Living in London changed me completely and entirely. Music-wise I’ve learned through the years tons about ancient relics of street/UK82 punk, post-punk, goth stuff, disbeat devotees and basement-warehouse-electronica. I’ve made friends, acquaintances, attended shows that I still barely believed I actually did and the mouth-to-mouth knowledge turned out so much more important than the fucking internet. I remember being dragged to a Fucked Up gig at ULU back in 2008 which was so WILD that then made me buy the “Hidden World” double LP. It is a masterpiece indeed, showing how malleable punk can be and introducing me to Deranged Records.
This Canadian label has the sixth sense to discover and release so much good stuff before everyone else notices. It has been running for a while now, since 1999, giving me the blissful opportunity to meet not only Fucked Up, but also Haymaker, Career Suicide, Crude compilations, Left For Dead represses, Total Abuse, Violent Minds, 86 Mentality, White Lung and the first Burning Love releases. Wow. Wow.
As a matter of fact, Deranged is just now ending another year of great music. Thanks to it, I’ve been listening to a lot of Helta Skelta (an amazing Australian proto-punk band) and the gloomy/goth post-punk by Pleasure Leftists. The fluffy ones in Wildhoney have also released a new record and their shoegaze has the thing in it to turn big really soon, I’m willing to bet on that.
But above it all I’d have to mention two albums: the Flowers Of Evil self-titled debut and the latest from Total Abuse. The former is a relentless exercise of salty lo-fi goth-punk, while the latter is probably my favourite punk record of 2015, fucking chaotic, fucking violent, feeding on feedback to build a hateful and desperate atmosphere for all you long-haired Black Flag fans. Go find about them and check other 2015 releases from Deranged, like the OAF seven-inch which is unpretentiously nasty.