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It was like a flashback to the summers of my youth. A random Moose Lodge in a random suburb of Detroit, where the people packed it in to catch Swinegrinder 2014 - a show/pig roast from a bunch of hardcore bands who were just there to blow the roof off the place for night. There was a heavy local contingent of course, with The Family, Sawchuck and Hellmouth providing a good amount of the evening’s entertainment, with Empire of Rats having made the trek up from Columbus as well.


And for several hours, it was a seriously sweaty aggressionfest, with a bunch of folks who were all close in age, reminiscing on the days when these shows were the backbone of the hardcore scene. What made it even more like a flashback was the headliners, a blisteringly brutal set from Detroit’s hardcore veterans Disgust.

It’s funny how much has changed; the crowd is populated with the same faces that used to mix it up down in front in the early days, but with every one a few years older and facing the reality of the fact that day jobs and kids make getting bruised and bloodied something that will put a real damper on the morning after, each set began with a cautious air. The crowd hung back, watching before realizing that everyone was of the same mindset, and that it was fine to move up. The testosterone-fueled teens were not in evidence at the non all-ages show, and everyone else was there out of a serious sense of old-school unity, love of the sound, and a mutual respect for Disgust - along with embracing the rare opportunity to see them play out.

If you’re outside of Detroit, you may have never heard Disgust. Or you may be more familiar with the Disgust from the UK. Or Holland. Or Japan. (It’s a pretty common name from a pre-internet era when hardcore scenes were more insular.) But if you were ever a part of the hardcore scene in the Motor City in the late ‘80s or early ‘90s, you’re sure to have caught them on multiple occasions. From 1988-1993, they were one of the main bands pegged to open for hardcore bands on the road, opening for the likes of Agnostic Front, GWAR, Gorilla Biscuits and Youth of Today and clubs like Blondies that were the mainstay of Motor City hardcore, and spent just as much time hosting their own shows, doing the grunt work that keeps any scene in any sizable city viable and solid.

In 1993, Disgust split up, with a brief reunion from 1998-99, where they kicked out a few more EPs. Then, like any band with serious roots to the scene they helped create, they got back together in 2013 for a 25-year reunion show, and decided that it was simply too much fun to let it go completely, so they came together to crank out another record, with five new tracks and five re-recorded classics, releasing it all under the title of Fifteen Years Of Pent Up Bullshit.

So there’s the history of Disgust in a nutshell, which doesn’t do this band justice, because it still presents them as a band that was, while Fifteen Years Of Pent Up Bullshit is a definite recording by a band that is.

When I saw them beat the rafters at the Moose Lodge, I was immediately blown away by what I was getting into, because these guys, while serious veterans, deliver their sound with a youthful passion. Just like bands like Houston’s Back To Back are playing ‘80s-style hardcore with the energy of youth that prevents them from sounding like a simple revival, Disgust has held onto the aggression and energy that prevents them from sounding like a tired reunion. Disgust, whether they’re rejuvenated from the break or simply so loaded with pent up energy that was never let out on their first run, have created a record (paired with a live show) that would have sounded fresh in 1988, and still retains the power today.

Opening with “Concrete System”, the band lays down a driving groove with a heavy foundation  topped with grating vocals. It drives slow, thick, sludgy and seriously heavy, dropping into “I Don’t Give A Fuck,” which embraces the other side of ‘80s hardcore, the fast thrash-heavy whirlwind that drives the circle pit. In these first two tracks, Disgust lays out everything they can do - without laying out everything they’ve got.

On tracks that fall in an acceptable level of mostly under and never much over three minutes, they alternate from circle pit riffs to serious fist pumping anthemic tracks, paired with lyrics that never get too deep, but simply stay fun as well as furious, with plenty of well-placed f-bombs. On top of it all is “Get Away”, a track that digs in deep with a grinding instrumental line that revs up a circle pit, building up to a blast of searing noise.

Fifteen Years wraps with “Suicide Is Bullshit” another driving thrash track that evokes more memories of the hardcore and crossover thrash bands that were big names in Disgust’s early days but have long since either imploded into tire caricatures. Disgust has done neither, and while this bullshit may have been pent up for 15 years, it never got stale.

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