Record Label: Mad At The World Records
Genre: Early Hardcore Punk
Band Link: link
Buy on Amazon.com

What we have here is a one-disc retrospective of a largely forgotten early New York Hardcore band. Throwing a bunch of demos, live tracks, and studio recordings, the album is a compendium of pretty much everything the band recorded in their short life. A staple of CBGBs, these guys tread the same musical ground as Minor Threat and the Dead Boys. And while it’s not bad, there’s a reason that nobody rediscovered them until now. They’re really nothing special, except for the fact that this is older than most of the kids these days.

Part of the problem of anthologizing a band like this is that they were probably better remembered in a live setting, playing all kinds of shows with bands of that era. They never recoded a full-length, and some of the demos and live bootlegs have truly terrible quality sound, with audio cutting out here and there, and muffled sounds. Still, I suppose for fans of the early CBGBs and Max’s sound, this is an interesting artefact. The compilation boasts 35 songs in just over an hour, since most of the band’s early output were quick one minute speedfests. Their later stuff becomes more structured and songs become longer and more thought out. It probably would have been interesting had they released a full length LP in their lifetime. But for now, this serves as a curious, if a little unnecessary glimpse into some nearly forgotten early 80s NYHC history.

Bottom Line: A well compiled, but really not too exciting retrospective of an early 80s NY punk band.
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