Red Handed "Wounds Remain"

Tormenting the ears of East Bay elders and affronting the gaiety of sun-and-fun seeking tourists, Northern Cali's Red Handed play music pissed beyond their years. Recorded while the band members were still riding school buses and posting lookouts to sneak cigarettes in restrooms, the result is no-frills hardcore punk; thoroughly single-minded and unrelenting, Wounds Remain swells and swarms like a closet full of enraged wasps.

Wounds Remain recalls an early era AFI -- think Answer That and Stay Fashionable simplicity, spliced with a mean dose of clenched-fist hardcore and Black Sails in the Sunset's coffin imagery. It's a fun, furious listen; of the album's 14-tracks, 8 are culled from older releases -- "older" here operating as an extremely relative term -- 6 are new material, and only 1 clears 2 minutes. In other words, Wounds Remain compiles the band's entire discography: every song they recorded between playing Black Flag covers ("Room 13" is included here) and late-night trysts with fuzzy cable channels.

Creepy, crawly hardcore: Maggots and Snakes

Fury for purchase at Rivalry Records