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So I was out on the town last night with some of the guys, and by that I mean we went to get some burgers on a Monday, and Voorhees came up in the Ipod shuffle. We switched off the shuffle and started going through our fav Voorhees jams, you know how it is:

“play this one…”

“which is the one that starts out…”

“what record is Death To Pigs on?”

Anyway a while back I wrote about their first 7″, Violent, which is a thrashing HC classic, but the first Voorhees record I actually heard was the What You See Is What You Get 7″, which collects songs from a few different comps or splits on one record, and was made for one of their US tours. It’s also kind of the last really great Voorhees release. Following this there was a turnover in most of the members of the band, and they took on a bit of a different more metal influenced sound. Eventually they did get back to basics and returned to fast hardcore, but it was a bit of a weird trajectory.

At any rate, What You See Is What You Get served as a great introduction to the band. 8 raw throated skull smashers that last about as many minutes when all tallied up. A bit of the old Boston sound (SSD/DYS/NFX — the song Swamped on here even borrows the “Protester” drum beat from Negative FX) and a bit of the old Britcore sound (Heresy/Ripcord/Intense Degree) all crammed into one package. Ian Leck as usual brought the most threatening and throaty delivery to this and the fucking drumming on this (I believe courtesy Michael Gillham) is some of the finest fast skin bashing ever. Jams like Power Trip hurtle their way from one fast part to another, as meat and potatoes as hardcore can get, but that’s the appeal. No melody, no slow stuff, and one single focused emotion, anger. 

This might be kind of a bummer, but my favorite track on this record is actually a cover. In fact it’s one of my all time favorite covers of any band of any genre. The song is “Hinkley Had a Vision” by the Crucifucks, but it’s transformed into the most mean sounding, ‘about-to-snap’ anthem you could imagine. A lot of it is because of the difference in the Crucifucks whiny vocal squeal and Voorhees low growl, but it’s played with more balls out authority in the musical department as well. I’m not actually sure the members of the Crucifucks would approve, I’d wager that Doc Dart would find it to be fascist or something. But when the music cuts out and you’re left with the infamous rant “I wanna take the president/chop off his head/and mail it to them in a garbage bag” in Leck’s thuggish limey bark instead of Dart’s squawk, you feel a surge of sinister power.

 I think the copies with white covers of this record are actually the “tour edition” made in ‘96 (Mister Leck if you still check this blog please confirm). There’s a more common version w/ a black cover. Neither goes for much money so I’d recommend people picking either one before people start to get wise to this band again. One of the best of their decade.

Oh post script, I think all of these guys are still doing music. I know Michael Gillham is doing some sludge punk in the form of Drunk In Hell, and Lecky sings in Meatlocker (did a good lp last year).

Oh one last thing non-Voorhees related: Hatred Surge “Isolated Human” e.p. is out now on Painkiller Records. Grinding violence.