Honorable Mentions from the Abyss #22: Blind Ride/Slow Jams

Hey brutal bangers,
sorry if the 'zine is very little active in these days but I am a lot busy to prepare a hardcore punk compilation-benefit to support financially the Trecentosessantagradi, the punk venue in Rome, in which I attended many live gigs, that today risks to be closed due to the effects of the fuckin' quarantine!
Anyway, today I found the time to write a new episode of "Honorable Mentions from the Abyss", that is about two interesting hardcore punk bands: Blind Ride and Slow Jams. Actually, I talked about them on "Timpani allo Spiedo on YouTube #2" (yes, if you still know nothing, the 'zine is now also on YouTube hehe!) but, for me, it will be a pleasure to talk again about these bands in this article.
So, let's start with...

BLIND RIDE - "TOO FAST FOR A SICK DOG"

... with Blind Ride (FB page) a power trio that was formed in 2019 from the ashes of Il Fronte della Spirale. Blind Ride, that ultimately participated in the "Fuck Covid-19 Edition" fest organized by Till Death, released just this year an excellent debut EP, entitled "Too Fast for a Sick Dog", though the Italian label Mastice Produzioni.

Now, "Too Fast for a Sick Dog" is composed of 7 tracks, in which you can listen to an unconventional style of hardcore punk. It's "unconventional" for three reasons: 1) its influences ranging from rock'n'roll to noise; 2) its gloomy and hallucinated atmosphere; 3) its mid-tempo but vivacious pace, since you can find the classic hardcore punk fast tempos only in "Too Fast for a Sick Dog/The Blind Ride" and in the furious and short "D.D.P.S.", and this means that the band doesn't love to be really fast and fast all the time, in a style reminding me a lot of Effigies and the likes. Plus, I love the production, that is essential and without tricks of any sort. So, all this (and not only) is Blind Ride: hardcore punk with something more to say!

SLOW JAMS - "HEAVY BLUES"

Now it's the turn of Slow Jams (FB page)! They are a quintet located in Berlin, Germany, but whose members come also from countries such as Italy, France and Romania, so they can be considered as an international band. Born in 2017, they published one year later their debut full-lenght "To the Bone" but here we're going to talk about their new EP "Heavy Blues", released in 2020 in a co-production involving 5feetUnder Rec (Denmark), Sengaja Rec (Germany) and Financial Ruin (USA).

Slow Jams are a very straight to the point band! Why? Simple: "Heavy Blues" consists of 4 songs but these ones are so short that it lasts only 8 minutes circa of pure intensity! Despite this, their sound isn't so violent nor particularly fast but, anyway, it's creative and raw, old and modern at the same time, spewing forth a hardcore punk with screaming vocals and different influences from genres such as stoner, showing all this already starting from the opening song "Determined Law" (that's also the more furious and faster one). So, they remind me another band featuring on these pages like the Italians Backjumper. In brief, do you want to listen to some (very) heavy blues? Well, Slow Jams are fuckin' for you!