GUILT - BARDSTOWN UGLY BOX
The idea of a record 'dating' is an interesting one. Like it sounds so particularly like the time it was made, and in that context it's fucking cool but outside of that you can't really listen to it because, you know, it's so 2003 dude.
Refused's shape of punk to come got me with that. I got into the band not very long after that record came out and it seemed like there was nothing else like it. I bought the whole 'this is a whole new stage of hardcore' hype. I got the 'reinventing' thing. Fuck that. I listened to that record a few months ago for the first time in six years or so and yeah, wow...record has not aged well AT ALL.
So what makes records not age well? It's partly the sound being a time-specific thing, like at the time that shit was considered legit, or worth releasing or not embarassing to play in front of yr friends. And it's partly what came after it, influenced by it, that makes it unpalatable. I have a friend who likes Quicksand in theory at least, like can see what they were doing and where they were coming from, but can't listen to them because they're 'proto nu metal'. Slip, well the song dine alone on rage, got me even before I'd heard Tool (who ripped them off a tonne), so, I've never had that problem even though I can totally hear that shit. Therefore, I still blast that record all the time, and when Gorilla Biscuits played here the other weekend I almost (chickened out at the last second) went up to Walter and was like 'dude when I was like, 14, Quicksand fucking CHANGED MY LIFE'.
Anyway, Guilt's bardstown ugly box is probably a record that hasn't aged well. But I fucking love it. Not because I have some kind of teenage attachment to it or anything. I actually only heard this band about a year ago. But with certain bands I often like them as much for where they're going as whether or not they actually get there, so to speak. That's I guess why I dig so much 90's stuff even though I wasn't 'there' for it until like 98, 99. There's a charming amateur quality and a sense of 'here it is, for better or worse, at least it's (sort of) honest' that I feel is lacking a little from hardcore punk today. Sure I'm totally nostalgia-fying that a lot, I know for a fact there were a lot of cynical dicks around back then, just as many as there are now, maybe more. Reading stories about the MTM fests makes me think that nothing ever changes; shit sounds exactly the same as LLDIY or whatever, both the good and bad parts, and the hilarious parts.
Guilt are definitely a case of the journey as much as the destination. This record's from '94 or '95 or something, I forget which. They'd always interested me because I remember them being cited by a few people in zines I read as a huge influence on Shotmaker, who I thought were fucking incredible. Also they were Duncan Barlowe's post-Endpoint band and that guy's always interested me. Barlowe, if you can't place the name, was the guy who famously 'resigned' from hardcore after someone from Ten Yard Fight (or Floorpunch, fuck I always mix the two up) decked him for 'talking shit'. Barlowe had protested that said dude had said 'selling out edge was one step away from taking a dick up the arse' and Duncan was like, hey, that's homophobic bullshit, fuck you.
As much as the 'resignation' was a pointless act I kind of admired the spirit of it. I also liked the way Barlowe and his long term musical compatriot, Rob Pennington, reflected a kind of ambiguity with their music that was really cool. See by the time I was getting into this shit there was a seperate thing going on, what you'd now call the hessians or whatever, all us PC kids, we were retreating to screamo or thrash or wherever the fuck and leaving 'hardcore' to the people who didn't care about the shit we did. Barlowe's bands put records out on Victory and played hardcore shows, all the way up to his last 'hardcore' band, By the Grace of God. They played within that scene and tried to bring those messages into the fold. And yeah it got caught up in the hype and styles of the time, there's lots of hilarious stories about people crying at Endpoint shows and stuff. But listening to that music, made fourteen years ago, I still get that and I fucking admire and love and respect it for all it's worth.
Bardstown Ugly Box sounds nothing like Shotmaker. I can see the influence but still. It's midpaced, chuggy post-hardcore, rock, metal, what the fuck ever. I really wanted to cover omega in Ex Spectator, so I played it to Kirk and Sean and they were like 'dude...this sounds like Grinspoon'. Yeah. Thanks to the stuff that came after it hasn't dated well. But in 1994 tuning down to drop D and playing mid paced shit was pretty next level.
Guilt were that classic case of dude in big hardcore band's next project; what Quicksand was to GB for Walter Schrieffels (sp?) or Embrace was to Minor Threat for Ian Mackaye: time to slow down and get introspective. In some ways, much like those two bands actually, it's really fucking clumsy. But like those two bands I love it because it's a group of people trying to find their way around something new and different, trying to express something else.
The record has one of the worst drum sounds I've ever heard and it has that wonderful early 90s taking itself seriously pretension: check the tracklisting below, and also the record is divided into two parts; 'man against society' and 'man against himself'. It has a fucking doctored photo of a cat in a suit and tie on the CD itself (let me remind you, this came out on Victory). It has ambiguous fugazi-ish artwork. Barlowe's vocals are pretty bad. You can't hear the bass too well and the guitars are, to borrow my friend's phrase, proto nu metal.
But it has some fucking killer moments. Listen to omega and tell me you're not fucking stoked with that chorus. Listen to the quiet breakdown in phi and lose yr shit like I do, and think about how many times those Twelve Hour Turn style chord changes have showed up in the music we listen to since. Cringe at lines like 'and as I watch you sleep, yr beauty kills me'. It's so bad it's good and it's also, at the same time, a legit-ly fucking awesome, rocking mid-paced hardcore or post hardcore or whatever record.
Guilt put out a bunch of shit including a record called further which is fucking KILLER, and I'll get around to upping eventually. The leap they made from this LP to that is unbelievable, the record wouldn't sound out of place today. But I figure it's good to start here.
Both are still in print from Victory so, you know...I don't give a shit about them actually but in principle, if you like this stuff, buy the records to add to yr collection of vinyls.
Guilt - Bardstown Ugly Box (Victory Records, VR029, 1994 or 5?)
SIDE A, 'man against society'; Gamma / Omega / Chi
SIDE B, 'man against himself'; Xi / Omnicron / Theta / Phi
