Vinyl LP release of the first cassette "Estoc de pus" (1984) by Kangrena, one of the most remarkable bands of Barcelona's punk scene in the early, eighties, remastered from the original 1/4-inch tapes by Santi and Victor Garcia at Ultramarinos Costa Brava Studios, Sant Feliu de Guíxols. For lovers of Crass, Sex Pistols, Discharge, Damned or early Exploited, rageful and dirty punk at its best.
"Antikomunist Nazi-punks" was one of the biggest spray paintings that you could read on the walls of Kangrena's rehearsal place. If it wasn't for the noise, you'd never say that a punk band was playing inside that lush summer house. And NO, they weren't nazis, but frustration generated by Spanish transition, where left-wing parties that appeared after dictator Franco's death weren't as left-winged as many expected, made a lot of Barcelona's early eighties punks confront to the false illusion that left-wings represented, and declared themselves anti-communists.
In that old summer house in Masnou, near Barcelona, lived three of the four Kangrena members: Manolo "Loco Speed", "Jhonny Sex" and Kike, and in the ground floor they had the rehearsal place. Having that permanent practice slot was what made the band become the main punk band of Barcelona's area in 1982 and 1983. Almost all of the punk bands at the time passed by that house to record a demo or to practice, including Último Resorte, Shit SA, Epidemia... The noise was so extreme that even one day an angry neighbour crashed the house's main door trying to stop that demonic sound.
Kangrena were real punks, self-destructive, offensive, anti-politic and free, and that's why they were accused of everything: of being rich kids because they had a place to play and because the singer used to live with his parents in an expensive flat in Barcelona (as if you could decide where to be born); of being "postcard punks" for not changing their looks when everyone around was letting their hairs grow long and evolving into new tendencies (hardcore, metalcore, anarcho-punk...); and of being politically inactive when everyone started to mix punk and politics, and even accused of being sexist for their song "Rape", and of system-supportive and injustice proclaimers. Everything was a product of misunderstanding, inexperience, envy and youth urgency.
With the years, everything falls in its place, and nowadays we can assure that the casual meeting in december 1981 between those three punks and "Quoque", who spontaneously jumped the stage to join the band to sing a Sex Pistols cover (and that became the start of Kangrena), the punk movement in Barcelona would have never been the same. -Joni D
