Here we are..back again. Days late but no dollars short.
SCHEME REPORT:
!New Release in Da Store!
Scheme is proud to present you the new offering from CT's WRECKAGE, titled II.” It’s a pretty good sequel...not like Aliens or Terminator 2 level but still pretty damn good. Maybe like The Matrix: Reloaded but only the action scenes and not the weird philosophical crap. Straight forward Connecticut hardcore featuring members of ALMIGHTY WATCHING and KIDNAPPED.
I don’t know who in this complex power structure decided we should publish newsletters on Mondays but let it be known that we will continue to suffer to improve the worst day of the week with some needless hardcore info / jokes / musings / show reviews.
As far as SCHEME specifics, All ALMIGHTY WATCHING / RESTRAINING ORDER orders are in the mail and should be arriving to you soon or at the very worst are being run over by a forklift in a distribution center.
WRECKAGE II tapes and the restock of ALMIGHTY WATCHING tapes will ship out middle of next week, some are going to distros throughout the world so if that's a thing that you do get in touch and we’ll ship some out your way.
We're also proud to announce that after countless trials and tribulations, we have finally acquired an intern for the Fall '21 semester: the entity that goes by the name Grato. He doesn't have a first name and he's a lot taller than you'd think. It's kinda weird.
Grato is currently in the midst of acquiring his associates degree in SJI (Shows, Jokes and Ideas) while attending SUNY Scheme. Moving forward, they will be handling all of our mailorder so if anything is lost or forgotten about, it's their fault. Not us. Scroll below to read their review of the KOYO record release weekend.....TW: Emo bullshit....
SCENE REPORT:
The WORN record release was ill: you had good jokes (RIP Quinn from THE FIGHT), good covers (shout outs to C4 playing the BREAKDOWN song with the naughty word in it), secret sets and just overall good vibes. WORN’s new record is dope and congrats to them on a successful record release.
With record releases in mind - this past weekend was the record release for emo heart throbz KOYO and their new record on Triple B, Drives Out East.
I only went to the first show cuz I ended up just playing X-COM 2 on my Switch all day Sunday but the show was awesome. STAND STILL’s first show was the real highlight of the night, playing their first EP, a comp song and their MOVIELIFE cover with mad kids singing along and diving….perhaps even some OSPO. As for KOYO...there wasn't any doubt they were going to kill it. They’re from Long Island and for better or worse, emo bullshit is our bread and butter…..it’s in our DNA. I, Albin, did a zine for KOYO that in hindsight, might have been a little too emo? KOYO might throw leftovers of that in their store - grab one if you want to read and make fun of me.
This September we’ll be visiting the beautiful Hudson Valley to go to two shows in the not so beautiful Poughkeepsie, the first being MINDFORCES first local show in years (shameless plug: watch ALMIGHTY WATCHING at that) and the second being a combination of Scheme alumni, RESTRAINING ORDER and one of the final dates of the upcoming KOYO/SOUL BLIND tour. Be sure to also check out some HV legends, RECYCLED EARTH on that show for a reunion? Reformation? Return from hiatus? Who knows, I’m just stoked to see it.
In regards to new music...you should check out the new SUPER STRUCTURE 12” that Daze is dropping the day of this email blast. Normally, this is where we would make a joke about Daze but this record is legit good - straight chaotic heavier hardcore from Japan that is on streaming for the first time that should be given a fair shot.
KYLE’s PLAYLIST:
SUPERTOUCH - Alternate version of the 7”
MEMORIAL DAY - Demo
TRUE BLUE - Demo
SUPERTOUCH - Better (off the Anti Matter comp)
MOONDOG - Demo 1990
BETTER THAN A THOUSAND - Self Worth
TRUE BLUE - The Ice
ALBIN’s PLAYLIST:
STAND STILL - A Practice In Patience
BOWERY ELECTRIC - Beat
BLACK MARBLE - New Shit
RHYTHM TO THE MADNESS - Discography
METHOD OF DOUBT - Kudzu
TURNOVER - Da Red One
HAIRSPRAY ('07) - Soundtrack
AMERICAN NIGHTMARE - Both 7"s
Listen to these songs and others here:
GET DOWN...with Dave Murphy
For lack of accurate geography we’ll call GET DOWN an east coast hardcore band (being a combination of New Jersey/Bostonians residing in New York? / and of course real life people who live in Boston). Featuring members of IN MY EYES, BETTER THAN A THOUSAND, PANIC and the guy who made that message board they talk about in TOHC...and of course the living and breathing, still moshin legend Dave Murphy.
They've got somewhere between 1-2 demos and 2 7” releases and probably played some good shows. The catalyst for this short tumble down memory road was buying the second GET DOWN 7” at Static Era in Milford, CT on the way to ALMIGHTY WATCHING practice for the mere price of $3 (the lowest price something in a record store should be marked frankly) and after some years of knowing what the band was but still often getting them confused with GET HIGH I had never actually seen a record or heard a note of music.
So I buy this thing and note the uniquely avant garde layout and seemingly screen printed blank post card it came with and a section on the jacket denoting who the record belongs to (Stefan Kominsky..why did you part with this record man?) and then realize it's also on spotify so I listen on my way to practice, it's something that really resonates with me, surprising only in the way that no one ever has pointed me in its direction...It's no news that Dave Murphy has good taste and I should never have expected otherwise.
Like any self respecting person with little to talk about I contact Dave to tell him I really like the record and want to know more about it and of course as he's someone who knows how to tell a story he lays a few vignettes on me that I will now share with you..like it or not.
On the subject of the first self titled 7” on Painkiller Records...
“We broke into the room. Rent wasn’t paid in awhile. Rats and shit were coming out of moldy old trash cans. It was 183 fuckin degrees in there with all the windows shit. We recorded from like 8 pm til 6 am and it was in the bag. There was a chemical magic to the night that I can only compare to hardcore’s version of “Appetite For Destruction” There was an epic rooftop sesh of beers and blunts overlooking the entirety of Manhattan from the sketchiest rooftop perch you’ll ever see”
On the subject of the second self titled 7” on Mosh Camp Records...
“Second record we brought cases of Sam Adams and more blunts to Eric Lomon’s house and had a stress free fun as fuck weekend away from NYC. Banged out that whole record on the spot in a weekend. Soooo much happier with that recording. The songs rip! When Pops played me all the songs between the 2 Records I’m just like “I get to yell over this??!!”
“Two labels folded while trying to release that record, that's why they got mailed out YEARS after people had ordered. Mosh Camp and another label tried to do it and finally we got all these records and covers so me and Pops grabbed a bunch each and just started mailing them out years later”
“We mailed a record to a guy that turned out to have died while waiting in his record LOL, it got returned to us”
KOYO DRIVES OUT EAST RECORD RELEASE REVIEWs:
As mentioned in da intro - this is the first piece from our intern: Grato, a fresh face being who is a newly minted Brooklyn transplant,. For all our readership (the thirty plus year old men and Europeans), we’re going to include some annotations so you can understand the references that they make easier, cuz shit I don’t know what the hell they’re talking about at times.
The otha’ day… Albin hit me up to do a write-up of the Koyo Record Release Weekend™ Under Exclusive License By Sequel Music Group. Albin also forgot I haven’t had fun or enjoyed a show in probably half a decade now, as somebody, somewhere always needs me to work some aspect of a show in some capacity. After I told him this, he decided it would be funnier if I just wrote my vague assessment of the weekend without really watching any bands, so you can find my thoughts below:
FRIDAY NIGHT:
Friday was kinda dope because it sold out in advance so scanning tickets on the AMH iPad1is way easier than collecting cash and trying to make change for 100 people in 25 minutes. However, people kept coming in early thinking they ran the place and I had to sprint around giving everybody and anybody a wristband and AMH Girlboss / Team Leader Jules2got pissed at me for not being ready by doors, while my body was already fucked up off my first two shots of espresso ever and an hour of sleep on a tile floor the night before.
YESDUKE: Lumpy once described YESDUKE to me as “the best band on Warped Tour3vibes,” which I think is pretty accurate. From my extremely limited point of view, people were just chilling with a select group of homies singin’ along. They did a cover that I absolutely and completely forgot but I’m sure it was cool.
STAND STILL: POSI IS BACK4. This band fuckin’ rocks. Lindenhurst and beyond diving like mad with pile-ons for nearly every song. Definitely a much bigger pop for their first show than I had previously expected, but extremely welcome and cool enough to overlook the riff stolen from THE AGENT.
SHACKLED: In no other terms Joey told me “I need to put a mosh band on this show for it to sell out.” Violence level was about a medium. The only dancing I saw through my little window was Hartmann fuckin it up and I think I would need to see Marazzo cam to accurately judge how good and/or funny this set was.
RULE THEM ALL: Unfortunately, Andy passed away in order to become a ghost lawyer dealing in paranormal crimes, leaving poor Richie all alone on guitar. Pretty funny stuff given that they (former 3 guitar band) had to play right before KOYO (current 3 guitar band)– that didn’t stop Chris Smith Mets from absolutely slugging kids to the [relatively] posi band, which is always dope and hilarious to witness. They opened up with a Clobberin’ Time cover, where Jon explicitly demanded the kids better know the song, to which they did not. A sad byproduct of today’s hc kids being raised by ASKING ALEXANDRIA and not H2O5.
KOYO: Okay, so this band, I actually watched. I didn’t get to dive or have fun or anything– just hold up Marazzo cam while he played. KOYOs mix of 2000s/2010s pop punk being played by current hc kids created a strange dynamic where in between dives and pile-ons, kids were dancin’ like madmen. That being said, this was probably the best posi performance I’ve seen since the pop-punk-inspired-by-hardcore wave of 2011 - 2015. At one point I def shed a tear6realizing how cool it was that myself and my lifelong friends had finally ‘made it’ and had all these cool opportunities and moments coming our way, but Albin told me not to make it too fruity, so that’s a story for another day.
SUNDAY NIGHT:
I went to bed Saturday night after driving two hours back to my apartment to avoid the hurricane, only to wake up, see it went east and have to head back to Oakdale. Despite hurricane worries, this show ALSO sold out, which is some pretty unheard of stuff for a band’s second and third shows. Working doors at Shakers fuckin’ sucks because A) the bartenders harass you all night and B) there’s a giant ass wall between me and the stage so I can’t even partially watch bands like I do at AMH, but despite that, here we go:
LIVING WEAPON: At some point hanging out Saturday, I realized this was expected to be the “Violence” band. From what I heard through the wall, Jeremy’s wee woo wee7guitar things over Jon’s evil voice into breakdowns was definitely enough to turn ape mode on in sold out Shaker’s. All I really know about this set is that Lumpy got Chris Smith Mets good in the nose.
VICTORY GARDEN: KOYO is fake pop punk. THIS is real pop punk. VICTORY GARDEN has been playing a lot recently and from what I am pretty much absolutely guessing, this may have been their best set so far? From my side of the wall I heard an OPERATION IVY cover AND a GREEN DAY cover– two covers? In one set? Now I’ve seen it all8.
SOUL BLIND: I did not watch a minute of this set due to a giant wall blocking my view, but the new songs sounded really loud. At one point I heard what I think was an ALICE IN CHAINs cover, which if I had to guess is going to be internet hc’s new thing now that I’ve stopped hearing about OASIS. Also, some kid(s) were trying to dance to the shoegaze music?? Not sure how that works…
LIFE’S QUESTION: LIFE’s QUESTION has been doing this thing where they’ve been opening / soundchecking with a cover of Panama, which is honestly more badass than funny… from what I understand this was a stock and standard L?9set, imo the best/most innovative current hc band. That’s not to say that this was a bad set by any means, I’m sure there were tons of kids dancin’, just not any jokes to make about it.
REGULATE: First off, REGULATE fuckin rocks. Punchy lyrics, excellent songwriting, great danceability. This was, as expected, another excellent REGULATE performance. However, this ended with a full cover of You’re So Last Summer instead of the little snippet cover I’ve been seeing them do the past couple years. Kids, as expected, absolutely loved it.
KOYO: Scanlon said it takes a lot of balls to do two headliners in one weekend. Scanlon probably did not know that since 2013, we’ve been pulling eggs out of fridges to prove to people that Joey’s balls are, in fact, the size of eggs. KOYO night two was as solid, if not slightly better than night one. Shaker’s has a slightly move divable stage, so the dives picked up a little bit more in exchange for slightly fewer kids singing along. As a whole, a very excellent record release weekend that I’m sure way less cool bands will be emulating for years to come. Also, I dropped Marazzo’s camera during the encore chant, so I’m sorry if you see that on YouTube and get vertigo from it.
Not to be confused with the iPod, the greatest technological achievement of the 21st century - tied with YouTube.com
Not to be confused with Jules Massey of SIDE BY SIDE / ALONE IN A CROWD or Jules from the 2007 cinematic masterpiece, Superbad
Lumpy notably knocked out just under a dozen people at Warped Tour 2008
OUT FOR JUSTICE - NOTHIN 2 PROVE, out this fall, will prove this statement to be clearly wrong
Please refer to the final line in "SHIT YOU NEED TO PUT RESPECT ON" VOL. 4, featured in Scheme Newsletter 007 for confirmation
Pause: it's a fact that it's only acceptable to cry at funerals or during an H2O set while you embrace your bro
It took me ten minutes to realize that L? meant LIFE'S QUESTION and not that they took an L, as in a lose. Fuck you Grato