It's Casual- The New Los Angeles II: Less Violence, More Violins

Stoked Records
2012


Hardcore punk band It's casual are one of those bands that should be in every one's personal collection (especially if your personal collection includes loud, fast and raw hardcore punk with metal riff-age!) and yet no one in my personal circle seems to have heard of them. Of course even I had not heard of them until the beginning of December so I'm not one to throw around criticism really. Now that we are talking about the band though it's all rather interesting. This 2-piece band was formed in 2001 by music industry professional, musician, and show promoter Eddie Solis (he plays guitar and handles vocals while it seems as if a series of drummers has come in and out of It's Casual). It's Casual (who take their name from a line in Cameron Crowe’s obscure follow-up to "Fast Times at Ridgemont High", called "The Wild Life") has shared the stage with quite a variety such as Story of the Year to Mastodon, High on Fire, Prong, Zeke, Nails, Fireball Ministry and Fu Manchu. You might be thinking that so far all of that is interesting enough if certainly not anything to stop the presses over. Fair enough so how about this then-It's Casual's music addresses transit issues. Since Eddie Solis has been taking public transportation all around Los Angeles County for the last decade or so and, in the process, has seen enough frustration and anger over the messed up state of our freeways that he was inspired to form a band to act as a rallying cry for change. Of course that rallying cry is all the more loud and urgent sounding when the music behind it is born of the meeting place between Black Flag, Motorhead, Discharge, The Melvins and early C.O.C. and a sound that wouldn't be out of place on Southern Lord Records. Eddie Solis himself calls the music "L.A. hardcore" and "L.A. skate rock", but all you need to know is that It's Casual offer intense music for an intense world.