I’ve not been as excited about the American hardcore scene as I have been this year in a long, long time. There’s so much exciting stuff going on it’s getting easier and easier to forget that “hardcore” means “mall Emo” to great swaths of the population and all I can hope for those kids is that that garbage that’s being marketed to them serves as a starting off point and not a cultural holding cell.

But, I mean it, not since the early-mid 1990’s have I been buoyantly excited about the possibilities of the hardcore scene. There’s a surge of stuff going on right now within which folks are clearly operating in the hardcore ‘genre’ (and, as such, can be appropriately labeled such) but are so full of creativity and pushing, not the boundaries of what hardcore can be, but the guts of what it is.

To wit: Sex/Vid was in Athens a couple of nights back and completely ruled it. They really only played for, maybe 19 minutes or so by my estimation but just killed. Don’t bother looking for them online anywhere because all you’re going to find is a bunch of dorks like myself raving about how good they are. Good luck finding their records, too. (Try here.) But because you must hear them I give you this measly live recording that is already 3 years old. Whatever. It’s still a fine introduction to a band you’re gonna have to hunt down.

MP3: Sex/Vid-Live At KEXP Radio (University of Washington, Seattle)
(Note: File is around 17 minutes long. No track listing. Deal.)

PS: Since the band doesn’t seem to be repressing it anytime soon (or,maybe, at all) I’ll pony up the tracks from the Drugging EP sometime soon.

See your town below? Go.