Black Train Jack

Back in the early 90's, I picked up the debut Black Train Jack album, No Reward. I had really liked the track they had on Victory's 1993 version of the Only The Strong comp, but the band's full length didn't really grab me as I'd expected. I liked the album enough to give it occasional spins, but at that time, it really wasn't "hardcore" enough for me.

During one of my recent obsessions over Hardcore from the early 90's, I pulled out that No Reward album, and discovered that it had aged amazingly well. It was such a blast to listen to that I started digging into the band and discovered that they had released a follow up a year later with You're Not Alone. I figured that I'd give it a try. After downloading it and giving it a quick listen, I knew that I needed a copy.

Like the Bad Trip albums, I found that finding a copy wasn't as easy as I had anticipated. Sure there were overseas sellers on ebay offering up a copies for about $50 a piece, but I figured that Black Train Jack didn't have that strong of a following, and if I waited it out, sooner or later someone would put a copy up for auction and I could get one for a much better price. In the end, I grabbed one from a seller in UK for $16. The price was still higher than I had expected to pay, but they weren't showing up very often on ebay, and my patience was stretched pretty thin by that point. I just wanted to own a copy, so I finally pulled the trigger.

Black Train Jack is just a classic case of those early 90's hardcore bands that didn't really fit into a specific style, and just did their own thing. Sure they could have skipped the cover of The Joker on this album, but still, I'm so glad that I revisited this band, and discovered their second LP.