Various Artists
Inside Looking Out: A Middle East Punk & Hardcore Compilation
Abbreviated
***
Over the past 35 years, punk rock has mutated into a multifarious beast that has comfortably outgrown international borders. The Middle East take is showcased on this 21-track leviathan from the Dubai-based label Abbreviated, innovation meeting imitation in roughly equal measure.
Aching for Californian pop-punk's dewy-eyed emotions? Sandwash and Dead Shakes both tunefully represent the UAE. Prefer moshing? The terrace chants of New York hardcore reverberate through Lipslide and the Casablanca crew WORM. Beirut Scum Society, meanwhile, resurrect the brothel creepers-and-Brylcreem attitude of The Cramps.
Dubai's IED recall the manic teeth-grinding rock of Irish upstarts Therapy?. Boasting roots in Lebanon's earliest punk outfits, Detox are equally eccentric, their gleefully discordant boy-girl vocals extolling humped desert mammals on
Camel
.
ILO presents numerous underground scenes while donating profits to Dubai's expatriate labourers, but the greatest endorsement is that pogoing without pausing to Google half a dozen new discoveries is impossible.
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