The Formative Years

Septic Death

I vividly remember the first I was exposed to Septic Death. 

It was unlike any other hardcore punk, thrash or crust punk I had heard before. 

Not only were the songs thematically centred around themes like fear, paranoia, terror, mental illness and political issues of 1980s cold war era, but sonically I was blown away by how effortlessly and technically concise Septic Death conveyed the horror of the songs’ lyrical content. 

Singer Brian Schroeder’s, i.e. Pushead, detailed second-to-none idiosyncratic artworks added another intense mind-altering dimension to make the package complete and sealed the deal with the way he created gripping and immensely recognizable visual equivalents to the music and made Septic Death instantenously one of my all-time favourite bands.

Septic Death was and to this day remains a unique band in that it not only created its own unrivalled haunting niche sound, which was lightning fast, extremely erratic and noisy, but a whole world on itself.

I loved the fact that Septic Death did not really rely any metal tinges to add a punch to their emission, but was in league with bands like Deep Wound, Siege, the fervour of furious Italian hardcore punk like Cheetah Chrome Motherfuckers and Raw Power, trailblazing rudimentary European outfits like Pandemonium and Laerm as well as Japanese hardcore thrashers like S.O.B.: Septic Death’s guitar parts sound at times like condensed white noise, drums are reminiscent of a madman running amok with a pair of metal sticks in an abandoned industrial site and stating that Pushead’s varied, well thought through and at times deliberately obnoxious vocal delivery was unorthodox would be an understatement par excellence.

Needless to say, Septic Death’s legacy influenced how punk music evolved from the likes of Discharge and Black Flag to what became widely known as powerviolence, trashcore and other blast-beat dominated extreme music.

One of the most imaginative, pioneering, seminal hardcore punk bands that occupies a special place in my heart.