Which way next?

Job hunting | All Ages Records | Pizzatramp

I’d love to be able to say the job hunting referred to above is a cool new band you must listen to*. Unfortunately that’s not the case.

Instead it describes something that’s been taking up a lot of my time and mental energy over the last two months since I was made redundant (or laid off, for American readers).

Things, it’s safe to say, have not exactly gone to plan - certainly not in line with the enthusiastic plans I formed while on summer holiday to write more here, adding interviews, longer in-depth pieces and weekly roundups.

The Weekly Digest posts curating news and writing on punk rock, alt rock and indie music from the previous seven days did get launched and have been keeping the metaphorical lights on around here. Much like the monthly updates to my Fighting with the Undertow playlist, the Digests remind me - and not for the first time - how much I need deadlines.

I did also manage to publish one interview, with Jimmy Watkins (Joyce/Running Punks), so some more of those plans did actually work out and now that my head’s in a better place there’s plenty of plans and ideas to get on with, the first of which will come to Fire Red Sky on Wednesday.

And that will be an exclusive, though one-off for now, punk rock chart from Camden’s All Ages Records.

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All Ages Records

There’s a ton of photos on my phone from All Ages Records, the London punk and hardcore record shop. Some remind me what to look up on Spotify before I next return to the shop, some go to Instagram, and some used to be for the Twitter account I ran for the shop.

Safe to say it’s certainly a very photographic little bastion of punk rock coolness up in Camden, and it also holds a very special place in my heart. Over the first Covid lockdown I set up a Twitter account for All Ages to help its owner Nick, a move that inadvertently set me on the path to using my years of journalism experience to write about music as I absorbed more and more new punk rock goodness.

While punk is resolutely not about numbers like sales, I’m nevertheless delighted that Nick has tallied up a year’s worth of figures for us (and who doesn’t like a good list). All Ages’ punk rock chart ranges from hardcore classics to modern oi to pop punk. So look out for that on Wednesday.

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Pizzatramp

One of the many bands you might discover at All Ages Records - though (spoiler) a little too niche even for Wednesday’s punk rock chart - is Welsh thrash punk trio Pizzatramp, who travelled up to the capital in September to curse out London, London gigs, London audiences and many other things besides (Pantera, say, as the video above makes clear).

The trio’s latest album, The Last Supper, came out in September. It’s apparently going to be their last, as they say they’re splitting up some time next year. But as they also adopt NOFX levels of piss-taking, it’s hard to be certain about anything they say.

What is certain is the new album rocks like a junkyard dog eyeing up your foot for a bone. Singer/guitarist Jimmy trains his scabrous lyricism on various shades of rightwing arseholes (‘Flagshaggers United’), fans of the police (‘Cop Fetish’), and the state of a world going down the tubes (‘What Fresh Hell Is This?’). Written three years ago, and recorded two years ago, its references are depressingly up-to-date.

Thankfully there’s plenty of humour too. ‘Mr Slam’ is about Jimmy’s overwhelming desire to become Vinnie Stigma from Agnostic Front after falling in love with him upon seeing the ‘Godfathers Of Hardcore’ documentary. Meanwhile, 'The Last Supper' started as a song about what chocolate Jimmy would break vegan edge to eat when he's about to die, before the album’s title track slowly morphed into the world's first celebrity cannibal anthem.

With the exception of its closing track, ‘Zombies Have Feelings Too’, which would have been best left for a CD’s hidden track, the album’s a lurching trash punk collection, powered by airless frenetic drums, steel girder bass runs, and no-nonsense guitars that are moving too fast for frivolities such as solos.

* Job Hunting appears to be up for grabs** if you need a name for your band, but probably best steer clear of it

** Unlike Job For A Cowboy, who promise a “relentless fusion of hardcore and death metal with the precision guitar attack of progressive metal”, which sounds like it’s worth checking out