Old version of Aborted Society logo
It’s completely surreal to think this label is a decade old. I thought it would be fun to recount the beginning of what is still an amazingly difficult habit to break!
In the winter of 1998 I was in the basement of my parent’s house in Colorado; I had been on a short visit for xmas break and was in my dad’s office on the internet, which even at the time was a crude, slow, dial-up driven foray into pop-up windows and flurries of adverisements. Around that time we were using WebCrawler, which was an internet browsing application that truly lived up to its name. There wasn’t a whole lot of punk on the internet; the stuff that was there was kind of buried. A lot of people had started using Tripod, which let you have a free website under the URL of members.tripod.com, and so the beginnings of punk resources on the web began to sprout. People were making really basic sites that were essentially just of links to other sites, with some marginal content as well. I wanted to start getting into making websites, so I created a Tripod account and started what would then spiral out into areas I never would have imagined possible. The logo you see to your right is what I quickly sketched out on a piece of printer paper when I created the site, and on the fly came up with a concept of a culture of people no one wanted; a congregation of marginalized freaks that would come together and foster some sort of a community to counteract the corporate, sterile environment around them: an aborted society.
Sounds totally ridiculous when I look back on it, but at the time I really wanted to create spaces where people come together, and the internet had all sorts of new avenues to accomplish that with that were being largely underused. The site was really basic, I had no idea what I was doing but had a long list of website links of bands, artists, and activist-oriented websites, as well as the occasional rant or essay. I would look at other websites and copy code, then used elements of that in the original ABSOC site. I was teaching myself HTML essentially, and using Aborted Society as an experimental vehicle to test out new lines of code, effects, marquees, all the cheesy shit from the mid 90′s.
Aborted Society Zine Issue #1
The next year in 1999 J@ck and I decided to start doing a DIY punk fanzine in Seattle. When our friend Jay stopped doing Point of Interest zine, we knew there had to be something to fill that void so we fired up our glue sticks and transformed Aborted Society into a punk rock fanzine. We wanted to differentiate ourselves by having fun in our zine. So many punk zines at the time were so P.C. and activist-oriented that they were by and large, not the most fun things to read. We came up with all sorts of gimmicks and schemes; coloring contests, mad-libs, games, funny rants, comics, anything we could do to lighten up the atmosphere and try and get punks to have fun again. We’d interview people who were active in the scene, but not necessarily in bands. We just liked featuring amazing punks, and J@ck kicked off the first issue by interviewing Chris Wheelchair of the Bus Station Loonies, who is a bit of a superpunk in that he played in bands, ran a label, zine, hilarious tape radio show, and about a billion other things.
I’m not exactly sure when the idea to put a record happened. At the time I was working at a legal copy facility in downtown, and was pilfering copies of zines to keep myself from going insane. My manager at the copy place was also good friend Ben Reagan, who ran Records Not Excuses, a DIY label in town putting out old school-style hardcore punk and grind. In the legal copy industry I met a lot of people in the DIY world; a lot of 7″ record covers at the time were being pilfered from various legal copy joints all over town, and the one I worked in was certainly no exception. I started meeting punks who were putting out records, and realized that the logistics of doing so were well within my grasp, and one thing I always remarked on was the need of a good compilation that was documenting the amazing music scene in Seattle and the greater Pacific Northwest at the time.
V/A - ABSCESS OPERANDI Compilation LP
I started saving and sold a bunch of my record collection to get some startup money for the first release, which began in the early fall of 1999 and didn’t actually culminate until June of 2000. I was approaching a lot of new friends in the Northwest whose bands I liked: David Koresh Choir, Razed, Whorehouse of Representatives, Scathed, Blazing Carnage, as well as 80′s UK peace punks Riot/Clone, whose lead singer Dave was kind enough to grant us an interview in the first issue of the zine, Boston hc punk champions Toxic Narcotic, and various others. ABSOC at the time was very conceptual, and I had these themes of decay, birth, death, and rebirth going on throughout the booklet of the record. I had friends in town contribute pieces of art for the booklet, as well as each page dedicated to a band for their songs. We did 500 copies on red vinyl with silk screened covers. I called it “Abscess Operandi,” a play on the latin modus operandi for “method of operating.” Overall the project was heinously expensive but sold very well. It received initial good reviews in HeartAttack and Maxiumrocknroll, and it was a great learning experience. This label started out as a concept and began to evolve almost seemingly on its own. I’ve had some amazing experiences, met fantastically talented musicians, made some of the best friends I’ve ever had in my life, and have had a blast the entire time.
We are celebrating our 10th year of existence with two shows that are happening on February 18th and 19th. We would have loved for all of the current bands on our label to participate, but things are hard to coordinate with so many people. We are very excited to host ALARIC from Oakland, who if you have not been exposed play a great combination of darkwave and post-punk. Also the return of MURDERESS to Seattle, their first appearance with their current line-up! We’re very stoked to have AGE OF COLLAPSE, a punishing melodic crust group from San Diego, CA (keep your eyes out for a future ABSOC release!)
Cheers and thanks for the years of support and interest in our fledgling little endeavor.
-Rob
ABSOC
Friday, February 18th
ALARIC (Darkwave from Oakland feat. mems of Dead and Gone, Cross Stitched Eyes) – www.myspace.com/alaricalaric
COUNTDOWN TO ARMAGEDDON – www.myspace.com/countdowntoarmageddon
OCCULT SECRET SOCIETY – www.myspace.com/blackpunkwhitedeth
CROSS – http://www.myspace.com/crosscrosscross
Black Lodge
9PM
Saturday, February 19th
MURDERESS (PDX) – www.myspace.com/murderesspdx
AGE OF COLLAPSE (SD) – www.myspace.com/theamericans
FRUSTRATION – www.myspace.com/frustrationpunk
GENERATION DECLINE (Bremerton) – http://www.myspace.com/generationdecline
Club M in Georgetown
Doors 8PM
Flyers to follow, also we’ll be making screen printed posters that will be sold at the show!
This second release from this band is a vast improvement over their self-titled EP that came out in 2006. Woah — long time. The first thing that strikes me is that these tracks do not sound eager. Does that make sense? You can hear what has improved in the years gone by. It’s still angry, but darker and more brooding. There are some slightly discordant sounds here that serve to build tension on the long intro on the first track, and unlike many bands of this style that follow the long intro code, the length here is no hindrance. The songs are melodic with the galloping guitars that we have come to expect from this style of crusty epic hardcore, and the vocals switch from higher-throated metal style to deeper growls. The most interesting moments are when the band incorporates some of the darker elements of post-punk and some slightly metallic stuff — listen to “Like Animals” (the best song on this record) to see what I mean… I don’t think Eater of Worlds is for everyone and not every song is great, but if you like melodic crust with slight metallic leanings, but firmly rooted in punk, you should check this out. These dudes are doing something different within their genre. Interesting direction. (MB) (Aborted Society)
