Various Artists: Fiesta Comes Alive!

Looking for something that's fast, loud, or fast and loud You have no shortage of options. Standing tall and proud among the pack is Slap-A-Ham Records, a record label that isn't ashamed to publicly declare its punkness every year at Berkeley's famed punk venue, 924 Gilman. At this location, sludge-rockers, grindcore aficionados, and power-violence bands converge en masse once a year for Slap-A-Ham's Fiesta Grande. Rather than let past Fiesta Grande events slip into memory, the label has now released Fiesta Comes Alive!, a 41-minute, 40-song celebration of all things ugly. And what a fiesta it is! It's a veritable who's-who of fringe punk: Among the album's participants are Man Is The Bastard, Spazz, MDC, Gob, Stapled Shut, Crossed Out, and countless others, and it's great because it chronicles the groups they way they would like to be remembered: live and energetic. Some of the live banter is a bit tedious, but that's redeemed by MDC's chipper quote about the death of the lead singer of the Nazi band Skrewdriver: "It's not horrible. He wanted lots of other people dead, so it's okay to want him dead." That's Fiesta Comes Alive! in a nutshell: angry, violent music; peaceful, tolerant ideals. (Slap-A-Ham, P.O. Box 420843, San Francisco, CA 94142-0843)