Tales of the Salty Bag

 Skinhead (no racist association) put out an absolute banger of an album last year. I found out about It's a Beautiful Day, What a Beautiful Day through a review (or was it in multiple top 5's..I can't remember for sure) in Razorcake a number of months ago and boy am I happy I did. The juxtaposition between the music, and the vocals and lyrics is jaw dropping. The music is driving hardcore punk with lead guitar that at times is incredibly bright, there are leads sprinkled throughout the album that are as bright as a sunny summer day. The vocals are shouted; it feels as if the singer is grabbing you by the collar of your shirt, pulling you in, then yelling in your ear. The urgency is unmistakable. The lyrics are dark and incredibly thuggish. If they weren't sung with such conviction, at times some of the lyrics could be seen as a little over the top, but the delivery doesn't give you any chance to second guess the singers conviction. If you just gave me a print out ...

  So back in June of 2022 I conducted an email interview with Joe Compayre. Cut to almost 4 years later, it slipped through the cracks and I didn't get it posted...now 2022 feels like a lifetime away....and for Bazooka Joe 204, 2 albums have come out since (off the top of my head, not sure if I'm missing anything); 2023's banger as part of the group Park Like Setting with This, That and the Third  and May 1, 2026 (this past Friday as of this posting) Bazooka Joe 204 put out his most recent solo effort  333 McPhillips: Halfway to Hell  (my first impression, no matter what moniker Joe Compayre is putting out music under it's always top notch and should be celebrated by all, Halfway to Hell is no exception. Every aspect from lyrics and wordplay, to flows to production [mixed bag of producers this time around] is spot on). Me not posting this interview had nothing to do with the quality, it just didn't happen. With that said I think there's some good stuff in here...

If you're into collecting punk (all sub genres [and some metal in the mix]) records and looking for some stuff that may be off the beaten path  Forbidden Beat Distro on IG may be of interest to you. Jimmy was running it by himself for a minute (and expanding my Cure collection exponentially), then he took a break for a minute before coming back recently (I believe with a partner) with some absolute bangers in stock. A few weeks ago he posted some records that I was quite interested in, one was on my list, the others weren't on my radar. Of the ones that wasn't really on my radar was Rancid's Life Won't Wait Demo's . When I slid the post over to see the back of the album I saw that one side of the LP was the Silencers...now that got my attention. Cut to a handful of days later and my order came in, I threw on the Silencer's side first because the lore of the Silencers really intrigued me (it's Rancid with a few other notable musicians, the one that made ...

 About a month ago I fell down a wikihole...and ended up ordering Cannibal Corpse's Centuries of Torment: The First 20 years (I don't currently own any Cannibal Corpse cd's or LP's, but I dig music history). I've dabbled in streaming CC's music, but my primary point of reference to date is seeing them open for Hatebreed in like, 2011 (googled it, it was Nov 2009). I remember Corpsegrinder banging like crazy with his tree trunk of a neck, and CC being heavy (who woulda thought eh?).  About 10 mins into this documentary and they mentioned Darren Pfeiffer being the drummer in the pre-CC band Beyond Death. Man, is Goldfinger the Kevin Bacon of music? Also, lets go Buffalo, amiright! So my in laws went on a trip late last year and as usual were thoughtful and brought me back a bag of Qtela Singkong cassava chips Rasa Balado (Balado Spicy Flavor). When I cracked the bag I got a whiff of BBQ. The front of the bag shows chips, some spicy red hot peppers and garlic. Cass...

Neon Taste Records has been around for a minute (since 2017 as a record label it appears) but I wasn't really aware of them until this past fall when I was trying to find a Canadian distro that was going to be carrying the new Dark Thoughts LP ( Highway to the End  [I'll likely write about it on this blog at some point but the coles notes of it all is that Dark Thoughts nailed it again]). Anyway, what was I writing about? Oh yeah, Neon Taste has, and keeps on, putting out some fantastic music. From YUMRE001 with Easy Money's Collection 79-82, which is some fantastic Canadian power pop that Neon Taste unearthed and put to wax..er, vinyl...to the absolutely blistering hardcore of YUM050 (it looks like they dropped the RE from release numbers) Winnipeg's Negative Charge with their Self Titled (frantic mid 80's east coast flavoured hardcore) and face melting YUM51 Toronto's Imploders with their Targeted For Termination (frantic early 80's west coast flavoured ...

 Yooooo! Old Dutch Pretzel Pieces, All Dressed Flavoured, are bangin'. I wasn't planning on putting up a post tonight, thought maybe I'd just take some notes in my phone, then I popped these in my maw and had to grab the laptop. The pieces are soo piecey, it's like someone had a bad day and took a bat to these pretzels (that would have been 1.5cm+/- diameter. I'm not typically a pretzel man, but these are thick enough that they're not just dried out meh, they have a dense crunch. Mildly bready (but still crunchy) goodness. Now, the flavour is what really knocked my socks off. I'm not sure if they use an agent or if there's moisture from the pretzels but the seasoning is heavily covering these pretzel pieces. It's like when you're at the movie theatre and put butter or margarine on the popcorn, then sprinkle some seasoning on and it's almost like a pasty seasoning in certain parts. There's also some well-toasted pretzel that welcomingly po...

My kids getting slightly older means I can now bring them along on my adventures to shows in Winnipeg (at least when it's all ages and ties into a weekend..which is what happened just over a week ago). I was stoked with I saw Quit It! was making their way to/through Manitoba again and it was on a Friday. It was touch and go for a minute if I/we were going to make it but the hockey scheduling gods shone down on me/us and I was able to justify keeping the kids up late on a Friday night. First of all Domohaus is absolutely fantastic, Adrian and Hannah seem to have a scene (tapped into a scene), that's friendly (and more importantly kid friendly, at least IMO). At their 4th Annual Occasional Halloween House Party (with bands playing out of the garage due to mild spitting/rain) started off with Grotoko (full band style for the first time in a minute) killing it in their '66 Batman villain costumes. I love Blue's live stage presence, it fits perfectly with the confluence of d...

Kitz Willman is a rapper currently out of Winnipeg who puts out some amazingly unconventional music. Sometimes chaotic, sometimes unsettling, various levels of distortion on the vocals. Vocal delivery is all over the map; a bit punk, a bit ODB, all Kitz. On a moon on the verge of everything that you wanted Kitz performs all duties from soup to nuts. To me moon feels very stream of consciousness (but rooted in a few overarching themes) and quite dense rhyming. Unique. moon has a dark feel (as most of Kitz's music does). This is music that isn't hardcore, but I could see inciting a mosh pit. It looks like the tape is sold out, but it's great. A and B sides were intentionally made the same length to the point where Kitz edited some of the songs to make it work out. Arriba puts out great corn chips. Slightly more dense and crunchier than Doritos...and slightly more corn flavour. They come out with 'new' or 'limited time' flavours, however, less frequently than t...

 I am not an expert on Nomeansno, but I can tell you this..their music can be quite difficult to get on physical media (LP, CD or otherwise [unless you want to spend somewhat spicy money]) in Canada. Luckily, Alternative Tentacles reissued Wrong. Now, cross border shipping is still muy caliente, but enough distros picked it up in Canada to allow me to put Wrong into my record collection this year. Nomeansno (since 1979) played (ended 2016) chaotic punk rock that I want to say fell into hardcore, but they were far more than a single genre. Wrong is unconventional for a punk band to say the least. The bass is lively as hell, with a tone that's absolutely perfect. The drums know when to get weird and when to kick it into overdrive. I don't know if it's jazz or funk, but there's something in the mix that if Nomeansno wasn't so aggressive it might feel pretentious..instead they're just odd and make me wish I had the opportunity to seem them live. Lyrics are talk sung...

 Uglies chips are funny. Their marketing is (and this is paraphrasing) that they take the unusable/waste chips and produce their chips out of those leftovers. "Reducing waste and helping fight hunger". To me, their potato selection is pretty on par with other smaller scale/independent brands... so I'm not quite sure who's throwing out the potatoes that they make their chips with, IMO the potatoes/waste they use are the good ones. So yes, Uglies, 170g bag (nice size, not too small, not too large). Thin chip but crunchy. Oh, by the way this is about Uglies Salt and Vinegar flavored (yes, no u, these are imports that in Canada are usually found at Winners [at least when I've seen them]). So yes, decent amount of skin on these little kettle cooked chips... fairly white in colour chips. They have a nice white vinegar tartness. I picked up a somewhat granular salt texture when I was consuming. I feel Uglies are no more janky than your average bag of kettle cooked (good...

 I came home one day to find a bag of Nosh & Co Buffalo Wings & Blue Cheese flavoured potato chips on my countertop. F'in eh. I've been thinking about them for a while, but didn't crack the bag because I didn't want to go off phone notes for the review. So it's finally time. They smell like buffalo sauce. The ridged mid weight chips have a nice crunch. The first chip I had I felt the seasoning was pretty weak so I was sort of disappointed. But as the saying goes, it gets better. The first one appears to have just been a dud while the remainder have relatively generous seasoning. The flavour is your standard buffalo wing and blue cheese; a bit of buffalo hot sauce bite, slight sweetness and a relatively good dose of blue cheese (like 66% hot sauce, 33% blue cheese [+/- 10%]). These chips are quite fine, and at a 130g bag they're looking out for your health, hah. I'm one chapter away from finishing Inner City Pressure: The Story of Grime  by Dan Hancox...

 At the end of 2023 I saw Quit It! play in Winnipeg at the Handsome Daughter. I typically try to catch the opening bands, because I like being introduced to new music. One of the opening bands was Leon's Getting Larger, LGL (not sure if they ever abbreviate their band name like that [it reminds me of LWL, the Jersey pop punk band from the late 90s early 2000s, I'll Always Remember the 6th is such a banger {LGL doesn't really sound much like LWL, other than a bit of off center pop sounding...where was I going with this}]) were really fun to watch and they produce a sound that I don't hear very often coming out of Manitoba (maybe I just typically run in a different musical circle?). Anyway, Leon's Getting Larger put out their first album late last year, You Be Good Now ...which saw a vinyl release earlier this month (February 2025). I ordered a copy and it came to my door late last week. This album's great. Leon's Getting Larger has a couple singin' voices...

 About a week ago a friend at work gifted me a bag of Neal Brothers Original corn chips, "so good together" and organic (thanks J.). There's a few bags waiting in the bullpen, but I let these jump to the front of the queue since they were a recommendation. Not much for fragrance. The corn chips look as shown on the bag, sort of thick chips in shellish shapes. They're a good few mm thick. I threw one into my mouth and was met with the crunch that I anticipated, an airy but crunchy corn chip. The yellow corn flavour is there and quite pleasant. They tasted salty, good salty (not overly salty, but salty enough that I thought I'd be looking at a high teens to low 20% per 50g when I looked to the back I was quite pleased to see that they're only 10% (25% fat) per 50g. Fluffy (not like cotton candy, but like, not as dense as say a Doritos [or most corn] chip), salty, corny. These chips do bang. Now lets see how they go with salsa. Forbidden Beat Distro had been oper...

It happened. I started wondering if it ever would. It's been 16 years. People who were born after 4:13 Dream became teenagers and started driving between 4:13 and Songs Of A Lost World. Am I complaining that The Cure took 16 years to put out another album? No. They don't owe me anything. If Lost World never came out that would have been perfectly fine. Mr. Smith and his cohorts provided the world with hours and hours of fantastic music. In 2024 they added 49 minutes and 16 seconds into their absolutely amazing catalogue. A lot of the lead-up to Lost World spoke of the darkness of the album, the very few reviews that I've glanced at have mentioned the darkness as well. Like, I sort of see it, but to me, it's more of a heavy album (not like metal heavy, more so that there's some serious weight to this piece of art) and sonically epic soundscapes. There's a lot of brightness in the music and vocal melodies. Don't get me wrong, the lyrics are super bleak and if ...

 This past November was quite alright. After lengthy gaps both The Cure and The Dopamines blessed us with new albums. I don't think either album has fully set in for me yet, but I wanted to inform you that if you haven't checked out either albums yet...you will not be disappointed. The Dopamines 80/20 smokes. The same band that brought us 2017's Tales of Interest comes again with lyrics that are often quite angry and/or dark with a fair amount of introspection, poppy punk music, hypnotic basslines. To me the music for Save Your Beers has one foot in late 90's/early 2000's alt rock with that verse riff, if you just played me the riff with no lyrics and told me it was from the Green Album I wouldn't argue with you, then the punk kicks in with some classic bass bridge in the mix. Weiner wrote and has lead vocals for two songs on this album (I haven't pulled out the previous albums but I don't believe he's had lead vocals and I'm assuming with only ...

It's Alive Records is back baby! If you're not familiar with IAR, they released some of the best pop punk (not in a warped tour sense, in a punk with great pop sensibility, uh, sense [while hitting so many different branches of the pop punk tree]) to come out of the States and (typically Eastern) Canada from 2004 through 2019 (Copyrights, TBR, Steinways, Dopamines, Gateway District, Crusades, The Creeps...lets just say I celebrate their entire catalogue, as should you). I had seen the Local Drags LP on Recess Ops a while ago (along with Punk Rock Raduno 4) but it wasn't on the IAR website. I wasn't quite sure what was going on, but was a little concerned that it meant the end of the label. Those two records have been on my list of things to get to for a while, but you know, sometimes you just don't get around to getting things. Anyway, this past Oct 4 a notification pops up in my email, IAR posted a new record on their bandcamp. I kept scrolling, is that another IAR...