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Well here’s a real collector favorite. Koro’s - 700 Club. This 7″ was legendary even in the pre Internet days, as one of the speediest and most catchy North American records from the initial Hardcore explosion. This thing clocks 8 songs in 6 minutes or so and has had its status well cemented as a cult classic since it finally saw an official reissue a few years ago. Somewhat reminiscent of early DRI with equally intense vocals, but a little less straight forward. The choruses stick to your ribs a little better and aren’t quite as samey, and there’s a more out of control edge almost approaching a Void kind of franticness. Unlike Void people have made a big deal over the years about how tightly Koro actually perform their songs on this.

But in recent years there’s been a bit of a snag in the mythology. A couple years ago, following the official release of the 7″ on Sorry State records, the world was abuzz when it was announced the long rumored to exist, shelved Koro lp, “Speed Kills” was going to be released. When it finally surfaced, aside from being obviously sourced from a crappy tape (which sometimes helps but in this case didn’t), there were two extremely glaring problems.

1) None of the songs were as good or intense as the 7″ EP. The writing was less inspired, the vocals were flatter, the songs were slower, and that leads to the bigger problem that effects the Koro “legacy” as a whole…

2) A few songs from the 7″ appeared in rerecorded versions, that were NOTICABLY SLOWER than the 7″. But it wasn’t just that they were slower, the vocal delivery was less manic… and there was something with the pitch that seemed wrong. Side by side comparison was the proof in the pudding - the 700 Club 7″ versions of the songs are all one note further up the scale on bass and guitar, which leads one to conclude that the record was artificially sped up to sound faster and more intense. Live sets of the band which began circulating from around the same time (and which have since been issued on a collection CD) served to confirm this.

I still love the Koro 7″, but I can’t really love it in the same way. I’ve been cheated. I’m sure there’s a really bad pun here where I can utilize the title “Speed Kills” (it seems ironically lack of speed killed my love of the band)… So I dunno, where does that leave this thing? Kind of just a $500 Milli Vanilli, but it’s still pretty sick. Note Dr. Cooch says that this clearly has the higher contrast back photo denoting that it’s from the 2nd batch of record sleeves made. The first has more grey in it.