giovedì 29 settembre 2016

Extreme Conditions Demand Extreme Responses

I grew up in a small town of circa 2500 people situated 30 kms outta the nearest big city. Not the most isolated place in the world of course but around 1992, for a bunch of spotty teenagers who were into skateboarding & just discovered metal, it looked like we were stuck in a sea of boredom in the middle of nowhere. Thankfully, trough skateboard we discovered extreme metal (before we were only listening to Iron Maiden, ACDC etc...) and made a bunch of new friends who were into the same stuff we liked. Around spring or summer 1993 we met this crazy guy named Andrea (RIP). He was one year younger than me but he discovered extreme music way before us. We immediately got along pretty well and we started to hang around together regularly. He had what back then looked like the biggest record collection ever so one day me and my mate went to his house and gave him something like twenty 90 minutes tapes and asked him to dub us as much music as possible. Recorded tapes slowly started to come back to us short after. One of them contained one of the most influential album of my life: Brutal Truth debut full length "extreme conditions demand extreme responses", released by Earache back in 1992. While I was already familiar with Napalm Death early material, this was at another level. It was way more brutal and those blast beats were simply insane! I still worship Scott Lewis for the incredible work he did in this record. Fastest grind drumming back then! Not to mention Dan Linker. I guess that it's thanx to him if I started playing bass back then. For sure one of the few person I consider a living legend: the older he got, the more he pushed to the extreme the music he played. You can't say that for many other people. Not only this ruled hard musically, but also lyrics were waaay smarter & more interesting than your average dumb metal clichés. A socio-political attitude (but always far away from the righteous PC fuckers), brutal grindcore and an obsession for hemp made Brutal Truth the perfect band for 17 years old me. Unfortunately through the aforementioned friend I soon discovered that they played a gig (with Fear Factory) very close to my house in january '93, just a few months before I discovered them!! I took me to wait 5 more years before I was finally able to see them live. They were awesome of course but I'd still give a nut to be able to go back to that gig. Their debut album has always been my favourite in their long career.
While I kept buying all their releases over the years, for some reasons I never managed to get a copy of "ECDER". Back then I was happy with the dubbed tape I got. Then I've replaced it with mp3s (but I still have that tape). Now, after being a fan for over 23 years, I decided it was time to get a proper copy of it. Of course not the stupid recent repress on double lps, the real deal. Scored this easily for quite a reasonable price. Very clean copy but it misses the printed dust sleeve. How people can lose something like that is beyond my understanding. I didn't remember this came with a hype sticker. I'm pretty sure I've never seen a copy with it back then. Anyhow, they're always welcome since they are a nice extra touch to an already solid release.

venerdì 16 settembre 2016

Det Bittra Slutet+

Another monstrous double lp anthology assembled by the usual suspects @ F.O.A.D. Records. This time it's the vinyl version of the Asocial "det bittra slutet+" cd that came out last year on DisRec. While I was expecting a complete discography, this compiles only the rare early material from this band: "the legendary “Det bittra slutet” EP (1984) with its previous demo and unreleased tracks from the same session, the complete “Asocial Attack” cassette, an extra rehearsal from the same period, extra demo tracks 1983-1984 (among which the songs included on the “No war no more Vol. II” Comp. Tape) and 15 live tracks (the complete Split cassette with Distrust + 2 more songs recorded in Hedemora)". Top notch fast swedish hardcore that Daniel Ekeroth, author of "swedish death metal" book, claimed as the very first band doing the blast beats. Apart for their legendary demo, I wasn't familiar with all the other material featured here and I must admit that I like the material from "asocial attack" tape even more than "det bittra slutet". It has a rawer sound that works perfectly for this band. Even the live material is not that bad and worth your time. Like all the F.O.A.D. releases, it's a deluxe product. Comes on a beautiful gatefold cover and a booklet with band's history, notes, pics, flyers and all the useless infos we record nerds like to know!

venerdì 2 settembre 2016

ROCKS interview 2000

While looking for something else in my zine collection, I came across this interview with ROCKS, a legendary KBD band from Sydney that released a killer 7" back in 1978. Taken from MRR#211, december 2000.