RECOMMENDED (06/15/06 @ Beerland)
Kent, Ohio, spazz-punks on a mission. Locals Manikin headline, and the Apeshits and Here Comes Trouble lure you in with long-gone punk. -

RECOMMENDED (05/20/06 @ Emo's)
Need a little chaos in your life? This year’s Chaos in Tejas festival presents a mob house of local, national, and international hardcore and punk. Though the fest technically started in Atlanta as Prank Fest, offering straight-ahead hardcore, it moved to Austin last year, where it became Rikki Fest or Chaos in Tejas, depending on whom you talked to. Organizer Timmy Hefner wanted this year’s shows to be a little more varied.

“I try really hard at making it kind of weird,” he says. “It’s definitely mostly hardcore, but I try to mix it up.”

As far as Texas hardcore goes, Thursday night’s headliner the Dicks are the seminal touchstone, a combo of raw punk rage and hardcore politics. Also on the bill are Limp Wrist, the Pedestrians, Sweden’s the Victims, and locals Army of Jesus and Iron Age. In Hefner’s spirit of keeping it weird, Friday’s headliners Dead Moon are perhaps the least hardcore. The Portland trio has been making fuzzed-out garage punk since the late Eighties, and singer Fred Cole’s been in bands since the Sixties.

“They’ve been one of my favorite bands forever,” Hefner says. “It took some work to track them down, but they were stoked on doing it.”

“I know Chaos is supposed to be a hardcore fest, so maybe they think that some of these bands need to learn that faster is not always better,” Cole jests.

Friday night opens with sets from Severed Head of State, Career Suicide, the Marked Men, Criminal Damage, Bastard Sons of Apocalypse, and Signal Lost. Saturday’s headliner, Portland hardcore quartet Tragedy, promises their cult following a blistering set of particularly chaotic assault. Helping them out are Japan’s Forward and Warhead, Fucked Up, Look Back and Laugh, Bayonettes, and locals Krum Bums and Manikin. Each night you can check out an aftershow at the Eastside space 423 Tillery. Visit www.emosaustin.com for info. - Audra Schroeder

RECOMMENDED (01/28/06 @ The Parlor)
Punks blast off New Wave’s Technicolor exterior to reveal the dark side of Manikin’s latest, Still. -

RECOMMENDED (08/12/05 @ Beerland)
Attack Formation, a local hydra-headed collective of musical expressionists, has been busting clocks and throwing rocks since 2000 with music that could ostensibly be called “punk.” But it’s more complex than that. The current 10-piece’s singer/guitarist Ben Webster takes an egalitarian approach to the revolving lineup’s writing process.

“[It’s] everything all the time,” Webster explains. “Since we are an organ(eye)zation, we have a lot of liberties that other bands maybe don’t have. There are so many people and ideas going at one time. The way we are recording and writing now has changed since we have different people all bringing in songs and lyrics and ideas. This record was written very differently than how we write now; it was a very finger-in-the-light-socket kind of exchange between us.”

This all-or-nothing approach seems to work for them. They’ve put out five vitriolic records in various incarnations of the band (Attack Formation, the A-Formatik on Tact, Attack (iN)Formation) and their most recent, Somebody as Anybody (Australian Cattle God), is a white-hot poker in the ass. The band and various guests sing about, well, God knows what, but they’re pissed about it. It seems that Attack Formation is just a little politicked off, but Webster doesn’t necessarily think so.

“I don’t feel like I have a voice in this country that can affect the political environment,” he says. “Fela Kuti said, ‘Music is the weapon of the future,’ so if I am to find my voice in music, maybe in the future I will have a say.” After a bit, he goes on to add: “I was discussing the politics with the band, and our position is: Bob Schneider is the Antichrist.”

The Difference Engine (ex-XBXRX) from Alabama, San Antonio’s Boxcar Satan, and locals Manikin open Friday, and Houston’s Ume, Austin’s Oh, Beast!, and Jagjaguwar’s Oneida from NYC support Saturday. - Audra Schroeder

RECOMMENDED (06/03/05 @ Emo's)
With the release of The Kick and the Snare, Dallas’ Deathray Davies successfully distill their eccentric take on summer pop melancholia to its richest, most succinct essence yet. It’s not a long album, but there’s a lot to hear in those 11 stacked tracks. The Davies’ road-hogging Glurp labelmates Grand Champeen are the bar-birthed product of many hours studying the gospels of used rock vinyl, while openers the Ugly Beats take it all the way back with their Sixties teen canteen punk. - Greg Beets

RECOMMENDED (02/04/05 @ Emo's)
Black Flag or Hank Sr.? Doesn’t matter. Hank III plays it all. -

RECOMMENDED (09/23/03 @ Beerland)
With all the hifalutin musical fare carpetbagging it through Austin this fall semester, the Eastside Suicides’ Stoogey smear is just the antidote. Their self-titled local debut is chunky goodness next to the gritty, four-alarm punk kick of Tacoma’s Mexican Blackbirds. If Birds’ new Dirtnap heart attack Just to Spite You is any measure, the Riverboat Gamblers better watch their backs. Materialistics open. - Raoul Hernandez