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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.

The Crumbsuckers were one of the first NYHC bands to really take on a full crossover sound that seemed to appeal pretty equally to hardcore and metal audiences in the 80’s. Agnostic Front tried with their second lp Cause For Alarm, which, like the Crumbsuckers’ classic LIFE OF DREAMS, was adorned with full color tripped out cartoon art by Sean Taggert (at his artistic peak), but doesn’t really command the same respect today among metalheads. For AF, the vocals were weak, the songs got long, the riff-theft was obvious, and things weren’t really as tight as they should have been. Life Of Dreams is no doubt the kind of record they were aspiring to make, or at least should have made, and as far as Combat Core releases from that time period, there is none finer than it.Musically the way the Crumbsuckers work, and what makes them a success is that they can play with 80’s metal chops, busting out tight double bass drum licks, start-stop poly-rhythms, and full on thrashing, neck shredding solos, but they keep the economical song lengths and structures of classic hardcore/punk. Take for instance the topical “Super Tuesday” a song about, what else, the election process in the USA. At only a minute, it works off a standard start-stop vs/ch/vs/mosh structure hundreds of hardcore songs have used before and after it. But when you listen to how tight the chops are in the speedy paddle beats, hear the ringing of the chrous effect on the guitars, and the excess of reverb drenching on everything, it’s pretty obvious these guys were not purists. Despite the fact that tons of hardcore bands tried to perform a similar balancing act with their songwriting, few really executed it as well as the Crumbsuckers. Oh and how could I wait til now to mention Chris Notaro’s command of the mic. Seriously this guy is one of the best ever. Not a hint of any kind of actual singing. Without naming names, there were an awful lot of NYHC bands that, when it came time to make a big-time lp on a metal label, delivered vocals that attempted to be more accessible, complete with singy/clean vocals and attempts to stay on key, like bargain bin Anthrax vocals. Obviously that stuff is not cool. Fear not then, because Notaro’s delivery has the kind of glass-gargled, rabid freakouts that are in the same class as Victim In Pain, Thou Shalt Not Kill, et. al. Every song he delivers his gurgling pissed-off fury perfectly, always on time, always clear, and always hard.What more can you ask for? You even get one of the weirdest lp covers ever. I have no idea what’s going on and I’m just going to assume it was conceived on drugs.

Gloomy doomy crusty…

Onslaught - Power From Hell is in some ways pretty advanced for 1985. This is the foundation that a lot of later Crust Metal and Death Metal were built upon. Released on Pusmort/Children of the Revolution originally, Power From Hell takes  a relatively extreme crossover style up for its time. There’s a good deal of COC, Discharge, and GBH in the mix here, but with heavy doses of Venom, early Slayer, Bathory, and Sodom. Onslaught were a UK band, and their influence on subsequent groups from the country, like Bolt Thrower, Hell Bastard, and Axegrinder is plainly evident, although the lyrical content, which is mainly of the demons/Satan/evil/Hell variety is totally different. I guess the main thing is that Onslaught were a little more ragged than your average Deathrash band of the day. Harder vocals, more chugging mosh riffs, and still a discernible musical connection to punk.

Of course a big reason this was snatched up by punk rockers is that it was on a punk label and had the Pushead endorsement which might have been a little more worthwhile before he was doing Cocobat CDs and weird action figures. I’d imagine for some people who picked this up, it was the first time they heard real down and dirty underground metal, and thus served as an adequate point of entry. Actually it’s worth mentioning that a lot of songs just rip off Venom and then add some chugging skank riffs to pad things out. Take for instance “DEATH METAL” not to be confused with Possessed’s song of the same name, and having very little in common sonically with the genre that subsequently took the same name. This one is basically a retread of Venom’s “Black Metal” (also very unlike what we call Black Metal now), right down to the the speed-rockin’ verse, and the ascending chorus with the repeated shouting of the song title. The reality of it is that early Venom really is only a degree or two off the first couple GBH lps anyway, which really must have primed this for punk consumption.

As you may have noticed this is a pressing on green vinyl out of an unknown number (probably a few hundred) and that combined with the Pushead label makes it fairly desirable.

…oh and 1 day left on these: http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZtrem_two

A couple worth checking out:

• You Breed Like Rats blog interviews Jay Fox from United Mutation –>
  • part 1 and part 2.
• http://bidhardcore.muxtape.com/ we’ll update this from time to time for our own titillation 
• new IRON AGE single is out/another boring painkiller ad.
• and bid on these: CC’s Auctions

A couple auctions you might have missed:

• ANTI CIMEX RAPED ARSE - $275
• Bad Brains tee - $215
• Life’s Blood - Defiance 7″ (Lord Jesus sleeve) - $207

Aside from test pressings and whatnot, this is the rarest H-100’s item that I know of the Dismantle 7″ on clear vinyl w/ a clear cover. Supposedly there’s 25 that are numbered and another 25, like this one that aren’t numbered. Ignorant, raw, and violent as fuck, the H-100’s rep has grown and grown since their brief existence, and the members have gone on to be in almost every subsequent hardcore/punk band from Cleveland worth caring about. As I’ve said in a previous Inmates entry, this is practically the only thing from the mid-90s in the USA that actually still matters. While everyone else was into who knows what (Screeching Weasel? Submission Hold? Outspoken?) these demented boys were rabidly devouring and regurgitating the best thrashing hardcore from Japan (Systematic Death - who they later covered, Gauze, The Comes, etc.) and chasing it with the self destructive hi-jinks (and sounds) of some of the most classic and low-brow American bands (Poison Idea, Battalion Of Saints, the Nihilistics). Oh there was also copious amounts of drug abuse and violent live shows I’ve only heard about involving various projectiles, weapons, and general misanthropic activity. I mean this is how legends are made, you do something cool, you mix it with something crazy, and then you break up. I believe in total there were something like 15 H-100’s shows over a couple years, maybe someone can confirm this in the comments section.

Dismantle remains my favorite, and their most collectible record, self released on Bloodclot Records with a graphic of a giant syringe stuck in a dude’s back on the front and tracks with titles like “Gonna Knock Your Teeth Out”, “Ain’t Too Young To Die”, and “Panic Attack” it really doesn’t leave much to the listener’s imagination. So many bands kick a specific image on their records, they sing about politics they have no involvement in, or personal ideals no human being could live up to, in other words they stretch the truth and lie. Well reader, here is a record that tells the truth. It tells it like it is. Every word, and every sound is the truth. The violence and depravity and buzzsaw guitars and skull bash drums - it’s not fake. Even the recording itself is just as direct and truthful. There’s no absurd over production or studio trickery, nor is there any excess distortion or noise pumped into the mix to make it sound “more raw”. You just hear 4 men getting sweaty in a room together making noise for themselves and anyone else who might “get it”.

“I was born/so now I suffer…”

A rarely seen, but much less valuable than the colored vinyl edition of Youth Of Today’s “Break Down The Walls” is this black and yellow sleeve variant on Wishingwell records. I may be wrong but I think this might have been pressed after the Revelation edition already existed. I’ve heard some number like 250 copies thrown around for how many were made but I have no idea where to confirm that. There’s some speculation as to whether this edition was entirely approved by the band and may have been produced to fill out left over vinyl from the first press. I’ve heard a variety of stories, none of which have been corroborated with any hard evidence. All I know is that you see this version very infrequently. I want to kind of speculate and say that sometime in the future more people are going to realize how hard this one is to find and start paying more for it, but right now it usually doesn’t break $100. If you’re a hard-core YOT fan this is the kind of thing you’re going to be happy to get sooner rather than later.

While you’re looking, you can pick up We’re Not In This Alone, and Can’t Close My Eyes 12″ edition, and a bunch of other later 80’s NY-Centric releases.

Oh, and don’t forget THESE.

Nothing on earth is more volatile and threatening than a screaming woman. I’m quite sure that this is why, when you get one with a killer voice in a hardcore band, it’s always a homerun. Right up there at the top of the heap for female fronted hc bands (and as we all know it’s a boys club here) is Brain Death from Japan and their classic Personal Affair 7″. Musically it’s all straight ahead thrash which is pretty fitting for Japan at the time (’87). Definitely reminds me a bit of a lot of the britcore bands like Heresy, Ripcord, Intense Degree, etc. but there’s plenty of bands from their native land that mined similar territory (S.O.B., Outo, Systematic Death, and many more). There might even be a little D.R.I. in the mix but I guess that’s sort of implied. The guitars have a nice broken up over driven sound, not too much treble or static-y distortion, but nice and crunchy, and the bass is clean but has a lot of body and thickness. Good crash and bang drums that sound very roomy and lively, propel the music well and sound pretty good for the time period, if a tad low in the mix on some songs.

Vocalist Sachi is really what puts things over the top though. Absolutely frantic and awesome, she spits with the same lightspeed type delivery as the rest of the instruments with very few breaks between parts. I can’t imagine songs like this were easy to sing at such a high speed. I guess it’s somewhat novel to hear a woman sing for a band that’s doing such meat and potatoes thrash and just absolutely destroy all the guttural barking male vocalists who’ve sung to the same style of music. Maybe it’s just the slightly higher pitch and different timbre that make it sound more urgent and powerful, or maybe she’s just really good at yelling. More likely it’s both of these things.

 You really shouldn’t have to drop more than $20-30 on one of these and if you like paddle beats and speed with the occasional contrasting Cryptic Slaughter style breakdown or solo, you really can’t go wrong here.

…and now for a quick commercial: I’ve got some items of my own on ebay. Mostly just doubles, or stuff I picked up for trade that just sat around for a while. Have a look and do some bidding: http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZtrem_two

As noted in the past I don’t really spend much time listening to Government Issue these days, but Legless Bullis still a cult classic, although not quite as earth shaking as many of the records that came out from the same time and place. The songs aren’t quite as thrashing as S.O.A., not as hard as Youth Brigade, and just not as all around great as Minor Threat. To flip a popular turn of phrase, if Legless Bull weren’t on Dischord in 1981, I suspect it would be a $30-40 record at best. This isn’t really to say it’s not good, but just that it’s not great. For proof of this check out the Dischord boxset which has Ian Mackaye singing a version of Asshole, a song found on here. He’s just able to make a lot more of an otherwise unremarkable song.

I saw a band cover Rock ‘n Roll Bullshit recently and I couldn’t help but wonder why? Are they aspiring to be a footnote? I guess I’m coming down a bit hard on the G.I.’s here. They were DC’s band for a chunk of the 80’s and turned out plenty of non-embarrassing tunes in their career. The test pressings of early Dischord singles seem to be a little rarer than most of the lps. probably 8 or 12 pressed, so if you’re a DCHC completist, or Dischord for that matter, this is going to be a choice pick-up for you. I know there are some G.I. fans out there so feel free to bust on me for not giving Stabb his due.

Btw - the seller here has a bunch of other big ticket items that you’re gonna want to have a look at.

Metal Mon. #26 is here.

Today I’ve got some tasty cross-over in the form of Sacrilege B.C.’s - Party With God. They’re still only my 2nd favorite Sacrilege, but this is a pretty awesome album ala Money Talks era-Cryptic Slaughter and Thrash Zone era DRI, with some Reign in Blood influence mixed in as well. A nice middle ground between hardcore and 80’s metal. Most of the songs are 2 or 3 minutes, so you won’t find any sort of Master Of Puppets epics on here, just full on thrashing, and speed. Party With God might be one of the Bay Area’s best kept secrets. It’s held in the highest regard by any metalhead past or present that you meet from there but it failed in making a sizable impact outside of that area. Maybe this was partly because it was on a punk label (Alchemy), which is also well known for doing Poison Idea’s ”War All The Time” (congrats too Cooch for just getting a test press), The Melvins “Gluey Porch Treatments”, RKL’s “Rock ‘N Roll Nightmare”, Neurosis’  Pain Of Mind, and lesser known gems like Parnoia’s “Many Faces” lp.

There’s not a whole lot to distinguish Sacrilege from the pack I guess, they’re strictly a genre band, but if you love the sound of a scooped Jackson guitar being abused by 16th note tremelo-picked riffs that cascade on top of eachother, Party With God has the cheap thrills you desire in spades; there’s plenty of stupidly nonsensical solos and dive bombs drenched in chorus too.  The predictably typical lyrics are shouted in a good monotone (no singing!), about the usual stuff - the devil, nuclear war, comic books. If you’re looking for a band that took thrashing to new heights, try a little record called Leave Scars, but if you’re cool with predictable, but endeeringly scrappy USA thrash here it is.