Borderless Countries Tapes

What a great find here! Anyone around in the day remembers BCT’s tape ads in Maximum Rock n’ Roll and other zines. Started in San Diego by Chris and Dave, this was a great DIY label dedicated to promoting stateside and overseas punk and hardcore bands to a wider audience. It’s so amazing to me that these gems are being reissued. Some of these bands only ever appeared on comp releases, which makes the tapes even more valuable from a historical perspective. Currently, thirteen of the releases are here, with two recent tapes unavailable due to copyright issues. Hopefully this doesn’t deter them from releasing more, as there are 27 in total. Reviewing them in detail will be pretty daunting, so I’ll do a quick summation of each.

BCT 01 - First Strike - They kick off this series damn strong with all U.S. bands and some pretty obscure or tough to find material. Bands featured include Clitboys (Milwaukee), Future Ruins (later The Romulans from Cali)., Violation (Maine), Vatican Commandos (from my home state of Connecticut, and one of my favorite HC bands of all time), Skoundrelz (obscure L.A. band), Mr. Epp (noisecore from Seattle), Posion Center (young sounding skate punk from myabe Virgina?), Eat The Rich (featured on at least one other BCT tape, and I don’t have much info on them besides that, but I like them), Cultural Breakthrough (no info), and some very early tracks from Seattl’es own The Accüsed! A pretty excellent slice of US HC on this one.

BCT 02 - Music On Fire - Tape two from the series, and the first all Italian release. Bands featured are: 5˚ Braccio, Raw Power, Wretched, Indigesti, Stacione Suicida, Rappresaglia, and Crash Box. Some big names on this roster, and some new ones to discover for fans of Italian HC! These are most likely from demos, with some live stuff thrown in as is th norm for the series.

BCT 03 - Eat Me - Recording quality here definitely picks up the tape artifacts, but it’s starts off strong with a well known band: White Flag. Other bands include: Deranged Diction (decent ripping core from Montana!), Corrupted Service (slower punk from unknown), Killroy (American Oi! from California), Wallflowers (a noisy anarcho band from SoCal), Solucion Mortal (rough and sloppy HC from Mexico, very good drummer though), and No Response (awesome noisy core from Wisconsin with spastic vocals). Tracks are live, studio and rehearsal quality.

BCT04 - Ahhh… Italian Punk!! - Pretty self-explanatory. Bands include Chelsea Hotel, Shockin’ T.V., Rough, Tiratura Limitata, Eu’s Arse, Nabat, Dark Ride and, perhaps more known, Peggio Punx and Cheetah Chrome Motherfuckers (my personal Italian favorite, though these seem to be poorly recorded live versions) The Italian HC scene was unique in that it didn’t have a huge origin in American style Rock, so there are a lot of weird influences in the music, like jazz, experimental, etc. Tracks run from typically intense hardcore, to Oi! and older style punk.

BCT05 - Raw Power ('83 Demo + Live in Pisa, Italy Dec. 4 1983) - ‘Nuff said, one of Italy’s greatest turn in their first demo, ripping early stuff before they crossed over to crossover.

BCT06/BCT 07 - Last White Christmas Vols. 1 and 2 - These two fantastic tapes captured a fantastic Italian punk extravaganza from 1983 featuring a range of known and lesser known Italian bands. This release is a must for fans of Italian punk. Download comes with a nifty stash of 100 pics from the concert itself. Monumental!

BCT08 - Rattus - Finnish Hardcore - Arguably Finland’s second best HC band (or tied with Terveet Kädet), this tape turns in some of their early demo and live tracks. This is a band you should know if you’re into overseas HC.

BCT09 - Terveet Kädet - Knock Out - This is basically a collection of live and rehearsal tracks from the best Finnish hardcore band of all time —Terveet Kädet. If you love them, you will dig this. If you only like them, it will be a tedious listen.

BCT 10 - I’m Buck Naked - Tape 10 is a big one, with 48 songs and 13 bands of varying skill. Bands include: Love Canal (sloppy noisy stuff from HB), Suburban Decay (practice quality recording from this OH band. I think this likely came from their one tape), No Response (WI), Fuck You (A fun song but not sure who they are), (A band called ‘White Pride’ is on the original tape, and though it was understood they were lampooning the ideology. BCT opted to leave them off the Bandcamp release, possibly because they had to to publish this title), Eat The Rich (they to my knowledge only had songs on these tapes, but they were one of my favorites from this series), Drills (noise core with a skate edge from Seattle, I think the singer might have been insane), Accelerators (another BCT exclusive I guess, reminds me of a UK82 influenced US band), Disorderly Conduct (This is the NYC band, featured also on one or two of the Big City comps. Another band that only had comp songs released.), Detention (classic New Jersey fun punk who had the famous “Dead Rock n Rollers” 7”), Unexpected (another Jersey band who had a rarer than a Dodo 7” released. They follow that goofy Jersey style of punk), Psycho (my favorite Boston band from when they were still a hardcore band. These were live tracks), Akutt Innleggelse ( Norwegian HC band from what sounds like a practice room tape, kinda not my favorite) and ending with Raw Power’s classic ‘Fuck Authority track from their demo

BCT11 - Brain Of Stone - 25 bands on this one, it’s a whopper, so I won’t list each band, just go get this one. Features an international lineup of bands, including another from my home state of Connecticut (Youth Korps)

BCT12 - Hideous Freaks Search For Happiness - Following tape 11 was another great gem focusing on the USA again (and a Canadian band) Again, too many bands to mention, but if you are looking for some hard to find songs or obscure bands, this is a tape for you. Support these guys giving us so much great vintage!

BCT13 - 100% Italian Hardcore - This tape features just two bands, Stazione Suicida and Putrid Fever. Stazione leads the tape with mostly longer form songs that veer off into rhythmically experimental sections surrounded by various speeds of punk. I believe the two BCT tapes they appeared on pretty much covered their discogs. Definitely unique. The second band is Putrid Fever, and they surprised me just because of the band name and song lenghts. I was expecting ripping Euro-core, but they came across as a tight, musically skilled mix of Dead Boys, The Minutemen, and Metal punk, with a bit of motor city rock. Quite good. They have a discography release somewhere. The live tracks are a little more intense in that CCM way.

Link: https://borderlesscountriestapes.bandcamp.com/music