Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Unsane First Three Singles


Don't know why I broke these out, but I am glad I did.
I remember seeing them at Hampshire college and they were one of the loudest bands I had ever seen. They had this goofy little A frame thing practically falling apart. Since I was a straightedge goodie two-shoes, I imagined these guys to be as crazy and fucked up as the graphics. They had that total NY vibe. Totally disgusted and disgusting.

This Town b/w Urge to Kill. Treehouse Records 1989. So right off the bat you've got the Zodiac Killer artwork. Brutal. Feedback, Wah-Wah, buried vocals. A winner.

Concrete Bed b/w El Mundo. This is the one that really stands out to me. Glitterhouse 1990. Concrete Bed is a total ripper with a Big Black kind of vibe.
Maybe the hit single of the bunch.

Sub-Pop was the home for 1990's epic Vandal-X b/w Streetsweeper. All the elements of the first 2 singles are pushed to the limit. Harsh, trebly, buried vocals. Pummelling assault. Nevermind the graphics which were some over the top sickness.

Jungle Music came out in 91 too, but it didn't grab me as much as the first three.
The first album was pretty rad too, but they kind of started to live off the hype. Maybe there was just too much competition for the hateful noise crown as you had Drunktank (naptime!),Red Bliss,Whorl, Zeni Geva, Hammerhead... I getting giddy just thinking about it.
I guess there is a singles collection of these on Matador, but it appears to be OOP and going for dumb money on amazon. I would guess those without the records are savvy enough to track it down and poach it on the web.

2 comments:

TerryG said...

I've got the singles collection on LP, I'll grab that and my Hammerhead discs and we should have a listening party.

Anonymous said...

You nailed it. They were rad. And then they weren't.
And the horror graphics get old.
Good lord, am I sliding into Tomas Squip????

d