by Boris Otterdam
1. Deadlock - Cancer
People outside Australia always yell "Bloody Fist" when you mention Australian hardcore to them. Fair enough. It is the most well known and respected Australian hardcore label and with good reason.
But for me, the best ever hardcore track made in Australian history was made by Deadlock (later known as Negative Network and formerly as Dave Riot).
Deadlock was a Sydney hardcore producer who began making tracker hardcore sometime in the late 90s. He later had his, almost entire discography, re-released by influential Sydney hardcore label "Powerviolence" (later changing it's name to Com-Baton Records). He has had a few vinyl appearances on comps and labels and made one vinyl EP that I had to own.
After 15 seconds of uncomfortable static noise. You are hit right in the fucking face by the word "Cancer" then a kickroll which changes to a kick drum at about 200bpm or so. One that sounds like a steel machine piston and knowing Deadlock - probably was sampled from one. The thing about that kick is it is perfectly tracked and flawlessly fast and heavy and absolutely unrelentingly brutal.
I've cleared goths, running in fear from the room at a show in Melbourne with this track at about 110db.
There's no crashes, no synths, no bassline. Just snares and hits and industrial factory sounding noises and screams of horror. Your only respite from his speedcore head bashing is a bridge with more squealing and squirming static noise, then "Cancer" and then BANG! more kicks….right in your stupid face.
Negative Network should have been bigger than he was. Live, he calmly stood on stage and obliterated you with his precision, tracker made, industrial speedcore. But it was not to be. Seeing him live was one of the best hardcore shows I ever saw.
When it finishes, like a good industrial hardcore track. It gives you no warning it's going to stop. For all you know it could start again.
That's one of the things that makes it the most perfect hardcore track I've ever heard.
2. Dekoder - Knife
I always thought this was not just one of the best hardcore tracks ever made but the best electronic track ever made.
Dekoder (formerly known as Pendulum before the West Australian DNB supergroup came along) is one of the most prolific producers on the label, having been involved in dozens of bands and projects outside of it and is still a well known purveyor of sounds via his radio shows in Newcastle.
Knife produced in 1995 but not released on vinyl until 2003 was a favourite of mine from 2000 after Max Veritech of Hardline Rekordings gave me an advance copy on a CDR full of Australian hardcore.
Kinfe's perfection comes in it's use of a simple sample "I'm gonna walk through your street at night with the knife" made more ominous and terrifying by splitting the sample into two "I'm gonna walk…..through your streets... .at night...with the knife” so it sounds more threatening. The result is a track that sounds like a theme song for a deranged murderer - straight out of a 70s slasher film.
The hi q kick drums are heavy as fuck. The track itself, driven along like a cinematic theme for a film that should have been made. The bones of it are a pretty basic mid tempo hardcore track, but the production and the use of heavy synths, stabs and ethereal pads and synthetic voices is where it shines as a truly incredible piece of music.
"Knife" is one of the few tracks you hear live and couldn't care less about dancing. You can drown in those pads and you'll be frozen by it in awe. .
Perth hardcore producer Paulblackout remixed it in 2003 while he lived in Newcastle and his remix gave it another side altogether, He knew which parts of the track to accentuate.
Both are the perfect compliment of each other making the 10" they were released on Bloody Fist a must own in Australian hardcore vinyl.
Dekoder's musical ability in creating those melodies that get stuck in your head makes "Knife" a true classic in Australian hardcore. There's nothing you can even pick wrong in it. It's perfect in every way.
3. Animal Intelligence - Now You Know
Growing up in Perth Western Australia and getting into industrial hardcore and gabber in the late 90s - it was inevitable that I would discover Animal Intelligence aka Max Veritech.
"Now You Know" the opener from the EP Eardrum Torture on Hardline Rekordings released in 1998 is probably his best track and was the first Hardline record I ever bought. A scratch master, devotee and prodigy of Bloody Fist (he learned via Mark N through correspondence how to produce hardcore with turntables and a tracker). Max learned from Mark N how to combine his scratching skills with his vinyl sampling.
The result here is a well known Tim Dog scene diss, cut and faded to time and being converted into Max's diss at the Perth rave scene (yeah we've all had problems with them).
The pace of the kicks and the samples match perfectly. You can tell the volume fader cuts, to cut the breaks in the intro, were made live on a turntable mixer.
A lot of hardcore artists sampled Tim Dog. But Max's intro, into the kick pattern of a reversed 909 over "fuck what you heard" gives you the perfect "down to business let's do this" type beginning to the track, with the hats coming in perfectly on "fuck that shit I'm the real motherfucker" making the rap samples sound even meaner. The whole track backed by synth vocals and casio sounding chiptune tones.
In the beginning the line "hardcore rap will never die" is cut into "hardcore... will never die" and "running to the light….running to the light" echoed.
At the 4 minute mark. Max just lets it all rip. No sample cutting, just letting the record and the samples run out and the track cane for another few seconds or so.
To me that always sounded like Max just getting into it so much he was just watching it smash out without worrying about the finer details of the sample cutting. I've never asked him if that was the case though.
4. The Last Ninja - One Way Ticket
The Last Ninja only played a handful of times in Australia before he finished in 2007. Starting in the original Perth breakcore scene in 2000 as one of the founders of not just it but 8-Bit Recordings, that itself followed on from the Hardline Rekordingz industrial hardcore scene of the mid to late 90s.
Released on his sold out debut CDR "The Rushed EP" One Way Ticket is just over two minutes of amens, sped up and distorted in punishing ways with murderous kick drums.
After the first break pattern, you get a manga sample that announces the track's intention "cheer up your misery isn't gonna last much longer, when I press this button you're gonna get a one way ticket to oblivion" and then smashed with distorted kick drums.
The synths are basic FLstudio 3 presets and live sounded fuckin painfully trebly. There's a brief halftime amen bridge, which is played out a second time before it finishes.
The Last Ninja is at heart (and still is) an indie pop/alternative rock fan. As a result his production for hardcore and breakcore always came with a verse chorus verse element, which made his tracks really stand out. Before he was The Last Ninja. He was just Adam Clarke. Another floppy haircut in corduroy pants, standing at Perth indie rock and alternative shows, clapping politely and shuffling in the front room of The Grosvenor. But really, he was sort of a sleeper agent in a quiet and unassuming scene not realising he needed a way to channel anger. He had an anger seething in him, which upon discovering breakcore and hardcore. He found a perfect outlet for.
During the second pause where the 303 winds down. He would scream "Go!" into a mike at early Perth breakcore shows like "VOID" which was at a large and echoey pub (which was then a punk shitbox with a giant pole in the centre of the stage and then later became a megavenue) and he'd drop those kicks and THE ROOM WOULD GO JUST FUC...no not really. It was Perth. They'd mostly stand there staring at him. We'd go mental though. His sound in that room would be loud and uncompromising.
"One Way Ticket" will always remind me of the announcement in 2000 that breakcore had arrived in Perth Western Australia. Which it more or less was. It's a simple, straight down the line hardcore track made on FLstudio 3 which does what it needs to and then stops suddenly.
I doubt it will be remembered by more than those of us who knew him or played with him but that shouldn't determine how good a hardcore track is and I have always believed that.
5. Sokuseki Men - Strait To Hell
Tasmania's Sokuseki Men were a duo of producers only in the Australian breakcore and hardcore scene for about 5 years or so. But they left a mark that is indisputable. Known as Maus (later Idiot Lust) and Wheelsfalloff. They were two guys who loved breakcore and hardcore and had some of the best production it ever saw and some of the most unique tracks.
Both of them after releasing the one album went on to solo projects that had equally vital contributions to the Australian scene. Wheelsfalloff's "Wreckless" is the closest thing to perfect breakcore I ever heard made in Australia, for it's break production and sample use.
"Strait To Hell" is samples from Alex Cox's movie of the same name combined with cuts from a Slayer song. All arranged into a nightmarish hardcore armageddon of a track and all in just over 3 minutes.
Placing both hardcore kick drums and snare rolls over the Slayer loop and making a fast and heavy and headbangable anthem for the foetal Australian breakcore scene in the early 2000s.
The bridge which jumps out suddenly with a playful synth loop and a speech sampled from the film, builds until it screams at you about bludgeoning and mutilating - before the Slayer/Lombardo drum roll, reintroduces that loop and we're back to a hardcore bashing.
Typical of Australian hardcore, they end the heaviness with sarcasm and cynicism using a comical sample of someone shooting a dog (but not in a realistic or mean way) and a sinister giggle ends the track.
The Sokuseki Men album "Sosueus" was released by System Corrupt in 2003 but was archived digitally in 2015 by ENDE Records which remains the only way to hear it online.
"Strait To Hell" is not the only Aussie hardcore track with Slayer loops or gabber kicks but the construction of it and it's quick dart from hardcore tension to lulling calm in that bridge - makes it the one that will always stand out the most to me.
https://enderecords.bandcamp.com/track/strait-to-hell
6. Xylocaine - Rural Area
As one of the pioneers of both industrial hardcore and breakcore in Australia as a member of Nasenbluten but also one of the most prolific of the Bloody Fist family - still to this day. You'd be hard pressed to find an Aussie hardcore fan here who doesn't start grinning like an idiot at the mention of his name and most probably quote you their favourite sample from one of his tracks.
Often they look at you and say "punishing punishing punishing" from Titration which is one of his finest moments for sure.
Producing hardcore in Australia, there's a lot who have their formulas and methods and tropes. Xylocaine literally has no formulas, no tropes and no defining methods. He sits at a tracker and his mind opens up and creates the most unique and memorable hardcore in the country. He both has the ability to, with nothing more than a handful of sounds, create something with patterns, sounds and noises - you'll have never heard before but is skilled enough to always create something that you can easily recognise is his.
His 30 year career has produced hardcore so strikingly unique, astonishing and influential, that many consider him one of the country's finest producers of electronic music in general - not just hardcore. His music is the best example to show non-electronic music fiends. Many of his best tracks come off like their own mini sci-fi, dystopian audio films. His dry sense of humour and cynical view of Australia helping to define one of Bloody Fist's most endearing traits.
Influenced by everything and anything from Australia's historical, pioneering contributions to noise and experimental music such as Severed Heads and SPK to the mundanity of television and consumerism which he amplifies into a more terrifying dystopian sci-fi like vision that even Snog can't match. Ita Buttrose's infomercial for a treadmill was one of the most annoying and stupid ads ever in the 90s on Aussie TV but now thanks to Xylocaine will permanently be associated worldwide with brutally heavy and uncompromising industrial hardcore.
But...
"Rural Area" is for me his best ever track. A little known contribution (unless you're an obsessive Fist fan) to the Strike Records vs Bloody Fist collaboration from 1996.
It's one of the most creative and atypical hardcore tracks for only a few reasons. It's hard as fuck as you'd expect and it canes along at a perfect pace but it has a few identifying aspects that make it more unsettling than most hardcore tracks.
The Fist brand of "smartass sampling" humour comes through with a JJJ? recorded radio sample of someone asking a DJ to "play something that's cheerful and happy for everybody" which is his shit eating grin behind his Amiga that you can't see - that he's about to fuck you up.
One thing Xylocaine and then housemates Syndicate pioneered in Australia in the 90s was how to strip hardcore down to it's bare bones and create an intensity by making kick patterns that were low on crashes and hats and brought the kick and snapping snare forward into the mix. I used to call it "bare bone hardcore" and definitely took A LOT of influence from it.
Around the 35 second mark. The kick pattern changes for a brief fill which the snare doesn't follow. Giving it a human drummer type mismatch that stops you in your tracks. It's incredible and sounds like something most modern hardcore producers would consider "something to fix" but in Xylocaine's hands becomes something that stands out and accentuates the tempo - in even a brief pause.
It's the highlight of the entire track.
Point blank refusing to give you anything that could be considered musical and therefore palatable to most people like some bass and synth and nut….no fuckin way. You get the odd hat acting as a crash here and there and a squealing feedback hit.
Sounds slide and shift back and forth around the track like an exploded beer can in the back of a ute. The kick pattern driving along with a bouncing distorted hit, driven by those kicks until 1:13 when it stops suddenly and what sounds like Charles "Bud" Tingwell tells you "sometimes suicide seems quite attractive" and an 80s computer/android voice asks "you wish to spend some time beside a sewer?"
A line which delivered right could be hilarious but in the film it's sampling and in Xylocaine's hands it becomes just monstrously unsettling.
Once the voice explains what suicide is to the android/computer voice. The sample ends at "please explain further" and you go back to the dryfucked, crashless pounding of Xylocaine's kick/snare pattern now joined by more distorted claps and snares. No bass no synth. This is abrasive and bare bone hardcore, completely devoid of glitz and glam that was a thing in a lot of hardcore overseas at the time.
The track smashes along like a broken factory machine, threatening to explode and catch fire on the factory floor. As it thumps along, you can imagine factory workers in 80s old school dark blue overalls, scattering in fear as "Rural Area" doesn't appear to be stopping anytime soon without breaking something...or everything.
After reintroducing us to the two sample voices again. Xylocaine throws us off guard with a high pitch machine error type tone, which makes the track sound even more like a factory machine failing in front of us.
From 2:53 onward it's a brilliant skipping collection of short, sharp sounds that once added to the kicks and snares - creates a perfect Xylocaine bounce. There's some more samples about pain and Charles? saying "no" in his blunt Aussie accent as an addition to the rest of the pattern.
By the time it's finished punching you with added kicks and slices of weird, mutated samples. You're left in shock with the only option to comprehend what just happened being to just play it again.
7. Cytosyne - Fact
The first mention of a track not available on vinyl or CD or even CDR but only digitally and the first I've mentioned that was made after 2010.
[nstblt] as it's known is No Sleep Til Bedtime. A Melbourne hardcore label which has grown to become one of the major players in Australia's hardcore scene.
A completely digital 21st century label that introduced to the world producers like 6head_slug, Tyrant X, N3OCORT3X and a range of other hardcore fiends. All of whom have crossed paths with every aspect of Australia's hardcore and breakcore scene in the last 15 years.
One was a young producer from Sydney called Cytosyne.
Cytosyne had appearances here and there and only released a digital EP with my label ENDE Records in 2015 and then it appears never again, except for a collection of remixes for The Harder View.
His best track "Fact" was released by [nstbt] in 2011 on the compilation EP "Suffer Age" This was the track I wanted when I contacted him but label head Greg 6_headslug wouldn't part with it and I was not in the least bit surprised because if I was him - I would have done the same.
Fact is possibly schranz but I never pay attention to hardcore genre labels anymore. I still don't know what frenchcore is.
What Fact is really is one of Australia's best and most catchy hardcore tracks.
With a killer breaky sounding intro that fuses effortlessly into a kick snare hardcore intro and an appealing synth melody to introduce you to it and samples like "gimme" and "wake up" dropped in. It suddenly drops the melody and announces "trying to trade over the faith that's a fact" before you're pounded with the first pattern of kicks.
That's probably not the sample and I'm sure Jake Cytosyne could tell you what it really is but for the purpose of this review. Let's just stick with that for now.
Even sitting here typing this. I have to keep fucking stopping to headbang. It's what kids now call a "banger"
"Fact" is a real modern, computer produced sounding hardcore stomper but uses that chip melody to throw you off that it might calm down.
the fuck it will.
At 2:48 it stops the melody slowly to introduce a slow fade in noise before half a second of dead silence and then "WAKE UP" before a hat count in slowly added by some snares and then back to a kick pattern before the "trade over the faith" sample comes back and you're back to the main track pattern. It's catchy bounce is hard to ignore or resist nodding to. Try it.
An absolute belter of a track and one of the best ever produced in Australia. One I've dropped into a few mixes over the years.
8. Epsilon - Fad Bather
The youngest and last to drink from Bloody Fist's success in the Newcastle hardcore scene before Bloody Fist closed operations in 2004. Epsilon will probably go down in whatever history of this music is remembered as one of the best breakcore producers in Australia.
Which he isn't. He isn't one of the best - he is the best.
But aside from his mindblowing breakcore is his unique and noisy contributions to industrial hardcore and without any doubt the finest moment for his hardcore is...
Fad Bather.
Released in a short collection of hardcore on a 12" comp on FCK Records in Denmark in 2004 alongside fellow fister Hedonist - just after Bloody Fist closed shop.
I once asked Epsilon about the sample that acts as the theme for the track. Where did he get it from?
An angry Aussie man yelling..
"What are you doing to me? what are you fucking doing to me? you're fucking killing me...fucking kid"
a sample so terrifying and reminiscent of a neglectful and contemptuous Father in this country, that you swear if you look up you'd see the cunt standing there with a longneck in his hand. The way he manipulated the sample - adds to the terror of the hardcore track where the ominous figure is not "Satan" or "Pinhead" or some mythical figure of fear but one of the most realistic - an abusive and drunk Dad.
He told me he recorded it himself. But I can't remember if he recorded it at his home or someone else's. Throughout his early releases and tracks there was a recurring theme of parental or spousal abuse (such as with his side project Patricider). Nothing he ever explained or felt the need to and why anyway - his music explained more than enough.
The dark and disturbing legacy of Australia's working class suburbs that most of us who grew up in them, either experienced firsthand or through someone close.
It makes "Fad Bather" more than just a hardcore track to bang your head and fist punch the air to. It shows how Australian hardcore and breakcore was one of the most misunderstood and maligned syles of electronic music - yet was capable of saying something fucking real. I've seen people high as kites stop dancing long enough to realise what the track is about when dropped in a set.
It's the only track that gives me baaaaaad flashbacks to childhood where through friends parents I witnessed some shocking violence towards children as a guest of the kid I knew all before I was even 12.
yet that is what makes it important and one of the best tracks he made.
Aside from it's theme. As a hardcore track it has a perfect borderline kick roll as it's main pattern, which pumps along machine-like, with some rattling noises and chiptune style electronic squarks.
Typical of Epsilon, it veers from glitchy breakcore drums to the 909 gabber death randomly and without warning. Clocking in around 5 minutes in total, it continues scaring you with a few more cuts from the Fad Bather of "fucking kid" which after some sound muddling by Epsilon sounds like it's more under the breath than direct.
With the extra "you fucking animal" thrown in only once and snare rolls, clicky hats and noises and beeps bouncing around all over the place it eventually runs out of breath, stops beating you and just seems to fall over and stop - leaving you with jaw dropped at how he made a catchy and fast hardcore track out of the pain of being around a contemptuous and abusive parent.
It would be easy to make a track about parental abuse that's just edgy or "hardcore" for shock factor but in Epsilon's hands it just shows how scarring and horrifying it really is.
9. Maladroit - Simply Irresistable (JRHNBR mix)
After the suburban horror that Epsilon showed us it's time to introduce or remind you of an Australian breakcore and hardcore producer who knew how to push the levels of good taste and create dancefloor anthems that got roars of laughter coming from the dancefloor instead of just cheers and fistpunches.
I think it was "Animal Passions" that Maladroit sampled for this track. A documentary that interviewed people with genuine love for practising bestiality that landed Channel 4 in the UK with record complaints on being screened.
So if you were going to sample the funnier and grosser elements of the documentary into a plunderphonic breakcore and hardcore stomper....
..what would be the best...pop song....maybe... to mix them into I GOT IT!! he probably yelled...
Robert Palmer's “Simply Irresistible” we all remember it from childhood. We all remember the clip, the pink mini skirted models and the bright red lipstick.
Now it appears what is "simply irresistible" is…..fucking animals. Thanks to Maladroit I can only think of lines like "people pussy pony pussy - pussy" when "simply Irresistible" comes on the radio at work.
So along with the obligatory Scooter references he dropped a lot in the 2000s and brutally heavy kickdrums. There's the line "she used to look good to me but now I find her - I've been with people I've been with animals - simply irresistible.
And you're in.
You're in with the accompanying saw waves to match the guitars after a kick battering as a pause introduces you to a man who married a pony.
The samples get grosser and Maladroit perfectly weaves them into Robert Palmer's best loved song.
By the time popmash came along. It was probably pointless to turn it into a subgenre of breakcore because I mean ...what's left that Maladroit hasn't sampled?
He was never a popmasher himself. He sampled fucking everything. No style of music was safe.
As much as he was one of the most prolific (rumoured to create up to 5 tracks a day in the 2000s) producers of breakcore. His approach to hardcore was no fucking around and straight for the throat. Underpinned by his manic breakwork, penchant for resampling a halftime amen into a fully heavy and fast one without respeeding up the pitch aaaaaaand....
...his love of internet and conspiracy paranoia and his dark sense of humour.
Humour will always be the most important factor in separating Australian hardcore from the rest of the world. It's something we do well but Maladroit was probably the best....after Nasenbluten.
Someone tried to tell me once there was "nothing political" in his music but they were idiots. Literally every track he made was saying something about something about this crazy fuckin world. Some just weren't smart enough to see it.
I would give you the link to this but it appears to be according to discogs - unreleased. It's not even on Youtube.
10. 556a - I KIll Ds
Originally released via the Powerviolence/Com-Baton website as an mp3 in 2005. 556a aka John D produced what he thought was a hardcore statement against Sydney's shocking police corruption and a hardcore anti-cop stomper that screamed "fuck the police" But he actually created something much more than that - by accident.
If memory serves me well it came hot on the heels of the riot in Macquarie Fields Sydney after a high police car chase killed a teenager in a stolen car they were chasing - that crashed into a wall. A riot that lasted a few days.
Whatever it was. The anti-cop theme, the NYPD blue theme slopped in with some sound warping, the Aussie samples about cops being corrupt and the repeating threat "I Kill Ds... as in detectives" the track became an instant Aussie hardcore classic more than his other 556a stuff or even work with The Pilfernators.
Less than a week after it was released. The track was downloaded that many times that John was begging people on the site and various hardcore forums, not to kill his website's bandwidth. This is in the early days of broadband and internet music hosting. Most other producers at the time were on Myspace only.
The bounce and the tempo and the machine sounds and computer beeps and the sample voice dropping in as a fill from time to time to remind you that it "kills Ds…..as in detectives" just to explain a common Aussie slang for detectives to an international audience or just remind Aussies he is in fact talking about cops.
So with the samples looping and bouncing in time to the monotone thump of a booming low end gabber kick drum at almost a doomcore pace and the occasional NYPD Blue drum roll. "I Kill Ds" cements itself into Australian hardcore history as John D has not just by co-running one of Australia's best hardcore labels with Fraughman on and off since 1999 and I think one was at one stage part of Nightvisions Promotions but introducing the world to The 556a, The Pilfernators, Morbus, Kenozla, Maladroit among others or even being recognised as one of Australian hardcore's most important and tireless promoters. Even if it came down to his last dollar as I was once told. Few I met were as passionate and as dedicated as he was to Australian hardcore.
But he will more than likely be remembered by those of us of who were contributors to the early days of the 2000s hardcore scene as the creator of "I KIll Ds" so fucking catchy, bouncy, cold industrial and bluntly threatening that it's been remixed by a few artists since.
There's two versions of it. But for my money the version pressed to vinyl on "Sydney Scags" EP is the absolute best.
As I write this after 5 hours of writing this article for Low Entropy. I'm playing it for a 5th time on Youtube. Tomorrow morning I'll have to get up and blast it on vinyl.
There are dozens and dozens of incredible Australian hardcore tracks I don't have time to mention from artists like Hedonist, Syndicate, Overcast, Rybacker, Dislasystem, Manifestevil, Matt Bleak, Deadcode, Cuntag, Aston, Farmercyst, Mirvcore, Spinecode, Wolf Head, Surrealizt, Angry Teenager, Killjoy...
but that's 10. I said I'd do 10.
here's "I KIll Ds"
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