Deep Wound

Echoes from the rugged hills of western Massachusetts continue to linger from the intense, booming hardcore style of Deep Wound during the first half of the 1980s. Westfield, MA high school companions Scott Helland and Lou Barlow launched the group in 1981, with its lineup solidifying in short order after they recruited drummer J Mascis, who had replied to a notice seeking a player of “super fast beats,” and brought in vocalist Charlie Nakajima. The ensemble put out an EP during summer 1983. Those recordings met with scant reward, though two cuts—“A Time to Stand” and “You’re False”—appeared on the 1984 anthology Bands That Could Be God; the lack of broader commercial traction soon prompted the band’s dissolution. In the years that followed, its members stayed musically engaged: Mascis started the late-’80s outfit Dinosaur Jr. and, together with Nakajima, later formed Gobblehoof, while Helland performed with the Outpatients between 1982 and 1995.