Sorrow Obsessed

New metal albums haven't been holding my interest too much this year. The few that I've checked out, have been good, but I've just not wanted to spend any time with them. So when I saw the new record from The Obsessed at one of the local record stores, I'm not sure why I felt the need to buy it.

I've never been a huge fan of The Obsessed. Nothing against them, I just haven't taken the time to really sit with any of their older records (even though my friend, Jeff, is always after me to listen to The Church Within). I did, however, enjoy their last album from 2017, Sacred, and actually spent time listening to it, so when I saw the new record at the store I figured that I'd grab it...even if I wasn't feeling the need to listen to it at the time. At some point, I'd be in that place, right? So I might as well buy it when I saw it.

The past couple of weeks have seen surprisingly cooler temperatures... strange for August, and it has started to feel a bit like Fall, and so when I saw the new record from The Obsessed in the stack of records to blog about, the time suddenly felt right. Man, I have been listening to Gilded Sorrow this past week and has put me in the mood for more shit like this.

Shatterhed

When I was recently picking up some 90's colored vinyl, and was poking around to see what else the seller had that might be interesting, the cover for the Shatterhed 7 inch caught my eye.

I knew nothing about this record, and had never even heard of Shatterhed before... but the record cover had a very 90's hardcore look to it, so I brought up the Discogs entry for it. Okay, the record is on 1124 Records, and I know that I have a 7 inch from this label in my collection for a straight edge band named Blindside... so that made up my mind and I knew that I was going to buy this.

This Shatterhed 7 inch is very much in the melodic hardcore vein of the time. When the record arrived as a part of my Discogs order, and I put it on the turntable, I didn't think that it was all that noteworthy, and I felt that maybe it was trying too hard with the melodies... but after listening to it a few times, these three songs are really starting to grow on me. I'm liking this more and more, and while it isn't going to touch some of the more well known bands of that time, this was still a fun discovery.

Probably the most surprising thing was that I was able to find the mp3 files for these songs on Soulseek. In a world of Spotify streaming, small bands like this get lost to time and dust, so I was happy that I was able to load them into my iTunes library and have these songs at my fingertips to play on the computer.

One Step Ahead

While I was in a 90's hardcore mood (always) and picking up the Burst Of Silence 7 inch, I decided to take a look at the sellers list to see if they had any other cool things from that time period that I needed to pick up.

One Step Ahead might have sounded identical to Verbal Assault... in fact I might have picked up this 7 inch because No Answers zine reviewed the band's first record, saying that "some of the songs were blatant Verbal Assault rip offs." Sounds good to me... and probably why I enjoyed the band Remission so much as well. I know what I like, and if the band does it well, I'm not concerned how much they may "borrow" from another band's sound.

Of course in my ignorance, back in 1991, I picked up the black vinyl version. Happy to finally grab the white vinyl pressing after all these years. Man, the two songs on this 7 inch from 1991 are just so good. Shame they didn't do anything after this.

Burst Of Colored Vinyl

Like most years, I've spent a good amount of time listening to 90's hardcore. It is probably the place that I spend the most time. It just never gets old for me. So shortly after posting some lesser known stuff like Man Will Surrender and Deepwater a few months ago, I immediately felt the need to search out more of that kind of thing.

I've always had a soft spot for the Burst Of Silence 7 inch. I saw them play day three of the New Bedford fest in 1994, and grabbed their record after watching them play. Of course the record that I bought at the show was the black vinyl, and at the time I didn't really know any different. To the best of my knowledge there was only one pressing of any record... and it was usually on black vinyl, although occasionally something was pressed on colored vinyl instead... but I had no idea that record labels would do BOTH. It took me years to understand this fact. So here we are 30+ years later, and I'm finally getting around to adding the colored vinyl version to my collection.

There isn't anything really original with the four songs on that 7 inch... they play that chugga chugga style of 90's hardcore and hit all the standard topics of straight edge and vegetarianism, but I don't care because I love that style and there can never be enough straight edge vegetarian/vegan songs. I eat that shit up.

Two Eyes For An Eye

A few posts back I mentioned that I avoid discography collections when it comes to buying records... so of course I'm here to post a discography collection that I picked up recently.

I'd been listening to bands like Sick Of It All, Agnostic Front and Cro-Mags for a couple of years before I truly got into hardcore. I started going to metal shows in Boston at the beginning of 1990, and over the next year, newer and more underground hardcore bands started to make their way into my periphery. By the time we were moving through 1991, I'd pushed a lot of metal aside and Boston Hardcore was my new personality. Bands like Kingpin and Dive were so important to what I was discovering for new bands at the time, but Eye For An Eye just seemed to be on another level. Boston loved that band, and went off the few times that I saw them at The Channel or Bunratty's. Because they were such a formative part of my entrance into the Boston hardcore scene, when Deathwish recently released a compilation 12 inch that contained the band's two 7 inches, it made it really hard to not pick one up... plus, I'm fairly certain that is me in the Bad Religion shirt off to the right, by Lloyd's foot, so that was another incentive to grab a copy.

When it was announced that Eye For An Eye were going to do a reunion show with Have Heart in Boston on July 20th, I was crushed. I had family plans for that day that I was not going to be able to get out of, and it was very disappointing to think that I was going to have to miss out on seeing the band that was so important to my true hardcore introduction. Thankfully, a few weeks before the Have Heart show, Eye For An Eye announced that they were going to be doing a smaller show the night before. Now that was a show that I could make! I might be exhausted for my nephew's wedding the following day, but it was a price that I would gladly pay.

I ended up connecting with my friend Pete that lives in Boston, and made plans to get some pizza before the show. The pizza place was just around the corner from the club, and as we were eating, all the dudes from EFAE came in and hung out with us. Kind of a funny moment with the guys from the band introducing themselves to me like I didn't just drive 120 miles to specifically see them. Fun times for sure. I was a bit anxious about the show and having to awkwardly hang out before the band started, but man, once they started their set with Signs Of The Pride, I was transported back in time. Band was so fucking good that night, and I'm very glad that I made the trip.

One more photo that I stole from the Eye For An Eye instagram page that shows how much fun those early 90's Eye For An Eye shows were, and includes a young and crew cut version of me peaking up over the guy climbing on the crowd.

The Return Of Fu Manchu

I keep having the best of intentions of getting back to posting regularly here on the blog, but time moves so fast these days that I blink and a week has gone by... being away for four days last weekend to see Metallica play a couple of shows did not help with my posting here either. Speaking of shows, I'll be seeing Fu Manchu play with Clutch next month, so let's get to their new record.

There is no bad time to listen to Fu Manchu, but summertime sets the perfect vibe. As soon as I gave their new record, The Return of Tomorrow, a listen, I was hooked on that fuzz. You know exactly what you are going to get with Fu Manchu. There are still a few Fu Manchu records that I haven't heard, but each one that I spin is just a blast... and this new one is no different. Perfect summer soundtrack.

It has been over 10 years since I last saw Fu Manchu play live. It was shortly after the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing and the city went into total lockdown for a manhunt shortly after the show... so let's hope things are less dramatic when I see them next month.

Vinyl tends to look cheap these days with gross patterns, so it is always an unexpected surprise when it looks this good AND matches the cover art. More of this please. "Sky and Space" colored vinyl limited to 4,000.