11/24/2025
This Is Canada Not America
The underground isn’t a place it’s a pressure. And AP Records keeps the valve twisted, letting the country’s noise leak out in raw, righteous blasts. Their new compilation, This Is Canada Not America, is a pointblank statement and a map of the scene: Barbed Wire Braces, Lip Crunch, Iron Moose, and a swarm of lifers and first wavers clawing for floor space on a single disc. Three exclusive cuts seal the deal from Ripcordz, Dayglo Abortions, and Death Sentence turning the tracklist into a time bomb with a fuse long enough to rope in every basement from Niagara to Nanaimo.
A.P. Records is dropping This Is Canada Not America with the kind of DIY blitz you only get when the label head is also the street team: a multi-city record store push and two shows (Camp Cataract in Niagara Falls and Ooey Gooeys in Hamilton), positioning the comp as both release and rally. It’s the label’s big tent snapshot 31 bands across Canada and a statement of intent for Southern Ontario as a hub instead of a footnote.
Ripcordz exclusive: The Montreal warhorses deliver a full throttle reminder that longevity in punk isn’t nostalgia it’s endurance. Ripcordz have a history of blasting into community fundraisers and mixed bill mayhem; their presence here is both a co-sign and a dare to keep the locals hungry.
Dayglo Abortions exclusive: Dayglo’s track arrives with decades of gasoline under it this is a band that burned satirical holes in polite society with records like Death Race 2000, combining speed, snot, and a grinning disregard for civility. On this comp, their exclusive feels like a spike strip: it stops traffic and cuts the tires.
Death Sentence exclusive: A Canadian hardcore lineage piece, the Death Sentence contribution snaps like cold rebar. It’s the kind of exclusive that makes a compilation more than a playlist you hear a chapter get written.
From top to tail, the sequencing climbs in ferocity; each cut ratchets tension and texture so the final third feels weaponized. That’s curation, not accident and it’s why comps matter more than algorithms: someone with calluses arranged these songs so your pulse has somewhere specific to go.
This disc isn’t just a roster it’s a long distance scene report. You hear Hamilton grit, Niagara speed, Toronto chaos, Prairie frostbite, and West Coast vinegar.
Barbed Wire Braces: Hamilton smash and grab punk with the impulse control of a malfunctioning siren. Constantly surfacing on mixed bills and all ages afternoons, they’re part of the city’s habit of turning matinees into rites of passage. Live, they don’t leave room for polite applause just the sound of bodies deciding to move.
Lip Crunch: Niagara born hooks strapped to a brick. They grind at a tempo that makes small rooms feel like they’ve swallowed their exits; on a comp, they’re the glue that turns fast into ferocious.
Iron Moose: Toronto trash punk with a gig calendar that reads like a brawl schedule local bills, Spiderfest chaos, and Ask A Punk showcases that treat stages like accident scenes. Their inclusion signals the comp’s appetite for bands that live in the gig economy and spend their pay on strings and gas.
Together they strip the paint off the national picture: Canada’s punk isn’t monoculture, it’s topsoil thin, stubborn, and everywhere.
Southern Ontario is a choke point: craftsman basements, university radios, art crawl detours, and bars that remember your face from the pit. Hamilton’s documented punk history Teenage Head echoing through the Casbah years and CFMU’s Punk City walking tour sets a civic precedent for loud culture as actual culture. Canadian punk’s roots run parallel Viletones and Diodes in the east, D.O.A. in the west, and Hamilton’s own lifers carving a middle finger in steel.
A.P. Records builds on that foundation with shows that tie charity to chaos (RIPCORDZ at Taps for Community Care), putting scene ethics into circulation: noise for need, speed for food, and flyers as public service announcements. That’s how Southern Ontario keeps the lights on DIY as utility, not hobby.
Bee Gee runs A.P. Records like a siege: small batch duplication, releases announced like emergencies, and hands on coordination between bands, venues, and media. The Medioq listing shows a release calendar that reads like a campaign bulletin drops, debuts, rollouts anchored by a December 5 compilation milestone and a Niagara Toronto corridor of shows. “One-man army” isn’t branding it’s logistics: booking, pressing, promoting, and pointing the convoy toward borders when the locals need a breather.
That energy bleeds into cross border radio syndication and multicity events, pulling U.S. and overseas ears into the Southern Ontario noise orbit. When you see the same A.P. fingerprints on flyers, streams, and matinee bills, you’re looking at a person treating a label like a community service.
Plunk O Rama Radio isn’t background it’s a switchboard. As a monthly radio show, it splices live performances, interviews, and scene chatter into a continuous wave, with special programming blocks that spotlight label months and partner showcases (That Damn Punk Show syndication, Canadian punk roundups, and community features). It’s accessible and participatory listeners can call in, bands announce releases, and you catch live tapings that turn the studio into a micro-venue.
This is where the comp gets legs: radio segments that preview tracks, profile contributors, and route new fans to upcoming shows. In a country as spread out as ours, radio is still the bridge; Plunk O Rama makes sure the bridge isn’t gated.
Print is dead only if your hands are clean. Plunk O Rama Zine drops bimonthly, handmade in Niagara on the Lake, and treats flyers like civic documents dates, venues, lineups, and the promise of sweat. Each issue pairs those flyers with band biographies and local album reviews, turning event promotion into scene documentation and giving new acts a permanent page instead of a disappearing post.
For a compilation like This Is Canada Not America, the zine is the echo chamber that matters: print the lineup, profile the exclusives, and pin the next gigs to refrigerators across the province.
Curation over algorithm: A.P. sequences this thing so it escalates each cut sharper than the last because someone is steering, not sorting.
Infrastructure with heart: Radio and zine aren’t add-ons; they’re accelerants. They form a media triangle with shows so bands have multiple lanes to be heard.
Regional truth with national reach: Southern Ontario holds the lantern, but the shadows stretch coast to coast.
Direct answers: this compilation rules because it feels like a street-level census taken at volume. If you’re inside the scene, it sounds like your weekend. If you’re outside, it sounds like a reason to come in.
The underground isn’t hidden; it’s simply where the work is. Bee Gee and A.P. Records are doing the work. This disc proves it.
