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Here’s a crucial slice of early NYHC, No Thanks “Are You Ready To Die” on red vinyl. Though the seller seems to think it’s a mis-press, it’s seen around from time to time, but is definitely more rare than the black vinyl. According to the band’s singer there were 5,000 pressed on red, which is impossible given how infrequently you see it.

So it was sometime in 2005 and I was on tour with Mind Eraser. As it was the first tour I’d ever booked, it was quite poorly done, and by that I mean, the dates were a total clusterfuck. As such we had a day off in Berkley which shouldn’t be a place you have trouble finding a show. At any rate though, it happened, and somehow (I don’t remember how) Cooch got word that the singer of No Thanks, Donna Damage had surfaced in Berkley and had been on the internet claiming to want to do a reissue of their elusive 7″ E.P., and even to have original unplayed copies. An email was sent, and miraculously a reply came from Ms. Damage that we should meet her that afternoon at her apartment. I felt like one of those punk rock detectives on the Break My Face website. When we showed up Donna was there with her roommate, a former member of a later lineup of No Thanks as well as her metal band Navigator (they have a demo that reminds me of  Détente , another female fronted metal group). They were both definitely in the Berkley hippie mode, and offered to get us stoned, which of course we politely declined because being straight edge is cool. Without missing a beat, she offered us some carrot cake instead (it was not “space cake”). I wish this happened more often, but it’s the only time in my life that it has. Usually people just get bummed I don’t want to get fried. Fucking jerks I say…

The cake was delicious and following that Donna pulled out a box full of photos from hardcore’s early days on the Lower East Side. There were also a few cassette tapes, and yes, a handful of copies of No Thanks’ “Are You Ready To Die”. We flipped through the photos for a while. Early pictures of the Nihilistics and the Undead, a shot of teenage Harley Flannegan, maybe some early Sonic Youth or Agnostic Front shots, great material. As we rummaged Donna told us stories about living on the Lower East Side during the first hardcore era and stop to note things like “that’s my old living room” in photos. She played us the No Thanks demo (which is absolutely killer, and possibly the fastest hardcore released in ‘81), and told us about the troubled release of their 7″. The engineer didn’t like the band or take them seriously, the original front cover art was lost or destroyed, the label was sketchy with their treatment of the band, etc. All the usual shit. After an hour or two we thought it might be time to make an exit, we’d made plans to further discuss doing a reissue of the 7″ and demo after tour (eventually this got bounced to Gloom records, before finally coming out last year on Lengua Armada), and I politely enquired about purchasing one of her copies of the 7″, which at that point was already a 3-digit item. Donna instead offered to give me a copy, and then offered one to Cooch too. In probably the least selfish moment of his life he declined, saying he already had one. Immediately I could read the collector scum remorse on his face, but it was too late.

As soon as we got in the car the first thing he said was “I can’t believe I turned down a free copy”. I’m sure I said something like “yea what the fuck is wrong with you”. Still we were psyched on our experience, and at that point anyway were looking forward to the first reissue on Painkiller. Of course that never happened, and basically every other reissue we’ve attempted has been foiled in some way since. “Wahhhh”.

Regardless No Thanks were a great early hardcore band. I think they’re probably most similar to the punky scuzz of Urban Waste, but a little heavier in terms of protest lyrics and politics. Donna is probably one of the hardest female singers I’ve ever heard. Absolutely great vocals. Ladies take note: sing like this in a band instead of trying to copy Penelope Houston. Are there any females even reading this blog?

Hey real talk - pick up the lp reissue of this stuff on Lengua Armada, it’s well done and worth your time if you dig early NYHC.

For its day, The Zero Boys “Vicious Circle” lpis a bit of a curiosity. A lot of the songs are bouncy Middle Class style thrashers that are just tuneful enough to stick to your ribs, but there’s also a fair amount of rockin’ mid-paced material that really sounds a lot like Leave Home/Rocket to Russia Ramones with big 60’s melodies and crunchy guitars. Actually the guitars on this one have that unmistakable early 80’s stereo chorus. I read that Vicious Circle was basically recorded live, and so in place of a 2nd guitar track I’d assume they just had the guitar player do his thing in stereo through a chorus pedal.  Despite that dated piece though, this one’s pretty timeless. One of my favorite Midwest (Indiana) HC/punk lps that there ever was.

The title track opens things up in a swirl of dizzy call responses and it’s over in under a minute, which segues into the first mega-classic jam Amphetamine Addiction. This one has that great Ramones style that I mentioned before. Catchy and memorable til the last, this song will be bouncing around your skull til you die after you hear it. Definitely not a drug glorifying song, which I suppose was the style at the time, but it’s so energizing it’s like a virtual amphetamine shot in your arm. Next is New Generation, then Dirty Alleys Dirty Minds, and then my fav track on the A-side Civilization’s Dying - a classic anthem for the 80s, or now. This song is just such an expertly crafted piece of pop injected punk (the good kind we like, not the bad kind on your tv), it’s almost hard to describe. The chorus is solid gold, it ought to have been honored by some official body of musical achievement. It’s a peace song I guess. The opening lyrics: “Civilization’s dying/and no one’s realizing/The position of hate stuck inside the gun ” are a decent summation of that. This is probably the best, and most recognized Zero Boys song, not to down play their many other great songs. Closing out the side they revisit “Livin’ In The 80’s” from their giga-rare single, and then do “Drug Free Youth”, which predates the Abused song of the same name and actually was the reason I purchased this lp in the first place.

The B-side while not quite as perfect still has a fair share of hits, and probably leans a little more towards the hardcore side of the Zero Boys’ sound. Down The Drain, Outta Style, and You Can Touch Me last about a minute and change each. Forced Entry has a good call-response and is a tad longer. Hightime returns to the mid-paced rock side of things with vocals by I think the guitar player. This one’s a totally under rated NY/Detroit style rocker, there’s even a “Hey Ho Let’s Go” thrown into the lyrics. Not sure where it fits in with Drug Free Youth but it woulda made a great single A-side for its pogo-a-bility. Charlie’s Place is a second teir jam, but that’s still pretty good if it’s the Zero Boys. Trying Harder is the big Rock N Roll closer running at 3 minutes, and even more Ramonesy than than anything else on the lp. It’s definitely teir one sugary punk though.

Original pressings of Vicious Circle are on Nimrod records, and supposedly were kind of hard to find even back when they hit the streets. There were several represses, first on Toxic Shock, then Bitzcore, then Lookout, and most recently Secretly Canadian (who also released the odds and ends anthology The History Of The Zero Boys). This is one of the original Nimrod pressings, and it’ll probably run about $100, maybe a little more or less, but it looks pretty clean in the pictures.

I Was going to finish this post at home last night, and wouldn’t you know it, our internet was down most of the night. So here we are Tuesday morning, revisiting my Metal Monday. For this particular Monday of Metal, I give you the fairly hard to find Ripping Corpse - Dreaming With the Dead on Maze records. This is pretty easy to track down on CD, but since it was released in 1990 the vinyl doesn’t turn up too often, and was probably mostly relegated to Europe anyway.

Ripping Corpse took their name from an early Kreator song, and for the first part of their existence (the demo phase) were basically sub-Kreator/Slayer/Dark Angel evil-thrash. A bit techy, a bit predictable, but good mosh parts. While I’ll always prefer their Splattered Remains demo recording, Dreaming With the Dead is still a great chunk of not quite Death Metal tech-Thrash. You can tell that by the time they got to record this album, the Thrash thing was already waning, Death Metal and Grindcore were on the rise, Metallica and Slayer were long gone from the underground, and Ripping Corpse were basically obsolete. Their solution is basically to get a little more technical (like Kreator “Extreme Aggression”), try and sing a little harder, and kind of just cover up for the fact that they’re not really a death metal band. Maybe that’s an inglorious view of the whole thing, but lets be real, I’m probably not far off. Rift Of Hate, a holdover from previous demos now contains sections that are much slower and more sinister sounding where previously there was just a heavy slam section. Unearthly death grunts and shrieks are now added in places for emphasis while Tom Araya style “high-notes” are gone.

Part of what makes Dreaming With the Dead kind of awesome though is that it really could have only been made at this one point in time. When a New Jersey thrash band was trying to adapt itself to new extremities and depths that they couldn’t have been expected to predict. Erik Rutan’s notable guitar shredding helped them through to at least gain minor notoriety in metal circles, but there was no place for a band like Ripping Corpse by the time this album came out.

Battalion Of Saints - “Second Coming” lp

Here’s a platter of crucial early 80’s San Diego punk. Similar to a lot of other big USHC bands from this time period but distinguished by the batshit crazy vocal attack of George Anthony, who comes shrieking like a coked up maniac (probably was) on the opener, My Mind’s Diseased. It’s probably the best track on the album, and it’s surely his best cut vocally, but let that not diminish your view of the rest of this rock solid classic. If you care for the likes of Government Warning or Direct Control these days, you ought to know this one, because it’s basically the template for what they’ve been doing (hardcorepunkmetal). Yes the music has a bit of heavy metal color to it, but with a limited amount of technical prowess, esepecially from the drummer who often employs the well liked “D-Beat”. Actually this lp is a lot like what the post Discharge band Broken Bones really ended up sounding like. Only I happen to think this is a bit more ripping and rocked out. Less stiff, you know?

Holy Vision has some cool shredding and soloing from guitarist Chris Smith (not the same as Integrity/Inmates/Keelhaul member Chris Smith), dipping between the flashy showoff heavy metal side, and the string grating random noise hardcore side. No More Lies opens with the riff from (I think) some early Motorhead song, before busting into another call response style hardcore attack that should fill your meat and potatoes fix quite well. Actually a lot of the songs kind of combine the speed and thickness of classic Motorhead, with the kind of American beach punk feel of The Adolecents and all that. The album even closes with a fairly good cover of Motorhead’s “Ace Of Spades”, and I don’t take Motorhead covers lightly.

The cover is some awesome Mad Marc Rude work with the classic “skeletons emerging from the ruins” theme, found on so many good punk and metal lps.

Maybe I will have a Nervous Breakdown about someone getting this Nervous Breakdown for an old song…

Snowed in today… how about a classic:
Sarcofago - “I.N.R.I.”

As far as I can tell from the information in the auction this is the original Cogumelo pressing of the album with an orange tinted cover photo, (COG 007).

A lot of necrolords out there love to throw this one in the ring as a band that helped lay the foundations for modern black metal. Honestly I think it’s a bit exaggerated. 2 notable aspects of this record later adopted by black metal bands:

1) corpse painted members (it’s not like they were the first band to do this)
2) heavy use of blast beats, even in places where a more standard fast beat would do

Riffwise there’s really very little in common with what’s considered “black metal” now , and it’s a lot more like what you’d consider “black thrash”, sort of a post thrash metal grey area between black and death metal. Somewhere between a mix of Hellhammer, Slayer, Bathory, Possessed, and Sodom. As for the blasting, it’s helped along considerably by some kind of heavy studio magic. I can’t say if it’s triggering or if it’s an extremely heavily gated/EQ’d sound, but it’s definitely the most processed snare I’ve ever heard on a metal record. I honestly thought it was a drum machine the first time I listened, also partially due to the relative loudness of the snare in the drum mix. It’s much louder than any of the other drums, and the cymbals are barely audible at points, giving it a very artificial, and drum machine-ish sound. It’s emphasized more by the relatively high number of beats-per-minute due to the blasting. Drummer D.D. Crazy, despite the weird drum sound though, does come pretty hard on this and really does set the pace for a lot of extreme metal thereafter. He also went on to play on another landmark Brazilian lp, Sex Trash’s “Sexual Carnage”, another album your Mom should never know about.

There’s just no denying I.N.R.I. is an extreme and landmark album. The riffs, while inspired by the bands mentioned above, seem determined to make absolutely no concessions for anything other than all out brutality. Whereas Possessed were getting experimental via Larry Lalonde, Slayer were working with a major label, and most of Hellhammer were making avant-garde doom in Celtic Frost, Sarcofago are pushing in the opposite directions here. Determined to violate the listener with stomach churning tasteless thrash that in the end sounds most like the early Sodom offerings beefed up to much more disgusting and focused levels of evil. If extreme metal that followed in subsequent years is comparable to the horror movie genre, then I.N.R.I. is Last House On The Left. A completely shocking and new level of sickening garbage to inspire future death and black metal shut-ins and freaks. Even though it’s technically been surpassed since it was released, it still remains gruesome and affecting. In the 80’s parents were worried about bands like Judas Priest or maybe Slayer, but if they’d been aware there were records being released that sounded like this I really think a lot of them would have died of shock. Vocalist “Antichrist” (birth name: Wagner Lamounier – currently a professor of economic science and applied statistic at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais in Belo Horizonte, Brazil), shrieks, howls, and gurgles his way through numerous new (at the time) lows in the lyrical department (I’ll leave it to you to google for lyrics). Vocals drown in tons of canned reverb at some points, and at others double and triple over pitch shifted versions of themselves. At this point Lamounier also began cultivating a long standing feud with his former band Sepultura, probably the biggest band in the Brazilian metal underground at the time. Eventually this also led to encompass Ratos De Porao (who took the Sepultura side).

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?)

So can you believe right after the week I was sick, shit got hectic at my work (happens like twice a year)??? Anyhow I’m gonna try and double up on a couple posts when I can for the next few days, but either way you’ll forgive me because I got a HOT TIP for you.

I found someone with a GRIP of sealed[?] HR - It’s About Luv 12 inchers - original Olive Tree press. Now in case you’re lost here wondering why I’m trying to foist a bad reggae record on you, just chill. This is the record HR made right after the original dissolution of the Bad Brains, and then released on his own label in ‘84. He also released the first Beefeater 12″, a band that only Sami Reiss and James Ritter listen to now in 2009. Unlike every other HR record clogging the dollar bins of America though, It’s About Luv is only HALF reggae. The second half in fact… the B-Side. The A-side is in the vein of the Bad Brains songs you like for the most part, and serves as a sufficient missing link between Rock For Light and I Against I. For $10 a new copy of this (original pressing, not the repress on SST) is worth it for sure. In fact I’d probably rather listen to this than the soulful funk metal that takes up most of the space on I Against I. There I said it.

Roots is a bizarre dubbed out intro track with HR wordlessly moaning like some kind of reggae ghost. I totally don’t know where he’s coming from, but it’s actually better than most of the real reggae songs he puts together which are like 4th teir Bob Marley ripoffs. Fear not though, after a minute the dexterous guitar ripping of local DC legend David Byers (R.I.P.) kicks off It’ll Be Alright which is a fucking great song. It reminds me a little bit of Let Me Help from I Against I in the semi-sung/subdued delivery, but the riffing and drumming are total high energy and tuneful. By the way Earl Hudson is on the kit here so you know things are top notch. It’ll Be Alright only lasts about a minute and change, and then it’s onto We’re Gonna Get You. This one takes essentially the same approach as the previous track. Fast ripping Bad Brains style hardcore, with slightly more soulful vocals, honestly though, this could fit in pretty easily on Rock For Light. I think the song is about HR’s battles with police over Marijuana possession as the bridge has some kind of spoken re-enactment of the police shaking him down. From here things bridge into Heaven Forbid which is a bit more rocked out and mid tempo. It’s a bit weirder and sounds transitional, but it’s not too long, and still not as funky as the worst cuts on I Against I. There’s room in this one for an extended David Byers shred session which is pretty cool, although he doesn’t have quite the ear that Dr. Know does, even if more technically proficient. Closing out the side is Let’s Have a Revolution which starts with some dialogue re-enacting some court proceedings. The song is another mid-paced rocker, albeit with some bubbly horns thrown in that kinda get things dangerously close to ska territory. As bad as that sounds it’s actually a pretty good song and still keeps a pretty good clip. There’s a surprisingly good cover of this song on a 2 song tour single that Sam Mcpheters’ Wrangler Brutes self-released around 2004. If you can find a copy of that it’s a good listen.

Anyway as stated before the B-side is the start of HR’s forgettable and shockingly prolific reggae career, that is until the last song which is a live track called Free Your Mind that as far as I can tell was never released as a studio recording. Despite the muddy live recording, this is sort of the best track on the album. It begins with crowd chatter and an amped up HR screaming “are you ready?!” at the crowd. The song begins similar to the Bad Brains Supertouch and has a great Dr. Know style riff, with a machine-gun drum roll for a chorus. By the way what was with hardcore bands in the 80’s always including a live cut at the end of their lps? Totally weird practice. 

So anyway as stated this webstore seems to have a whole stack of these, and for $10 I think it’s well worth your time. Also the cover is cool as hell with a shot of HR in full milatary fatigues and huge thick dreads flying everywhere.

Dudes, ladies, doggs… I’ve been sick since Monday, with one of those ill February style cough/cold/rip-your-skull-apart type sicknesses. I feel disgusting. As such, blogging has been forgone in favor of sleeping, and medicinal regimens.

However: this is the Hardcore Torpedo Mega-Bonzer that simply cannot be passed on:

Fix “Vengence” and Necros “Sex Drive” together in one lot.

The buy it now price: “$8,000″.

Well say what you will here but even if that’s high now, eventually it won’t be. For the unaware, Sex Drive was pressed in a quantity of 100 copies as Touch and Go records #1, with Vengeance following in a quantity of 200 as Touch and Go records #2. Both are 2 of the earliest examples of hardcore bands cut to vinyl. These are probably the 2 most valuable and sought after USHC rarities at least insofar as regular releases go.

In the way of Sex Drive, a tradition of mediocrity was established early on for generic and unimaginative hardcore. While this record holds serious historical significance, the songs themselves are as undistinguished and interchangeable as those by the Violent Apathy’s and 5150’s of the world. The Necros did go on to complete some better recordings, and were a pretty big punk band in their heyday, but if not for this being the first touch and go release, and being pressed in such a minuscule quantity, it would not be a big deal. Police Brutality appeared on some later releases though, re-recorded and sounding pretty hard.

In the way of Vengeance (b/w In This Town) though, you have a stone cold classic. How classic? Arguably THE best hardcore  7″/45/single/EP  ever, or at the very least the best Hardcore song (I might give NA “best EP”), but you wouldn’t have a difficult argument to make either way. Legend has it that Tom “Pig Champion” Roberts of Poison Idea actually followed the Fix’s tour itinerary in the late 80’s stopping at all the record stores in each town hoping to find a copy of the single. The song Vengeance is one of the best songs ever to come out of the Hardcore era.  It buzzes with the electricity of The Stooges or Motorhead’s finest moments, but at about double speed, it has a ferocious and unhinged vocal, and the musicianship is on fire in the best way, perfectly walking the line between skill and recklessness. The recording is completely thuggish and brutal; shockingly thick for 1981. Such a bright start for a genre, even the Fix themselves never managed to top it. The b-side while not quite as immediate is still a real scorcher. The delivery and style are similar, muscular jockish proto punks going at warp speed, like if the Dictators took a toxic amount of speed on their best night. Here is a record that sells well into the quadruple digits on the 2nd hand market, but is worth EVERY PENNY the collector scum pay for it. There are not a lot of records I can honestly say that about. Here is a record that makes the most introverted humans burst into spontaneous air guitar solos, stage dive fantasies, and bedroom slam pits. If you really want to understand me and why I’m obsessed with the music I am, why I play in the bands I do, you can get it all here. When I hear Vengeance I’m Alex hearing the 9th by ol’ Ludwig van. My heart’s stopping and my soul is spinning. It’s probably the greatest song I’ve ever heard. I got a reissue though, I’m not dropping 8 grand on it.

I was going to make some mention of the panic that went up about Touch and Go, going out of business this week, but they’re actually just shutting down their distribution arm it looks like, so they’ll still be keeping their old shit in press, and releasing another Shellac lp in 4 or 5 years. Mr. Rusk, please, if you see this, we need to talk about the Negative Approach discography, some overhauling is needed, and if you don’t want to do it, I’ll do it free of charge. I would like to thank you though, for finally issuing the Fix Discography in 2007.

I am no skinhead, that much is obvious, and while Cocksparrer is no hardcore band, they are one of the finest and most accessible punk bands ever. But pertaining to the site here, their ‘77 single Runnin’ Riot (maybe their first bonafide anthem), is such a flawless cut of proto hardcore. It’s a little Chuck Berry’d/Angus Young’d/Steve Jones’d out, but add a little speed and this is as good as the best numbers by any top tier early 80’s HC band, except that the vocals are delivered in the way of actual singing. It’s got such a massive million dollar chorus it’s just impossible not to get swept up by it, a perfect combo of tuneful chords and generalized teenage rebellion. The way it hangs for a couple seconds before driving back into the verse is a great tension builder too, and after the second time through you get that amazingly weird and great solo, that starts way out in left field.

Sister Suzie backs this one and it’s a more conventional pub rocker. Could be a Sex Pistols song, but it’s a bit too well written to really fit them. It reminds me a lot of Slade or something actually. I think Bon Scott could have recording a really killer vocal for this, and in fact it may be one of the bigger tragedies of his untimely demise that he was not able to. The riff is actually really similar to Pure Hell’s punkified version of Lee Hazelwood’s “These Boots” (as sung by Nancy Sinatra)… kinda funny I guess. Good jam, but a sleazy bar rockin’ sex jam can only get you so far when stacked up against one of the greatest British rebellion songs of all time (fuck off Lennon, but R.I.P. Harrison).

So after consulting with resident former skin Cooch, I was able to determine that only Spanish and Portuguese come with this sweet picture sleeve, and as such, you’re gonna pay out the nose for one.