Senor Walsby is back to the front with his newest collection of black and white pandemonium, which revisits familiar territory, so expect his usual bucket loads of sly and sardonic wickedry, no-bullshit scene slicing antics, and insistent leveling of all icons and “punk stars.” Though he has been busy as the skin pounder behind the better-late-than-never 40-something year old thrashcore soldiers Double Negative, who charge through replica formats of early Corrosion of Conformity meets Discharge meets Void, he also has time to be tour dude/comrade/fellow traveler to the Melvins, and even has a diary in this issue to document the ups and downs of being on the road in the Ipod era. In other segments, he pokes holes in the lame history of Emo, creates fictitious girl superheroes like Jailbait Girl for those bald men with sweltering adolescent fantasies, details the origins of his early bands, such as fresh-from-the garage Zombie Clergy and posicore pioneers Scared Straight, takes side-swapping stabs at faux punk “reunions” – Minor Threat babbling about Saabs and SUVs — and takes time to relish reaming pop culture figures from Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin to Jessica Simpson and Bono. No one is off limits, and no elements within the scene escape him either, from the never-ending punk house parties with a million cookie cutter bands, or the scene politics that stymie dissent as ‘uncool’ and pump up “uniform thought” – lame codes that make punk seem extra enclosed and hermetic.  Sure, not everyone cares about these trails and tales, but for those of us raised on punk fanzine gossip, in-fighting, and territorialism, not to mention the comic work of Jaime Hernandez and Shawn Kerri, Walsby’s confessionalism, wit, and down-to-earth raps will be as engrossing as ever. PS This comes with a free monster mash CD of music as well!

Introspective, quiet, pared down, and often poetic, Mike Hale offers a kind of easy listening serenades for the post-hardcore generation that hungers for more than blitzkrieg sound systems bludgeoning the night. For those of us old enough, we might relate this outing to the solo stab of Vic Bondi in the late 1980s, when he discovered acoustica as well. “Lives Like Mine” spells out all the failure in those who are “quick to form opinions” and even employ evil, not knowing that “hate doesn’t make the night less cold.” It’s a key affirmation that anger might be an energy, but it won’t stop the world from crumbling or keep us cozy when disguises fall away. “Indigo Blues” doesn’t do a Mississippi stomp: instead, it paints a vague, but intriguing, picture of lovers, or friends, going down different paths. The most telling line is “hope is my cell,” a nice play on entrapment that suggests hope itself can be as restrictive and blinding as any other emotion, or in turn, hope will keep us intact, even as the world demands we give up. It’s a  stark “no” to cynicism, perhaps. The slightly more rollicking “When She Loved Me” bemoans the endless night that darkly offsets the bright days full of laughter. In fact, the main character sleeps with the lights on as a way to artificially replicate the same light (not unlike Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”) or merely as a way to drown out the darkness that comes when the dawn is too far off.  Lone piano notes softly punctuate “Losing Ground” — on ode to an almost hapless kind of loyalty, like following the ones you love as they reach out to other places and people. This, of course, makes us lose our own sense of being grounded. The most acute line is “you are my sweetest disaster,” which comes close to my favorite Marshall Crenshaw bit, “You’re my favorite waste of time.” Either way, the metaphors unload truckloads of personal symbolism.

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