Top Of The Pops 2016

2016 has been another really good year for new music. People always tell me that there are fewer and fewer new bands and records that get them excited, but in my opinion that's just a lame excuse for being lazy and just another way of saying "everything was better way back when". I get the sentiment of having the feeling one has heard that breakdown or that riff before, but maybe those aren't exactly the same and people simply have to keep an open mind. There are some old bands that had great releases in 2016 and there are some new bands that got me really excited with their records or demos. I can't wait for 2017 to come and bring me more good new music.

Record Of The Year 2016

Dangers - The Bend In The Break

7" Of The Year

Spirit Crusher - The Absolute

Demo Of The Year

Tie between Free and Lowest Priority

Discovery Of The Year

Rvivr and Erica Freas

Best Split 7"(s), Band With The Most Output and Most Loveable Band

Spirits

Honorable Mention (because it was played to me only once and I don't own the record)

Fury - Paramount

Me. You. Youth Crew 2016

Latest installment of this compilation series. Featured are - surprise, surprise - current bands that play Youth Crew hardcore. The cool thing about this series is that bands from all over the world are featured, not European or American bands only. It's also a collaboration by many different labels from all over the planet. My favourite bands so far are Spirits (of course), Tomar Control and Modern Problems. I'll have to give it a spin a couple of more times. Maybe some of the other bands will grow on me. I'm not sure which variant this is. Officially there are yellow (/95), green (/102) and dark green (/195) as far as colours go, but this copy is neither. It looks like solid green with some yellow marble going on. Could also be a 'dirty' green or a greenish yellow. So I'm chalking this one up as transition colour.

Spirits Meet Tomar Control

And another release by my new favorite band. It's really hard to keep up with them, but you gotta do what you gotta do. This time they teamed up with Tomar Control from Peru. I was a little underwhelmed by the Spirits songs at first, probably because I absolutely love their LP, but with every spin I gave the split they've been growing on me. 

I'd never heard of Tomar Control before (Peruvian hardcore hasn't been on my radar at all) but I really like the songs on their side of the split. 

Both pink and blue are out of 125 copies and since Speedowax had a few tests for sale in their webstore for a really good price I picked up one of those as well.