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hardcore records on ebay — aggregated and examined
“Brutal” is an adjective that folks throw around wily nily these days. It’s no big deal to a lot of people. Brutal this, BRUTAL that, FUCKIN’ BRUTAL SLUDGE RIFFS BRO, etc. It’s really overused y’know? Brutality, when it’s real, is something that’s primitive and savage. It feels violent at its core, no matter what “it” happens to be (a song, a word, a building). It’s governed by something that’s neither modern, nor refined, nor civilized.
Showing or suggesting a disposition to be violently destructive without scruple or restraint.
Follow me?
YDI - A Place In The Sun (1983).
The cover is a black and white shot with a coarse film grain. The scene is a WWI battlefield littered with dead bodies. One is being picked at by a wolf. Might be a dog actually.
A Place In The Sun opens with a distorted guitar line, much like you’re used to, but also not at all like you’re used to. It sounds like the band was using an older amplifier that didn’t have an actual distortion channel to record with. They compensated for this by cranking the gain knob to its loudest volume, but finding this was still not distorted enough, elected to record the guitar with the mixer actually peaking into the red so as to further distort the sound. It produces something much thicker, much more abrasive, than anything I’ve ever heard. Like Blue Cheer - “Vincebus Eruptum” trying to kill you. It’s a unique, uncivilized sound, with serious weight and presence. The drums and bass come in bashing in a way that almost equals the guitar sound. Reckless and LOUD.
When vocalist Jackal makes his entrance it’s clear that he’s on par with the rest of the racket. He snarls and intimidates and growls and howls and seethes all the way through each song. His teeth sound clenched and his sanity questionable. Thuggish doesn’t even begin to describe it. Unsafe might would be an understatement. A Place In The Sun is of the same tradition as No Policy, and Can’t Tell No One. Though it may not have been as ground breaking or historically important, it’s every bit as good. This is the sound of real violent youth in a post apocalyptic world. This music is physical. It crashes against your body with measurable and seismic force. Wood breaking glass. Metal striking concrete. Bricks hitting bones.
Chew on song titles like “Out For Blood”, “Mad At The World”, “Get Up and Fight”, “Not Shit” — YDI (I should have mentioned before that’s pronounced WHY DIE?) are as blunt as a baseball bat, and as capable of inducing trauma. It’s 1983, you’re standing up front, Jackal is wearing a studded leather vest and a Damaged t-shirt swinging a mic at you. There’s a good chance you’ll leave missing teeth or with glass stuck in your scalp.
Brutal.
There’s actually a pretty interesting story behind the title and cover, which is a detail from the 1935 John Heartfield poster of the same name, using a collage image of dead Italian soldiers being gnawed upon by hyenas to provide ironic counterpoint to Mussolini’s declaration that he wanted “to provide his people with a Place in the Sun”, as his army overran Ethiopia.
Heartfield was a British anti-fascist artist of the time; his artwork has also shown up on records by Discharge (the famed “Never again” graphic of the dove impaled on a bayonet) and Siouxsie & the Banshees (the “Mittageisen” 45 sleeve), among others.
Great entry on one of the sickest hardcore disks to come out. I totally agree with the Can’t Tell No One parallel. “Like Blue Cheer trying to kill you” = awesome.
BTW: Heartfield was a Weimar-era German, active in the Berlin dada movement. Heartfield is an anglicized version of his real name Herzfeld. Missing Foundation also snagged some Heartfield photomontages for some poster art.
Hey where do you guys get those sick YDI shirts? I believe it’s a tour shirt or something but I’m assuming someone recently screened them because I know I’ve seen at least 2 people rocking them around Boston including you.