Moment Of Truth

There had been a challenge going around on Facebook recently where people would post ten albums that had an impact on them. I usually avoid those kind of things, as I know that the majority of my Facebook friends do not share the same musical tastes as me, so what would be the point...but after being tagged to join the challenge by a handful of people, I decided to participate even if no one was going to care...hey, at the very least it would be interesting to see the posts pop up in my FB memories years down the road.

While most people were just posting album cover images they pulled from the internet, I wanted to use actual photos of records from my collection. I made the challenge a kind of musical timeline as we moved from the first album I remember buying for myself, and then as I progressed into Heavy Metal and then got into Hardcore. When I got to the point in the timeline when I first connected with Straight Edge, I ended up using a Minor Threat record, but really, that was only because I didn't own a single piece of Slapshot vinyl.

While I loved Minor Threat when I started to get into Hardcore around 1990, Slapshot were probably a much bigger influence. I was travelling to The Channel in Boston for a lot of Metal shows at the time, and somewhere along the way I started crossing over from Death Angel and Testament shows to Slapshot and Sick Of It All. Slapshot were angry and apologetically Straight Edge, and I gravitated to them. They had just released Sudden Death Overtime, and it feels like I must have seen them once a month for about a year...playing with Meliah Rage, Sam Black Church or Maelstrom. It was an amazing time.

Doing that Facebook challenge pushed me to finally hunt down some Slapshot vinyl. I didn't care if it was Back On The Map or Step On It...I just needed something. In the end, Back On The Map turned out to be the easier target, and I managed to pull a copy from eBay at a decent price. It had been a while since I'd listened to this record, but man, this thing is a classic. It is just absolutely fierce. Glad to finally add this important record to my collection.