«I've got the world up my ass and I gonna move fast, being the first, won't be the last (...)». Fucking yuppies, haha.
Recommended Movie:
When there is no more room in hell ...
Reading:
Gustave Flaubert said about «Madame Bovary» that he wanted to write a "female version of Don Quijote". With «Don Quijote», the first novel as we understand it today, was written and «Madame Bovary» was the first novel of the modernity. Scandalized and censored, this masterpiece of realism shows how a woman starts taking her dreams and wishes for real and enters a fight against something that is drastically more than just windmills.
As promised. here’s the repost from August 12 2006. Songs freshly ripped. What a great, great, great albeit short, short, short record! I bet KPeterD (KPD) says he doesn’t like it because he doesn’t have it. Love, peace and debauchery.
Top-notch punkrock from SF, this is the bands 2nd 7″ (the first one, “In Vagueness deal” is nice, but not too spectacular apart from the picture sleeve). BREAKOUT’s final output was a monstrous 12″EP called “No more” which has received much acclaim lately and rightly so!
This 7″ I think is the perfect link between the two mentioned - it really sits in the middle of them musically, which doesn’t make it average. This is the correct proof for music not being math, by the way.
Here’s the complete scorcher for you!
After I had posted the BREAKOUTS 12″, I asked myself what could come next without lowering the quality level. I kept searching my records and tapes, started ripping some tapes (Jerry’s Kids live and the occassional Heavy Metal demos) when all of a sudden I had a flashback. I remembered the old local record store I mentioned before. It was a small one room store. Everything in the inside was painted black: The walls, the hand made crude shelves, the ceiling, the floor, the seats and the black shades in the store window that kept the light out. The small office room, two steps down, on the other hand was painted all green. It made you sick when you walked in or out, it was just too much. The first time I had visited the store was in 1980. I remember the first DEAD KENNEDYS record on display, as well as the first IRON MAIDEN, AC/DC and other stuff, mainly Punk though. It was magic, especially when you were 12 years old. There seemed to be soooo many records to check out making you feel even smaller. What followed were years and years of visiting the store and another great one just around the corner (that one had a lot of bootlegs for sale from ca. 1982 on). I’d say there wasn’t one week without spending hours in the store, talking to the crazy owner and his employee, making friends with Metalheads and some Punks from Switzerland and nearby Austria.
In 1984, I opened the door and there was an incredible clean and razor sharp record playing on the main speakers. These speakers were hand made and I swear I never heard such a great clean and forceful sound ever again. The record the owner had put on had just come in with the big box of imports he received every thursday or friday and as I said, the sound was amazing. It was YYY’s 12″ - to me epitomizing to this very day the Hardcore genre like few others. There’s no Punk left in the sound and it does not lean towards Metal the tiniest bit. The band had one of the tightest rhythm sections in Hardcore. The bassist and the drummer are so incredibly great on this record that I sometimes wish I had their separated lines only, just like in the marvelous “Sold out” dub mix on the first GANG GREEN 7″. I swear I could listen to these two guys alone forever. Not that the singer and the guitarist shouldn’t be on the EP - it would just be fantastic if for a change I could focus on the rhythm section alone. This EP is perfect (even better than the BREAKOUTS’s 12er, to be honest). The production, the songs, the musicians, the cover art and the lyrics. Blimey you can’t beat YYY can you.
This EP had been reissued (that’s the red & black cover you see pictured) in 1989 and spiced up with some remixed demo tracks and such. These extra are great and if it was the only thing YYY had ever released, you could hardly imagine the band could have gotten better after them. When you hold them against the EP tracks though, they’re just very good. The label, Fringe, btw is the same that later released Metal records mainly, like SLAUGHTER and SACRIFICE.
Here’s the band’s official myspace site. And here’s a video I just found on Youporn. Damn, these guys really look like I had imagined them to look like in the past 24 years. Wonderful. I love the internet!
As you can read on the myspace site, YYY are preparing an offical anthology CD - let’s hope it will be released soon.
Why this has never been re-released, I don’t know. One of the best Hardcore Punk records ever released. Period. Find the BREAKOUTS first 7″ here and the 2nd 7″ here. Ripped with love. Forget all the other shit ass quality rips on crap blogs all over. Enjoy fuckers.
Seriously, for a minute: Am I that hip?! I just started watching Iron Man and before the first half hour of the movie was over, it had me get excited about AC/DC’s “Back in Black” and SUICIDAL TENDENCIES’ “Institutionalized” in the soundtrack. It feels kinda weird to be so much up to date. I mean, sure - AC/DC’s BIB album is one of the gold standards in rock, selling trillions and SUICIDAL TENDENCIES’ first amazing LP ain’t that much underground either. But the combination of the two, within minutes, in a blockbuster? What the fuck?!
Will bands like EFFIGIES (one of the best band names ever, btw) ever become integral part of the pop business? I highly doubt so. Acid dripping cynicism, evil and uncomfortable, combined with tight musicanship and a slick production. You may say “Security” is boring and damn right you are. I bet this is what it’s supposed to be - boring and annoying. This 7″ has it all: Excitement, power, cynicism, boredom, annoyance and a song about an airplane crash. Ever since SAXON’s “The Eagle has landed”, I think songs about plane crashes are the best. And records with airplane crash covers are even better. And those with song lyrics printed on the labels and with a concept all over the whole thing. Enjoy!
Finally a RAVEN post, you may say. Being one of the flagships of the first wave of the NWOBHM, UK’s RAVEN had started out as early as in 1974 already and developped a style that would lay down the first stepping stones for what a few years later morphed into Speed Metal (the lads called it Athletic Rock, haha). It’s not so much the speed of the drumming but rather the hectic singing and the wild guitar work. There’s really a whole lot going on in the background, if you follow the guitars. Quite a novelty for a 1980 Metal band! “Don’t need your Money” is the sing along track on the band’s first vinyl output, but “Wiped Out” is the hit. What a song!
RAVEN were a bit too hectic for me in the old days, I must admit. I bought all their records until “All for one” but rarely ever played them and in the end, I sold them along with most of my Metal records in the mid 80s. So when I saw this on Ebay last week, it seemed like a good chance to pick it up again. The description said something like “as new” and I could personally pick up all the records I won from the same guy. Silly me. Instead of taking a close look on what I bought, I had a little chit-chat with the guy who turned out to be a late-comer (I had expected him to be older & wiser & stronger). The first attempt of getting the records had miserably failed: I rode through heavy rain on the bike, when after 20 miles I ran out of motor oil. I had to leave the bike in some weird dump and jump on the train to get me back home. So I tried again the day after. It was a nice but long and cold ride until I was finally home with the records. It almost felt like 25 years ago, when I would ride through ice storms on my mom’s moped to the local record store, which was about a hour away. It never stopped me, however hard the rain was pouring down. One time, my finger tips froze so badly, I had to go to the emergency cause me fingers had turned blue by the time I had come home. If memory serves, it was the day VENOM’s “Die hard” 7″ was released. My mom had to put it on the turntable for me (okay, that’s a lie, but it sounds really good).
Back home I took a superficial look at the batch I won Ebay and enthusiastically left positive feedback. I was home safe, opened a good bottle of french wine and felt cosy and totally regressive, so why not just give the guy some good score for bringing me so much pleasure. What kind of a fool am I, really. You can imagine how pissed off I was when I played this RAVEN single and realized it was totally beat up. And the next surprise was: The guy sold me the bootleg of the AVATAR 7″ I had been re-hunting so long. Total bummer!
So here we go with RAVEN and a fine example of how dumb Metal really makes you. It’s a great record, but I somehow can’t enjoy it as much as I wish. Boring sissy story, I know. But to say it with Ian MacKaye: “And what the fuck have you done?!”
As promised. here’s the repost from August 12 2006. Songs freshly ripped. What a great, great, great albeit short, short, short record! I bet KPeterD (KPD) says he doesn’t like it because he doesn’t have it. Love, peace and debauchery. 
