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Good lord this is already at $40? I guess that doesn’t touch even a hair of what it’s worth content-wise. Citizens Arrest started in NYC in 1989, originally with the now semi-famous singer/songwriter Ted Leo on vocals. They produced a solid demo tape, and started playing shows, mostly at ABC-No Rio with other new (at the time) bands like Born Against, Rorschach, and a lot of others that are less cool (sorry Bad Trip). If Born Against became known for their political rabble rousing, and Rorschach became hallowed for their experimentation with metal and noise in a hardcore context, then Citizens Arrest were the band for the purist. Hardcore for the hard-core. I’m getting slightly ahead of myself though. Right after the demo tape, Ted Leo split, forming Animal Crackers, then Chisel. Daryl Kahan, who played drums for the demo phase of the band then took up the mic, previously having sung in the forgotten, but awesome True Colors (check their demos and song on the New Breed comp), and this is when things really popped off. The band recruited a new drummer, Pat Winter, previously of Our Gang and True Colors, and went to the studio to record 2 songs for the Evacuate records sponsored “Look At All the Children Now” 12″ compilation. From there on out the Citizens Arrest sound was fully formed.

What makes Citizen’s Arrest awesome to this day is that they always had a pure hardcore side that grounded any eccentricities. At the root of it all you could tell they were into early SS Decontrol, DYS, Youth Of Today, Ripchord, Void, AF, Negative Approach. The essentials to meat and potatoes HC. But there was something more. For one the riffs and guitar playing were occasionally colored by melodic passages, something that was explored in more detail by Born Against, but which still helped to shape the CXA sound. Most bands that deal in brutality do so in the most complete way possible. It tends to be a monochromatic picture, and while I’ve got no problem with that, I think part of what makes Citizens Arrest’s brutality stand out from the pack is that occasionally they counter balance it with the melodic aspect. The other part of the picture is Daryl Kahan, the band’s vocalist. Daryl was seemingly the most extreme member of the band, and since Citizens Arrest, he’s gone on to play in several pure grind and death metal bands, and at least one black metal band too. You can tell that he’s already aware of these fledgling styles, and he uses his knowledge in some of the harsher portions of his vocal delivery, and in some of the more esoteric lyrical passages on CXA’s recordings. Seriously, on the “A Light In The Darkness” 7″, you’re hearing one of the best hardcore vocal recordings ever. It’s like some unholy alliance between the first Bathory lp, the Void split, and John Brannon. My description does it no justice whatsoever. You just have to hear the way Serve and Protect (the lead-off track) hits a guitar break, only to be brought back together by the vocals shouting “I thought your job was to SERVE…AND…PROTECT”. It’s goosebumps every time, I swear.

A Light In the Darkness was originally supposed to be Draw Blank #2 after the first Infest 7″, but instead came out on Fred Alva’s Wardance label (Killing Joke reference?). There are 2 pressings of 1,000 each, I think you can differentiate them based on the record matrix as they were done at 2 different pressing plants. There’s also 100 copies on red vinyl, good luck getting one. I didn’t hustle when I could have got one reasonably cheap and am going to have to pay the price for that sooner or later. Some copies also come with the Citizens Arrest Eyes logo screened on the inside such as the one up for auction here.

FUN FACT: Daryl Kahan can also be seen in Friday the 13th Part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan as a skinhead in the times square scene.