Saturday, August 22, 2009

Posted by xjustinx | File under : , ,
Still one of the only Christian bands I've ever truly loved, here's the full length release from CA's Focal Point. This came out on Tooth & Nail at the tail end of 1995, and according to their site, is now out of print. Two of the three songs that were on the "Neglected" 7inch from Life Sentence Records were re-recorded and included on this eleven track full length. Members of Focal Point have gone on to be in awful bands like Training For Utopia and Demon Hunter.

Lest we forget the awesomeness of the 90s, let's examine a couple of the elements of this photo:
1. Adidas warm up pants. He must have been taking fashion tips from VOD.
2. Wearing your own band's shirt (although I must admit I like that it's a long sleeve).
I still say our ridiculousness of the 90s was far better than today's hardcore ridiculousness of flat brimmed hats, all over neon print, and general misappropriation of hip hop culture.

That being said, here's the download:
Focal Point - Suffering of the Masses
[1995 - Tooth & Nail Records]
http://www.mediafire.com/?znhauooaxow

7 comments:

Wedge said...

you forgot about running shoes

Anonymous said...

Also, the Mapex drum set lol

Aaron said...

12 years later and that long sleeve is still in my closet.

also, tfu wasn't awful, and I'm not going to defend demon hunter's nu-metalosity

Stephen said...

Would you want to sell that longsleeve?

I would pay good money for it if you really wanted to sell it.

Anonymous said...

Wow, my favorite hardcore album from back when I was in college. You don't happen to also have Overcome's "When Beauty Dies" album, do you? That would complete my stroll down memory lane.

Anonymous said...

Training for Utopia was way ahead of their time and I mean, way...Plastic Soul Impalement pre-dates American Nervoso, When Forever Comes Crashing, Until Your Heart Stops etc. People never want to admit how fucking brilliant and ambitious TFU was. Focal Point was killer but this stuck in the past post lost all credibility disrespecting Training For Utopia.

Unknown said...

I revisited this recently. I owned it during my Christian hardcore phase. The lyrics are so crap. Like, the songs are completely devoid of any kind of metaphor or lyrical art it's like he writes a paragraph and sings it to music. "When You Die" is a prime example. Total ass. Like I wanted to like it for nostalgia's sake but it's just crap apart from a few decent songs.

Many other early christian bands like Overcome and Strongarm made way better hardcore than these guys.