bidhardcore.com
hardcore records on ebay — aggregated and examined
A Burn 7″ on pink? File Under:
- Records I Need Again, Please Trade Me One
- AJ’s Favorite 7″
- Sick Drumming, Weird Guitars
The Burn 7″ is one of the most indisputably brilliant Revelation releases, as I hope you know. It succeeds on every level, and only uptight jerks who don’t appreciate its subtleties have trouble appreciating it. What I always heard was that the riffs were conceived in an effort to make them unplayable on guitar by anyone but Gavin Van Vlack. No idea of the validity of that, but it’s a fine story. Alan Cage’s muscular snare roll leads the charge into the opening track, Shall Be Judged, one of the better late 80s/early 90’s vegetarian songs. Gavin’s guitar works kind of a post crossover, chorus dipped end of the 80’s in NYC approach. Like Prong and Helmet were happening and being metal influenced didn’t really mean sounding like Slayer or having guitar solos anymore*. Cage and Van Vlack really break the 90’s wide open about 40 seconds into things. It’s a new world, a new New York, and everything has more groove, and weirder chords, but holy fucking hell does that first break down hit you like ten tons of bricks. For all the mainstream praise that say, Helmet got for doing some weird Alt-Metal off timey heaviness, they never came close to anything this primal but at the same time complex. This is a great moment in 90’s hardcore, and in some ways, one of the last important moments for NYHC.
You can still see what a seismic change it was when suddenly Revelation dropped Burn, Quicksand, Supertouch’s lp, Inside Out, on everyone ears. Suddenly everything was extremely serious (including musicianship), real polished, and a bit more “industry”. Compare to the beautiful shitiness of the No For An Answer 7″ and you’ll see what I’m talking about.
Back to Shall Be Judged, it has all the hallmarks of the 90’s, right down to a weird dissonant plucked part, a talking part, and a cool down part. This is a great song, because Burn is a great band, with an amazing frontman (Chaka Malik), but the number of horrible revisitations of its formula that happened in the 90’s, (thankfully for the most part when I was too young to be going to shows), is infinite.
The other tracks — Godhead, Drown, and Out Of Time, all expand on the musical themes established in Shall Be Judged. Godhead digs into the groove and breaks the 3 minute mark as it condemns organized religion in a way that I might describe as quaintly 90’s (but I feel kind of like a dick doing it). Drown has some more mellowed out and reflective moments with Malik declaring he’s “drowning in a sea of emotion”. Out of Time is a hair lower than the other 3 tracks in that it’s not the anthematic stone cold classic that they are, but it’s still a good weird groovy hardcore song. Following this Burn did a demo recording titled New Morality, presumably to shop to a bigger label that was a tape trading standard for years, its since been issued as a 7″ on Revelation. They imploded a little while after that and never made the sprawling epic lp they should have. There was a couple of brief reunions in ‘97, and ‘02, the later of which yielded a 6 song 12″ that had a few new cuts, and a couple of older, “lost classics” revisited on it, that’s not as bad as some people would try and tell you. But all of that aside, none of that shines as brightly as their 12 minutes of power here on their first 7″.
Back when this record came out, people bought records still and so there are 1000 pressed on pink like this one, and a few thousand more on the much more common black vinyl.
*(Who the fuck decided to dispose of guitar solos in the 90s?)
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.
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.
An Insted test press - hmmm. Can’t say I love ‘em, or really even like ‘em. It’s like someone took 7 seconds, made the vocals even less threatening, made the songs longer, and then put a picture of 3 kids skipping down the road on the cover - how does this even qualify as hardcore? It’s too Boy Scouts Of America. I’m not saying you need to be in full on GG Allin mode, but I dunno, where the hell is the anger? It’s like Crucial Youth only they don’t know it’s a joke. Choose For Yourself, Live and Let Live, Be Someone… I feel like I’m watching that Stuart Smalley sketch on Saturday Night Live. I will admit that We’ll Make The Difference is a pretty classic Straight Edge Anthem, but a whole album of this stuff is just too much.
Shout out to Gil who is the only non-straight edger ever in history to like Insted. To me this is insane. It’s like going to confession once a week but not being Catholic. Gil you’re one of a kind buddy. This one’s for you.
Well if you’re a collector of early Revelation items you know this is one of the top 5 rarities - Gorilla Biscuits 7″ w/ Todd Youth B-Side label. I’d assume there was an excess of A-Side labels, and so the plant just ran them out with leftover War Zone B-Side labels on the vinyl. I thought these were numbered somewhere but I can’t see it in any of the pictures. The dude selling this tries to make something of the fact that the lettering is purple. There’s really no way to verify what’s more rare though. These were probably the last copies from this pressing sold, and I’d imagine they were just slipped into whatever sleeves were around at the time.
I used to really love this record, now I’d probably turn it off after the first 2 songs. Most of it is kinda poppy which is a good gateway to hardcore for a lot of kids, but the first 2 songs have a pretty straight up NYHC sound like Token Entry or, actually the first War Zone lp. It’s cooler than Start Today (the GB lp) anyway, which at one time was probably my favorite record, and now only makes me cringe. That thing pretty much serves as the blueprint for over-polished octave laden pop-punk/HC hybrids, although I guess it’s directly descended from the first Dag Nasty lp. I’d rather just hear Break Down The Walls… or Breakdown “both demos”… or Break On Through (To The Other Side), honestly. I’m still straight edge though which is more than I can say for some.
If you’re into this, frankly the Buy-It-Now price is probably worth it. These were breaking $300 US a couple years ago, and given the weak state of the dollar, the fact that it’s driving up the price of nearly all hardcore records, and that Gorilla Biscuits are one of the most popular straight edge bands ever, it’d be a sound investment.
Once again, sorry for getting so carried away yesterday, I know I said it would be a marathon post, but there’s obviously way too much to read, especially on a hardcore blog. Forgive me father. Today I will keep it simple with some short-hair music, and I promise no term papers.
You pretty much can’t beat this for Straight Edge HC rarities outside of a Judge Chung King 12″: Youth Of Today “Break Down The Walls” on red vinyl. Everyone knows this is THE album for mid-80’s straight edge hc. Raging and fast enough even for the druggies out there. Most people also know the Wishingwell edition has a much better mix than subsequent Revelation versions of the record which have additional reverb added, and some kind of obnoxious Mutt-Lange style gated snare sound (check Phil Colins “Air Of Night” and listen for when the drums come in if you don’t know what I mean). The recording is still kind of unbalanced though. The toms are really loud in some places and sort of sound like really big boxes when they get hit, the snare kind of fades in and out in places, the guitars are too quiet in some songs, the whole thing just isn’t that clear sounding. I know they probably thought they had to go to a big studio to make a big lp, but they probably would have been better served cranking it out in a day or two at Don Fury’s 8-track Demo-Demo. It’s just kind of surprising that the premier straight edge band of the day couldn’t get a recording that sounded a little better.
On the whole YOT actually had really bad luck with recordings through their career. The first 7″ sounds like everything was recorded through one of those soup-can telephone toys you make when you’re little. The original mix of the lp that follows this one has drums that clip badly, thin guitars, and the remix of the same album has drums that are off-time. In the end, the Wishingwell version of “Break Down The Walls” is actually one of the better sounding things they ever released. It’s all sort of irrelevant because thousands of people the world over have been moved by these songs time and again, but still it’s odd to think about.
Red vinyl copies of this barely exist. Look no further than this passage from the Revelation Discography txt file for the explanation:
“The 150 count on each of the records is what Porcell believes to have been made. 100 of each color were given to the band to sell, but before they had a chance, everything from their van was stolen while parked near CBGB’s before a show. Assuming the thieves were not hardcore kids and were more interested in selling the band’s equipment than some silly records, it can be inferred that the majority of these 200 records were destroyed (a few were given away at the show before the rest were stolen however). A few years later, Wishingwell sold their remaining copies to local Orange County record stores. The difficulty of finding either color of this record can be attributed to their initial limited pressing as well as the alarming 66%+ destruction rate. In another fairly distressing yet humorous twist to the plot, I was told that the owner of one of the stores that got a number of the remaining color vinyl copies, took a dozen or so red ones home and nailed, yes nailed, them to his back porch and watched them curl up in the California sun.”
With the American Dollar the way it is, I expect an all time high for this. I got ripped off on the sale of one once. A really bummer day. Anyone who wants to mail me a free copy to replace it, please get in touch for my address.
More auctions from a seller I posted last week, and there’s plenty to go around, so be sure to check his whole list. Here’s a couple quickies from that list…
How about this
Chain Of Strength - True Til Death on green vinyl (that’s first pressing dude). Superior in every way to the Chain auction I posted last week, this is also much better than that modernized sounding remix Rev circulates now. I love the way the vocals are buried in the mix giving the music a more powerful feel, and the songs are much more aggressive and angry than the E.P. they did after this. The simplicity in the riffs really brings the anger to the forefront too, the main riffs in the first 2 songs only use 2 notes each. One more thing that some might say is out of the ordinary for the time, is how little focus there is on mosh parts, a couple songs don’t have them at all, and the ones that do can’t be called mosh-heavy by any stretch.
If you want mosh-heavy though, there’s always this
Release - The Pain Inside 7″, which to me sounds something like a combo of the Turning Point 7″ and the Raw Deal demo, but without guitar amps. What I mean is that the guitars have the thin, fuzzy sound that you can easily get by plugging your instrument directly into the mixing board/recording device, instead of plugging into an amplifier, and having a microphone record the sounds that come from that. Questionable production choices aside though, this record is one of the few to have the distinction of the letter A on the cover being replaced by the head of a man in a hooded sweatshirt. Some people would call him a Phantom-Edgeman. What I wanna know is why does that Phantom-Edgeman have red eyes? Was it a bad photograph, or is he some kind of vampire? Similarly the last E in the band name is replaced by a weird dude with a flat-top and big teeth. Bizarre.
Seller here has only 2 auctions even worth looking at, and they’re both the same record. Slipknot’s s/t 7″ on revelation, on black vinyl & limited red vinyl. Slipknot is a record best described as “infamous”, mostly for the fact that it sounds nothing like any of the other releases on the label at that time, but also for there being a famous band of the same name in the late 90’s. Unlike basically every record on Revelation up to that point which was derived from Youth Of Today, Agnostic Front, or somewhere in between, Slipknot were a bit of a “cross-over” band, that had most in common with Animosity-era Corrosion of Conformity, Money Talks phase Cryptic Slaughter, and maybe a bit of Septic Death as well. One thing they did keep in common with other bands on the label were message type lyrics, although they were more consistent with COC and Cryptic Slaughter type themes (anti-cop song, songs railing on the power elite). The record itself is quite ferocious and frankly I think the band could have had a decent career on NY’s Combat records, it’s funny how many people who would be into it aren’t familiar because of the Rev affiliation, the band name, and the sort of crappy sleeve on the thing.Whenst visiting RevHQ a couple years ago I saw founder Jordan Cooper sitting at one of the desks in the office. Cautiously I approached and asked for some Slipknot information, as if to illustrate how overlooked they are, he actually thought I was playing a joke. After I explained he opened up a little bit, but didn’t have much to offer in the way of info. There was a rehearsal demo produced by the band under the name Evil Dead, but they switched names probably because there was half a dozen other thrash metal bands with the same name. They were just some dudes from Conneticut doing the band mostly just to entertain themselves. They played CBGB’s one time and all the lights in the club went out which must have enhanced the sinister sound they had on display (or so I’d imagine). One thing people always said was Rev released this record because Jordan owed one of the band members money for pot (oh! the scandal!), but aside from it being denied of course, it sounds unlikely. It’s got a full color glossy cover, and my limited knowledge of the drug trade leads me to believe that’s just WAY too much pot for a dude to float you before asking for money.Here’s a photo of me holding the reels to the record as well as Breakdown the Walls: 
Alright, I feel slightly unsure of myself on this one, but I’m pretty sure I am right. This guy is selling a small amount of stuff and I noticed he’s selling boots of the Unity 7″, Skins Brains Guts, and the Cause For Alarm 7″, nonetheless, I am pretty certain this is a real Agnostic Front “United Blood”. You may want to email the guy and get some further photos to verify, but the sleeve looks right, the labels look right, and it seems to coincide w/ pressing info. One thing I find reassuring is that the sides are taped with scotch tape which is how a lot of the copies of the record originally came, because I guess there was a shortage of glue on the Lower East Side at the time or something? United Blood is the absolute ultimate proof that skill and ability are absolutely unnecessary to play convincing, memorable, and timeless hard core.
If skill is your thing though, there is this Judge “There Will Be Quiet” 7″ on gold vinyl. Forget This Time is a good, post Metallica jaded hardcore shit-kicker. 1,000 on gold vinyl btw. As good as this is (and it’s pretty good) it’s still no United Blood though.
I have a big post coming, but before that, please observe a few items in this short weekend post that Reptillian Records of Baltimore is selling. A lot of run of the mill indie store stuff (a clipped Crispen Glover lp, Guided By Voices, Beach Boys, Mr. T Experience…), but there are a few really high demand straight edge hardcore items. BTW: does anyone know if Reptillian still has a street address? I know they shut down, then moved, and I’m not currently sure if they have a store front or are just an online business. Any info would be appriciated. The records:
1) War Zone - Lower East Side Crew 7″ on Orange
One thing I love is all 3 of these records are raw as hell, and every song is a hit. The War Zone is the big money maker here but Together is probs gonna go for a hundred at least, and the Judge record, though not worth too much in dollars, is valuable at least in terms of the sounds found on it. The thing that really dragged me down to the pit of despair (aka: record collecting) was early rev/schism and related records. Something just looked so cool about the Judge 7″ to my 16 year old mind. After that the seed was planted and the spell was unbreakable. To me these records are great proof that playing straight edge hardcore doesn’t need to be all octave-chord leads, epic tribal drum breakdowns, and grand statements about society and self. Every band on NYHC - 1987 - Together, is basically just scrapping it out, hacking away however they can get the job done. The recordings themselves are not “big”, “clean”, or “huge”, they just sound like some mics pointed at a wall of very fast sound. Timing isn’t perfect, the drumming is primal and simplified, the guitars for the most part sound like beefed up waves of tv static; but every single band delivers in spite of this, and they sound better for it. It’s truely hardcore, “warts and all” as they say, and both the Judge and War Zone 7″s only serve to expand upon, and hammer that point home. Some people, no doubt avid readers of some crap-factory like pitchfork, or buyers of obscure 60’s world music, would protest that this music is juvenile and lacks anything subtle or thoughtful. I on the other hand would like to borrow an arguement from my friend DFJ, that sometimes I still feel the same things I felt when I was but 15, and anyone who says they don’t, is probably a liar. In rememberence, of old New York…
Oh since I wrote this they also added a Unit Pride - s/t 7″ which is neither raw, or New York based but still pretty good. Wide Awake is by far the best song on it though, and I actually don’t love it, but I do love their artwork. In addition, in a pre-emptive Metal Monday note - check the Abruptum 7″ they’re selling which is the first Abruptum vinyl. If you like evil Sweedish black metal made by an actual dwarf, this record is for you. Honestly I’d prefer the War Zone 7″.
