Buckley wrote in the mission statement to his magazine National Review that the conservative was the person who “stands athwart history, yelling Stop.” Agathocles are the very kind of unrepentant liberal agitators that drove Buckley up the wall, but their music is the living embodiment of Buckley’s sentiments. In a vain attempt to give the jingoistic hysteria and reflexive racism that characterized post-war American conservatism a patina of intellectual sheen, William F. So in lieu of a d-beat retrospective and before we get to the real countdown, I decided to take a moment out to recognize the geezers of grind: those legacy bands that have been kicking around with greater and lesser degrees of success and decided to either reunite or just drop a new album in 2009.
Is it just me or has then been a fairly crappy year for punk and hardcore? Given that the pickings are so slim (and that I’ve yet to pick up the new BBTS, Wee kend Nachos or Converge), I’m going to crown Wolfbrigade as this year’s prom queen and move on with a special jury prize going to Infe rnal Stronghold for their frost encrusted.
