Friday, April 4, 2008

Big Drill Car - No Worse For The Wear (1994)


No Worse For The Wear was the final album from Big Drill Car. There is a connection to two bands already mentioned in this blog, M.I.A. and ALL. Frank Daly and Mark Arnold joined M.I.A. in 1986 and formed Big Drill Car whilst they were in M.I.A. The band were one of the founders of hardcore pop punk/melodic hardcore along with Dag Nasty, All and The Descendents
The Descendents/All connection started with their first EP Small Block which was produced by Descendents guitarist, Stephen Egerton and both Bill Stevenson and Stephen Egerton worked on production with all of the band's later albums. Frank Daly does backing vocals on All's Pummel album.


This can only really be described as 80s pop punk in the nineties due to both the band's roots and overall sound. If you like any of the bands mentioned in this post and haven't heard this band, here's your chance to do so.

Download.

Sunday, March 30, 2008

Shihad - Empire Rehearsal and first demo



Here's more early Shihad. The first time I found out what this band looked like was when they won the Grunt Records New Zealand Heavy Metal competion which was held sometime in the late 80's. Anyway Bruce Rae from Grunt records in Christchurch was selling an overpriced coverless live tape from the event which featured Shihad and Strikemaster. I've long since lost that tape and haven't worked out how to rip tapes or vinyl anyway. Anyway I managed to get my grubby hands on an unofficial Shihad CD release entitled The Early demos.

Here is disc 1

Empire Warehouse Rehearsal(Approx 91/92)
1. Churn
2. Anonymous
3. Push Away
4. Feet First
5. Fear of Falling Apart

Dead and Buried Demo (88 or 89?)

1) Dead and Buried
2)IT

3)Tengu


plus Down Dance(demo version)


It's amazing that a song like Push Away never made it onto an album. The other songs from the Empire Rehearsal are also very good. Faith No More, Helmet and to a lesser extent than earlier, Metallica influences shine through.

Beastwars - IV

After over a year off for various reasons, we have returned solely because we wanted to review the new Beastwars album. I really w...