Wednesday, May 20, 2009

ATTITUDE PROBLEM, VALSALVA MANEUVER CONFIRM!
What do Facedowninshit and Disgruntled Nation have in common? Stumped? Us too. About as much as Greensboro and Kalispell have in common. But for some reason, we thought we'd mention the past bands these dudes were involved with.. before mentioning the current bands. Facedowninshit were (are?) a band fron Greensboro, NC that brought an awesome, somewhat bluesy swagger to the world of crushing metallic punk rock. They also brought something totally rare in genre, a sense of humor. Their last record, Nothing Positive Only Negative is a good example of that. Attitude Problem have a couple of the dudes from Facedowninshit, and play excellent dirgey punk. Jason from the Minneapolis band Faggot sings. That's nice.

Disgruntled Nation on the other hand started in the middle-90's in Kalispell, Montana. They were a scuzzy political punk band that played excellent, short intense blasts. Later in their life, they picked up Dave "Humpy/Sasshole" Parsons, and kicked out jams until about 2001. The put out a solid set of 7"s, covered Montana's state song on a comp, and then unceremoniously called it a day. Disgruntled Nation's Brent Shultz (whose mtpunk.com website has recently been all aflutter with all manner of Total love, critique, etc.) went on to pick up a guitar and form Ass-End Offend. Disgruntled Nation's excellent, hard-hitting drummer Matt Lawlor is the thread that goes forward to Valsalva Maneuver, which is the band that's actually playing Total Fest VIII. The band's got a handful of ripping track's on the Repetively Futile Montana 7" comp. that came out last year. VM seems to wholly embrace 80's west coast hardcore/skate rock, and they don't attempt to fix anything that's not broken with the genre. Short, fast, loud, dudes. SFL.

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