NOTE: Our current stock copies are on grey vinyl. 6 tracks of Vancouver, BC hardcore. Chain Whip formed in 2018 with the sole intention of playing their favorite blend of hardcore punk. Part KBD, part California beach, part grimy Vancouver. This 12" E.P. finds the band in a faster, more furious mode with five original tracks written and recorded in the height of the 2020 Pandemic. 3 tracks are re-recorded and polished versions from their 2020 Demo (being pressed on LP RIGHT NOW by No Spirit in Germany) while the others are brand new Chain Whip recordings. The final track, Death Was Too Kind was written by Brian Goble and recorded by the Subhumans.From the band:"For me it started in December 2019 when a developer unveiled a 5 million dollar chandelier to hang from the Granville Street Bridge - a testament to wealth and the city's cluelessness. A smug fuck you on display for the world to ogle while people froze in sleeping bags underneath. That insult grew into something more tangible.2020 was the year that an ever-worsening overdose epidemic was too boring for most news cycles. We watched citizens of North America get murdered in real time by pigs. White supremacists marched in the streets, encouraged by their revered grifters. Major news corporations backed both on primetime while demonizing people for just wanting to stay alive.We sat back, depressed and tuned into the images. We wished that we could just pull the plug on the nightmare around us. We attended some demonstrations, organized some benefits. Stayed home and we drank and drugged. We tried to sleep away the reality. Just like pollution makes the sunsets richer, we danced that good beat; a dependable, monotonous, continuous death.It hasn't quite come for us yet but we're still dancing to that tune - ever closer to the edge.Two Step To Hell. Meaner, faster, and a bit more pissed off."Our take: This new 12” EP from Vancouver’s Chain Whip is a non-stop barrage of punk energy. Chain Whip’s first album, 2019’s 14 Lashes, was a corker, a whirlwind of catchy west coast punk meets 80s US hardcore that was tailor made for my tastes, but Two Step to Hell is, in the label’s words, “meaner, faster, and a bit more pissed off.” As good as 14 Lashes was, this 6-track jolt of energy is even more exciting. Chain Whip fits squarely in the tradition of bands like the Freeze, the FU’s, Career Suicide, and Government Warning, all of whom took the anthemic, song-oriented punk of early Black Flag, the Germs, and the Adolescents and melded it with the blitzkrieg energy of pure USHC like Minor Threat. It’s rare to find a band that can both write songs this great and perform them with this level of precision and energy, but Chain Whip sounds like a flawless machine on this record. The songs fly by so quickly that you barely have time to process how killer they are. Take a track like “Blank Image,” whose great, TSOL-on-Jolt-Cola riff builds into a manic call and response chorus, repeats itself, then climaxes with a melodic guitar lead straight out of the Buzzcocks’ playbook. Every track is a miniature fast-motion masterpiece, reaching a crescendo with “Death Was Too Kind,” the Subhumans (Canaduh) singalong that closes the record. I’m tempted to complain that it’s only 9 minutes long, but this record is so killer that I wouldn’t want to upset its delicate balance with any unnecessary filler. Instead, I’ll just keep playing it three times in a row every time it hits my turntable. If you like hardcore punk, this is not one to miss.
