Here's another reissue from Beer City, this time of an early 80's hardcore/punk classic. Verbal Abuse played fast hardcore punk with straight yelling vocals and a lot of bitter attitude. I don't know what too say about this... it's that hardcore sound for which the early 80's are so often revered: Not too fast, not super aggressive, just raw, in your face, go fuck yourself hardcore/punk. The songs rarely top two minutes and not a single one hits three minutes, so they keep it to a no nonsense level of intensity throughout. And of course the LP closes with a cover of Grand Funk Railroad's "American Band". In addition to the tracks from the LP, there's a lengthy live set from 1984 that includes a few tracks that were never released. Believe it or not the sound is very tolerable for its age. I've heard live recordings from a year ago that sound like utter garbage compared to this. Of course it's got setbacks, and there are some areas where the master tape was likely a bit worn, but shit... the mix is good, and the sound comes damn close to rivaling the LP itself. Very cool. They even do a quick snippet of Black Sabbath's "Paranoid"... you can't lose. Of course the recording is dated, so it's dingy. The vocals tend to be out front with guitars taking a back seat, and it's not the most consistent LP of all time as far as the recording goes. Sometimes the sound is a little bit fuller and louder, other times it's thinner and lacks bass presence, but hey... it was 20+ years ago, what are you gonna do? One thing I will say is that I would assume this was remastered, but they probably could have done a little bit more on that end, if nothing else in the volume department, but I don't know... It sounds okay, and I assume pretty true to the original release, but I for one wouldn't have complained if they tweaked the mastering a bit more. The layout keeps it simple with that classic cover, a few black and white band photos, some lyrics, and some liner notes from three of the band members that played on the LP. The tracklist for the live set is off because there are more songs than there are track titles, so I don't know what the deal is there. The center panels also show a bunch of old flyers from shows that the band played with everyone from 7 Seconds and D.R.I. to the Dead Kennedys. The lyrics are as simple as can be, just pissed off and in your face: "Society hates me, that's okay, I don't like society anyway, I blew their world up in their face, Just because it's a fucked up place..." Judging from the liner notes a great deal may not have changed, as Nicki Sicki states, "The live set is from our '84 tour... This show was December of '84 at The Ritz in NY with The Ramones. The Ramones didn't like us, and we could care less." I hope Beer City keeps doing these reissues, because it's awesome to have classic documents of hardcore history properly released on CD like this.
[Beer City]
Running time - 43:46, Tracks: 27
[Notable tracks: I Hate You, Disintegration, I Don't Need It, Verbal Abuse, Emotional Constipation (live), Paranoid (live), I Wanna Be Me (live)]
Beer City Records - http://www.beercityrecords.com
