LIFE SUXX HARDCORE FUCKS VOL. 6
Featuring NÜTT and BIG TECH
Bad Dogg Compound
South Los Angeles
Sept. 30, 2023
As essential as Dodgers baseball and French dipped sandwiches at Philippe’s, the hardcore/punk scene is a mainstay of Los Angeles. The genre has gone through many iterations over the decades and will continue to wax and wane in popularity until our kids’ kids go to shows, wear our old T‑shirts, or start their own bands, but for the initiated, hardcore is a key part of our world and as useful as breathing. Driven by politics, distaste, and social unrest, the music and surrounding scene is often a safe space for anti-racism, LGBTQIA+ inclusivity, and standing up for those who can’t, and this was palpable as ever at the Life Suxx Hardcore Fucks mini-fest at the Bad Dogg Compound.
The venue is a South L.A. warehouse, hidden behind construction gates and an inaccessible cross street. A group of people waiting under a single light outside the front door was the only indication that we had arrived, before we were beckoned through a broken fence towards the red glow of the entryway.
The bill was stacked with seven bands. Unfortunately, the first two, Foul and Paranoise, weren’t available, so the night started later than expected. But at 8:30, as soon as the three-piece mincecore band from Riverside, Mom Body, set up and donned their signature ski masks, things started and never let up. One of the glories of backyard/warehouse shows is that goers are ravenous for a good time, so even for an opener, people move, pits circle, and bodies slam. Mom Body is only a bassist, drummer, and vocalist, but you couldn’t cut through the wall of sound they created with a chainsaw. Their songs were short, they were pissed, and the bassist’s cowboy hat survived the fall.
Up next was queercore band Grudgepacker, hailing from Long Beach. As they set up, the lead singer talked with a crowd prepped for frenzy. With songs from their self-titled album like “Anti-Pig Day (1969)” and “We Like Boys,” full of heavy riffs and chunky breakdowns reminiscent of 1980s hardcore and inspired by Philadelphia legends Limp Wrist, GP sang about an often mistreated and ostracized group of folx who are over your shit, here to stay, and here to make you dance.
Intercom, from San Diego, set up next and picked up right where GP left off. Heavy breakdowns were peppered between blistering d‑beats and lyrics from a sunglassed lead singer about breaking the mold and anti-fatalism in an unrelenting world. People were moving, they were moved, and they wanted more forever.
The second to last band was one of Los Angeles’s own hardcore heavy hitters Big Tech, and people were pumped. The lead singer was one of the organizers, and an important part of the L.A. punk/hardcore/no genre community. They gave us everything as soon as they opened their first riff. They started with a bang, playing songs mostly from their newest album, Expensive to Die, and were uncompromising from the first to last song. Amid stompy breakdowns, thick 4/4 riffs, and quick time changes, the lead singer jumped around the stage and into the crowd, and made sure we were all part of their set and accessory to the chaos. A perfect handoff to the closing band.
When NÜTT, a five-piece from Buena Park, took the stage, they were ready to destroy, and so were we. With a few EPs on their Bandcamp, they played songs from records like TUPAS!!… and NOISE IS LAW, and the crowd was beyond stoked for their Indigenous, queer brand of femme-fronted noise/hardcore punk. People from all crawls of life convened on the dance floor to pit, two-step, and collide with one another like life depended on it.
I stood near the stage, helping push people into the cycle of bodies or pick up those who fell along the way, and the energy was teeming. Part of a mosh pit’s magic is that it brings us together in a unity that’s us against the world, and by the end of the show we’re patting each other on the back, shaking hands with total strangers, thanking each for the other’s service, and hoping to see them at the next show, or maybe at the record store.
