workers with the math and reading skills necessary to wage a modern war. It homogenizes young people from numerous ethnic and cultural backgrounds into patriotic Americans who will blindly follow senseless rules. Our infrastructure, the interstates, the electrical grid the communications networks serve the military industrial complex first and the public as a windfall. I like all young American men was required to register for the draft, and in many countries military service is still mandatory. Since the Second World War the United States has continued to maintain an enormous military establishment, effectively remaining on a permanent war economy. The bipolar world of the Cold War justified this expenditure of resources. Now with communism in Europe rejected as a failure and China still decades away from challenging America on equal footing new threats are needed to justify the military industrial complex and the national security state. Terrorism, the drug trade, local despots can be inflated into world historical threats to civilization through a pliant profit oriented media establishment. We live in a world as senseless and barbaric as that of Genghis Khan or Attila. Our "modern" society is just the same old bullshit with more complicated devices of oppression and destruction. Orwell's "paranoid" vision of the future was not far from the mark. "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stomping on a human face forever."

Everybody who sends me copies of their bands records expecting me to review it herein should get wise. I only write about "lost" that is overlooked, forgotten, not so well known today punk and hardcore bands of the 70's and 80's. There are five hundred million places to read about the records that came out this month. It is my intention to expose people to some of the bands which are currently only known to old punks and record collectors.

This month I'd like to talk about the Amebix who have a cult following among the crust scene. While not exactly obscure, I feel this bands later material, due to its greater availability, has overshadowed their much better earlier efforts.

Publication Date:
January 1, 1988

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