bidhardcore.com
hardcore records on ebay — aggregated and examined
Can you believe there’s no active auctions for a Misfits - Halloween 7″ on ebay? What kind of Halloween are we having here anyway? How good of a Halloween can it even be?
Other crucial Halloweens:
- King Diamond - Halloween (Fatal Portrait, 1986)
- Sonic Youth - Halloween (Bad Moon Rising, 1985)
- Mudhoney - Halloween (split w/ Sonic Youth, 1988)
- Dead Kennedys - Halloween (Plastic Surgery Disasters –[i think?]– 1982)
This might be the best 7 Seconds record — Committed For Life. The recordings is the perfect rough and tumble early 80’s HC sound, and not all clean and polished like their later lps. The songs are some career bests, a couple were even rerecorded later on, but were never quite as good. It’s something about the band trying to be super tight and melodic, but not quite getting there all the way. Committed For Life, Drug Control, This Is Angry are classic mixes of british melodic oi/punk tendencies with Minor Threat’s delivery. Just fast humable tunes, and not anything close to pop punk. Love the sleeve on this too with the cartoon of the punks and skins and dayglo colors.
I don’t have a lot to say about 7 seconds, other than, they kinda went down hill from here. I still like everything up to (not including) New Wind, but the DIY vibe/sound of their first 2 EPs and some of the comp tracks just satisfies me more in some way.
There’s later pressings of this but the original is on Squirtdown (as I recall).
Not much bad you can say about this - arguably the best compilation from the USA in the early 80’s. It’s funny that such a great summation of the New England (mainly Boston) scene circa ‘82 can have notable absences like SS Decontrol and DYS, and still basically kick your ass top to bottom. Before getting into the nitty gritty let me break it into tiers here:
Tier 1:
- Jerry’s Kids (6 songs)
- Gang Green (7 songs)
- The Freeze (8 songs)
Tier 2:
- Decadence (unfortunately only 1 song)
- The Proletariat (3 songs)
- Groinoids (1 song)
Tier 3:
- The FU’s (4 songs)
From this info there’s a couple pieces of information you can glean. 1) The best bands on this comp have, by far, the most songs. 2) If the FU’s are the worst band on the comp, it must be a pretty good comp, and since I’ve mentioned them, let’s start from the bottom. The FU’s stuff on here is forgettable in light of their 3 lps. Overly simple, a little cute, but ultimately not that great. It’s still classic stuff, but I honestly never reach for it when I want to hear them.
Teir 2 finds one of the best punk novelty songs EVER in Decadence’s “Slam” which is a song about slam dancing, and features the all time classic line “gonna rip your Rock Lobster shirt”. The drumming, guitar riff, and vocals are all caveman style, totally as low as you can go, which to me makes the song better. I really wish they had more songs on here, and I’ve even heard they have a lost demo tape. I believe Dave Collins of DYS is on drums here. The Proletariat were like a baby Wire/GoF type band. Not really as interesting or nervy as those bands could be, and the song Religion is the Opium of the Masses is interminable, but their other 2 tracks, especially Options are pretty good. The singer definitely throws his voice to sound British which is pretty lame, but it could be worse. The Groinoids are probably the worst band in a conventional sense on the comp. Just totally out of time nonsense, but at this point that tends to be more enjoyable for me.
Now to the heart of this thing. Jerry’s Kids, Gang Green, and The Freeze all deliver enough material here to fill their own 7″s, and sometimes I wish these songs were released like that. Jerry’s Kids bust it out like a tighter, well oiled version of SOA maybe. It’s not that much like their XClaim lp but still extremely catchy and great. These are some of my favorite hardcore songs ever. Gang Green probably produced their best songs ever in this session. They were still high school aged at this time, and the songs thrash and burn with teenaged hormonal imbalance. Vocalist Chris Doherty’s screeching and cracking delivery is still one of the all time greats to this day. Actually they remind me of a more out of control Urban Waste at this stage. The songs are almost all a blur of speed and fuzz and crazy yelling. Never again would Gang Green come close to this. The Freeze’s offering are the beginning of their Hardcore era, and personally I think their best material ever recorded too. The songs are garagey and tuneful, snotty as hell, and they stick with you forever after. Of course even though they were actually from Cape Cod, they turned in the title track “Boston Not LA”.
There is a boot of this but I believe the labels were changed AND it doesn’t include the original inner sleeve/lyric sheet.
Noothgrush/Corrupted split 12″:
Noothgrush and Corrupted may not really fit as metal bands in a strict sense, but they also don’t fit as hardcore, and I really like this split. I think it’s good enough for either genre really. Both bands turn in lengthy sludge numbers that ooze misery on this.
Corrupted remind me a lot of Hellhammer, but slowed down, to a Winter kind of pace. Really simple, repetitive, and oppressive. Their first track (Inactive) clocks just shy of 20 minutes and feels sinister and hypnotic. Like the thoughts in someones head plotting something really bad. The second track (Estar En Visper) while only about 5 minutes, seems to go even a little slower, and serves as a little outro. The time between each drum hit feels like an eternity, it gives you time to contemplate the next one. It’s as hopeless as the last. A track of feedback squalls on top of the mechanical grind adding a different texture to compliment all the low end.
On the Noothgrush side, things really aren’t much different. The 6 minute opener (Hatred For The Species) does use some variety in tempo and has a swampy, sub-EHG style riff tossed into the intro. Actually the vocals aren’t a lot different from Mike Williams delivery either. Drazie is the second track, and runs at about 14 minutes. This happens to be (probably) my favorite Noothgrush song. Some people have tried to suggest there’s something wrong with this band because of their name (it rhymes with toothbrush). I’m of the belief that few bands did the sludge/hc crossover better in the 90s, and frankly a lot tried. Draize is just completely tormented, hateful, and crushing. It takes you to a place that’s dark, and I would not recommend listening to it if you’re an emotionally unstable individual. I think Noothgrush were one of the best at two things: crafting extremely severe riffs, and illustrating the detestable nature inherent in mankind. There’s nothing joyful or empowering in either of these band’s offerings. As if to make sure there’s no doubt in that, Noothgrush turns in a cover of Neanderthal’s “Crawl” on the end of their side that sounds quite good. That’s about as close to fun as things get though.
Well it’s fall again and it’s getting cold quick this time. You can’t really blame me for the sense of melancholy that’s set in on my day to day. Yea I know… “wah wah wah“, but there’s something about the fall, as well as the spring that always brings me back to Moss Icon. I could get philosophical and say that their music mostly deals with death and rebirth, and that’s why. I’m not sure if that’s philosophical or just accurate though.
I bought the Mahpiua Luta 7″ out of a box of used records at some crust show in ‘03 for $5. I was psyched, then I went to see Lost In Translation and fell asleep in the theatre. I think over time I’ve determined Mahpiua Luta has my 2 favorite Moss Icon songs. It’s a hair more subdued than their demo or first E.P. but in some ways it’s the best summation of their sound, the right amount of each ingredient in the mix.
The Life is the a-Side and is similar to their first single, but has a contemplative slower beginning, when it kicks in, it’s a quick mid-paced track, it actually reminds me a lot of the Ignition 7″s. The lyrics are mostly oblique references to loss and being unable to let go of something. The b-side, Kick The Can, goes further into contemplative territory, with vocalist John Vance acting as little more than a narrator to an abstract tale with a desert backdrop. Because of the desert imagery and downcast vibe that permeate the song, I’m sort of reminded of the quieter numbers on Meat Puppets II, although without the country influence. I think for American post hardcore it’s a really good song, actually I think both songs on the record are. As I’ve said in the past, John Vance is the only vocalist I find convincing with the shout/talk quasi-poet delivery.
There’s 3 or 4 different sleeves that turn up for this. All with the same image, but some have it glued to a manila envelope, some are folding sleeves, some I think are glued sleeves. I’ve never actually seen pressing numbers though, so I hereby appeal to the readers to post some info.
This one’s a record NO ONE remembers, unless they’re from Deleware circa ‘89: Infection “Legal Limit” lp. I found this in some dust covered bin about a year ago, and bought it for a few bucks just to check out. I was a little uncertain about potential sketchy politics based on the cover looking like some bogus white power record, but later confirmed that Infection never dabbled in such garbage (in fact there’s even a bonus rap track on here).
When I popped this on, I found it was a nice forgotten slab of metallic, would-be-NYHC, with the right amount of ineptitude and attitude. This has the familiar feel of all the classic In Effect releases like Brightside, Liberty and Justice, Blood Sweat and No Tears, with some Warzone and Breakdown vibes in there too. Hardheaded HARDcore, with metal guitars and everything dripped in cheap reverb. If it were a NY band I think they would have had no trouble being an accepted part of that scene, but Delaware is a hundred miles away, and though Philly is close by, it’s just not the same.
The record opens with a good galloping intro (a pit starter), before going into Same Set Of Eyes. Their singer immediately reminds me of an imitation of Roger Miret and Raybeez. I guess he doesn’t get originality points but he does it pretty well. The song has a nice chunky mosh beat for the main riff almost like Altercation or something. United is your standard punks and skins vs. society anthem that could be a late 80’s Warzone outtake. Most of the rest of the record touches on all the things you’d expect, but also with a lot of love for drinking/being drunk (hence the title). Actually what probably hurt Infection’s popularity more than being Delawarians, is that they were adamantly No-Edge (that’s 80’s slang for anti-Straight Edge if you’re a little slow on the come up). While this might fly just fine nowadays, it seems like a risky proposition in ‘89/’90 at the absolute height of Straight Edge when your sound will basically only appeal to angry suburban boys with pent up frustrations. With the exception of legit agitators like Sheer Terror, or fun kinda bands like Murphy’s Law, most of the big non-edge bands seemed to not rip into it too much - i.e. Agnostic Front sending out Strength “to the sxe kids”. Maybe in NY you could build a following being a No-Edge band, but for a fairly generic sounding band from Delaware, with a ghetto looking lp sleeve, well, forget about it.
So, really though, this is a pretty good album, and if you like this style I think you’re bound to enjoy it. It’s definitely better than a lot of the also-rans of the time like Fit Of Anger or Gut Instinct. There’s also a previous 7″ with a different singer, and of course some demos, but I think I like this album the best. $30 is a lot to pay for it but maybe you just want it nowand don’t want to wait around (we call that a convenience fee). When they pop up for sale at stores they’re nearly always $6 or less because no store actually knows what it is. Unfortunatly if you try to find one online pretty much any dealer will price it at $20 or higher just because it’s on a small label and it’s late 80’s hc.
Mosh it up.
Cold Sweat, for me was the band more than any other in my era that could not catch the break they deserved. I first heard them when I bought a copy of their debut lp Severed Ties. For sale on ebay now is a sealed (???) test pressing of that lp.It came out of the gate scrappy and deranged, mixing up the noise attack of Rorschach’s best moments, with the straight forward anger of the first Infest lp, the misanthropy and bottled up anger exploding out of each track in a burst of chaos. I firmly believe that it’s still as potent today as it was then, whereas most lps I bought in 2002/2003 were a time and place, their potency waned by the passage of time. This wasn’t a time when we were all ass deep in “weird”/off-kilter HC and punk either. This music got played because it had to, which is obviously what makes it great.
Fuck The Flock opens the album with the kind of rabid, violent rush that I feel when I listen to Antidote or No Comment. Blazing, dangerous thrash. A vocalist in kill mode. Smashed up drums and random notes punctuate each measure when the breakdown comes, although they barely slow down for it. My Rights dishes out a staggering start stop end-piece, like an update on the classic Die Kreuzen sound. Kept In Chains lets the thrash assault start the proceedings but then starts dismantling it piece by piece. By the time the half way point comes, the song is reduced to swells of noise and cymbal crashes with ranting voice-in-your-head type vocals. Kicking and Screaming comes close to a Black Flag kind of tempo, but with less precision, teetering on the edge of collapse even as the band is trying to control itself. Still it manages to heighten the tension at the half way point effectively. Side B gets deeper and the thrashing continues to be pushed to the side for more heavy parts. Longer buildups, like Abortion Is Dinner, and lurching start stop action like Cross In A Bottle’s feedback blasts, finally ending with obligatory dirging outro.
Be sure to peep the seller’s other auctions too. A few good joints in there.
Good morning to all. Today M. Colin Tappe returns to drop some UK82 knowledge and opinion.Here ’tis: 2008 collector scum market getting you down? Tired of seeing 3rd and 4th tier unpolished turds hitting triple digits? Well, in times like these it may seem like you either gotta give up and go mp3punk (in 2008 we may have progressed to FLACcore, I dunno) or just bite the bullet and start paying the going rate for the records you want, even if the going rate is about twice as much as when you originally wanted them a few years back; sink or swim, if you will. There’re other options, of course, like hunting down stuff from various regions that haven’t quite shown up on the collector radar yet, “digging deeper,” all that, OR, you can quit being a fucking crybaby and embrace picking up decent condition vinyl with “punk condition” sleeves at 2001 ebay prices.
For instance, take this here Ultra Violent ep which looks like it was boiled for 5 minutes, stuck to a wall with wheat paste and peeled off like a bandaid after it dried, BUT, has pretty much perfect wax. You gonna kick this full fledged banger out of bed if it goes for less than $20? If you do you’re a fool, I say, or worse, have those things I’ve heard about called “standards.”The Ultra Violent ep has a pretty big cult following, and for whatever reason seems to be the only Riot City or even UK82 release I see on a lot of USHC collectors’ wantlists (I’ve heard some speculate this is due to their inclusion on the first Killed By Hardcore comp, but I’m pleading ignorance on that one). The scarcity of this record makes sense, as it was put out in ’83, towards the end of Riot City’s boom when punk 7”s stopped selling 1,000 copies in a matter of weeks in the UK, and by the tail end of ‘83 Riot City and No Future would stick to putting out 12” eps instead, but sonically, this record’s appeal amongst non-UKHC collectors has always confused me a bit. I mean, I guess one could say they sound a bit like USHC fist bangers Battalion of Saints, NOTA, Pig Children, etc., but realistically they have way more in common with their countrymen Broken Bones or GBH (who the aforementioned US bands were biting off of as well). Of course saying you’re into Ultra Violent gets you cool points, whereas writing GBH on your jacket if you’re not a teenager caries with it a certain stigma, so I’m guessing that has something to do with this record’s appeal. Having killer artwork and an intimidating title doesn’t hurt either.
All that shit’s silly to think about though, ‘cause really, this is a scorcher no matter how you slice it. You get the standard blaring, treble-heavy Riot City production with about a million guitar tracks it sounds like, and a ferocious singalong right out the gate. The mastering on all these old singles is way bright and in your face, which compliments the tunage perfectly. Fuck, it seriously makes me want to give up on life and live in a cave when I think about how even a factory style dummy punk label like Riot City was able to consistently crank out these rich, sonically perfect sounding records that still sound great after a quarter of a century or jamming, and when you pay $30 for some deluxe reissue these days it’s nothing but clipping, artificially loud mastering and surface pops fresh out of the packaging. Ugh.
But wait, we’re still talking about the good things in life, the Ultra Violent ep. The b-side starts out with a mid-paced skanker, “Where Angels Dare Not Tread,” and the ep finishes off with “Dead Generation,” which is just as fast and ragin’ as “Crime For Revenge,” though not quite as memorable.The singer Adie went on to sing on English Dogs’ fucking PERFECT “To The Ends of the Earth” 12,” and just by singing on those two records the dude’s gotta have one of the best hardcore resumes out there. According to Ian Glasper’s Burning Britain book, there was 4 songs recorded for this session, the unreleased track going under the name “Sign of the Times” and there’s a 4 track demo, neither of which I’ve heard, so hopefully someone’s industrious enough to put some effort into doing a nice reissue.
Master s/t lp:
Master will never truly get the respect they deserve from the heavy metal community. I saw them last night in Boston in front of maybe 30 or 40 people. Paul Speckmann, their only constant member (since 1984!) seemed over the fact that Master will never be as popular as most of the bands they influenced, but you can’t help but thinking the guy deserved more. Speckmann constantly juggled his way through bands in the 80’s and along with Master, did great recordings with Deathstrike, Funeral Bitch, and Abomination. Sometimes he would reuse one band’s songs in the other, and they all have sonic similarities, but probably his most legendary recording is the Master unreleased 1985 lp. They obtained a contract with Combat in 1985, who released debuts for other formative American death metal bands like Possessed and Death, but somewhere along the line something went wrong. Master’s crushing debut lp never saw the light of day, and instead lingered in tape trading obscurity for years. It’s a shame because it’s one of the rawest most primitive death metal recordings ever made anywhere.
Around 1990 or so Speckmann secured a contract with Nuclear Blast Records (Germany) and released lps by both Abomination and Master that year. This became Master’s official debut lp. Most of the album was comprised of old cuts from their unreleased lp, plus a couple of new songs, a cover, and a song or two from a Deathstrike demo. While this doesn’t have the bludgeoning rawness of the 1985 version, Master’s s/t lp is still a great piece of crushing, primal metal. Like if Discharge dropped into C, and was fronted by Chuck Schulinder. Even with the 90’s sheen it still is a powerhouse. ”You are the master”.
Mind Eraser meets Speckmann
The year I moved to Boston was the same year that a big 90’s Straight Edge band from Boston, Ten Yard Fight, played their last show in the city. At that show someone declared today (October 17) National Edge Day. Actually it was my friend Pete who declared it, and the next year the band he was in (In My Eyes) played their last show to repeat the celebration from the year before. Ever since then, there’s been some sort of celebration of… well Straight Edge Hardcore by most of my friends in this city. It usually involves ice cream, crucial records, hooded sweatshirts… To outsiders I understand it makes no sense, but fuck ‘em, some of the most fun times in my life have been spent on those days. I guess it proves nothings better than good friends, and knowing that you’re better than everyone who drinks beer for fun (duh). I was going to post a variety of pictures of classic SE records, but as it turned out they’re all of the NY/CT variety. Boston only had like 4 or 5 notable Straight Edge bands until the 90’s though so I don’t exactly have a lot to work with. Happy Edge Day to all, and to all a good mosh.
