Vienna Style Empire – Showing You Whats Up Vol. II

It’s quite incredible that an Austrian capital city of Vienna has so many great hard-core bands as the case is here. With this particular release, Showing You Whats Up Vol. II, the scene around Vienna presents itself with a total of eighteen songs and bands on a sampler that was released at the end of 2022 via WTF Records. It comes as a follow-up to the infamous Vol. I from 1998. This brand new Showing You Whats Up Vol. II comes in a deluxe 6 panel digipack with booklet (in which each band is presented with one page & additional QR-codes in order to learn more on each of them), 650 hand-numbered pieces, of which mine own copy is no. 533.

Eighteen bands show a good cross-section of the Viennese scene. Since it’s a sampler, I’ll do something I usually never do, to present all eighteen artists & their songs. Thus, the tracklist goes as following:

01. Companion – Unbroken
02. Owe you Nothing – Stand Your Ground
03. In The Cage – When The Dogs Comin’ At Me
04. Sense Of Justice – Roadcrew
05. Lowlife – VSHC Defender
06. Only Attitude Counts – Rule Em Out
07. Perfect Sky – Die For A Lie
08. Live Life – Start A Riot
09. Bust the Chain – You’re The Enemy
10. Unspoken Themes – The Power Of Equality
11. Unjustified Violence – Mainlining Hatred
12. Hardened By Truth – Mi Ciudad
13. Permanent Style – Time Is Now
14. Death 4 Liberty – Hold Me Back (DFL Attack)
15. Tigerblood – As Integrity Fails
16. Kickdown – Your Way
17. Mr Frosty – Freedom’s Not Free
18. Spider Crew – Enemy Within

As it’s almost always the case with this kind of a sampler/compilation releases, among those are some of the bands that I was familiar with, while most of the others I had absolutely no knowledge of. Thus, apart some of my favourites as Only Attitude Counts, Tigerblood and Spider Crew, I had a tremendous pleasure to learn more on some new acts. It’s obvious to hear that all bands were commited to deliver their best songs, representing the city’s scene in the best possible way. The simplest definition of hardcore music is that it’s similar to punk rock, albeit much more aggressive, noisy and intense. After two spins/listening sections of Showing You Whats Up Vol. II, I must say that most of the bands live-up to this definition, something they can be proud of.

The production of this sampler is amazing, with this necessary rawness that characterize most hard-core bands, and it obviously also works fine here, giving the sound a proper live feel without sounding too lo-fi or even too polished modern sound.

This sampler has a lot of power, and it presents their city in the best possible way. Between the many good songs, there are also a few really good songs esp. at the beginning of the sampler and obviously the closing one mentioned before, Spider Crew. Some of these will definitely stick in my playlist for a while. Thus, if you’re like myself, a big fan of hard-core genre, and lookin’ to discover new bands from the Austrian scene, this is a perfect place to start.

Showing You Whats Up Vol. II shows us that not only Vienna Hardcore still lives, but it’s lively, bustling and vibrant, as ever before! It also vitness the how the Vienna Style Hard Core scene has grown for the last 25 years.

For further info on this particular release, and any other WTF Records’ releases go to https://wtfrecords.eu/