bidhardcore.com
hardcore records on ebay — aggregated and examined
Seller here has only 2 auctions even worth looking at, and they’re both the same record. Slipknot’s s/t 7″ on revelation, on black vinyl & limited red vinyl. Slipknot is a record best described as “infamous”, mostly for the fact that it sounds nothing like any of the other releases on the label at that time, but also for there being a famous band of the same name in the late 90’s. Unlike basically every record on Revelation up to that point which was derived from Youth Of Today, Agnostic Front, or somewhere in between, Slipknot were a bit of a “cross-over” band, that had most in common with Animosity-era Corrosion of Conformity, Money Talks phase Cryptic Slaughter, and maybe a bit of Septic Death as well. One thing they did keep in common with other bands on the label were message type lyrics, although they were more consistent with COC and Cryptic Slaughter type themes (anti-cop song, songs railing on the power elite). The record itself is quite ferocious and frankly I think the band could have had a decent career on NY’s Combat records, it’s funny how many people who would be into it aren’t familiar because of the Rev affiliation, the band name, and the sort of crappy sleeve on the thing.Whenst visiting RevHQ a couple years ago I saw founder Jordan Cooper sitting at one of the desks in the office. Cautiously I approached and asked for some Slipknot information, as if to illustrate how overlooked they are, he actually thought I was playing a joke. After I explained he opened up a little bit, but didn’t have much to offer in the way of info. There was a rehearsal demo produced by the band under the name Evil Dead, but they switched names probably because there was half a dozen other thrash metal bands with the same name. They were just some dudes from Conneticut doing the band mostly just to entertain themselves. They played CBGB’s one time and all the lights in the club went out which must have enhanced the sinister sound they had on display (or so I’d imagine). One thing people always said was Rev released this record because Jordan owed one of the band members money for pot (oh! the scandal!), but aside from it being denied of course, it sounds unlikely. It’s got a full color glossy cover, and my limited knowledge of the drug trade leads me to believe that’s just WAY too much pot for a dude to float you before asking for money.Here’s a photo of me holding the reels to the record as well as Breakdown the Walls: 
Hail Sweden as they say… found 2 well known Käng-core treats. Mob 47’s eponymous 7″ e.p.has been recently released by Sweden friendly Havoc records in the USA (although this on is from an original pressing) and has generally remained through the years one of the better known Swedish hardcore releases in the United States. Having been featured on both Pushead’s Cleanse the Bacteria comp in 1985, and the P.E.A.C.E. compilation the year prior, as well as on a couple of BCT compilation cassettes (I think), they had fairly good exposure to the average U.S. based HC listener of the day. I think overall their sound is also maybe a little easier to identify with for people raised on your Minor Threats, your Negative Approaches, your Agnostic Fronts, as the songs keep a bit of a faster clip than your average “D-Beat” related release, and maintain brevity, similar to those bands (not that such a thing was unheard of with other groups of this style). Additionally, the riffs themselves are a tad more tuneful than your average Discharge worship, and I think that goes a long way in putting this E.P. in its rightful place, at classic status. Animal Liberation plays like a simplified take on Nothing by Negative Approach, at least to my ears, though the theme of the song is a much more straight forward political one that ought to be pretty obvious. Seems like an early instance of animal rights, at least as far as straight hardcore goes, and I wouldn’t doubt the members of Ripcord took note, among many others. One more thing I think is worth note in comparing it to U.S. releases from the same time period is the almost total lack of bass-guitar in the mix. I always associate extremely trebly, thrashy hardcore with the sound of early mid-west and east coast hardcore from the United States, and like this record, part of the reason for that is that the bass was nearly mixed off a lot of those records and demos. The record would not really change or sound very different if there was no bass player, which is a huge contrast to say Discharge (who are the obvious starting point for the sound of this E.P.), and while other bands from Sweden use the bass guitar to varying degrees of importance and prominence in their sound, I find it particularly neglected with Mob 47. If you’re not familiar with Mob 47 and have any interest at all in early hardcore from other countries, there are a few different comprehensive reissues out there which are cool but a little intimidating as they compile numerous demos and comp tracks. For that reason I think the best place to start would be the straight up reissue of this E.P. on Havoc. It’s affordable, very well distro’d, and nice looking too.
In some ways, the other side of the coin here is Anti-Cimex - Victims Of A Bomb Raid 7″also from 1984, and hardly relatable to USHC at all. Actually Victims, or Wictimsas pronounced in the title track, hardly even sounds like previous Anti-Cimex records and attempts to sheen a lot of the rough edges that those had. Where their previous record (and probably most legendary), Raped Ass (that’s Arse) has a sound centered around the overload of various distortion pedals and frequent cymbal crashes, this record seems like a pretty obvious attempt to refit the band to the sound of Discharge’s Hear Nothing, See Nothing, Say Nothing. Now I know that’s kind of a “duh” revelation, but it’s a pretty big leap to take for the band itself. While I’m sure they thought this sounded rather professional at the time, it reeks of cheap processing and studio effects of the era, despite still being quite a classic. The snare drum is heavily compressed and gated so that it nearly sounds sampled (if you don’t know what I mean tap your computer mouse with your index finger a few times - it’s that sound), the guitars are much clearer and dipped in chorus as was the style at the time, and most everything has some reverb to make it sound bigger. Discharge themselves, somewhere around Why? or Hear Nothing, started using a chorus pedal on their guitars (in the studio anyway) to give them a “fuller” sound, and a lot of early 80’s hardcore records attempt to use this same trick, often to hide the fact that they only have a single guitar track on them (see: every record recorded in Washington DC after 1982). In addition there seems to be a more conscious attempt to display some kind of guitar playing “chops” with numerous noodling/string bend moments, and other pointless stuff. Or, maybe they just really really wanted to sound like Hear Nothing, complete with a string-bend to punctuate the riff every few measures. Probably both. You know, despite all that though, this is a brutal release, and even though it’s not the best, it’s still the second best Anti-Cimex release. I also think that through their entire career (maybe barring the sub-par Anarkist Attack) Anti-Cimex had a superior grasp on actually putting together a catchy song, rather than just a couple of heavy parts and stringing them together as a song, and that’s worth at least a tip of the hat.
I like this seller’s listings. I’ve featured them before, but this set is kind of cooler because it’s several different things — a bunch of rap lps, a bunch of Japanese hardcore, some American grindcore, and a little bit of NYHC. I dunno, you could probably have a decent time hanging with this person.Here’s a tasty Japanese ripper… or something like that. LSD’s - Jast Last 7″. This is hardly the genre I’m most knowledgeable in, but this is one record that left an impression on me right from the get go. The vocals pour out in a mess of distortion and slurred growling, most likely double tracked (it could just me some kind of echo effect though?), but sounding pretty crazy. The music is kind of more controlled and somewhat metallic in the delivery, with fairly precise mid-paced type riffs. My favorite song is the 6 minute Karen Nash which begins with a clean guitar intro, and then builds up with a noodley riff, before kicking in full power with the most deranged vocal section on the entire record. The song pushes into hookier and more melodic territory, more-so than the other two on the record, or for that matter any other LSD song. By the time the maiden-esque solo kicks in 2 minutes deep it’s pretty obvious you’re hearing a masterwork. Finally at about the middle the sheets of distortion let up for a return to the same clean guitar work from the beginning. The buildup back into the song is cheesy and “of the time” as could be but it works because the band sell it, and to me it all sounds necessary, like there’s no fat to trim (which is absurd because in reality it’s a 6 minute song), they have me under the spell. When the speed really picks up again and the vocals come with tortured “whoas” echoing into 80’s reverb oblivion, it’s the payoff. I really have no idea what this song is actually about, but it just sounds moving. Maybe melodrama has a big effect on me. As a sequel to yesterday’s posting: a Crossed Out 7″. Of course if you know me at all, you know I’ve staked some of my creativity in this record’s legacy, much to the disappointment and annoyance of a person or three, but generally these are people that are old and/or Scottish. Seriously though, this one’s timeless. A template for a dozens and dozens of bands thereafter, none one tenth as good. Crossed Out said they were into Siege and the Skitslickers, it really can’t get much more straight forward than that. It’s that kind of simplicity that permeates the sound and style of the record. There’s nothing tricky or hard to grasp, it just sounds like a hammer beating against your skull really fast, and then really slow. There are a couple of 90’s bootlegs of this but the seller has taken care to list attributes that verify it as an original (matrix numbers being the give away). If you’re ever not sure about one of these, look at the between song gaps, the original pressing has long silences between each song, like 5-10 seconds, you should be able to see them just by looking at the vinyl.
One of the few bands to be explicitly named by the term’s originators as “West Coast Power Violence”, No Comment occupy a special place even among the PV genre elite. A group impossible to replicate, and one of so few to produce a truly perfect record that transcends the genre it’s tied to - DOWNSIDED. One of the things that set the group apart from many others were the relatively clear shouts of Andy Beattie, who would sound as comfortable in any number of other Hardcore bands, but sounds so perfectly suited for No Comment. The constant wash of riffing is really driven by the start and stop of the drums, which I’ve heard the drummer had to take speed to perform adequately (no idea if this is simply legend). The sound is almost the musical equivalent to someone having a seizure or something. Every few seconds the song changes direction, but never collapses under the weight of itself. Each track is relatively simple, but deceptively so, as each one takes skill to put together with more split second stops starts and twists than most other genre bands would bother with. I think that’s part of what makes No Comment who they are and were. The will to really stretch a 20 second song for all it’s worth. For many that just means a quick blast of crash and bash, but No Comment were able to take the same ammount of time and really make it feel like a whole song in that time. It’s this kind of razor thin percission that really defines them. In all they rip through 11 songs, the first 10 of which are covered, I think in less than 5 minutes, the last of which preserves the tradition of ending with a long heavy outro. Like some other entries on here, it’s sort of difficult to know what to even say about a record thats meant so much to me, and thrilled me so many times. It’s not even that Downsided is “this” or “that”, it just is,(for me at least). I remember when I finally obtained the actual 7″ (had a discography prior to that), and looking at the weird foldout sleeve. The collage on the front with the baby and all the drugs, the strange look of the members, the giant fold out of the arm on the inside, the cryptic lyrics. The final proof that No Comment were just their own island I guess.
Metal Monday Vol. 8: This is from the same seller as last week’s Whiplash test, a copy of Venom - Black Metal on Neat records on a weird grey and brown vinyl swirl. I know I’ve featured Venom on here a bunch of times but this is probably one of the more sought after pressings of the Black Metal lp on Neat, (not a later pressing). My brain still isn’t feeling “on” this morning and it’s hard to know what to say about an album with the level of impact that Black Metal has had, and the insane amount of baggage attached to it because of the title. It’s kind of funny though, for the amount that it’s sighted as a key influence by bands, there aren’t a whole hell of a lot that sound like it. There’s no question the biggest influence that hangs over the song writing is Motorhead, although with a much trashier delivery. A couple of tracks, most notable, Buried Alive play like a dumbed up, moron-Black Sabbath, but most of the rest are really a kind of punk-metal, that too few groups had time to develop with the advent of full on thrash taking over almost right after this album was released. Still the album is significantly more musically accomplished than the preceding one, Welcome to Hell, marking the first time the Venom drum kit sounded like something other than plastic buckets, and though the drumming is still likably terrible, it’s noticeably more accomplished than previous recordings too. It’s sort of funny to think, I guess, how seriously so many people have attempted to take this album, when you see photos of the Helvete shop there’s even a trinity of Venom lps hanging above a door way. But the album that the most overwrought, unnecessarily serious genre was named after, has a song like Teachers Pet, which is essentially just a prediction of Hot For Teacher, and plenty of choruses that just sound like amateur Judas Priest. To me it will always be a bit of a party album, and I’m sure I’m not the only one, even as some dope in evil face makeup is probably right now trying to hear the shouts of “S-A-C-R-I-F-I-C-E — SACRIFICE!” and not smile and play air guitar. I don’t know, I got nothing here. Have fun, listen to Venom, I need to take a nap at lunch.
A rather suspect listing in my opinion here of Black Flag’s Nervous BreakdownE.P. First of all though before I get to that, if you don’t know, this is basically the first record that could be called hard core, in its original press (out of 500). The brick pattern that you see on the cover is what denotes that. Nervous Breakdown is one of the 100 greatest rock and roll songs ever written, of any sub-genre that falls within those boundaries. It feels silly to talk about it. It’s like a Christian talking about Christ, or lately, a middle class college student talking about Barrack Obama (I hear after he ends all wars on the first day, he will walk on water on the second). Maybe on the third day he can pass a law obliterating sketchy ebay sales. See the first thing I noticed is the picture on the sale page is just a little stock jpg you can find from a quick search of google images. Which made me puzzle if it was really a first press with an original sleeve, or if the sleeve has ever been counterfeited. In addition the seller only has a feedback of two, in other words they’re a new seller. For such a marquee listing, there’s also minimal information given, and the typing in all caps, just automatically does not sit well with me (which isn’t really fair). Also they misspelled Nervous as NERVOUSE, but I am also a really bad speller. I am fairly certain the claim of “mint condition” is not going to be up to goldmine grading standards or whatever. So… I guess at best this will probably go a little under the going rate (and who even knows what that is… somewhere between $400-$700?). I would not bid without some kind of paypal insurance, or some way to be sure I could get a full refund. Btw. my friend Bob found one of these buried in the back of some record store last year. It was $10. My other friend found a copy of The Mad “Eyeball” for $5 there a few months before. There truly is no justice in this world, is there?
What a strange collection of items this seller has. Mint in package water pistols, creepy 3 for a dollar bendy monsters from the 70s, and some OG demo tape type items. ***THIS JUST IN***: seller is Blaine from The Accused, which explains a bit.
Of interest:
An original Brotherhood demo tape. I believe this is the second Brotherhood demo (the one featuring Ron Guardipee on vocals) and the one that was recycled into the band’s 7″, some of their comp tracks, and eventually the Words Run Thick As Blood anthology on Crucial Response. I heard tell of a little beef between the Brotherhood and Crucial Response camps over owed money, that supposedly ended in a shake-down during a Sunn tour sometime in the last few years. I kinda picture it going down like that part in The Princess Bride when Andre The Giant’s character is standing in front of the castle wearing that same hooded robe that Sunn wears, and shouting ominous things. If it wasn’t that way, I don’t even want to know how it was. Personally if I was one of those Sunn dudes, I’d be wearing that thing everywhere. Down to the convenience mart, to the dentist, wherever.
Yes, if you haven’t caught on, Brotherhood is technically pre-Sunn, pre-Burning Witch, pre-Goat Snake, and who could forget, pre-Engine Kid. Also (and much cooler), post-False Liberty. But truthfully the most interesting aspect of Brotherhood to me is the song The Deal. This is a perfect and, somewhat strange (for its day) hardcore song. It begins with a fairly speedy blasting section, like a revved up SS Decontrol, only to cut to a surprisingly slow moshy section about ten seconds later, before diving right back into the speed. In some ways it predicts the territory that would be increasingly mined by the likes of Infest, and their numerous followers, in subsequent years. I’m not suggesting Infest borrowed a formula here, but just that this is an interesting precursor to one of their trademarks. If anything Brotherhood were probably trying to borrow more than a little from DYS, as well as SS Decontrol on this song. Well at any rate I love it very much.
Also of interest: Northwest Hardcore and More. But what is the “more” you ask? it’s hard to say for sure because this seller’s listings are so sub-par, but The Melvins, Wermacht, the Accused, False Liberty, Spastic Blur, and of course MR. BUNGLE are all in there. Seriously if this guy gets $10 for such a crap listing I’ll be surprised. Seems cool for all you tape buyers out there.
Even though it’s not Monday I can’t not mention that he’s selling a Cannibal Corpse demo as well, although I have no way of verifying if it’s original. There’s a mediocre lot of Accused recordstoo. No Return Of Martha Splatterhead in there unfortunately.
I Was A Sellout Before You Were A Sellout - by Joe Losurdo - (From Roctober #9, 1994)
Gather round kiddies and let’s hearken back to those dark ages known as the mid ’80’s. Yes kids, before MTV was serving up your weekly Alternative hero, before Circus and Rip magazines changed their “formats” to suit the times. The year was 1984 and Punk was pretty much dead to me with Hardcore soon following suit (This decision was made at the ripe old age of 16). But as fate would have it, an opportunity opened to me that I had previously only dreamed about. A local “Hardcore” band called Life Sentence had called me up and asked me to play bass for them and do some touring, so I immediately dropped out of high school and said “later!” to my boring suburb (where else, right?) and headed out. I had grand visions of screaming groupies, packed houses and trashed hotel rooms, though I couldn’t admit it, ’cause I was “Punk”. On the outside I wanted to be Minor Threat, on the inside I wanted to be KISS. However, after three months of playing in people’s living rooms, not making any money, not bathing and worst of all not eating, I went home ten years older than when I left. We were pissed off because we were good (relatively) and yet we weren’t getting anywhere. Sound familiar, folks? We were confused as to why shit groups like GBH and The Exploited were pulling in $500 to $1,000 a show when we weren’t even making gas money. So we said fuck it, we’re going to attack every market in the Punk rock underworld syndicate. First, the new Metal-”crossover” scene was a virtual goldmine! It was truly ironic that all the same people who would beat you up for being Punk were now getting into it. Then again, today’s Nirvana and Pearl Jam fans are yesterday’s Def Leppard and Judas Priest fans. I’m a firm believer in genetics, and it’s what I dub the “sheep” chromosome. Regardless, we were blessed with a stroke of luck when a friend of ours gave James Hetfield of Metallica a Life Sentence sticker, and the next thing you know it’s stuck on the leather jacket he’s wearing in Kerang! magazine and the promo poster for the “Master of Puppets” record. So we of course sent off more merchandise goodies to our ‘ol pals Metalica, and BOOM! Lars is wearing our shirt in the “Cliff ‘em All” video. Jackpot! Next thing you know Anthrax, Nuclear Assault and our touring buddies D.R.I. are Life Sentence fans and the snowball effect has started. We definitely made more money off our merchandise than off our guarantees from shows. We had serious Metal fans coming to our shows, and we would oblige them by playing Slayer’s “Chemical Warfare” and Motörhead’s “Ace of Spades”. Ahh, but folks, man does not live by Metal alone. Our lust for Punk domination became insatiable and we were hungry for more! Our next target: skateboarders!
The Skate-Punk resurgence was ready to explode into the mainstream. We could smell it and we wanted in on the action! As luck (that’s the key word) would have it, while we were in St. Louis for a show a couple of skateboard bigwig pros were in town for a “skaters camp”. Steve Steadham, Monty Nolder and Christian Hosoi were hanging out at the show so we made our move, initiated by Steadham and our guitar player’s love of spliff. Everybody was good ‘n’ high, so we had Steadham come up on stage and play drums with us for a “Blues” jam as our first song. Needless to say the kids loved it, and in the next issue of Thrasher, the skater’s Holy Qu’ran, there’s a photo of Monty doing a handplant with our colorful logo on his chest. We also got one of those hilarious Pushead adjective-abuse reviews. On tour we used to have this inside joke of asking locals where the nearest half-pipe was whenever we’d arrive in a new town. A review in a San Diego zine called Black Market described me as “Joe, who plays a mean bass and craves skating vert!” I can barely stand on a goddam skateboard! But of course we always had them on tour with us. To help move the amps.
The last factions of Punkdom we had to crack were the Straight Edge crowd and the Maximum Rocknroll P.C. army. I believe the Straight Edge crowd to be almost on par with the Metal crowd for generating laughs with their sheer ridiculousness. This was way past the Minor Threat, S. S. Decontrol days. This was more the Uniform Choice and Youth of Today era with plenty of hilarious T-shirt slogans that would have made Nancy Reagan proud: “Straight and Alert”, “Drugs and Booze, the sure way to lose”, etc. We sort of inadvertently got lumped in with Straight Edge ’cause our old singer made us sound like 7 Seconds (whom we also used to play with alot). I can remember a couple of occasions when we would literally fall out of the van drunk and completely bum out the 14 year old Straight-Edgers who were waiting for us to show up. For a humorous take on the Straight Edge movement, go to your local library and in the American Hardcore archives and look under “Crucial Youth.”
The Maximum Rocknroll-Veggie-Leftist-Anarchist-Homo/Lesbian-Revolutionary crowd was pretty easy to infiltrate. We had been reading the magazine long enough to know what catch phrases we should use in our interviews. I can actually recall saying “Protest and Survive” in an interview which functionally translates in America as “Mom, if you don’t buy me the new MDC album I’ll kill myself.” Our first album was chock full of politically Left anthems such as “Peacetime Death”, “Men In Blue”, “Election Day” and of course “Take A Stand”. The funniest part was that our old singer who wrote those songs was one of the most politically ignorant people I ever met. Let’s just say the skinhead he once was still lived in his heart. When we were being interviewed on MRR radio in Berkeley, I threw a curveball to my bandmates by saying that I was in the Revolutionary Communist Youth Party. Our drummer Tom, not to be outdone, went on to talk about the time he spent in El Salvador. Yes, we were full of shit. All kidding aside, a tip of my hat goes to MRR for teaching many bored suburban Punk rockers about more going on in politics than they possibly could have found out from the idiot box or the newspapers.
Of course there was the flipside of the MRR crowd: the dreaded SKINHEADS! The name alone sends people scurrying like mice. BOO! I scared you! When I was 12-13 years old, I lived for Skinhead “Oi!” music. My favorite bands in the world were The Cockney Rejects, Blitz, The Business and Peter and the Test Tube Babies, amongst others. But the Oprah wave of Skinheads, who would have never heard of the movement if it weren’t for all the media attention and who were likely to be Nazis (despite the fact that the original English Skins were Black), seemed to be more into Agnostic Front, Murphy’s Law and the Cro-Mags. Sure they were skins, but they weren’t Oi! So every now and then we’d play “Oi, Oi, Oi!” by The Cockney Rejects and the Skins would go apeshit, but it was quite obvious that most of them didn’t know the tune, but knew they were supposed to. When we played in Montreal there was a group of French-Canadian Nazi Skinheads(?) that were sieg heil-ing us as we played it. Not one of those morons could speak English so how the hell did they know what we were singing about?!!! For all they know we could have been singing “We are all homos! Oi! Oi! Oi! We love Commies! Oi! Oi! Oi! Being bald is stupid…etc.” They’re probably all hockey players or mounties now.
My point to this whole article is that there is no point…to any of it! Black Flag in ‘81, D.R.I. in ‘84 or Nirvana in ‘91, NONE OF IT MATTERS! Like those geriatric corporate machines said over 20 years ago “It’s only Rock n’ Roll!” So shove your twenty something-Slacker-Grunge-Generation X-Details-MTV-in it’s eco-pak-bullshit up your ass, America! Throw in your Pearl Jam CD’s and Docs too if there’s room! Oh yeah, and here’s a tip: If it goes platinum, there’s nothing “underground” or “alternative” about it! Now get out of my room kid, visiting hours are over.
Well maybe you’re out today voting for who you get to vote for later this year. Unfortunately my favorite UFO peeping, Larry Flynt allied, pacifist is already outta the running. Just kidding I could never vote for a candidate whose name I wouldn’t be able to spell until year 3 of his term. Really, Larry Flynt Dennis? Well it’s not like you can go any lower than zero anyway. Can you believe though, that I actually got a mass text message to vote for Obama? Like I trust a friend of Oprah any more than a lady with the same voice as my middle school social studies teacher. It’s more of the same with all of these jerks. . Oops sorry… let me go back to consoling the post Superbowl depression of my peers (”Ya know the Superball’s in Detroit this year…”). Personally I’m just thrilled that after 8 years, #81, ART MONK, has been inducted into the NFL Hall Of Fame. Wait this isn’t right either…
GREETINGS FELLOW HARDCORE/PUNK ENTHUSIASTS! Today I’ve found a seller with a couple of tasty treats, and a bunch of indie-rock tripe, that shall get no further acknowledgement. Firstly there’s Canadian Youth Youth Youth - “Sin” 12″e.p. We call them YYY for short. You can put them on the same itunes playlist as your Pig Children 12″ maybe. This one (like the Pig Children) has a tendency of showing up sealed kind frequently, and this one appears to be as well. So if what you’ve always wanted was, a pricey record you will be de-valuing by listening to it, well here it is! Nah this is an above average offering for sure.
Also available The Inmates - “Government Crimes”7″. This one comes with the Zouo themed sleeve on blue vinyl(it has a photo of Zouo on it), thus denoting it as a 2nd pressing, although it’s listed confusingly as a 3rd pressing. In addition, it’s listed as being from Japan, which must at least be flattering for these guys. The Inmates are my number-one favorite group of the Cleveland scum-core bands. It was truly an honor to be able to reissue their lp on Painkiller in that toxic-waste-green jacket. Seriously the fact that this came out of the United States in 94/95 is mind blowing. There was nothing this cool or catchy anywhere else. Maybe the next best thing was the Copout 7″, and frankly I’d rank that far below. Slap-a-Ham was already a spent force, Straight Edge Hardcore still sounded like a spoof of a Helmet record, most punk bands sounded like Aus Rotten at best. I dunno, maybe it wasn’t that bad. I mean I was 14, at best I had a couple people playing me garbage on Victory, and maybe 7 Seconds, but that’s at best, so what do I know right? I’m sure seeing Catharisis or some such 5th teir Rorschach ripoff whose name I can’t think of was really meaningful at the time, but let me go out on a limb and say, you probably don’t wanna wear that on your sleeve now anyway. The Inmates - this is the stuff from then that still matters. Blown out ear smashing, brain searing, 10 megaton destruction. Oh and if you’re still in a Cleveland mood, there’s a repeat copy of The Mormons “On The Trail West”e.p. Looks like this is a $50 piece now, I guess the appearance of the Homostupids has cemented that.
Metal Monday Vol. 7:
Maybe you’ve heard of Metallica. The only band that has been a perfect 10, and a perfect zero in rock ‘n roll. At one time they were so good, so perfectly hooky, heavy, and powerful, that even having probably THE WORST drummer to ever be in a successful band, couldn’t stop them from being awesome. Ride The Lightning and Kill ‘Em All are the most heart thumping, fist-banging, thrash ever IMO. Yea i know there’s way cooler bands to reference from Germany and Brazil and Colombia, but seriously, none of them wrote Creeping Death. I don’t even care. Now I know what some people are thinking: “uhhh I’m pretty sure Meg White is the worst drummer to ever be in a successful band”. Those people are wrong and I will tell you why: because Lars Ulrich thinks he is good and accomplished as a drummer, and Meg White knows she is bad, and goes on national television with a 4 piece kit and bashes it out caveman style. Lars has roto-toms and 2 kick drums and is still fucking up “For Whom The Bell Tolls” ON THE RECORDING. But like I said, the fact that this is going down, and Metallica is still one of the best ever is a testament (no pun intended) to the power of their riffsmanship. Sometimes I wonder if Hetfield only kept him around to prove that he was the best.
“I’m so good I can play with a drummer not fit to tie Lombardo’s shoe laces, and outsell everyone. Watch me.”
In some ways it’s criminal. Anyway, Kill ‘Em All came out as Metallica’s vinyl debut in 1983 after a couple of well circulated demo cassettes, and sold out its first pressing of 5,000 copies allegedly instantly (well by the end of the week). At the same time, their label Megaforce issued a couple of 12″ singles for songs found on the record. One was the Whiplash E.P. which was basically a modified version of the Jump In The Fire single that preceeded it by a few months (e.g. it’s different by only one track). Whiplash contains the songs Jump In The Fire, and of course Whiplash on the a-side (in slightly remixed versions), and demo versions of Seek and Destroy and Phantom Lord with fake crowd noise added on the b-side. Mostly it was produced to capitalize on a popular band and to have a single to issue to radio stations I would imagine. So here is a test press of the Whiplash single on Megaforce. Already bid to an insane dollar amount considering it’s not even a proper album. In addition the seller has a number of other similar test pressings, mostly of less cool big name thrashers like Anthrax (sorry Sanchez) and Overkill, although I will give the nod to the test press of Testament’s “The Legacy” - a great thrash debut, as far as bigger name American bands go.
