I asked a pile of AMR friends, affiliates, band members, whoever for their Top 5 best and worst things of 2006. What a mistake... sordid tales of heartbreak, addiction, favourite bands and personal exploits ensued. Hope you enjoy.... beware. And don't take it too seriously, this has turned out to be a session of slander.

HD STEVE
"i do vocals for BRICK VS FACE and do some illustration and graphic design for a bunch of local hardcore bands (WARPATH, APPRECIATE, ANTAGONIST, DAMAGED, GSH, ONE MUST FALL, 21 GUNS) and also do merch (organise tees and screenprinting) for a few bands"
WORST:
1. got broken into and had all my shit stolen
2. wrote off my car
3. my best friend got engaged to a canadian
4. i lived in auckland
5. i watched marie antoinette
 
BEST:
1. managed to keep most of my friends and made some new ones
2. got my braces off
3. spent the weekdays drawing pictures and spent the weekends outside of auckland 
4. was a model in the lower catalogue this summer, which was a bit awkward at first cos i'm an ugly mutherfucker but has resulted in lots of funny stories so it was totally worth it
5. had more luck with the ladies than in previous years. this is not related to the previous point!
CAM REID
"I play drums for DIAL. In my spare time I draw shit pictures that Rich likes to laugh at (that bastard). Theatre practitioner/student."
WORST:
1. Castrato
2. Failing papers

BEST:
1. GSH/Dial Tour. Easily the best time of my life.
2. The road-trip North to see Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Maybe the second best.
3. Seeing Against Me! at Indigo and laughing at this angry-little-pig-girl.
4. Converge - No Heroes
5. Stitchface broke up.

DAVE DYNAMO
"I'm run DYNAMO PROMOTIONS and book a whole bunch of shows around the place.. Apparently I'm also a real asshole, hate everyone, have horns and three assholes"

WORST:
1. The Warriors losing 4 points
2. The Kiwis losing the tri nations
3. Turning 26 years old
4. Shit turnouts for good bands
5. I can't think of anything else bad.. I must be getting "posi" or something?

BEST:
1. Went to Japan
2. Madball came back
3. I didn't lose my job
4. ....I can't think of anything else, maybe I'm not so posi after all.
MAT WADSWORTH
"i do vocals for DAMAGED"

WORST:
1. internerds
2. the term 'spirit filled hardcore' i mean...what the fuck is that shit about
3. new zealand celebrities
4. wellingtons weather
5. the north shore fuck that cunt of a place except pyes pies.
6. bust out bands, stop regurgitating rip offs of the abused record cover and get off the balls.

BEST:
1. Getting an ipod for xmas.
2. the new sick of it all album
3. my cat having kittens
4. getting an espresso maker for xmas
5. outrageous fortune
RICH BURNS
"Rich from DIAL, 'Most Likely to Break Down 2006'. Play guitar. Architecture student. Do occasional graphic shit for Action Man"

 

 

WORST:
1. People liking ridiculous, unoriginal, and pandering music for all the wrong reasons. Listening to the most angry and intense music on the planet, claiming to 'get it', and then listening to some poppy bullshit that is created solely to sell units or has some gimmick to it. Woooo, irony. People only being interested in music because they can dance to it, or it has a sweet looking fashion sense to it. You know the type. Douchebags. People who pretend to be angry to fit in. People that have no real integrity to anything, and don't contribute anything.
2. The blatantly corrupt and unquestionable, archaic systems that govern faith worldwide. I have a faith, it's called faith in humanity. And I don't have to give it $$$ or power over me for a sense of security. You can fuck with Galileo, but you ain't gonna fuck with me.
3. Getting emotionally shat on and used by people who have little empathy. Learning that people don't really give a shit, they just want to have a good time ultimately, and learning that you never really know someone.
4. Having to choose your friends wisely.
5. How every little bullshit thing weighs on your conscience all the time. And without realising it, it's strangling you. And it's your job, and your job alone, to fix yourself up.

BEST:
1. Being uplifted by music in the myriad ways that music, and only music it seems, can do it. Hearing a particular sound that either ruins you, or makes you feel like getting up in the morning's all worth the effort.
2. Learning that tours rock! Go tours! Go bands that go on tours! Your'e awesome! Keep it up. On the road is where it counts. Unless you suck. Strangers don't suck.
3. Getting out of 2006 without being a burnt-out wreck.
4. Learning that creative differences are ultimately a good thing, and working them out is hard for a reason. This is at the root of forging something that at least touches on original.
5. People giving you positive reinforcement, and people genuinely digging what you are doing. Learning that if you do the work, you'll get something out of it. 2006 was a year that I got a bit of this and it was fucking awesome.
RHYDIAN THOMAS
"I run the AMR sinking ship, guitars in DAMAGED and vocals in STRANGERS"

WORST:
1. Dealing with a million closed-minded fucks in the NZ music industry who see heavy music as nothing more than neanderthal satan-worship and treat you as such. Also, people NEVER meet deadlines!
2. Fat girls with ipods who study psychology and talk about their trips to Thailand
3. I'm permanently sick with whatever the season brings
4. Israel's murderous zionist agenda going unchallenged in global politics
5. Mormons came to my house TWICE!

BEST:
1. STRANGERS and DAMAGED getting our shit together and playing regularly, especially the NZ tour with GSH
2. Seeing DIAL and THE WRONGMEN plenty of times
3. Paris in Winter
4. Great new flat with an office space
5. Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and co. writing amazing new books that break the taboo of religion

DYLAN WALKER
"THE WARPATH vocalist and Hamtown resident cunt"

WORST:
1. Cunts quoting Borat, Probably the best movie of the year but I don't wanna hear your shitty impersonations
2. The Warpath breaking up, pretty shit but all great things have to come to an end I guess
3. Canberra, Possibly the worst city on earth. It's redeeming feature was a suburb called fishwick where the sell a shit load of porn, sextoys and fireworks.
4. Those rubber clog things. Most rediculous fasion since.......well ever. I saw a grown man wearing them, they look like those jelly shoes little girls used to wear. What the fuck is going on
5. The shit turnouts for the best bands, Ringworm, Against and even Madball all got crappy turnouts If you missed any of those band your fuckin stupid

BEST:
1. Madball Party and show, shit was off the hook, best day in years
2. Putting out a full length and getting to tour it. Espiecally in aussie. That was a long time goal of mine. And we met some really good cunts and played with some awesome bands
3. Broncos winning the NRL
4. Steve doing vocals for Bricks. Holy shit that motherfucker is crazy.
5. Colin of Arabia's Demo

CASH DOG
"from THE WRONGMEN, just another slave trying to break free"


WORST:
1. A surge in the Christain agenda being pushed to the youth of the world, through 'rock' and "so called punk" music, as well as record breaking jesus brainwashing camps.
2. The illegal war America instituted against Iraq and Afghanistan for there own financial gains, still goes unpunished by the rest of the world which sits on its hands and does nothing.
3. Israel still does what they like and are unchallenged by the western world.
4. Pop Emo replaced pop punk and Nu metal, soon to be replaced by Pop Hardcore.
5. The fact that with all the advances the world has made that everyday evils have not changed, while you read this, someone is being raped, molested, tortured, murdered.

BEST:
1. Music that gave me a reason to live
2. George Bush's approval rate is going down
3. Fucked Up - Hidden World (album of the year that gave me some hope)
4. Gay marriage coming to the forefront and winning in many countries and states.
5. Seeing some quality international bands unexpectedly (Some Girls, Schifosi, Ringworm)

 
MIKE SCHIBLI
" I play a shitty guitar shittily in DAMAGED and STRANGERS. Bugga! Nort"

WORST:
1. Summer holiday weather - Fucking BULLSHIT!
2. Work - Worst job anyone ever had
3. All my awesome flatmates moving away
4. My shitfuck guitar
5. Smoking still...

BEST:
1. Sigur Ros live - Hand down best live show I have ever seen both sonically and visually. Incredible.
2. South Island tour - Illin' with Dial and some other faggots round the south island. Good times.
3. Booking tickets to live in London 2007
4. Last week of December - Up in hometown Whitianga with a whole heap of good cunts.
5. Sharkfest - A whole heap of awesome bands and people.

 
THOMAS CASEY
"Graphic design, illustration, some web etc etc"



WORST:
1. Going insane.
2. Climate change.
3. Missing a GAWJ show.
4. ebay.
5. Old Man Gloom not releasing anything new.

BEST:
1. Getting engaged
2. Music!!! - Current Ninety Three, OM, Six Organs of Admittance, Comets on Fire, Boris with Michio Kurihara, (the) Melvins (and new Big Business, technically 2007) Wooden Wand & the Vanishing Voice, Wooden Wand & the Sky High Band, Unearthly Trance, Mastodon, ISIS, Converge, Michael Cashmore, Nurse with Wound, Coil, These Arms Are Snakes, Cult of Luna, Jesu, Red Sparowes, Khanate, Grails, Kayo Dot, Aethenor, Oxbow.
3. Finishing a degree.
4. Growing a moustache and goat-face to rival that of a 14 year old chinaman.
5. BJ and Tyler winning the Amazing Race. TTOW
 
GRANT SHERIDAN
"Guitarist for defunct powerviolence/grind band DAS RAVEN, guitarist for as yet unnamed but coming-together-fast old-school hardcore band (known as JAP'S EYE to some), co-host of $2 sho on FLEET FM (9-11 tue playing yer weirder shit), all round stingy bugger  and terrible bowler"

WORST:
1. things going well and everything coming right only to... (2006 was a hard year);
2. writers block / loss of interest;
3. crashing my car;
4. being a broke-ass, stressed-out student;
5. jono my best friend and bass players passing.

BEST:
1. not being a broke-ass student anymore;
2. new band starting up;
3. awesome people;
4. somehow scoring a radio show;
5. scoring some awesome hard to find already records (wrangler brutes, ocean,  etc).
 
JASON GASCOIGNE
"drums in DAMAGED and STRANGERS, over the last year I have done Website design for THE WARPATH, DYNAMO PROMOTIONS and some cunt by the name of 'ACTION MAN'"
WORST:
1. Monday - Friday , 8:30 - 4:30
2. The turnout for Ringworm in Auckland (make that most internationals)
3. Fucking retards who live in my building who keep fucking with the firehose
4. Being dragged to a Shaky Hands show
5. Root Canal Surgery

BEST:
1. Ringworm at Hardcore 2006
2. 4 Madball shows in 4 days
3. Releasing and touring for Damaged s/t CD, GSH/Dial NZ tour
4. Mastodon - Blood Mountain
5. 'Damaged Man'
6. Sick of it All - Death to Tyrants - even if they have a tour bus these days ;
 
TALI WILLIAMS
"DIAL vocalist"

WORST:
1. The Henderson
2. The war on Lebanon
3. America & Israel
4. My mum's partner
5. Everyone is ignorant

BEST:
1. Dial/GSH tour
2. Going to Jordan & Syria
3. Standing on the picket line for Progressive and winning
4. Getting to meet Robert Fisk
5. My brother
   
RYAN JORDAN
"RYAN AND THE ROCKETS vocalist and anthropologist"

WORST:
1. Kiwis extra time loss in the tri-nations final, absolutely gutted. Warriors were also dismal, 2007 looks more promising.
2. The increasingly common sight of little bloods and crips thinking they run shit in Hamilton. They need to just kill each other off and be done with it, too much spray paint and too often intimidating people that have nothing to do with their brainless game.
3. Steve Irwin carking it. I don’t care what fruity vegans will say about him manhandling furry little creatures, I’m gonna miss the guy.
4. Discovering I get a severe allergic reaction to ivy…twice.
5. Don Brash being sent on his way. Couldn’t National see his enormous potential?

BEST:
1. Borat. “In my country, they would go crazy for these two... this one... not so much.”
2. Madball. My favourite band all the way from New York playing two shows in a row in my small home town… pretty hard to beat.
3. Prison Break… addictive. Heroes… even more addictive. Extras season 2… “Is he ‘avin a laugh?”
4. Burger Fuel’s “White Christmas combo”…why did they ditch it? Christmas can be all year round…can’t it?
-5. Hamtown Smakdown… One Must Fall. Top band, big send off. Life I live, air I breathe, poison free till 2005.

 
KERRY-ANN LEE
"KAL makes stuff like zines (HELP, MY SNOWMAN'S BURNING, CAPTAIN HOWDY et al.), posters, drawings, as well as teaching art and design to the peeps, and used to put on shows, promote zines and records (RED LETTER ZINE DISTRO), document 04 hc punk, run the mixtape swapbox and help with punkfest and such"

WORST:
1-5. 'The Great Winter Shitstorm of 2006' x5 (badness can, will and did).

BEST:
1. mail mail, music and writing from distant lands.
2. rocking the sweaty, loopy house-party-show circuit with Welly's finest.
3. going on my first ever ghost train ride at Luna Park, Melb.
4. Sharkfest: making the poster and gaffawing at home-made creatures.
5. Sweet Mother's sweet sweet pie, Kumbaya!

 
OTIS CHAMBERLAIN
"I play drums in/write and arrange for GOMORRAH, sometimes record bands, make all kinds of art, and skate"


WORST:
1. Enduring the continuing Bush administration muppetshow - dumb and dumberer.
2. Television - exponentially shitter every year, actually - detuning all my channels should go in the best of 2006 column.
3. The Wellington Waitangi Park Skatepark - how professional concrete layers fuck up a $100,000 skater-designed apparatus is beyond me. So close, yet so abortionally far.
4. Not really too many disappointments, but was expecting more from new Slayer, Norma Jean, DEP (plagiarism EP), and LOG.
5. Death in the family is the sux.

BEST:
1. Writing, recording, and playing shows with Gomorrah
2. Bad Brains live at CBGB;s DVD - 14 years later - about fucking time.
3. Isis, COL, Mastodon and Into The Moat's latest releases on continual rotation - actually discovered way too much awesome music this year to be fair to a top 5 type thing.
4. Family Guy seasons 4 + 5
5. Meeting a whole bunch of good cunts (including my lady Z)
(... also honorable mention goes to the Will Haven reformation - bukka!)

 
KALEM O'BRIEN
"dishwasher and play bass for STRANGERS, also i run the advertising section for streetweapon 'ARM YO'SELF'"

WORST:
1. pigs with tazers
2. the end of this night creeps
3. nz tours from auckland to hamilton
4. streetweapon
5. sex with flatmates goes horribly wrong

BEST:
1. seeing kings arms get deathfaced
2. wrongmen
3. touring in the south island
4. sharkfest
5. abortion

 
SEAN CARMICHEAL
"Part owner of UPSETT RECORDS and Drummer in GAWJ. Long time lover of Punk Rock"

WORST:
1. Underground Fest for the shit times and having one of the Upsett/Gawj touring vehicles involved in a fucked up crash.
2. Cunts on Trade Me for being the worst pricks to deal with.
3. Cunts in Hardcore bands preaching about the mean streets of NZ and having a hard life. Grow the fuck up.
4. God in the music.
5. 26th May 2006 - Aether. Scene Whore. 1000. @ Upsett. Worst show ever and these dicks really deserve to have their instruments stolen and burnt.

BEST:
1. Upsett Records. Great place to hang and be apart of.
2. Gawj - Love playing the ugly fast stuff.
3. MCR Company for all the great obscure Japanese Thrash we love so much.
4. Hummingbird Of Death - Best new band I've heard for awhile.
5. The Wrongmen - Easily the best NZ band for 2006.
 
GRAEME HOWARD
"Computer nerd who posts shit on message boards and occasionally updates http://walkamongtheenemy.blogspot.com/ (WALK AMONG THE ENEMY NZHC BLOG)"

WORST:
1. The state of Auckland hardcore.
2. News of The Warpath splitting up.
3. Damaged are based in Wellington not Auckland.
4. I'm STILL working at the same job.
5. The turnout for Ringworm. I know it was a Sunday but seriously what a pathetic crowd. Ringworm still fucking ruled though!

BEST:
1. Gettin' engaged.
2. Getting to see Ringworm in Auckland! FUCKING RINGWORM!
3. Colin Of Arabia 2006 demo. Came out at the start of 2006 and I still listen to it at least once a week.
4. Getting my Nintendo Wii in time for Christmas holidays.
5. Live Metal in Auckland! So many good bands locally and from overseas. Already at the start of 2007 we have shows coming up from Suffocation, Isis, Gospel Of The Horns, SLAYER and locals like Diocletian, Creeping, Skuldom!

 
MATT "SHIMANO"
"I am a vocalist for The DRUG PROBLEM and WHEN YOU EAT OUT A BAG LADY and am at a Film Course studying practical technique but I also like Global Culture and hope to one day become a machine gun or pot of boil"

WORST:
1. Lawn Bowls becoming a trendy whacktivity.
2. Ham.
3. Court fines.
4. Ministry of Justice penalising unpaid court fines.
5. Boiled meat and raw cheerios.

BEST:
1. My course.
2. Listening to Black Witchery, Revenge, Conqueror, Leviathan, Shining, Whitehouse, Zombi, Shitmat, mutiple MF Doom releases and Aplhabethead's Herman Munster Love Theme.
3. Soul Searching Compost Radio With German Sleaze.
4. Brand new living quarters.
5. Doing interesting things with lights.

 
JOSH JEFFREY
"I compile DEHUMANIZE ZINE and I’m a design student"

WORST:
1. New Bronx album
2. Stronghold breaking up
3. Deathray Soiree breaking up
4. Street Weapon zine
5. Darkest Hours live performance

BEST:
1. The Hope Conspiracy join the deathwish roster and release Hang Your Cross 7” and Death knows your name 12”.
2. The Wrongmen – Den of Vipers ep
3. Pessimist Fest
4. Shark Fest
5. Whitakers mocha chocolate