My Head Hurts

Inner Anger were a hardcore punk band from Kamloops, British Columbia, active during the late 1980s and closely connected to the small but energetic Interior B.C. punk scene that also included groups such as Desperate Minds and Sineater. The lineup documented on their only known release consisted of Marty Yutalo on vocals, Mike Soper on guitar and vocals, Darren Jones on bass and vocals, and Steve Wegelin on drums.

Although based in Kamloops, Inner Anger were part of a much wider Pacific Northwest hardcore network. Their surviving concert history shows a band travelling well beyond their home city and sharing bills with both established and emerging punk acts at a time when the West Coast underground was changing rapidly.

Inner Anger appeared with D.O.A. in Kamloops during 1988, and by early 1989 they were travelling through the United States. On January 6, 1989, the band played Portland’s Satyricon on a bill with Mudhoney and Nirvana, placing them directly within the Pacific Northwest club circuit just as the region was beginning to attract international attention.

Two weeks later, on January 20, 1989, Inner Anger appeared at 924 Gilman Street in Berkeley, California, with Crimpshrine, Sharkbait and The Cheez Boys. The Gilman appearance is especially significant because it shows the band operating within one of the most important independent punk venues in North America, far removed from the comparatively small Kamloops scene from which they emerged.

That same month Inner Anger travelled farther south to record their first album. My Head Hurts was recorded and mixed at Spot Recording in Santa Ana, California, in January 1989. Although the precise itinerary has not been documented, the Portland and Berkeley dates place the sessions within the same period as the band’s West Coast touring activity.

The album was produced by Inner Anger and Dave Kory, with Kory also engineering the sessions. Released later in 1989 by the independent British Columbia label Chikara Records, My Head Hurts contained eleven songs: ‘Reality’, ‘Life Out There’, ‘The Time’, ‘Tears and Puppeteers’, ‘Alice in Nowhereland’, ‘Cobwebs’, ‘Building Borders’, ‘Simple Change’, ‘My Silent Son’, ‘The Divorce Song’ and ‘Great Escape’.

All of the songs were written and arranged collectively by Inner Anger, emphasizing that the band operated as a group rather than around a single principal songwriter. Musically, the album combined hardcore speed and aggression with heavier rock elements and arrangements that occasionally moved beyond the strict confines of fast punk.

The lyrics were similarly broader than a conventional hardcore framework might suggest. Some songs addressed political and social divisions, particularly ‘Building Borders’, while others dealt with relationships, family, aging, frustration, isolation and personal uncertainty. ‘My Silent Son’, ‘The Divorce Song’, ‘Cobwebs’ and ‘Simple Change’ gave the record a noticeably personal dimension alongside its more confrontational material.

That mixture of political anger and introspection helped distinguish Inner Anger from many hardcore bands working within a narrower lyrical vocabulary. My Head Hurts could be aggressive and cynical, but it also contained songs concerned with ordinary relationships and emotional consequences, giving the record a more varied character than its punk and hardcore classification might initially suggest.

The album’s visual presentation was also handled largely within the group. Steve Wegelin created the front cover, while Wendell Phillips of the Kamloops Daily News supplied the back-cover photograph. A printed lyric sheet accompanied the record, preserving the complete texts and documenting the band’s personnel, recording information and extensive acknowledgements.

Those acknowledgements reveal some of Inner Anger’s local and regional connections. The band gave particular recognition to Desperate Minds, calling them ‘our bros.’, and thanked Gary Chiba, along with musicians, promoters, friends and venues encountered during its activities. The record also thanked the various bands Inner Anger had played with, reinforcing the importance of the touring and independent-show network to the group’s development.

After the recording sessions, Inner Anger continued performing. A surviving chronology documents them at The Paramount in New Westminster on August 20, 1989, with Verbal Assault and Head First, while period evidence also places the group among touring punk bands appearing in Victoria.

These appearances show that Inner Anger were not simply a local Kamloops recording project. They travelled through British Columbia and down the American West Coast, performing in venues ranging from Interior B.C. halls to Satyricon and 924 Gilman Street. Their touring history connected them with the broader hardcore culture stretching from Vancouver and Victoria through Portland, the San Francisco Bay Area and Southern California.

My Head Hurts appears to have been Inner Anger’s only released recording. No confirmed earlier single, EP or subsequent Inner Anger record has surfaced, making the album the principal surviving document of the group.

-Robert Williston