After I graduated from Ewing High School in June of 1990, all I wanted to do was move to California and ditch my family, my roots and my lame ass central Jersey town for good. While so many of my class mates were contemplating college majors, I was ready for sun, sand and maybe actually talking to a girl. I had my flight booked by the end of June. I also wanted to go out there to see Infest perform live. They were a blinding Hardcore wrecking machine from Valencia, California who only had this one 7” they put out themselves, but I fucking loved it. It was equal parts Brit ’blastbeat’ (Napalm Death) with the most primitive of early 80s’ American Hardcore (DYS, Siege, Deep Wound, The Abused, Negative Approach, etc.) It had a shitty looking Xeroxed sleeve and had no intentions but to slay your ass. I knew it just had to be a completely mind blowing experience live. Well, to make a long story short, within three weeks of my west coast jaunt, I was already back home in Jersey kissing cable television in my parents’ living room without seeing Infest AT ALL. It seemed not one of my Straight Edge pen pals in Cali knew or cared about the band . ‘Dude, those dudes are total druggies’. One of them told a story of how he tried out to be their bass player while the band chain smoked grass in front of him the whole time. He ended off the story with a very passionate ‘Fucking losers!’ and that was that…no Infest for me.
Fast forward a million years later, and I’m in CBGB’s for some reason. The band on stage is Mind Eraser from Boston and I’m standing with my jaw on the same floor where my skull was dropkicked some fifteen years earlier. This was the closest I was going to get to see Infest in my ‘bad hip’ years and I wasn’t weeping at all. I quickly ran out and bought everything I could by the young unit and I was thoroughly impressed. So impressed that I didn’t think twice how I was a grown man head banging in his living room to the strains of such tunes as ‘Chewed Up, Spit Out’ and ‘Full Spectral Dominance’.
They just released a brand new spankin’ twelve song 12” e.p named ‘Glacial Reign’ and have to say I’m smitten as hell. These kids have studied their Infest along with their early 90’s Slap-A-Ham catalogue (Crossed Out, Capitalist Casualties, etc.) But this ain’t some sorta loving tribute stuff. From the sludge caked intros to the power drill pay offs, this is something special that seems to come from the O-Mind of a first time toke of Freon or something much better/worse. Could these kids have early 70’s jams by Dark or Bang hidden away in their collections? I think they could and/or should. If you ‘act now’, you can get both a vinyl and CD copy of ‘Glacial Reign’ for a mere fifteen bones. Not only that, they’ll throw in a completely confusing one sided 7” of M.E. covering ‘Teenagers’ by The Meat Puppets. You know…now that I think about it…these kids are DEFINITELY on drugs…
That’s great.
OK, you redeemed yourself on your last post by-
A- Talking about Infest.
B- Mentioning Slap-A-Ham
C- Not pretending the shit was no longer going down. (please note use of ironic Ebonic grammar(it looks so wrong but it feels so right)).
Minor Infractions.
A- MP3, Hello?
B- Not mentioning Spazz.
C- Not mentioning Shank.
Posted by: Jason | July 26, 2006 at 10:01 PM
The linkage to the labels' website has MP3's there. Dig it chief...
...And I just recieved an e-mail from a member of Mind Eraser telling me they are in fact totally drug-free, which confuses me even more about their demented brutality.
Spazz were OK...but they were no No Comment...
Posted by: tony rettman | July 27, 2006 at 08:04 PM
What about Mind Eraser from NJ? They were local legends when I was in high school in the early 90's. They used to play Connections and Obsessions. Some members were from Morristown and went on to form SHAT.
Posted by: Michael B. | April 18, 2007 at 11:53 AM