A Mini-guide to Ebullition Records' Eclectic Underground Hardcore
BY GREGORY ADAMS
It has been a long-ass time since the last label guide, so this month Gut Feeling is doing a lil’ dip into the hefty back catalogue of California’s Ebullition Records. Reason being? Well, this month also found Orchid — who released three records with the label near the turn of the century — hitting stages with a chaotic mess of Western Mass-grown hardcore for the first time in over 20 years. There’s still one show left for the spring reunion campaign…and maybe more from there? Who’s to say.
Getting into the history quick, the Ebullition imprint was founded in Goleta, CA by Sonia Skindrud, Brent Stephens, and Kent McClard back in 1990, though the latter mostly took the reins while also maintaining a crucial d.i.y. distro of the same name, and co-founding the HeartattaCk zine/distro guide that kept thousands of hardcore kids tuned into the underground.
The label got off to a rocky start, with their first-planned release falling through from the jump. It was supposed to be a full-length with California hardcore spiritualists Inside Out, which was going to be called Rage Against the Machine (based off of a phrase McClard used in his earlier zine, No Answers). Inside Out broke up, left the recordings unreleased, and their singer, Zach de la Rocha, went on to form…well, you know where this is going, yeah?
The good news is Ebullition ended up dropping more than 60 releases between the early ‘90s and now. Here’s just a few that I’ve personally spun a bunch over the past — good god — 27 years?
Iconoclast – Groundlessness of Belief EP (1994)
When I was 16, I dubbed a copy of an eclectic mixtape of hardcore, emo, and metal songs that another kid had made for a friend of mine, which I absolutely credit for pushing me much deeper into the world of underground music (I’d been firmly on the Fat Wreck Chords/Epitaph path at that point).
New Jersey’s Iconoclast were on the tape, with a song called “I Like You Less Than Apple Pie.” The group’s 1995 Groundlessness of Belief EP — their second 7-inch for Ebullition — was a wiry, feral-screamed, and oddly bass-funky four-song collection. Like a heavier, less-refined Fugazi, maybe?
“Apple Pie” is an anthemic outlier, though, coming through way more emotions-wrecked. Ian White Williams’ melodic, if exceptionally raspy vocals just drip in painful, personal reflection.
This was the first hardcore 7-inch I ever bought. Still a banger.
Frail – “Drought” (1995)
XXX: Some Ideas are Poisonous is a wide-ranging, double-sized compilation of straight edge bands that pushed beyond the boundaries of Youth Crew culture. Honestly, it’s a pretty uneven affair, though there are a few solid jams on it. The best of the bunch is unequivocally “Drought,” an extra emotionally-charged cut from Philadelphia’s Frail. Doubly important, it’s also that band’s greatest song.
“Drought” is fast-bashed youthful anxiety exemplified. Teenage vocalist Eric Hammar sounds palpably nervous at the idea of living an empty life (“shallow hearts. thoughtless actions.”); the drums are constantly playing catch-up to the melodic, but unsteady chugging. But the backend breakdown of mosh beats and key-warped guitar octaves makes for a cathartic close-out.
Oddly, this didn’t make their discography CD back in the day (which also comes highly recommended). The Numero Group do seem to have some kind of plan for the band’s music in the future, so maybe there’s a fuller, “true” discography release on the way.
Monster X – Attrition EP (1996)
Another one I came across through that mixtape. Monster X were an Albany-based, grind-influenced straight edge hardcore band that went full-on nuclear with the assaulting Attrition EP.
The band’s sole 7-inch for Ebullition is a disgustingly grimy blur of oddly-placed blasts and distortion-diming guitar damage. I also love the war-of-the-gargantuas-like back-and-forth vocalist John Moran holds with himself, where he’s either howling like a 50-foot cyclops or a terror-stricken pterodactyl. You might not catch it, aurally, but his lyrics hit on anything from right-to-die reform, to concerns about the fluoride levels in our drinking water, to the commodification of hardcore.
The drumming is unrelenting and foot-to-the-floor, with a lot of the record’s charm laying in how imprecise the hitting can be. Like, “Human Rights” sounds like a hardcore song got accidentally dropped into a malfunctioning death metal garburator (incidentally, Attrition also features a grinding cover of Unity’s “Positive Mental Attitude,” which perhaps set the stage for the Chain of Strength and Bold covers Monster X brought to 1998’s To the Positive Youth EP).
Portraits of Past – 01010101 (1996)
Outside of the Orchid releases, I’m fairly certain this could be one of, if not the best-selling and most beloved Ebullition records. And for damned good reason.
Formed in the Bay Area, Portraits of Past first popped up on the label with a pair of songs on a 1993 split 7-inch with Bleed. Their contributions were these oddly melancholy, blast-intensive bits of emotional hardcore where guitarist/backup vocalist Rex John Shelverton (jesus…what a name!) offers up the most endearing, just-a-teen kind of shrieking.
Their lone full-length, 01010101, is a different animal. It’s a sprawling, complex, and supremely beautiful post-hardcore journey where that jagged-screamed aesthetic reverberates off sophisticated, overwhelmingly heart-aching songcraft.
Rex and Jonah Buffa’s odd-jangled guitar tandem is what makes the record so unique. While the oceanic undulating of it all makes it sounds like the pair were diming vintage Roland pedals, they’ve said over the years that’s just because they were both tuned so damn low that it affected their intonation, creating kind of a naturally messed-up, out-of-phase chorus effect sound. Aggressively, painfully magical.
Orchid – Chaos Is Me (1999)
As for Orchid, I first saw their 1999 debut LP, Chaos is Me, advertised on the back cover of HearttaCk, along with the rest of the then in-print Ebullition releases (a canny marketing move). I ended up with the record because an older kid that was generally flipping first-press Agnostic Front LPs online for $60 (which seemed wildly exorbitant at the time) thought he was buying some kind of melodic, Misfits-style horror-punk album — based on the lo-fi, silhouetted skeleton artwork. He was straight up mortified when he dropped the needle and discovered it was not. I was cool with it, though. Sick score.
The record is definitely informed by mid ‘90s Francophone hardcore bands like Union of Uranus and One Eyed God Prophecy — think three-quarter-swing savagery that wasn’t afraid to lean into the occasional blast beat. Guitarist Will Killingsworth frantically trilled out a barrage of sad-sounding octave riffs that further smashed against an ominously ever-present low E drone note. Jayson Greene shrieked out scene-critiques (“Aesthetic Dialect”), while tapping into youth rebellion (“Invasion U.S.A.”) and poetic morbidity (“Death of a Modernist”).
In another Ebullition connection, I booked an Orchid show at Jen and Andy from Submission Hold’s basement/practice space in the summer of ‘00 — the Vancouver band also released a pair of albums with the imprint; now that I think of it, they also hosted a show for labelmates Reversal of Man in 1999.
The Orchid gig was part of a tour with The Red Scare and Gut Feeling podcast guests The Blood Brothers, both of whom likewise recently announced 2024 reunion dates. Red Scare sadly did not make it across the border back then.
Yaphet Kotto – Syncopated Synthetic Laments for Love (2001)
Just going to ram through this last one, but emo-adjacent Santa Cruz quartet Yaphet Kotto also delivered great records through Ebullition. Compassionately propulsive politico hardcore that teetered dangerously between life-affirming and soul-crushing sounds.
There was a unique vocal dynamic going on between guitarists Mag Delana and Casey Watson — with the former powerfully eagle-soaring through his high melodies, and the latter offering up more of a gruff-and-grumbled, street-level counterbalance. Had the immense pleasure of seeing Yaphet Kotto a couple times on a West Coast tour before this album came out, and blasted it like crazy as soon as I could hear these same songs on my stereo.
You want a couple more Ebullition connections, while we’re here? Mag also played in Bread and Circuits, a band who’d dropped an album through the label in 1999, and likewise included members of Ebullition alumni Fuel, Torches to Rome, Struggle, and more.
END HITS
Supercrush – “Lost My Head”
Ok, one last note. This week, Supercrush vocalist Mark Palm finally drops that Seattle-centric compilation he was talking up last year on the Gut Feeling podcast. Like he said back then, KR Records’ From Far It All Seems Small is a spiritual successor to the grunge explosion-preceding Deep Six and Sub Pop 200 collections, in that it heavily showcases what’s going on in the Emerald City rock scene at the moment. Sonically, though, it’s a much sweeter thing.
The first single off the comp is the ‘Crush’s “Lost My Head,” which continues their ever-masterful run of distortion-blown, Bubble Yum-snappin’ power-pop jams. This one also gets by with some Moog-ish keyboard tones and a digital bomb sample that sounds like it was ripped straight off a copy of Astrosmash. Not a huge fan of the word “toilet” popping up in a pop song, but an otherwise tasty tune about misplacing yourself for a moment.
The record comes out in full this Friday (May 24th), and features additional pop, alt-rock, and gaze-warped grunging from the likes of Fluung, TV Star, Dead Family Dog, Versing, Sun Spots, Hell Baby and more. There’s also a two-night record-release event coming up in Seattle, which you can find out more about over here.