Cinderblock

When I heard the announcement last year that War Records was going to be releasing a record from a long lost early 90's hardcore band, I could not wait to check them out. Cinderblock were from Buffalo and featured memebers that went on to Despair, Snapcase and Earth Crisis... and apparently they released one poorly recorded demo back in 1992. I'd never heard of this band, but I was fairly stoked to check them out.

The Breath The Fire 12 inch features six songs that Cinderblock originally wrote in the early 90's, and were finally given a proper recording last year. From the start of the first song, Sundial, you can feel those early 90's vibes, and the beginning of Samsara feels like it was influenced by Shelter's Freewill. I was pretty excited over this record after the first listen, but after a couple more spins, I'm having trouble maintaining that same level of enthusiasm. I mean, it is good, and it is a cool relic, but maybe I'd prefer those original rough demo versions instead of this re-recording. We'll see... maybe it will grow on me a bit more with more listens.

The vinyl options were the typical crap. There was a glow in the dark vinyl option, that looked cool, but I wasn't interested in paying the extra $10 that it cost compared to the other versions... and then there were the gross looking metallic gold and splatter options. The "galaxy" version probably looks the best out of all of them. 300 pressed.