Hardcore Punk and Oi!-V/AThis is the first studio album from these guys in over a decade and the first time the trio of James Stevenson (The Alarm, Gene Loves Jezebel, The Cult, and Generation X), Chris Bashford and Gene October have played together on an album since 1979. Because Dave Martin wasn't able to record due to his multiple sclerosis so the band enlisted the services of Tony Barber of the Buzzcocks who has been a fill in since 99.
This a compilation of 17 hardcore punk/Oi! bands: Slumlords, Offensive Weapon, Fed Up!, Crucial Change, Strong Island Boot Boys, Klasse Kriminale (awesome Italian band, I really like how they flip between Italian and English), Run Like Hell, Skin Disorder, Second Class Citizen, Reason to Fight, The 86'ed, Fear City, First Offense (some youth crewish vocals over fast paced hardcore punk, just wish the recording was better because it's the worst on the CD), The Offenders, The Jesse Jaymz Acoustic Onslaught (see the review I did for him for a more detailed description), Baby shakes, and Explorersz (the most ska influenced band on the disc, even have a harmonica in the song, I think they are from France).
This comp brought some songs by bands I have encountered and opened my eyes to some new ones such as Skin Disorder, Strong Island Boot Boys, Crucial Change and Second Class Citizen. While most have similar sounds and influences there are some bands that break the mold such as Baby Shakes, who are a fronted by a female. The Offenders song "People Who Talk Shit" sounded really similar to the Slumlords, I mean really similar, so it was only natural I would dig that.
Obviously each band sports their own recording which varies in quality, some sound awesome, some okay, and some are ehhh. But the mastering job was damn good to level this thing out to make it sound as uniformed as humanly possible. Not an easy task when you have so many bands with different recordings, and in some cases much different sounds.
This one is the kind of layout you see on many albums of this type; a big congregation of punks and hardcore kids acting up. The colors are little on the dull side but the awesome drawings make up for it. You got my kind of dude in the left hand corner sparking a band, a dude nailing someone with a guitar, the obligatory puker, dude getting his chin rocked. The back displays all the bands and song titles over the fist logo of the label. Inside the booklet has all the bands listed in a scattered array with choice photos of some of the bands and also has the website or myspace page for each. One thing that could've made the booklet a bit better was including what album the songs were off of, so if people liked a band they would know what album has the song they liked.
Rating: 3.9/5
Songs Worthy of Replay: Reason To Fight-McCarthy's Revenge Slumlords-Our New Policy Fed Up-Last Straw Second Class Citizen-Sunshine and Roses Crucial Change-Shutdown The 86'ed-Dropout
Synopsis: Very well put together compilation that will expose people to bands they may have never heard otherwise as well as giving you some songs that you probably have already checked out. Cool artwork that is perfectly fitting for the style of music caps this one off nicely. For more information on this release and the bands on it check out: http://www.myspace.com/unitedriotrecords or http://www.unitedriotrecords.com