bidhardcore.com

Here’s a nice double shot of late 80’s USHC rarity from the same seller.

1. Behind door number 1 we’ve got No For An Answer - You Laugh with the highly sought after I-Spy sleeve. This is definitely one of the most hard to find early Revelation rarities, with supposedly 200 made, I assume for either tour or mail order. You Laugh is probably the most preachy straight edge record to come out before the 90’s. Every song has a pushy message, and is very verbose, which is kind of funny because, the band can barely play them. The drumming in the fast parts takes a loose paddle style which doesn’t fit the sterile 80’s gated sound at all.  At times the guitars hold it together enough so that you don’t notice how rickety the drumming is, but at others like say, the intro to About Face, things pretty much derail and the effect is pretty neutering to the music. There are definitely some minor edge classics on here though. The mosh riff to Just Say No, comes in at just the right time and seems designed to open the floor right up, and the sing along is a bit of a no brainer. The title track hits on the touchy “casual sex” topic, but probably has the best riffs on the record. The lyrics are clumsy and pretty ham-fisted  which wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t feel so smug and self assured. As I said before, probably the preachiest 7″ of the 80s. The muted cymbal hits in the beginning are laughably off, which is I guess appropriate for a song called You Laugh, because sometimes I do laugh when I hear it. When Will It End is the worst song, as juvenile and stupid as possible, by the end of side 1 it feels like they’re trying to touch on every category of positive message (recap: song 1 - anti drugs, song 2 - anti casual sex, song 3 - anti violence), it’s just a little much. Also this song has a HORRIBLE clean guitar intro. SKIP. Side B brings you back though - Without A Reason is a pretty good anti-drunk driving track, it kinda sounds like they mixed the drums lower so you wouldn’t hear them go off time during the chorus, but it still gets classic status. Track 5 is Liar which is about 6 seconds long, but pretty cool. It’s the only song without a pushy message on the record, so I guess like… 20 seconds would have been too much to not have a message for. The last track, About Face, is okay, but it’s a mediocre diss track on Uniform Choice for being “sellouts” and has a long talking part over the mosh. Also it’s the sloppiest of all the songs which gets distracting. I think this recording was actually a demo originally and had an instrumental intro, and a really bad Agnostic Front cover in the session too, confirm/deny anyone? Anyhow - a solid 7″, definitely the least good of the first 15 or Revelation Releases, but that’s pretty much every 1st tier late 80’s straight edge record so what can you do? Oh and of course… Dan O’ (the singer) now owns a bar. WHOOPS.

2. Door number 2 contains: Outburst - Miles To Go on RED vinyl. Not the repress folks this is the OG on Blackout, one of the crappiest labels ever to release good records. Anywho, there’s supposed to be like 200 of these as well. It turns up WAY less than the blue vinyl variation. Alright, in the past I’ve made some noise about this record not being that good, despite the fact that I was in a band that stole from practically every song on it. I’m ready to apologize and say I was wrong. This is a pretty good slab of NYHC. I still like Breakdown, Altercation, and Raw Deal better, but there’s some real TNT on this one too.  The cover still sucks though. I’m not taking that back. As others have said - looks like the year book page for the A/V Club. Big standout with Outburst are the vocals which spit growl and seethe with teenage anger, which helps to gloss over the genericish “angry guy” lyrics. He has a good delivery too and  knows when to stretch certain words out and when to cram others together. The music is pretty rhythmic, like a more precise take on Breakdown’s style, the riffs are a little more complex and noodly, the back beat is a little heavier, the stops and starts are a little cleaner. It’s cool, and the best songs like No Choice, When Things Go Wrong, and Thin Ice (which are front-loaded as the first 3 tracks), pull out all the stops. If you ever liked head smashing heavy NYHC you can appriciate how those songs deliver with each change up. The B-Side holds up well but can’t match the 1-2-3 punch you get in the first half. The production… well it definitely has a certain charm and I know some people love it, it’s probably the most extreme example I can think of of late 80s NY style production. Every instrument has a cheap digital effect added. The echo you hear on the bass drum at the beginning of Misunderstood sounds something like a basketball being dribbled, the snare to toms roll that kicks off No Choice sounds like the echo knob can’t go any higher on each hit. The guitars are very 80’s metal, probably run direct through a metal zone pedal and then a chorus pedal (to make them sound “fuller”). Each one has a buzzy crunch and absolutely no bottom end or heaviness. There’s more echo heaped on top, so at the end of everything they kind of sound like shimmering static. The bass sounds about the same, and the vocals of course, are all echo. It’s very artificial sounding, and an odd choice for songs this ferocious, but it was ‘89, and at the time this was state of the art. I’m sure it cost a lot but I don’t blame them, this record was made to be a hit, and it was recorded to sound pro. It just took about 15 years for very many folks to notice.