Awesome compilation of punk and hardcore from Belgrade circa 1986. 10 bands, 26 tracks. A few of these bands never officially released anything and only appeared on other compilations. Others only are featured here on this tape, as far as I can tell. Rather than typing out a detailed account of all the bands, just download and set aside an hour to get down with some rare, crude ex-Yugo punk excellence. Bands are: FORWARD TO THE PAST (NAPRED U PROSLOST), THRASHAGAIN, CODEX O.D., TOTAL DESTRUCTION, CRIST, K.Z.V., LESSON, N.B.G., WHITE RABBIT BAND, D.L.H.
Back to former Yugoslavia today, Serbia to be exact - I give you a fun tape from KBO! Following a split with INCEST, a tape called "Tama," and a live tape, this appears to be their fourth release. The opener is a goofy cover of Bob Dylan's "Forever Young," and maybe would have been better situated as a closer or buried at the end of side A. If you can hang through it (or just skip to track 2), you will be immediately rewarded with some fast, raw punk with simple but memorable guitar lines and choruses. The songs are consistently catchy and straight-forward punk, with some variety in the form of a couple instrumentals (2 of which are great!), and a nice ballad thrown in. I want to compare them to QUOD MASSACRE from Ljublanja, since they both have that upbeat melodic 80's thing going on, but KBO! is maybe a little less aggressive. Great stuff, and I would love to track down their other cassettes and LP's!
There seems to be an extra track that's not on the track list, followed by a segment of recorded American pop radio that I decided to include for the sake of completeness - and just cuz it gave me a nostalgic feeling. I did however remove the segment of Bowie's "Heroes" from the end of side A because you can all find that elsewhere...
Today I present you with a great tape-trader comp of early punk from Ex-Yugoslavia. Unappealing cover, I know, but the music is a great taste of the diverse punk/new wave movement in the 70's-80's in former Yugoslavia. Interestingly, the first thing I noticed is the absence of more well known bands like PARAF, PEKINSKA PATKA, and PANKRTI. This of course is exciting to someone like myself who wants to dig deeper and hear the lesser known stuff! Here's the rundown:
PRLJAVO KAZALISTE does 3 youthful 70's rock'n roll punk tunes // MRTVI KANAL play 3 incredible upbeat punk/postpunk jams with driving keyboard lines. Extremely dynamic! Easily the winner on this tape for me - "Oglasi" is an instant classic! // ZENEVSKI DEKRET does 3 solid mid tempo punk songs and a cover of "Chinese Rocks" // more mid-paced late 70's styled punk from ZONA RANE MASTURBACIJE // and one catchy and mysterious track from GOLA JAJA - you must check out their other astonishing demo material from the excellent Degenerik blog here! // a couple softer, but catchy and crafty punk tunes from ZABRANENO PUSENJE (NOTE: "Stanje Soka" has a painful stint of skipping halfway through the track, presumably because the material was dubbed from a heavily partied CD) // one cool post-punk track and one scorcher by PROBLEMI, the second track being one of the best on the tape // two interesting and weird post punk/wave tracks by BELINSKI ZID // GROUPA 92 do two great punk songs nuanced with flourishing keyboard lines, much like THE STRANGLERS! Another standout band on the comp. // SVE PO SPISKU does 2 catchy RAMONES-ey punk jams // N.B.G with 3 quick-paced punk ragers with memorable choruses, regardless of your grasp of the language // and last but not least, GOBLINI from Serbia plays 3 tracks of melodic and poppy punk with a great driving quality. They also sound like they maybe came a bit later, judging by the recording and style...but who knows.
I should also note that I totally fucked up when I ripped this cassette and accidentally started with side B, and am not knowledgeable enough with Audacity to fix this - so the files are sequenced as such. Doesn't really matter, right?
