Austin

Before SXSW. Before the tech money. Before any of that there was Scratch Acid making the most unhinged noise in Texas. Yow, Sims, Washam, Bradford, four guys in Austin in 1982 playing louder and weirder and meaner than everybody else in the state combined. Two EPs and one album, all of it sounds like it was recorded during an earthquake. When they split in '87, Yow and Sims head to Chicago and start Jesus Lizard, Washam hooks up with Albini for Rapeman. Austin's first noise rock explosion lasted five years and scattered shrapnel everywhere. Five years later King Coffey's Trance Syndicate picks up the thread — Cherubs make Heroin Man in '94, Pain Teens and Crust fill out the roster, and Austin goes from Big Bang to steady burn. The story never actually ends, it just goes quiet between eruptions.