Vengeance

Last night Warcry played in my town.  For those of you who aren't familiar, Warcry is members of Tragedy, Hellshock, and probably some other really good bands playing raging, total Discharge worship, straight forward D-Beat punk.  I picked up a copy of their first LP Maniacs On Pedestals back in 2004.  It's decent.  Nothing original.  I've listened to it a few times over the years.    I also grabbed a copy of 2006' Deprogram, which I listened to maybe twice.

Live, Warcry are a non-stop, blistering, steamroller of D-beat punk, from start to finish.  I'm not sure if they even really stopped to Take a breath.  Singer Todd Burdette's theatrics border on almost ridiculous.  I found myself in the corner of the room giggling at the overwrought male posturing of it all.

But then on my bike ride home, it occurred to me that I don't know what this person has been through, really anyone in the band.  Am I mocking their art?  Maybe the looming nuclear apocalypse that seemed ever present during the Cold War haunts them still.  When the singer angrily points the sky, while screaming indecipherably, maybe he's actually seeing ICBMs falling from the sky to bring oblivion to us all.  Maybe he rages at the ghosts of maniacal leaders, and wars past, wars yet to come, and those ghosts just come of the surface more when they play.  Or, you know, Ronald Reagan himself could be haunting the back of this bar. 

I'm getting off topic though.  I was moved to revisit Tragedy's Vengeance LP upon getting home from the show.  In my opinion, this is one of the best Hardcore Punk of our era, if not ever.  Seriously.  From start to finish, the power of this record is completely undeniable.

I first got a copy of this gem on vinyl when Tragedy came through Denver in 2002.  I still listen to it fairly regularly.  

This record was the soundtrack to some of the most difficult, bitter, moments of my young life.  In 2003, after attending the Anti-FTAA protests in Miami, Florida and witnessing the ensuing police beat down, this record was there for me, hidden away on a cassette tape on a bus full of other activists speeding North out of Miami.

"Every last ounce of sympathy, every last bit of emotion
Saturated with this bitterness and situations, stacked end on end end on end"

I sat in the uncomfortable seats, holding hands with one of my life long best friends, and could find no words of my own, but those lines repeated over and over in my head, with new, vicious, meaning.  

Those were the words that sustained me, gave me voice, when the horrors I had witnessed were too much to bear, and I felt like my own voice had been stolen.  I want to make it clear, that I am only speaking from my privileged experience.  Police violence is systemic to people of color, and poor people in the United States, and white activists like to make a big deal when we get a taste of someone else's daily existence.  Even then, the repression we face usually pales in comparison to what movements in other countries face. 

Later that winter, upon hearing of a friend's sexual assault, this record again, was what kept me company through a long and terrible night, crying, and smashing bottles in the darkness of the alley behind our ramshackle house. When I felt almost calm enough to sleep, I stomped up the stairs to my freezing room, and put this tape in the stereo, hit play, and the world looked almost right, at least enough to sleep, and face another day. 


"Will we recognize our self abuse, as a product of the abusive hands that molded our lives?"

This record gave me words, when I felt too terrorized, too traumatized to find words of my own.  When uncoupling abuse, violence, and domination culture from a life worth living piled up into weeks, months, years, and felt like there would never be any dawn in sight.   This record leant voice to my anger, to my despair, to my defiance,  for that, am endlessly grateful.  

"No words, no words can explain the anger from years and years of being beaten down
No words,no words can relay.. no words,no words can erase
Brainwashed, domesticated, bound in chains
No words, no words can relay

As the giant steamroller called progress mows down the last fragments of what once was

No words can explain the rage as another factory replaces another field
No words, no words can relay

No words can begin to say what would be said if the dead could replay, if the napalmed children, the tortured dissidents, the publicly executed, the burned villages, the silent masses could cry, could scream, could speak..

Telling tales of tragedies for which we find no words
For which there are no words" 

 I think this record is still available on vinyl.  Get it.  You owe it to yourself.  Tragedy are pretty staunchly DIY, and put out all their own stuff.  This is probably available from any number of distros.

Here.