Before Tropical Fuck Storm there was The Drones

'I See Seaweed' is the fifth studio album by Australian band The Drones, originally released in March 2013.

Recorded by the band themselves inside a "demountable classroom from the '60s", the music on the album is more dynamic, darker and "expansive" in comparison to previous albums, while Liddiard's poetic lyrics were regarded as being more "universal" and humorous in exploring topics such as climate change, free will, conservative politics, socioeconomic issues, existentialism and the human condition in general.

TRACK LISTING

1. I See Seaweed
2. How to See Through Fog
3. They'll Kill You
4. A Moat You Can Stand In
5. Nine Eyes
6. The Grey Leader
7. Laika
8. Why Write a Letter You'll Never Send

Before grunge was a genre, it was an insult Mark Arm wrote about his own band: “Pure grunge! Pure noise! Pure shit!”. That band was MR. EPP AND THE CALCULATIONS.

Conceived in a math class at Bellevue Christian High School in 1978 as a completely imaginary group, MR. EPP eventually became one of the strangest, most confrontational and deliberately antagonistic acts in Seattle’s early underground. It was Mark Arm’s first band. Steve Turner joined during its final phase; Arm and Turner would soon form Green River and later reunite in Mudhoney.

But 'Ridiculing the Apocalypse' is far more than a piece of Seattle prehistory. This is not polite archaeology for completists. It is the sound of suburban teenagers turning musical ineptitude into an aesthetic weapon: serrated, collapsing guitars, hardcore velocity, lurching post-punk rhythms, industrial abrasion, free-jazz saxophone and enough black humour to destroy any trace of punk-rock solemnity. Instead of learning to play properly, MR. EPP learned how to use distortion, repetition, awkwardness and confrontation as a language of their own.

Their songs take aim at uniformed hardcore punks, Reagan-era patriotism, the Moral Majority, militarism, police authority, suburban privilege, college life and nuclear annihilation, while never sparing their own scene or themselves. 'Mohawk Man' was a vicious attack on those who had reduced hardcore to a pose and a dress code. The song reached number one on the influential Los Angeles radio show Rodney on the ROQ, while their 1982 EP 'Of Course I’m Happy, Why?' was reviewed in the very first issue of Maximum Rocknroll, which praised its strange structures, cynicism and intelligence.

A Seattle radio DJ introduced them as “the worst band in the world”. MR. EPP embraced the insult, building their reputation through absurd posters, deliberately ridiculous self-promotion and chaotic live performances. During their brief existence they shared bills with Dead Kennedys, Ten Minute Warning and The Rejectors, before playing their final show in 1984 alongside Malfunkshun, opening for Fang. Less than three years after becoming a real band, it was over.

Originally issued on CD in 1996, 'Ridiculing the Apocalypse' now receives its first-ever vinyl edition. BANG! Records and Jo Smitty have reshaped the anthology into a concentrated sixteen-track LP, newly remastered for vinyl by Sergio Delgado in Madrid in 2026. It includes the complete 'Of Course I’m Happy, Why?' EP, the band’s most essential studio recordings and two live tracks captured at Seattle’s Metropolis.

The packaging completes the document: Todd Why?’s original drawings, the wrecked EPP car, rehearsal and live photographs, Craig Joyce’s extensive band history and Jo Smitty’s track-by-track notes. Nothing has been cleaned up or rewritten into respectable rock history. The entire edition retains the photocopied, basement-made, fanzine-and-rented-hall aesthetic that defined MR. EPP.

Limited edition of 500 copies on black vinyl. Essential for followers of Mudhoney, Green River, Flipper, early American hardcore, post-punk and outsider noise — and for anyone who wants to hear Seattle before it became an industry.

Not a footnote. Not a novelty. The sound of a band turning ridicule into method.

TRACK LISTING

1. Mohawk Man
2. No Rights
3. Wild Youth on Money
4. Red Brigade
5. Acceptance
6. Spooky
7. Join Moral Majority
8. Strong Arms of the Law
9. Jaded
10. Falling
11. Intellectual Fool
12. Out of Control
13. Smile
14. Miscarriage of Justice
15. Genocide
16. Acceptance 2
17. What´s Right

Between 1987 and 1988, when Seattle was still a circuit of small clubs, four-track tapes and bands sharing drummers, Jack Endino went in to record one of the most solid – and most unfairly invisible – outfits of that scene: BUNDLE OF HISS. Those sessions fell into limbo, stored in the basement of Dan Peters (who would soon go on to MUDHONEY) and for years they were a kind of pre-grunge legend: everyone knew they existed, but there was no record, until Loveless Records from NYC released it on CD.

This Bang! Records LP is, finally, that record.

It gathers the core of those 1987–1988 recordings done by Endino: the moment when the band is tighter, darker and closer to what the press would later call the “Seattle sound”: minor-key melodies, thick fuzz, vocals on the edge, and that mix of hard rock, punk and Sabbath-like heaviness we’d later hear in Mudhoney, TAD or early Soundgarden.

And it’s not just us saying it. Kim Thayil (Soundgarden) said it when talking about the bands that never made it to the racks:
“Among the bands that made up the Seattle grunge scene of the late ’80s, a few never released material at the time… Until now, one of the most prominent missing from the shelves was Bundle of Hiss. I’m waiting for my copy because my 12-year-old cassette is wearing thin.”

And Jack Endino himself summed up these sessions:
“Vintage Seattle grunge from one of the original practitioners… I always felt sad that this hard-working band never managed to get a record out and was almost lost to history. It was a pleasure —and a technical pain!— to resurrect all this.”

The story is almost archaeological: the tapes surfaced years later in Peters’ basement, Endino rescued them, baked them so they could be played, remixed them and got them ready. He said it himself: “This record just didn’t exist before.” And he was right: this piece was missing for the grunge timeline to be complete.

Why is this a key release?

Because it’s first-generation material, recorded by the scene’s producer, at the exact moment Seattle was shifting from noisy punk to that heavy, shadowy rock that later blew up.

Because Bundle of Hiss included musicians who would later be in MUDHONEY and TAD – so it’s not a “similar” band, it’s the same people before the world knew them (Dan Peters, Kurt Danielson, Tad Doyle…).

Because almost none of those bands had the luxury of an LP at the time. Bang! fixes that now.

Because it sounds raw, young and dangerous: this is not a polished compilation, it’s a snapshot of the scene.

Bang! Records is releasing it on vinyl for the first time, just as it should have come out in the late ’80s: a basement document turned into a collectible artifact. For those who want real grunge, not the domesticated version.

Here is Bundle of Hiss exactly as Jack Endino captured them in 1987–1988.

TRACK LISTING

1. Swamp
2. Sleep No More
3. Amphetamine
4. White
5. Drown
6. What Dreams May Come
7. Rabies
8. Strobe
9. 12 Gauge

In 1980, right before the recording of The Gun Club's mighty debut The Fire of Love, Jeffrey Lee Pierce did a handful of solo acoustic recordings based on his fascination for Mississippi Delta blues. And this is what this record sounds like -- Jeffrey Lee Pierce doing a review of the classic blues -- raw, bitter and straight to your heart.

This album contains a 16-page booklet with previously-unreleased photographs and chronicles from Pierce's friends, speaking about their times and memories with him -- people such as Nick Cave, Mark Lanegan (Screaming Trees, Gutter Twins), Henry Rollins, Kim Salmon (Scientists, Beasts Of Bourbon), Terry Graham (The Gun Club), Tex Perkins (Beasts Of Bourbon, Cruel Sea, Butcher Shop), Kid Congo Powers (The Gun Club, The Cramps, Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, Butcher Shop), Jim Sclavunos (Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, The Cramps, Sonic Youth, Panther Burns), Spencer P. Jones (Beasts Of Bourbon, The Johnnys, Butcher Shop, Slappers), Steve Wynn (Dream Syndicate), Jeremy Gluck (Barracudas), Jim Duckworth (The Gun Club), Billy Zoom (X), Keith Morris (Circle Jerks, Black Flag), Bob Bert (Chrome Cranks, Pussy Galore, Sonic Youth, Five Dollar Priest), Hugo Race (Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds), Peter Aaron (Chrome Cranks), Dave Graney (Moodists), Tav Falco (Panther Burns), Dan Stuart (Green On Red), and more.

TRACK LISTING

A1 Promise Me
A2 Treat Your Train Right
A3 Cool Drink Of Water Blues
A4 Devil In The Woods
A5 Goodbye Johnny
A6 Gonna Find My Baby
A7 Desire By Blue River
B1 The Devil & The Nigger
B2 An American Promise
B3 I´m On This Rocket
B4 Your Man´s Feelin´ Low
B5 John Henry
B6 Blackyack Davey
B7 Waiting
B8 Hey Baby
B9 Hey Madame

Yes! It exists! Here are the unreleased recordings of what would have been the very last album of The Gun Club. Recorded in the very last period of the band, between 1991 and 1993, the studio recordings that Jeffrey Lee Pierce did with The Gun Club, with maximum quality and excellence of sound and presentation. What Jeffrey Lee Pierce exposes here is highest vocal and guitar performing, from sounds which remind us to Jimi Hendrix and Television, to truly intimate heartbreaking blues, going through soul and rock. Includes covers from The Who, Wilson Picket and more.