A certain something asphyxiates my breathing

Hardcore has always felt the most potent to me when the music reaches the same kind of frantic violence as the world that it's responding to. The first song on the Necros LP. Crossed Out. Die Kreuzen. The entire second side of the Heroin LP. There's something so compelling to me about the balance, these short, super-tight songs where it feels like everything is at the breaking point. Drummers hitting every single surface in front of them, exploding bursts that cut and jab but always remain concise. Guitar and bass careening, like their strings are a staircase the players are falling down. Listening to "Jack of All Phobias", the first song on Phantom Tollbooth's 1986 self-titled EP, I sometimes can't believe there's only three people in the band.

I spent a lot of the 90s feeling breathless and aghast, and those years were thankfully escorted by hardcore records. When life felt hectic, instead of finding a song that could calm me, I looked for one that felt just as hectic. There was a few years there where it seemed like Born Against were clearly the most succinct expression of this feeling; the songs swarmed and kicked in a way that I wished I could. Their abrupt endings made the two seconds of silence before the next song feel like a new kind of violence, a sudden elimination of air.

Somewhere along the line I explained to someone how deeply I felt for Born Against, how original and telling their records were. In a very friendly, hey-check-this-out kind of way he suggested I look for a 7" by the band Mecht Mensch. A few weeks later I saw a copy in a record shop in Rochester and paid $50 for it unheard, begging my sister not to tell my parents how much I spent. I loved it. Ran around the living room stagedive off the loveseat unspeakably happy. It felt like fighting every person that's ever made me feel worthless, irrelevent, or unfit, and winning! It was everything I knew hardcore could be.

A while later my friend Isaac gave me the first 12" EP by Phantom Tollbooth, knowing my love for this kind of brutality. The first song, clocking at 1 minute, 52 seconds, feels like it has somehow lasted from the moment I put on the record until this moment, and will extend its savagery for the rest of my life.

What was going on in New York in 1986 when this record came out? The history books seem to think there was just the Cro-Mags "Age of Quarrel" and Youth of Today's "Break Down the Walls", leaving no room for this kind of storm. The art-damage of D.N.A. was far enough in the past that it wouldn't even signify, and the band's reliance on sheer noise as a foundation seems to distance it from any of the midwest hardcore acts that reached their levels of aggression. Their thank you list includes Sonic Youth, Das Damen and Yo La Tengo, which suggests the company they were keeping. But if I try to imagine going to see Sonic Youth, even in their feedback-swirl mid-80s mode, and hearing this, I can only think of it like waiting for the train and suddenly getting stabbed in the ribcage with a screwdriver.

The track begins with an evil squall, which fades just enough to introduce the bassline before the drums and vocals kick down the door. Their initial impact is one of the harshest openings I can think of. The song rages forward with a wild-eyed fury, the drumming running so many fills that it seems like he recorded three different takes. It's a paranoia-inspiring flurry, makes me feel surrounded and harried. Just at the moment that you could become acclimated to the pace, the song stops with a neck-grabbing precision, which isn't at all showy but does make you realize that everything is carefully placed. Then they leap back into the fight.

This is where the song almost derails, with a dis-ease and drama that only heightens the sense of paranoia and harassment, with the bass peaking into this Minutemen-ish high-end speed, while the guitar restrains itself to tight, sparse chords. The drums almost manage a typical 4/4 beat. Then the noise swells up underneath while the vocals maniacally repeat "laugh, laugh and survive." It's harrowing, but clearly encouraging.

The other five songs on the 12" are good, they don't kill me the way "Jack" does but there is some gleeful dement on it, the lines "blood on the stairs/still mine" from "More Paranoia" or the haunted nonsense of "Little green girls with little green tails are telling tales, they're telling tales/about me" in "Sweat Blood." The thing that does kill me is how much this record means to me and how little it's entered any kind of hardcore canon. These days Phantom Tollbooth is best known for the remake of their 1988 LP "Power Toy" by Bob Pollard and by the bands they went on to form/join. Apparently the $50 I paid for the Mecht Mensch 7" is nothing compared to what it's fetching today, but you can buy a sealed copy of the Phantom Tollbooth 12" for $9. Really. It's on ebay right now. And when I can't breathe, and there are enemies on every side, it's impossible to say that one record signifies more than the other. And the Phantom Tollbooth has a better cover.