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Found this Die Kreuzen s/t 12″ on red vinyl. I think the red ones are a mid-80’s pressing but they’re definitely hard to come by, and of course T&G has since deleted the vinyl from their catalog.

Die Kreuzen’s s/t 12″ was a life changer for me. I hadn’t really heard a hardcore album that had so much unsettling atmosphere and creepiness, and found the tightness of everything rather disarming too. The vocals are an unearthly shriek, later copied on the first Rorschach lp, although not really with the same level of all out ferocity. The drumming rhythmic and churning, often staccato resulting in a more precise interplay between the drumming and the guitars than was common in hardcore in 1984, at others, getting lost in vengeful hardcore freak outs. The guitars buzz and ring with liberal amounts of chorus and echo applied so that they’re left sounding alien and disharmonious. It’s almost mechanical the way the band is locked into eachother. I think this is the kind of syncronized experience Ginn always strived for with Black Flag, but never quite picked the right people to execute. Not to say this is a Black Flag clone, although maybe it is the alienated small town midwest issolation version of their seedy Hollywood creepy crawl.

The sound of Die Kreuzen is just an unhealthy one. It’s feel-bad. It’s kind of the sound of someone who’s thinking too much put to music. Your mind races and spirals around and around and then gets stuck in slow motion for a minute before spiraling down again. You feel slow and stupid, suddenly you’re manic, you feel hot and dizzy and sweat, then it turns cold and your chest feels tight. It’s hard to breathe, you feel nauseous and your surroundings look dim.  They’re paranoid and intense, unearthly and almost hyper real. It’s a fever dream sucked into a chorus pedal.