30 Years Of Absinthe

I'm big on celebrating anniversaries. What was I listening to twenty years ago.... forty years ago? Hell, I'm keeping a list over on Letterboxd to watch and rank all the horror movies that I can from 1976 for a fifty year anniversary challenge. So yeah, I'm always interested in that stuff. I'd already done a couple of posts for the blog's 20th anniversary, so I've been in a celebrating mood... and as soon as we rolled into 2026, I started digging into my 1996 playlist to see what I was listening to 30 years ago.

At the start of my 1996 playlist was the Absinthe EP. I always loved Groundwork, and while Absinthe features a couple of key players from that band, I never really latched on to them the same way. Absinthe seemed a bit more harsh and chaotic compared to Groundwork, and I wasn't too interested back in the day. Seeing how much I fell in love with stuff like Disembodied last year, I approached this record with that mindset and found that I really loved what I was hearing. This thing got multiple repeat plays early this year, and I've listened to these songs more than I have over the 30 years that I've owned the 10 inch.

So yeah, while I do still own the 10 inch that I orginally bought for this record around 1996, it was the black vinyl version. Seeing how much I was listening to this, I couldn't help but feel the itch to pick up the colored vinyl version for it as well.

Free And Pink

I love some late 60's and 70's rock, but in recent years I've found that I don't reach for it nearly as much as I once did. My brain wants more aggresive shit these past few years. However, one cold and snowy weekend at the start of this year, I wanted to pull some of those old albums off the shelf, and stuff like Cream and early Bob Seger had me back in that frame of mind. At some point over the following weeks, I dove into the band Free on Spotify and I was surprised to find that I started obsessing over their self titled album.

The song Lying In The Sunshine had a chokehold on me and I couldn't get enough. It has such a lazy carefee summer vibe and it contrasted nicely with the harsh snowy January weather. I just kept returning to that album and I was surprised with how obsessed with it I had become. I needed the record in my collection and because I was listening to it so much, my brain thought that it would be very cool to pick up an original UK pink label Island pressing from 1969.

I really wanted this record, and I know how fickle my tastes can be, so I knew that if I didn't pull the trigger at the peak of this obsession I'd soon move on and forget about it... then a couple of years from now I'd find myself wishing that I'd struck while the iron was hot. Not wanting to regret letting it pass me by, I found one and jumped on it... making it my second $100 record purchase of 2026, and we were only two weeks into the year.

Most People Are Dicks

Another record from Tim's collection that I wasn't really sure if I wanted it when I saw it. I've been familiar with Ludichrist since the late 80's, but never really latched on to them. For the most part, I felt like they were trying to be funny... and that kind of thing tends to get old really fast with me... so I never really spent much time with them. I saw Immaculate Deception available from Tim's collection, with those Combat Core labels, and I figured that I'd give Ludichrist another chance.

This album was more enjoyable than I remembered. Sure there is the goofy shit like Green Eggs And Ham or the goofy cover of Last Train To Clarksville... plus songs that are kind of gimmicky like Most People Are Dicks and Down With The Ship (which they lean into quite a bit more with Ludichrist's This Party Sucks and when Scatterbrain revived Down With The Ship and made it a hit)... but I guess that I never really was aware of the New York Hardcore connections here with Chuck Valle on bass, and guest appearances by dudes from Agnostic Front and Leeway (and cool to see guys from Nuclear Assault and Crumbsuckers show up here as well). So, yeah, this album was surprisingly good.

Happy to kind of discover this old school crossover record and get it into the collection.

Caroline Quickness

I didn't bother checking out the Quickness album from Bad Brains until last year... 36 years after its release. The Punk Note edition of those Bad Brains records looked so good that it pushed me to finally listen to Quickness, with hopes that I'd like it and I could buy another one of those great looking covers. The marketing scheme worked, and I ended up grabbing one.

I was thinking that the Punk Note pressing was probably all that I needed for Quickness. It looked great, and the version of Don't Blow Bubbles was made into an instrumental, so I was all set with only having that version, right? Wrong. As soon as I pulled the record from the sleeve and saw those Caroline labels, I needed to have it. You can blame We're Not In This Alone... I think that was my exposure to those Caroline labels, and seeing them here, I was like yes give me more of that.

You'll still find me reaching for Rock For Light and I Against I 9 times out of 10, but Quickness is still a fun listen.

Ticket To Whiplash

Prior to this month, all of my posts this year have been for records that I picked up in 2025. Moving into May, it is nice to finally start writing about records that I've bought this year. I've bought 46 records so far in 2026, so I'm obviously still working with a large backlog. It would be nice to just rip through a bunch of posts to make this blog a bit more current, but I keep struggling to find the time. Who knows, maybe I can start to get things under control this month.

Dipping back into those records from Tim's collection, it was nice to pull some more thrash. Whiplash's second record, Ticket To Mayhem, was released near the height of thrash's popularity in 1987 and it just rips with an absolute metal fury. I love how raw and unhinged this album sounds... a voice that sounds shredded and guitars at 100 mph... man, it's so good.

I always found it cool that the bassist for Whiplash, Tony Bono, ended up in Into Another... so as I was leaving metal behind in the early 90's, it was funny to me that suddenly there was a new band with ex members of Underdog, Bold and Whiplash. Seemed like a such a strange mix.

No Tears In Effect

In my early days of collecting records, I picked up a copy of Sick Of It All's Blood Sweat And No Tears back in 2005, before I started this blog. It was a red vinyl reissue out of Germany, and I was pretty excited to pick it up at that time. Sure it looked nice, but it always ate at me that I didn't have an original pressing of the album. At the start of this year, when I got the latest update of what was available from Tim's collection, I was very excited to see that SOIA album in there.

Blood, Sweat And No Tears was one of the first true hardcore albums that I picked up back in the day. Sure I'd stumbled upon stuff like Black Flag, Minor Threat and Misfits as a young metalhead, but stuff like that first Sick Of It All record, Agnostic Front's Liberty And Justice For, and Killing Time's Brightside really helped to open my eyes and start to shift my musical focus at the end of the 80's.

As a huge influence as that Sick Of It All album was on me, I'm glad to finally have an original In-Effect pressing on my shelf.

Dedicated To Murder Anthems

To be honest, I'm not even sure where I picked up this record. I know that it was included for free in a package I'd received at some point, but I wasn't really interested in it when it arrived, and I just tossed into the "junk to deal with later" pile, so therefore I didn't really register where it came from.

I remember picking up the CD for The Dedication's Youth Murder Anthems back when it was released in 2002, but like I'd mentioned in my Frostbite post at the start of this month, it was a weird time for me with hardcore. I didn't spend much time with it at the time, and it has literally been 20 years since I'd last listened to those songs. When the record arrived, I was tempted to just throw the damn thing away... but that Frostbite post awakened something in me, and I've been listening to a lot of early 2000's hardcore that I don't really spend much time with these days. With that mindset, I figured that I'd give this record from The Dedication a quick spin before I wrote it off completely.

Yeah, this record from The Dedication definitely fits that vibe I've been riding this month. Early 2000's hardcore has a sound, and this is it. I'm really glad to have this one in the collection (especially since it appears that I got rid of the CD at some point), but I'm content with just the clear vinyl pressing and I'm not going to be rushing out to buy other versions of this... for now.