Wedge, Chard, Erba & Erba. These four unearthly ragers recorded and released fifteen of the most insane, off the wall, hellish, and beautifully chaotic hardcore songs of all time. Spread over three E.P.s, H100s ran roughshod over the Cleveland territory for the better part of the early ‘90s. Shit got broke, fists got thrown, and blood got spilled – all in the name of punk fucking rock. Listening to these records at 40 fills me with the same sense of damaging glee it did when I first heard them at eighteen. If music was chair shots and barbed-wire, these freaks would be Cactus Jack and Terry Funk.
Believe it or not, I got two out of three of these records for Christmas. My mom had given my brother some money to take to Extreme Noise in Minneapolis to pick me out some gifts. I unwrapped Texas Death Match and Distort Cleveland sitting in my grandmother Erna’s living room on Christmas Eve, 1995. Erna had an old record player upstairs, so the night was spent listening and reading lyrics.
The first thing that struck me was the cover of Texas Death Match. I was a big wrestling fan and the bloody grapplers on the cover had me utterly intrigued. I hadn’t yet discovered ECW, so it would take me a few more years to put names to brutal bodies (it’s Axl and Ian Rotten in one of their many gory, messy matches), but holy shit did I love seeing that carnage. Soon enough, 1994’s Dismantle would find its way into my existence (courtesy of one Mr. Leif Nygard, who also has an H100s tattoo), and the collection would be complete.
Fueled by addiction, depression, violence, humor, and, most of all, good old-fashioned rasslin’, H100s aren’t for everyone. They’re probably not even for most. I wouldn’t call them an acquired taste, as that would assume a listener might want to eventually find them palatable. No, it’s more of a “either you get it, or you don’t” situation. From the first distorted chords, sloppy drums, and sloppier singing, I was hooked for good. You very well may not be, and that’s fine. You probably wouldn’t like my Japanese Death Match tapes either, loser.
Listening to H100s is like hearing someone come unglued right in front of you. It’s a full-blown mess in the best possible way. It’s chaos personified, and it’s wielding a steel chair wrapped in barbed wire. And the chair is probably on fire. And there are thumbtacks everywhere. When you fall, you bleed – and the crowd screams for more.
James is a writer, record collector, wrestling nerd, and tabletop gamer living with his family in Asheville, North Carolina. He is a member of the Southeastern Film Critics Association, the North Carolina Film Critics Association, and contributes to The Daily Orca, Razorcake Magazine, Mountain Xpress, and Asheville Movies.