Caffiend / Filter
Friday, November 30th, 2012
Split 7″
Station Eight, 1994
As much as one can explore the music underground, there will always be treasures buried in time and obscurity. Entire scenes that barely blip on the most thorough subterranean radar may only yield utterly forgettable dreck, but every now and then a snapshot appears that gives depth to a scene that warrants more inspection. Here’s a an example of one such snapshot, this rare split between two Lincoln, Nebraska hardcore bands that captures two overlooked bands doing some interesting stuff at a time you wouldn’t expect this type of noise to be rumbling in a midwestern college town. Judging from the all-lowercase cover art and inside action shot of clean cut kids in band tees, you’d expect Caffiend to be some sort of straight-edge or proto-Emo band akin to Boys Life, Braid, or the Saddle Creek scene that’d soon follow. Instead, their track “Runaway” is an pent up burst of rambling noise skronk accented with intense blurts from a horn section and samples. The flipside by Filter (most definitely not the “Hey Man Nice Shot” Filter) offers more sample-driven chuggage with an even darker, metal sound that Neurosis was perfecting at the time. Both tracks make you wonder what else was going on around these bands and where to hear some more…
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As part of the groundswell that developed into the postpunk revival at the turn of the century, this 3-piece from Lincoln, Nebraska offered one of the best Wire/Gang of Four/Feelies-inspired singles you’ll ever hear. With minimal, sophisticated songwriting that was lost with the latter, more popular postpunk revival bands who peaked in the early 2000s, Eric the Red’s sole release features subtly shifting layers of tense, pulsating guitar and nervy vocals that echo of the earnest voice of Dave Callahan from Moonshake. The band merged key players from two veteran Nebraskan bands, including Rich Higgins of Sideshow, who released a number of bouncing post-hardcore records and toured during the early ’90s, as well as Shane Aspegren of Lullaby for the Working Class, who were a younger alt-country pop band that made a name for themselves through releases on Bar/None Records and numerous treks across the U.S. The mixing of an experienced punk with younger, musically-inclined upstarts resulted in this gem, which blows away a number, if not most, of the overly-hyped postpunk bands that followed a few years later.