Siekiera (Pol) - 1984 demo

The Soviet Bloc produced quite an interesting amount of music during the 1980s. Before Glastnost in the late 1980s, punk, and to a somewhat lesser degree, metal, was very much an underground phenomenon. As bands had to have their material approved by the government censors who controlled the state run record industries, a majority of the more fringe bands who professed extreme views had little chance of releasing anything on vinyl in their own country. A direct result of this was the prevalent use of cassette as the medium of choice for releases. Tapes could be made and duplicated quickly and cheaply by the band members without having to worry about government intervention. Despite this fact, the government would often crack down on punk bands, resulting in many cancelled gigs and band members being detained.

Poland is the country in the Soviet Bloc which probably had the largest scenes in punk and metal. Being second only to the USSR in terms of population and size, its clear to see why so many great bands came from here. By the late 80s the country had enormous metal and punk scenes which could easily hold their own with the rest of the world. Siekiera were one of the first bands to play hardcore in Poland. Their sound, like their name (meaning "Axe") , was an extremely primitive form of stripped down hardcore, harsh, raw and uncompromising.

The demo they recorded in 1984 remains their masterpiece. Even the production is extremely primitive and low-fi; in the right channel you have guitars and drums and in the left channel you have bass and vocals. The whole atmosphere of this recording is completely dead and lifeless. This isn't a fun recording by any stretch of the imagination, just very stark, bleak and cold sounding music. While it has nothing musically in common with albums like Godflesh's "Streetcleaner", Ildjarn's "Forest Poetry" or Swans' "Cop", this demo manages to evoke similar brooding imagery. Structurally this is almost as basic as its production, simplistic hardcore songs using little more than two or three riffs per song, often mid-tempo and plodding. Much like early Amebix, the drumming has a tendency to be rhythmically angular, giving the music an almost post-punk feel at times. Vocals are very hoarse, gruff and low-pitched shouts in Polish; the Slavic language group is far more harsh sounding than English and the Polish language suits this type of music perfectly. It seems the band has channeled the agony of Poland being partitioned by Russia over centuries, being devastated during two World Wars and then having been dragged into being a satellite state of the Soviet Union into fifteen hardcore songs.

After this recording the band would contribute two tracks to the Fala compilation LP (the title track of which has a beeping out of some lyrics by the censors). Strangely enough, the band decided to completely switch musical directions in 1985 with the "Jest Bezpiecznie" 7" and the 1986 follow up "Nowa Aleksandria" LP, which have more in common with Ministry's "Twitch" and Sisters of Mercy's "Floodland" than the early hardcore recordings. This stuff is good in its own right, but the demo remains the bleakest hardcore recording I've heard, and easily my favorite hardcore to come out of Eastern Europe.