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Crippled Youth - Join The Fight. The original little kid novelty band. Of course later they became Bold which you either love or hate, but Join The Fight is kind of hard to not enjoy. Pretty much these little guys sound like they owned 3 records, 7 Seconds - Skins Brains Guts, DYS - Brotherhood, and Youth of Today - Can’t Close My Eyes.  Speaking of which, did you see this copy of Can’t Close My Eyes on orange vinyl w/ the Batman stamp? If not, just click.

The best song, Can’t You See (sometimes known as I’m Straight), sounds like they’re going for a DYS type song. I think I like it more because it has a more serious vibe, and less of the fun/7 Seconds feel that the rest of the record has. That’s not to say that the fun songs aren’t a good listen too. Walk Tall, Walk Straight is probably the best of them with an end piece that has a little bit of groove to it (relatively). After that comes the well known Positive Scene where numerous prepubescent voices chant “It’s a Positive Positive Positive Scene”. Per square inch I feel like this might be the youth core record with the most backups ever. In Not Just Talk, they take over the entire chorus, in K-Town Mosh Crew the entire song. I feel like most of the spoof straight edge stuff like Crucial Youth and Straight Youth were based a good bit on this particular record, which would probably be falling into self parody if it wasn’t so determined to be serious.

At any rate there’s 3 official pressings of Join The Fight, each supposed to be out of 500 copies. The first press is all black vinyl, the second is on clear, and the 3rd is on black again. Some of the 2nd and 3rd press are have a BOLD stamp added to the sleeve because by that time they’d changed their name. In addition, some of each pressing have a guide ruler visible on the sleeve. Originally these were not supposed to be used, but when they ran out of good sleeves, the label started using them anyway. There’s also a bootleg via Germany from 1991 that has an obviously xeroxed cover, and different (yellow) labels.

 As for that Youth of Today on orange w/ the Batman stamp, only 100 made folks. I think the last one went over $500. These were made only for trading for action figures and other records by Jordan and Cappo so they don’t pop up all that often.

The Breakdown ‘87 demo, and subsequent pressing on 7″ vinyl, is one of the more polarizing releases of its time. It’s also in my estimation, one of the more important releases to ever come out of the NYHC scene. I mean historically it has an important place, and also creatively speaking I think it’s an important moment. Assholes will disagree. Idiots might not believe me. That’s fine I guess, Breakdown isn’t really for everyone, but it is for me. At the time this one came out people argued. It was reactionary, violent, tossed around a popular homophobic epithet in one song (although that track is actually not on the 7″ pressing of this), and not Straight Edge in the least.

Sick People busts out at the top of the tape and vinyl versions of this, and for better or worse it’s a turning point. It essentially questions the standard hardcore formula of playing a song fast, as it starts and remains throughout, heavy, chunky, and utterly mid-paced. Additional to that, it’s sonically one of the first instances of a hardcore band that doesn’t have an immediate connection to “punk”. The lyrics threaten violence on anyone that gets in the way, the riffs have a metallic crunch that nonetheless, doesn’t have much resemblance to any metal band of the day, the drumming sounds kind of like a gorilla fighting a drumset. It’s positively inept, but SO powerful. I often feel that the most interesting, and important bands are the ones that refit a pre-existing genre/sound to their own selves, and in the process create something genuinely new. Breakdown did this right out of the box. In 1987 this was the new sound of New York Hardcore.

Plenty of other bands had already tried to combine hardcore with metal, but generally they were just hardcore bands trying to switch to heavy metal that ended up meeting a sound somewhere in the middle. Again generally speaking, this usually came about as the technical skills of the musicians increased and they began to find hardcore “limiting”. In the case of Breakdown though, the metallic aspect of their sound was simply harnessing the bludgeoning ability of 80’s metal and crossover bands, while still maintaining the shouted hardcore vocals (and ‘true life’ lyrics), the simple song structures, and the raw musicianship of NYHC bands past. The sound is thuggish and mean the same way that early UK82 punk could be (threatening working class kids), but obviously with no similarity in the sound.

The second song Kickback, starts with a heavy sludge riff that kind of sounds like Sabbath gone street, but eventually gives way to an actual fast hardcore part. Even the hardcore part has more lurch it than normal though, more of a back beat; and when the caveman style buildup on the toms brings back the mosh part, it summons the most base instincts in the listener. It commands a show of male supremacy. Breakdown is a testosterone band. I cannot view them any other way. They sound like animals (lions and cheetahs) fighting somewhere.

Breakdown’s demo ‘87  is a pure statement of primitive anger. It’s hard headed and dirty and mean. In this era though, where high and low culture have essentially merged into one giant puddle of muck, I say this deserves to be as praised and recognized as early Motorhead or Stooges recordings in the greater rock lexicon. Swear to all the angels and saints I mean that without any irony, this shit was, is, and always shall be great.

“Both Demos”.

don’t forgetTHIS

Warzone Don’t Forget the Struggle, Don’t Forget the Streets
War Zone was one of the first hardcore bands I was ever aware of as a youth. Of course this was the 90’s so my introduction to them was their Victory years, but even a rerecorded version of Lower East Side Crew still has great songs, despite not being the genuine article. The first time I heard “Escape Your Society” from the Revelation comp, I never wanted to play a guitar solo so bad. The first one comes in just a few seconds after the start of the song with an absolute vengeance. It’s so short but it’s beyond perfect. I’m sure there’s a theoretical music college reason for that, but I don’t know it. It just sounds like all the right notes get hit. With the exception of one or two Dr. Know runs on the first Bad Brains album, it’s my favorite solo in a hardcore song. I studied that thing. Other than the rather loud ride cymbal throughout, I consider it a perfect hardcore song and my favorite War Zone track.

But Escape Your Society wouldn’t be half of what it is if it wasn’t for the Raybeez. “I can’t take it no more… I’m buggin out!”. The song rushes forward hereafter with Ray ranting from the perspective of a reformed drug addict whos had a few too many bad trips, rasping and growling all over the beat of the song. His vocals almost have an additional percussive element because, while they never go off-time, they shift and break against the tempo the same way the firey solos do.

The power of this song, and the classic As One (which it’s paired with), of course set the stage for War Zone’s first lp “Don’t Forget the Struggle, Don’t Forget The Streets”, originally self released by the band on Fist Records(you can tell the first pressing by the original hand written lettering on the back). I’ve mentioned before that Agnostic Front’s first lp is the ultimate summary of Hardcore music, and I stand by that, but I think DFTS occupies a similar, if somewhat different space in the NYHC lexicon in that it’s probably the most effective combination of all of the disparate elements of late 80’s New York City hardcore in one package. Street cred - check. Straight Edge - check. Skinheads - check. Metal licks - check. I suppose it doesn’t account for any sort of peace punk sentiment, but there is an underlying lack of trust in the government to their overt patriotism (I guess that’s libertarian in spirit). Regardless, War Zone manage to combine a lot of stuff that shouldn’t really go together here, and I think you have to give a lot of the credit for that to Raybeez, who was, by all accounts a man of the people. There’s something to be said for a guy who gets along with, and is well liked by, sketchy guidos from Long Island, Straight Edge suburban youths, and the archetypal skinhead.

 R.I.P. Ray Barbieri.
 (drumming in AF circa ‘83)

One of the most claustrophobic, suffocating records I’ve ever heard is Rorschach’s “Protestant” lp. This is the one they really left the biggest mark with. It influenced a whole slew of post-metal hardcore and post hardcore bands in the 90’s. Most were bad that missed the point I think. It’s a feel bad kind of record, you don’t really throw it on when you’re going for a Saturday drive to the beach or in the morning when you’re cooking breakfast. The music here takes cues from Black Flag circa my war but filters them through 10 subsequent years of thrash and death metal leading to tremolo-picked progressions and staccato breaks that follow the same kind of putrid atonal patterns as Swingin’ Man or Forever Time. Other times find them getting slower and more contemplative. Various write-ups of the band try to liken these moments to being influenced by The Swans, I find it to be a bit of a stretch. I think maybe the more out there moments on some Melvins recordings might be a better point of reference, although the overall atmosphere of the Swans might not be a bad point of reference. This atmosphere is one of anomie and alienation in the shadow of early 90’s NYC. A feeling of overall aloneness and aimlessness. The feeling of being a small piece of an immeasurably large machine. Like I said before, Protestant is a feel bad record, and if your spirits are not already sunk, this album can do the job.

One of the most effective tools used in conveying the oppressive mood here are the screams of vocalist Charles Maggio. The tale goes that he was having serious voice problems (I assume as a result of singing in this band) at the time of the recording, and thus his voice changed drastically from the way it was on previous Rorschach releases. Here it sounds higher, less intelligible, at times even screechy. In fact if not for it being such a perfect fit to the music I can’t picture myself really liking it much at all, but I think in context it’s a perfect fit. It sounds like someone who is isolated, someone who’s sick and suffocated. The grey smog and garbage smell of New York, New York looms over this whole recording in some way that I can’t quite put my finger on. Mabye I’m projecting my own ideas onto it, but I feel like the vocal delivery is a product of that environment. It’s like hearing someone choke on the exhaust fume air and cigarette butt ground.

Protestant is dense and affecting. For such an isolated and isolating record, it also was taken to heart by a great many people in the 90’s. Pretty much the entire subsequent output of the country of Germany in that decade owes itself to this album. And of course there’s Converge, Metallica to Rorschach’s Diamondhead (save your protests, it’s an analogy). Mr. Bannon’s primary vocal attack owes as much as their guitar attack to the blueprints found in the grooves of this vinyl, and they’ve at least repaid insofar as name-checking interview moments are concerned. Still, Protestant is one of the rarest of records where the bands it influences never can have the same feel, it’s isolated even from would-be peers.

The last song on the album is Ornaments. One of the all-time best closers on any record. It creeps along with a slow picked clean guitar playing like the background music to the moment of realization in a movie. Maggio’s screams are pushed deep down into the mix so that they’re barely audible, more isolated and claustrophobic than before. The song builds to a lumbering mournful crunch, slow and deliberate, and then abruptly the tape slows down, playing at half speed for the last unsettling 20 seconds. It’s the perfect ending. Like you’re hearing the record die.

Thanks to Tony Brummel reissuing it in the 90’s, one of the first reference points I ever had for “hardcore” was a compact disc of the Cause For Alarm s/t 7″. In fact probably the first hardcore band I owned multiple releases by (not counting a Minor Threat discography) was Cause For Alarm, who disappeared for about 12 years after issuing this first 7″, and then reemerged in the 90’s issuing a bunch of shit that still sounded pretty 80’s style other than having modern production. A lot of it still sucks though. Okay but back to ‘83…

Let me just take this moment to note, this has some of the all time greatest Hardcore cover art ever. The riot cops dragging the protester, it’s brutal. Anyway this opens up with the 45 second blast of Parasite, one cruddy sounding guitar leads the charge and shouted vocals that sound vintage and snotty pick it up about the same time as a decently approximated d-beat comes in. One thing I really loved about this record when I got it was that I could perfectly replicate the guitar sound with my Yamaha guitar and Crate practice amp. Actually I really wanted to do a band of this style then, and even tried once or twice on my 4-track. We won’t discuss the disastrous results here.

Second Chance makes it obvious that the band is recording the 7″ basically live as vocalist Keith Burkhardt calls out the title and then the band starts it off with a feel good mosh riff that lasts about 3 seconds before the fast part starts up. Something that made this one really palatable in my young days was how tuneful most of the riffs were and this one is no exception. It basically sounds like any classic NY punk band from the 70s sped up about 2 or 3 times, which is after all, pretty much what early NYHC is founded on. My exposure to CFA early in my hardcore career also ensured that it was the main reference point for other records from NY produced during the same time. United Blood sounded like Cause For Alarm with shorter songs to me. Antidote sounded like Cause For Alarm with the singer from Youth Of Today.

The centerpiece of this E.P. may be United Races which has a long mosh section in the middle, an easy to remember message, and the most catchy verse and chorus. Definitely the hit. Pretty much every track dishes out good no frills , start-stop 82/83 HC. There’s no weak links or wasted space. In Search Of, Poison In The Machine, Stand As One — all of these songs deliver the payload with as much directness and simplicity as possible.

After this Cause For Alarm was gigging for at least a year longer, and even recorded a second E.P. which remains unreleased other than the song Time Will Tell on the P.E.A.C.E. comp. Most of it isn’t as good as this one, though a nice CD with both E.P. sessions and a live set would be pretty awesome. Not that I expect anyone at Victory to bother or care. Some of the songs from the second E.P. did get recycled into the 90’s version of Cause For Alarm at least. Eventually tensions in the band pulled them apart, mostly because Burkhardt was becoming a Krishna devotee and was inserting too many of his beliefs into the band. Of course now he’s over it. Figures. Eventually Alex Kinon and Rob Kabula joined Agnostic Front and made an album called Cause For Alarm which unfortunatly sounds nothing like their former band.

BTW, before the reissue on victory (which is easy to differentiate because it has a yellow cover) there was also a boot of this record. You can tell the boot from the original because it’s on a cheap stock of paper (as opposed to the original card stock) and doesn’t have the tri-fold style sleeve the original has.

Here’s one of the weirder comps ever: End The Warzone. It’s probably most remembered for containing 9 (of 12) songs from Straight Ahead’s demo tape, thereby making it one of their 2 vinyl appearances.  Additional to that there’s also 2 live PHC tracks (was this necessary?), 4 Larm songs, and 2 Attitude Adjustment songs.

The Larm stuff is pretty solid for them, not their best stuff, but pretty much sounds like everything they ever did (out of tune, scrappy, thrash). I really like the Attitude Adjustment songs on here. I think they’re both from their ‘85 demo. Both were later re-recorded for their American Paranoia lp on Pusmort, but I think I prefer the demo versions because the vocals have more fire. The PHC songs are total nth tier junk. A bad Negative Approach cover, and a so-so original. Either way it’s kind of hard for this stuff to not be over shadowed by Straight Ahead’s contribution just based on the fact that it’s way bigger than anyone else’s. Even though the 9 songs probably only run 5 minutes, it’s still the fact that there are 9 complete compositions.

Straight Ahead at this point had just converted over from NYC Mayhem, who started as an early deathrash style metal band, then evolving into proto-grind core, and finally becoming almost a hardcore band, before changing their name and declaring themselves the full-on hardcore band you’ll find here. Most of the songs they contributed to End The Warzone, are actually modified versions of NYC Mayhem songs from their unreleased 7″ E.P. They owe a lot to Agnostic Front’s “United Blood”, as well as D.R.I.’s “Dirty Rotten E.P.” Most tracks don’t even take the time to repeat any of the parts, just delivering blast beats seasoned with tons of snare rolls and guitar breaks, and then occasionally slowing down for an awesome mosh part. I actually mapped out the structures of each song on this session once and they don’t make any sense. The riffs change to something new every 4 or 5 seconds and by the time you blink, 2 songs have gone by.

3 of the songs that appear here were later rerecorded for the Spirit Of Youth E.P. the band issued a year later, but the combination of a different drummer, and a more burly singing style on that release ensures that they almost sound like different songs here. Where Spirit Of Youth had gruff marbles in the mouth style vocals, singer Tommy Carol delivers a much more youthful and clear shouted style on this recording. By the way he also handles the drumming, which is amazing. Definitely some of the fastest blasting up until this point in time (I think the recording is from ‘85). If anyone has audio of any of the shows he played on drums with Youth Of Today (a band plagued by drummers I don’t care for) PLEASE COUGH IT UP.

All in all, Straight Ahead is one of my top 3 NYHC bands ever. It probably isn’t something you’d guess from this write-up because there’s really nothing I can even say about them at this point. From ages 18-21 I don’t think there was any band I was more obsessed with, seeking out live sets and videos, and replaying their brief output again and again. Eventually I sort of hit a wall with live sets and unknown info about the band because there is a finite amount of all that stuff, but still, this is basically one of the best bands ever in life. Maybe the only hardcore groups from NYC that can match them are V.I.P. era Agnostic Front, and the original phase of the Cro-Mags.

As far as I can tell this is the original pressing, I think the bootlegs all have blank labels. There are 500 originals w/ red labels like this, and 500 more with blue ones.

Young at heart, out for fun…

…oh and don’t forget to visit me here…

Here’s a nice double shot of late 80’s USHC rarity from the same seller.

1. Behind door number 1 we’ve got No For An Answer - You Laugh with the highly sought after I-Spy sleeve. This is definitely one of the most hard to find early Revelation rarities, with supposedly 200 made, I assume for either tour or mail order. You Laugh is probably the most preachy straight edge record to come out before the 90’s. Every song has a pushy message, and is very verbose, which is kind of funny because, the band can barely play them. The drumming in the fast parts takes a loose paddle style which doesn’t fit the sterile 80’s gated sound at all.  At times the guitars hold it together enough so that you don’t notice how rickety the drumming is, but at others like say, the intro to About Face, things pretty much derail and the effect is pretty neutering to the music. There are definitely some minor edge classics on here though. The mosh riff to Just Say No, comes in at just the right time and seems designed to open the floor right up, and the sing along is a bit of a no brainer. The title track hits on the touchy “casual sex” topic, but probably has the best riffs on the record. The lyrics are clumsy and pretty ham-fisted  which wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t feel so smug and self assured. As I said before, probably the preachiest 7″ of the 80s. The muted cymbal hits in the beginning are laughably off, which is I guess appropriate for a song called You Laugh, because sometimes I do laugh when I hear it. When Will It End is the worst song, as juvenile and stupid as possible, by the end of side 1 it feels like they’re trying to touch on every category of positive message (recap: song 1 - anti drugs, song 2 - anti casual sex, song 3 - anti violence), it’s just a little much. Also this song has a HORRIBLE clean guitar intro. SKIP. Side B brings you back though - Without A Reason is a pretty good anti-drunk driving track, it kinda sounds like they mixed the drums lower so you wouldn’t hear them go off time during the chorus, but it still gets classic status. Track 5 is Liar which is about 6 seconds long, but pretty cool. It’s the only song without a pushy message on the record, so I guess like… 20 seconds would have been too much to not have a message for. The last track, About Face, is okay, but it’s a mediocre diss track on Uniform Choice for being “sellouts” and has a long talking part over the mosh. Also it’s the sloppiest of all the songs which gets distracting. I think this recording was actually a demo originally and had an instrumental intro, and a really bad Agnostic Front cover in the session too, confirm/deny anyone? Anyhow - a solid 7″, definitely the least good of the first 15 or Revelation Releases, but that’s pretty much every 1st tier late 80’s straight edge record so what can you do? Oh and of course… Dan O’ (the singer) now owns a bar. WHOOPS.

2. Door number 2 contains: Outburst - Miles To Go on RED vinyl. Not the repress folks this is the OG on Blackout, one of the crappiest labels ever to release good records. Anywho, there’s supposed to be like 200 of these as well. It turns up WAY less than the blue vinyl variation. Alright, in the past I’ve made some noise about this record not being that good, despite the fact that I was in a band that stole from practically every song on it. I’m ready to apologize and say I was wrong. This is a pretty good slab of NYHC. I still like Breakdown, Altercation, and Raw Deal better, but there’s some real TNT on this one too.  The cover still sucks though. I’m not taking that back. As others have said - looks like the year book page for the A/V Club. Big standout with Outburst are the vocals which spit growl and seethe with teenage anger, which helps to gloss over the genericish “angry guy” lyrics. He has a good delivery too and  knows when to stretch certain words out and when to cram others together. The music is pretty rhythmic, like a more precise take on Breakdown’s style, the riffs are a little more complex and noodly, the back beat is a little heavier, the stops and starts are a little cleaner. It’s cool, and the best songs like No Choice, When Things Go Wrong, and Thin Ice (which are front-loaded as the first 3 tracks), pull out all the stops. If you ever liked head smashing heavy NYHC you can appriciate how those songs deliver with each change up. The B-Side holds up well but can’t match the 1-2-3 punch you get in the first half. The production… well it definitely has a certain charm and I know some people love it, it’s probably the most extreme example I can think of of late 80s NY style production. Every instrument has a cheap digital effect added. The echo you hear on the bass drum at the beginning of Misunderstood sounds something like a basketball being dribbled, the snare to toms roll that kicks off No Choice sounds like the echo knob can’t go any higher on each hit. The guitars are very 80’s metal, probably run direct through a metal zone pedal and then a chorus pedal (to make them sound “fuller”). Each one has a buzzy crunch and absolutely no bottom end or heaviness. There’s more echo heaped on top, so at the end of everything they kind of sound like shimmering static. The bass sounds about the same, and the vocals of course, are all echo. It’s very artificial sounding, and an odd choice for songs this ferocious, but it was ‘89, and at the time this was state of the art. I’m sure it cost a lot but I don’t blame them, this record was made to be a hit, and it was recorded to sound pro. It just took about 15 years for very many folks to notice.

The Crumbsuckers were one of the first NYHC bands to really take on a full crossover sound that seemed to appeal pretty equally to hardcore and metal audiences in the 80’s. Agnostic Front tried with their second lp Cause For Alarm, which, like the Crumbsuckers’ classic LIFE OF DREAMS, was adorned with full color tripped out cartoon art by Sean Taggert (at his artistic peak), but doesn’t really command the same respect today among metalheads. For AF, the vocals were weak, the songs got long, the riff-theft was obvious, and things weren’t really as tight as they should have been. Life Of Dreams is no doubt the kind of record they were aspiring to make, or at least should have made, and as far as Combat Core releases from that time period, there is none finer than it.Musically the way the Crumbsuckers work, and what makes them a success is that they can play with 80’s metal chops, busting out tight double bass drum licks, start-stop poly-rhythms, and full on thrashing, neck shredding solos, but they keep the economical song lengths and structures of classic hardcore/punk. Take for instance the topical “Super Tuesday” a song about, what else, the election process in the USA. At only a minute, it works off a standard start-stop vs/ch/vs/mosh structure hundreds of hardcore songs have used before and after it. But when you listen to how tight the chops are in the speedy paddle beats, hear the ringing of the chrous effect on the guitars, and the excess of reverb drenching on everything, it’s pretty obvious these guys were not purists. Despite the fact that tons of hardcore bands tried to perform a similar balancing act with their songwriting, few really executed it as well as the Crumbsuckers. Oh and how could I wait til now to mention Chris Notaro’s command of the mic. Seriously this guy is one of the best ever. Not a hint of any kind of actual singing. Without naming names, there were an awful lot of NYHC bands that, when it came time to make a big-time lp on a metal label, delivered vocals that attempted to be more accessible, complete with singy/clean vocals and attempts to stay on key, like bargain bin Anthrax vocals. Obviously that stuff is not cool. Fear not then, because Notaro’s delivery has the kind of glass-gargled, rabid freakouts that are in the same class as Victim In Pain, Thou Shalt Not Kill, et. al. Every song he delivers his gurgling pissed-off fury perfectly, always on time, always clear, and always hard.What more can you ask for? You even get one of the weirdest lp covers ever. I have no idea what’s going on and I’m just going to assume it was conceived on drugs.

A rarely seen, but much less valuable than the colored vinyl edition of Youth Of Today’s “Break Down The Walls” is this black and yellow sleeve variant on Wishingwell records. I may be wrong but I think this might have been pressed after the Revelation edition already existed. I’ve heard some number like 250 copies thrown around for how many were made but I have no idea where to confirm that. There’s some speculation as to whether this edition was entirely approved by the band and may have been produced to fill out left over vinyl from the first press. I’ve heard a variety of stories, none of which have been corroborated with any hard evidence. All I know is that you see this version very infrequently. I want to kind of speculate and say that sometime in the future more people are going to realize how hard this one is to find and start paying more for it, but right now it usually doesn’t break $100. If you’re a hard-core YOT fan this is the kind of thing you’re going to be happy to get sooner rather than later.

While you’re looking, you can pick up We’re Not In This Alone, and Can’t Close My Eyes 12″ edition, and a bunch of other later 80’s NY-Centric releases.

Oh, and don’t forget THESE.

I am back - and reunited w/ my internet access. I gotta post this right now. Honestly if I’d not just dropped a sizable amount on a couple of records I’d probably be buying 2 or 3 of these. Original Kevin Crowly and Sean Taggert shit ain’t easy to come by.