Winter in the Midwest

With the location-based gang mentality that has overrun hardcore since its inception, it's sometimes hard to hear the sounds coming from regional areas over the highly tauted and heavily promoted ones of New York, Boston, Los Angeles, etc etc. If you're outside of the US like myself, it's probably the same if you superimpose your own capital cities in that sentence. Everyone knows the big bands from the big labels with the big enough budgets, but what of the little guys?

For a while now I've been blown away by a lot of the bands coming from the American Midwest. Sure, you've got your heavies like Coalesce and Modern Life is War, but then there's the well-kept secrets that take a little bit of digging to discover. Here are some rad Midwest bands that fit the bill.

Building Better Bombs.
These guys alternate from caustic hardcore to two-step friendly Bronx-esque rawk 'n' roll to revolution summer melodies to atonal squalk to mid-tempo stomp effortlessly. Indeed the only constants here are great riffs and some throat-ripping screams. Featuring one of the girls who used to be in the Soviettes (one of the best guilty pleasure bands in punk), their full-length record "Freak Out Squares" really gets the job of putting an original spin on an often languid style.

Building Better Bombs - Freak Out Squares (V0 VBR MP3)

Get Rad.
A joke band with serious riffs. Their songs touch on topics such as the rise and fall of Metallica, how cool friends are, breaking into waterparks, and being nice to puppies. The songs, however, are no-bullshit hardcore, with elements of crossover thrash, youth crew, and fastcore thrown in for maximum effect. Their first full-length, "Say Fuck No to Rules, Man" was my soundtrack to the summer of 2006, and their efforts since then, namely the "Bastards United" EP and their second LP, "I Can Always Live" aren't too shabby either. Featuring members of bands like Seven Days of Samsara and Herds, who I'll get to shortly.

Get Rad - Say Fuck No to Rules, Man (V2 VBR MP3)
Get Rad - Bastards United (V2 KBPS VBR MP3)
Get Rad - I Can Always Live (V0 VBR MP3)

Herds.
This is crusty, d-beat ugliness of the highest order. Featuring one of the dudes from Charles Bronson and revelling in feedback and Motorhead back-patches, these guys use a lot of the better elements of their genre to their advantage while throwing in some original sounds for good measure. Occasionally the tempos slow and the guitars give way to towering monoliths of bass noise, but no matter what the tempo Herds know how to stay earfuckingly abrasive. Their self-titled full-length was one of my favourite records that came out last year.

Herds - Self-Titled LP (V0 VBR MP3)