Back in or around 2007 my buddy Jake invited me to a show, I’m not even sure he told me who was playing or if he did I hadn’t heard of them yet anyway. Turns out it was Toronto’s Career Suicide who were on tour with Regulations from Sweden. Both bands fucking ripped and I still remember being pretty blown away- I don’t think I’d seen any hardcore bands that I actually liked since the mid to late 90s! It wasn’t the bands necessarily, I kinda lost interest around the time dudes started practicing round house kicks and windmill punches instead of pogoing in the pit.
Anyway, I was messaging with Mikey the bassist from Imploders about this today. I was slobbering over the guitar tone on their new record and he told me it was probably due to Regulations who he said were a big influence on them. The press release that Static Shock sent mentioned Circle Jerks. I was thinking more like Adolescents or Germs but I can definitely hear and appreciate the Regulations worship. Regulations sounds like Chavo/Jealous Again era Black Flag (IMO the best era) so I guess I would describe this as early West Coast American hardcore? Based on the cover art which sorta reminds me of Sean Taggart, and the alliteration in the album title, one might think this was crossover/thrash. But this ain’t no little buff boys music. Black Flag may have helped draw the Nazis and meathead surfers that allegedly ruined the early LA punk scene but Jealous Again came out a year before anyone was using the term hardcore anyway so let’s just call it punk.
Listen to the aforementioned guitar tone, it’s cleaner than a ducks b-hole when he’s swimming in holy water! Ok maybe not that clean. Mikey, who also plays bass in Chain Whip now, credits this to Regulations but it’s almost like their guitar player stole John Fogerty’s Les Paul!? And they further flip the script with a bit of Rat pedal on the bass. I mean they’re not reinventing the wheel here and other bands like Fentanyl off the top of my head have already entered clean-guitar-core territory but it sets them apart for me personally. Enough about the guitar tho when everything / everyone in this band rips. I thought about asking for lyrics but it’s more fun to try to interpret them myself- “Every single Friday night same fucking thing, getting turned out in a Heavy Metal dream.” These might be the lyrics to Imploders’ “Bloodstains On The Big Screen” which might be a reference to the movie and/or magazine Heavy Metal?
Asked what he thinks about all this, Mikey says, “If you know any of us personally we are all giant fucking goofs. It's much more authentic for us to write tongue in cheek songs about our worldly observations thru sarcastic dumb humour.” Following in the footsteps of Career Suicide and other Toronto punks like Brutal Knights these dudes are probably my favourite current Canadian band.
