To be perfectly honest, sometimes Olympia outshines Seattle in quality of musical output. Is it wrong to distill it down to Macklemore vs. The Halo Benders? Please, don’t answer that. Regardless, my jaw dropped when I hit play on Youth Regiment’s new, self-titled tape. Despite hailing from our state capitol, Youth sounds like a time warp back to Washington D.C. in the early 80s. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a local band play hardcore punk that’s anywhere near as enjoyable or sonically authentic as this group. I love this.
The tape kicks off with a bass tone that sounds almost identical to Joy Division’s “Transmission,” except more aggressive. After a few measures of thump-a-thump-a-thump-a (that’s how a bass sounds, right?), the rest of the band smashes in with a surprisingly danceable hardcore bounce. The guitar is bright and lofi in a way that beautifully textures the song, chiming in and out while rivaling the buzzsaw efforts of Johnny Ramone himself. (Yes, I know the Ramones aren’t hardcore, but we’re talking guitar textures.) One drumroll later, everything builds off that thump-a-thump-a while the power-tool guitar hisses away. Then, the whole outfit lurches into a classic hardcore chorus, or outro, or something. To hell with the formalities of song structure! They scream, hit, shout, and play.
The rest of the release (which, in total, clocks in at six minutes via four songs) is similar to the first track in that its standard hardcore parallel in quality to anything put out by the legendary D.C. label Dischord Records. Not a single thing is out of step. It almost feels like I’m listening to tracks lifted from an influential compilation like Flex Your Head. I’m just waiting for their inevitable cover of Stepping Stone.
Youth Regiment is apparently one of those bands that’s either trying to create a mystique to themselves, or is anti-promotion and thus anti-posturing…because my singular google search resulted in literally nothing. (I found them by chance when I checked the latest Olympia releases on Bandcamp. Crate digging in the digital age.) They appear to be on a label called Stucco — a seemingly “no poseurs allowed” realm, as “fuck a label” is proudly written where any company information would normally be. Other than that, I see they played a show at U-District house venue Pizza Palace and have one other tape out that’s even more lofi and less worth mentioning. But I’m eager to see if anything else arises, because these four songs absolutely rip.
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