Covering one song can be difficult and hellish thing to do because there are so many options. Staying true to the original in music or in spirit? Covering it note by note or sticking to the theme? Keep the original lyrics or alter them a bit? Compiling a whole tribute album can be even worse but Ripcord Records navigates all the traps splendidly and today, August 6th, released a tribute to the one and only hardcore band that everybody, EVERYBODY, should know: Fugazi!
Honestly, if you do not know the eight seminal records released by Brendan Canty, Joe Lally, Ian MacKaye, Guy Picciotto and for while also Colin Sears, do yourself a favor, take an afternoon off, listen to them in chronological order starting with 1989’s EP compilation 13 Songs and ending with 2001’s The Argument. You are in for a treat and will learn a lot about modern Hardcore, for example where At The Drive-In found the blueprint for their hectic and raspy singing. Or where many Noise-Punks bands found the chopped off guitar “riffs” and the Post-Punkish basslines. This band was, is and will be the role model for so many bands and you will hardly meet any serious Punk band who cannot instantly tell you their favorite Fugazi record. Or why it’s impossible to have ONE as the whole catalog is the ultimate immeasurable treasure chest.
Ripcord Records once again shows how to do a good compilation right after already publishing 2021’s best compilations for Post-Metal (Refuge Part II) and Post-Rock (Refuge Part I) and combining more than 15 hours of music and 150 songs between them. By donating all money made by the purchases to a charity that helps women and children who find themselves victims of violence and abuse, the wonderful Charlene was also able to show that her label is not just talking about “giving something back to the community” but really doing it. The money made by her newest compilation will also go to a charity, this time to Tribe Animal Sanctuary Scotland.
The compilation shows 43 bands/acts doing their best to show both variants of covering – really turning a song upside down (listen to La Dispute’s five-minute-version of ”Strangelight”) or staying very close to the original (Belvedere’s version of ”Styrofoam” for example). The list of bands also reads like a rollodex of renown Punk/Hardcore acts with some even showing grit they haven’t shown in a while – Into It. Over It.’s Evan Weiss does an unexpectedly rough, rugged and ruby-red cover of ”Instrument”. You can find really big names on this collection like Ken Andrews’ Failure giving a chimerical cover of Fugazi’s maybe biggest “hit” ”Waiting Room” as he is able to stay close to the original and still tuning and tweaking the instruments so cleverly that it still turns out like a regular Failure-Space-Rock song. Or Boysetsfire’s Nathan Gray doing a grand and inviting ”Bed For The Scraping” where it becomes clear how splendor-some the original is and at the same time, what a great Hardcore crooner he has become over the near thirty active years.
You still need convincing to buy this compilation? Okay, here are four more arguments: Jonah Matranga turning ”Suggestion” into a lush, seductive TripHop song. LIFE doing a mesmerizingly “stormy” electronica version of ”And The Same”. Authority Zero showing up with a Reaggaeton-influenced ”Bad Mouth”. Wojtek transforming ”Fell, Destroyed” into a pure Blackened Post-Metal-apocalypse. ZAO showing how to give a hardcore song like ”Guilford Fall” even more Hardcore edge. Oh, that were already five more reasons to buy it. Now go, do yourself a favor and buy the best tribute compilation of 2021!
