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hardcore records on ebay — aggregated and examined
Dropdead/Crossed Out split ep. One of the gasps of greatness from the original power violence wave, and one to foreshadow awful 2nd wave trends. For one this is a 5″. The funniest looking, worst sounding format there is. For another it’s a three-way label split. YIKES.
Regardless this is some of the finest material by both bands. Actually in the case of Crossed Out its some of the ONLY material. Kind of a mind melter, but the Crossed Out 7″ was recorded in September of ‘91, this split in February of ‘92, and their second split in October of ‘92. In other words the output of one of the most influential bands in extreme music was all laid to tape at various intervals over about 400 days (unless you count the demo where they’re not really full formed yet). One of the more striking aspects of this Crossed Out material is that it’s much more muddy and lofi than their previous 7″. It’s full of tape hiss, and has almost no treble whatsoever. The vocals are high in the mix and distorted as hell, with the guitar and bass making a thick wall of mud, and the drums sounding like a cave man beating on animal skins.
Dropdead has been a little more prolific but I’m pretty sure their tracks on here are still in the live set. About 2 minutes and change of high speed, lo-fi crusty grind core… or power violence, or whatever, and it sounds pretty much how they’ve sounded ever since. A blitzkrieg of simple speedy riffs, shrieking throat ripping vocals, and a collision of d-beatish parts, and SSD at double speed. It’s great how much the original hardcore paradigm is just simplified and compacted into the simplest most streamlined form here. Yea there’s bands that have taken it further or gone more extreme, but this is still fully recognizable as hardcore, even though every track runs like 15 or 20 seconds. Only thing that’s kind of annoying - it’s impossible for me to play this side without it starting a couple seconds into the first song, but I’m sure people have been griping about that since it came out.
Brian if you’re reading this please post about smoking pot and playing sonic the hedgehog with Crossed Out on tour w/ Dropdead. That would be sweet. Only 1000 made ever, and a handful of 7″ versions in the form of test pressings.
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I never knew this was so rare, there used to be multiple copies of this record, just sitting in the 7″ bin at Fallout records in Seattle. This was before “powerviolence” became really big and watered down. I have the same problem with this record playing too. The best 5″ that actually plays from beginning to end is the Melvins 5″. I haven’t listened to this record in years!
it’s fairly easy to come by, but has been going up in value i guess since the whole 4th(?) wave of PV bands hit over drive a couple years ago.
You are incorrect when you say there are 1000 pressed, there are 2 different pressings on this. 1000 on one, and 2000 on another. The first press is a FOUR label split, not three, the labels are: Rhetoric, Selfless, Crust, Crust West. Second press is between 5 labels: Selfless, Posthumous, Crust, Crust West, Japankore
ahh i guess i wasn’t counting Crust West as a seperate label. Also didn’t know about the 2nd press, I was looking @ my copy (evidently first press) when I wrote this up.
there’s also a super-rare version of the 5″ which comes with an orange cover, apparently limited to only 23 copies… i have one for trade or sale. and of course i can send scans and detailed info (matrix numbers, etc.). drop a line if you’re interested…to: leoferrand AT yahoo DOT it.