This is a reissue of Raw Power's debut record from 1983, remastered and all that jazz. This Italian hardcore band has become pretty damn well known over time, but I'm honestly not that enthusiastic about the relatively noisy brand of hardcore/punk displayed within these 14 tracks. I think a big part of that is because the recording is way dated, and there are some issues with that bugging me. I love the bass presence, but it's weird because in some of the songs the bass totally dominates, while drums and guitars fall to the distance and the vocals rest barely out front, jumping up and peaking to distortion when the yelling gets more aggressive. The levels are actually really strange because they fluctuate constantly, so you can actually hear guitars getting louder as bass gets quieter, and vocals coming forth while drums sink back a bit, etc. The variation is most noticeable on the guitars and bass, but when combined with the peaked levels of the vocals it can get obnoxious. Their style on his record is pretty straightforward hardcore/punk with great fast vocal patterns (the strength of the record for sure), a moderate level of speed, some caustic leads akin to Black Flag or something along those lines, etc. Some of the songs are pretty damn good, especially the rockin' "Don't Let Me See It", but really nothing about this is striking me as all that memorable. As a bonus there's a ton of CD-Rom material, some of which is good, and some of which blows, but the biggest problem is the way it's all put together. There's a discography and all that stuff (photos, flyers, etc.), as well as some really early videos of the band (horrible quality, especially the audio), but then there's a lot of other cool stuff like print interviews and tour diaries - but they're all .jpg's of the magazine pages, so it has to open up in Photoshop, and it's a huge pain in the ass to try to read from a low-res .jpg like that. The videos also don't work right so you have to browse the CD drive to get them to load properly. So... I find that aspect of the disc unnecessary. The layout's not bad... not great, but not bad. I really like the front cover a lot, but the rest is somewhat slapped together with plain text and rough photo collages, but it gets the job done. Lots of old band photos are included along with the lyrics and some liner notes from both the band and the label. The lyrics are pretty straightforward attacks on the police, racism, capitalism, greed, political corruption, and all that stuff. They're simple, but pretty aggressive, flat out calling for the murder of cops and stuff like that. Wild. I don't know, there are a handful of killer songs here, but I think that a better recording would have been crucial to this record. I hate to say it but very little about these songs makes me feel like this is a historically critical hardcore/punk record.
[Soulforce]
Running time - 20:39, Tracks: 14
[Notable tracks: Don't Let Me See It, Repression, Power]
Soulforce Records - http://www.soulforce-records.com
