Magic Bullet is preparing to release two albums by infamous, deactivated NYC powerviolence outfit, BLACK ARMY JACKET, with remastered, digital reissues of the band’s 222 and Closed Casket albums on streaming and digital platforms. With both records prepared to be re-deployed into the public domain next week, Noisey is now streaming the entire fifty-track Closed Casket collection album, alongside an exclusive interview with BLACK ARMY JACKET drummer, Dave Witte. Closed Casket is a fifty-song effort in collecting BLACK ARMY JACKET’s various cassettes, 7″s, and splits in one convenient spot. The material included is culled from the band’s self-titled, self-released cassette (1996), split with Spazz (1997), split with Corrupted (1997), split with Noothgrush, (1997), and The Path Of Two Swords As One 7″ (1998).
Noisey’s intense interview with drummer Dave Witte leads with:
“This month, Magic Bullet will exhume two releases from BLACK ARMY JACKET, who were yet another pit stop through which the Dave Witte juggernaut passed. Over the course of a brief, blistering lifespan, the grind-inflected hardcore act released a clutch of split releases with underground legends like Spazz, Noothgrush and Corrupted, popped up on Brutal Truth drummer Rich Hoak’s record label, and tempered all this punk-friendly mayhem by sharing the stage with metal behemoths like Mercyful Fate, Suffocation and Death.”
Stream BLACK ARMY JACKET’s Closed Casket album below and check out the interview at Noisey at this location..
Magic Bullet Records, celebrating the label’s twentieth anniversary this year, will issue both 222 and Closed Casket on all digital platforms next Wednesday, February 22nd.
New York City’s BLACK ARMY JACKET was one of the key players in the powerviolence movement of the 1990s, the band specializing in a unique strain of grinding hardcore that was as memorable as it was relentless. Notably, BLACK ARMY JACKET was one of the earliest bands in the playing career of drummer Dave Witte.
Having done time in Human Remains and Discordance Axis (among others) leading into BLACK ARMY JACKET, Witte went on to play in many more notable bands within the genre and beyond, including Municipal Waste, Publicist UK, Brain Tentacles, Burnt By The Sun, Deny The Cross, and more. Guitarist Andrew Orlando was the figurehead behind Reservoir Records, a label of the same era that represented like-minded talent such as Spazz, Jesuit, C.R., and Noothgrush. Bassist Carlos Ramierez is the co-owner of Fascination Street Films, a writer for No Echo webzine, and holds rank as the vocalist of Deny The Cross with Witte and members of Spazz, Agents Of Satan, and more.
