Socialized Hate

I go back and read my old posts here on the blog quite often. Is that weird? I don't know. It seems like every other day I'm on here searching to see what a I wrote about a certain record, or to check to see what I was buying in 2016, for example. The amount of time that I spend reading my own blog seems a bit excessive... to the point that it might be weird.

Anyway, I've been listening to a lot of old school thrash lately, and it had me going back to read the 1989 in 2019 series that I had done a few years back. Man, I remembered how much fun it was to hunt down those records at that time. My collection for those classic thrash records is kind of weak, and considering just how important they were to me in my late teens, I quickly got the itch to chase more of them.

Atrophy were from Arizona in the late 80's, but they easily can stand alongside the more well known Bay Area bands from that time like Forbidden and Vio-lence They only released two albums, Socialized Hate in 1988 and Violent By Nature in 1990, and then the guitarist took off for medical school and the band fell apart. Both of their albums were released when I was out of High School and was going to college, which was probably my peak for thrash. I lived off campus, and didn't socialize with anyone at school. In between classes, you'd find me in my car listening to the latest thrash CDs instead of hanging out on campus with anyone. That first year at college, no one else in my classes was remotely interested in metal, so I wasn't interested in being around them. College proved to be just an extension of that High School awkwardness.

Atrophy were a band that didn't just sing about standard metal themes of satan and serial killers. They had something to say. Aside from the goofy Beer Bong, every song on their Socialized Hate album is an angry critique on society and politics. Listening to this album today, it still sounds as vital and relevent as it did back in 1988. I've been spinning Atrophy a lot this year, so it felt good to get their first album into my collection.