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>> Passed down over decades of practice in dark, deafening rooms, only a select few these days can still speak the ancient physical language of slamdancing, known in some parlance as mosh, circle pitting, or thrash. Those who can still decipher this art tend to be young, able-bodied, and, as history’s shown, overwhelmingly male. You might call it exclusionary, but hey, at least you don’t have to be wealthy. It’s a ritual that’ll certainly be practiced later this month at the otherwise-proper Port City Music Hall, when longstanding Maine hardcore band CRUEL HAND put out their album The Negatives in a release party with Worcester hardcore gurus Bane (on their last leg of their 20+ year run). Cruel Hand have more or less carried the Maine hardcore scene since their inception in 2006, no small feat considering most of the scene plays out in VFW halls and basements rather than established clubs. Of course their burly, down-tuned, midtempo hardcore can tend toward the comically hyper-masculine sometimes, but the band have made a life for themselves out of more than just riffs and barks, touring the country countless times while providing a voice for the outsider and a vote for refusal. The Negatives is the band’s first for old-world independent punk label Hopeless Records; maybe it’ll do for them what it did for Taking Back Sunday. Visit cruelhand.com.
>> Really tickled to see TEENARENA RECORDS breathing some life into the simple world this month, issuing two albums by Bar Harbor psych-rockers COKE WEED onto one double-cassette package. The band’s most recent album, the dreamy, glow-in-the-dark Back to Soft, has been packaged with 2011’s Volume One, their first, for use in your Volvo wagon or half-kicked-in boombox. You know this label (outta Rochester, New Hampshire) because they’ve released wax versions of albums by Brenda, Foam Castles, and Metal Feathers in recent years. As regards the Weed, they hit up Portland once more this Thursday the fourth, playing with S.S. CRETINS and Montreal’s Thus Owls. Visit cokeweed.com.
>> We missed the chance to pump it up in last week’s tablet, but in solidarity with this issue’s labor struggle feature, it’s worth giving a nod to the rock festival/political soiree that happened in Brewer this past Monday. The Labor Day celebration, titled “Raising Wages Rocks,” was one of those rare events merging rock ‘n’ roll moments with an awareness of the labors of those in all sectors who make them possible. Thrown by the Eastern Maine Labor Council, the party featured music by Portland funk band SLY-CHI and Bangor culturalist DJ BABY BOK CHOY. Plenty of political heft too, with presentations by the left-ticket candidates Emily Cain, Mike Michaud, and Shenna Bellows. ^
