Restrain

Restrain were a straight edge band from Lee's Summit, Missouri, a suburb just outside of Kansas City. I've never gotten a full grip on if they were a vegan band or not, but judging from some of the lyrics, they were vegetarian at the least. From the cover art to the lyrics, one gets a real sense of straight edge militancy from Restrain on this 7", but one thing that you might not guess from that statement is that the singer of Restrain was Sean Ingram. Yes, that Sean Ingram. The one that fashioned a new reputation for himself by talking endless shit about straight edge in his next band, Coalesce. Released in 1993 on Chapter Records, this 7" is a good representation of what one would think of when they hear the term "90's vegan straight edge".

Restrain - Armageddon
Chapter Records [1993]
http://www.mediafire.com/?mxtnjgkmddw

78 Days After Death

78 Days After Death were a metalcore band from Salt Lake City in the early 2000's. They arose from the ashes of a band called Deadfall, and played a style of metalcore tinged with black metal. I feel fortunate to have been able to play a handful of shows with them both in Utah and Oregon (although they had to cancel on a couple of Portland and Boise shows). As far as I'm concerned, 78 Days After Death can be placed among some of the other legendary SLC bands like Insight, Clear, Lifeless and Triphammer.

The first 78 Days After Death recording appeared as a track on the Ascend From The Darkness comp on Dark Vision Records. I can't remember who ran that short lived label, but I'm inclined to say it was the drummer from Beneath The Ashes. A follow up release by 78 Days After Death was supposed to come out on this label as well, but it never materialized.

78 Days After Death - Skyfalls
Dark Vision Records [2000]
http://www.mediafire.com/?ejnnjiqzjon

Sometime in 2001 saw the Time Is Forgotten cd being self released by the band. Containing 8 tracks, it would end up being the largest output from 78 Days After Death. It was while they did a west coast tour in support of this cd that they first hooked up with my band, The Dead Unknown, for a show in Portland. Hardcore in Portland was at an all time low at this point in time, and turnout for the show was beyond dismal, but we all went out for some food after the show, and got to become fast friends.

78 Days After Death - Too Much Is Forgotten...
Self Released [2001]
http://www.mediafire.com/?ryjngz2hezm

A few months after playing a show together in Portland, I received an email from Billy 78 wanting to do a split 7" with The Dead Unknown. Both of our bands were adamantly against religion, and their idea was for our two bands to team up for an anti-religion themed 7". It's with this recording that I think The Dead Unknown finally started coming into our own, and the 78 Days After Death track also showed a much more intense direction. Billy and Clint were having a few setbacks with the covers, so the first 50 copies that came to me in Portland got their own limited PDX covers:
The Dead Unknown then packed 9 of us into a Suburban and made the 16 hour drive to SLC for the 7" release show. Salt Lake was going through another one of their venue lulls at the time, and the one place that would do shows charged a fortune, so we knew from the get go that we wouldn't be getting paid, but fuck it, we were young and just loved to get out of town. Like all of our shows in SLC, it was a lot of fun, and well worth the crazy drive for no pay. The drive home to Portland from that show is still infamous, because in the middle of nowhere, we decided to pull into a Denny's for some food and sleep, and at some point very early in the morning while we were all crammed into the Suburban, JD woke up and started freaking out; "Where are we? Why are we here? We should be on the road. We should be driving right now!" He then proceeded to attempt to get out of the Suburban, and in doing so, he farted right in Teddy's mouth. Holy shit, what a drive home.
Upon checking, there are still a few copies of this 7" available at
Very Distro
I ripped these mp3s from the master cd of the 7" a few years ago when Clint brought it to me on a Cherem tour. It was scratched to shit, but I got a clean rip off of it. After moving a few times, I can no longer find that cd, so here's the old 192kb rip, as opposed to a V0 rip.

78 Days After Death/The Dead Unknown split 7"
Shattered Silence Records [2002]
http://www.mediafire.com/?e40iyjmcnwt

The final recording from 78 Days After Death came in the form of 2 songs on the From The Mean Streets - Salt Lake City Hardcore comp. They had added a keyboard player at this point, but they used the keyboard in good taste, and at no point in time does the keyboard overpower any of the other intstruments. I never got to see them play at this stage of their time together, but I wish I had, because the song Wasted Flesh contains an awesome breakdown with the sweet lyrics of "You're just another junkie!".

78 Days After Death - Wasted Flesh & Untitled
xResolvex Records [2003]
http://www.mediafire.com/?j0kgmg32jny

78 Days After Death suffered from the same symptom that many bands do, seeing a revolving door of 2nd guitar players. Not too long after the songs for the aforementioned comp were recorded, the band broke up. Various reunion talks have floated around, but things seemed to get a little weird between the singer and the rest of the band. They almost did a reunion using the singer from Pushing Up Daisies, and even practiced with him once or twice. Billy and I also talked a few times about myself doing vocals for a reformed version of 78 Days After Death, but nothing ever materialized.
Billy also sang for Cherem and played guitar for Up River
Jake went onto play drums for Up River and Tamerlane

Grimlock

Let's go ahead and get this out up front, I love Grimlock! Over the years, I've noticed that people either seem to love or hate this band, and I reside on the love side of the coin. I never particularly took them too seriously, and I think that's what made me love their lyrics as well. Grimlock only played Portland once (in '97 if I remember correctly), and it was quite a show. The singer was spotted doing some pushups before the set, which can seem to be an odd sight. If you've never seen Grimlock, their singer John, was a small, but beefed up dude (see below)

Their set started off mild enough, but somewhere around the 2nd or 3rd song, John ripped his shirt off, and then proceeded to pick up my friend's little brother and throw him onto the crowd (I think the female singer of Berzerk took the brunt of the landing). Now the rage that seemed prevalent in their cd was at the forefront of the live show.
As far as I know, both of the labels that released Grimlock material are no longer functioning, so I'm going to present what I think is a complete Grimlock discography.

I don't really have any info about Grimlock's demo, but I acquired this recording from someone of the the message board on the SA Mob website. It has 3 songs, and is encoded at 320kb.
Grimlock - Demo 1995
http://www.mediafire.com/?hnjemny43ad

Next came the Thirst For Immortality 7" in 1995 on Pin Drop Records. The 7" contains these 3 tracks:
Feed My Rage Mountain of Power Bring The Pain
I decided to not rip the 7", because all 3 songs are contained in the hidden track on the Songs of Self cd.


1997 brought the Songs of Self cd on Pin Drop Records as well. This is where Grimlock really started to come into their own. It includes such tracks as 24, about the hockey player Bobby Probert, and My Sins, which contains some of the most volatile lyrics I can really recall hearing, i.e. "break the bottle over your face. lay there and bleed bitch." and "I'll kill you...I'll kill you...you fucking cunt."
On a sidenote, let's take a look at the picture on the inside of the cd insert:
Who is that guy near the bottom left of the picture, and why on Earth did they turn him into a cyclops?I've always figured that their must be a backstory containing some major b33f.

Grimlock - Songs of Self Pin Drop Records [1997]
http://www.mediafire.com/?0yzkdkjztzk

Crusades of Reality was Grimlock's first release on Life Sentence Records (based out of Salt Lake at the time). The monologue throught the song The Pain Game is of particular awesomeness. This EP contains 6 more songs of exceptionally heavy hardcore, although I always thought the production value wasn't as great as the previous record.
Grimlock - Crusades of Reality Life Sentence Records [1998]
http://www.mediafire.com/?lmqxrnz1ytn

Shortly after the release of Crusades of Reality, a split 7" with Rebirth came out on the SIH label from Japan. The only Grimlock track on the 7" though is Lamentation, which can already be found on Crusades of Reality. In 1999, after touring on behalf of the EP for Life Sentence, Grimlock broke up.

In 2003, Grimlock got back together, and recorded another EP for Life Sentence Records. Once again, they recorded 6 tracks, but the production on this record is great. This EP sounds heavy as can be, and John's vocals really got stepped up.
Grimlock - Crusher
Life Sentence Records [2003]
http://www.mediafire.com/?sg3ddgdymfnsi1j

The Crusher cd was also an enhanced cd, which contained pictures, desktop wallpapers and a couple of quicktime videos. I extracted those files, and uploaded them here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?znj2nmyfloy

In 2005, Grimlock disbanded once again. I was really hoping they'd make their way to the Northwest one more time, but my dreams were squashed by their breakup. Life Sentence Records also seemed to disappear again around 2005/2006. The label's owner, Dan Gump, seemed to drop off the face of the Earth yet again (the same thing happened around 2000 when he then surfaced in, I think, Milwaukee). Numerous rumors have circled around Dan for many years, but he was also a pretty nice guy the few times I met him while touring through SLC.

xReflectx - The Hourglass End

I first heard Reflect sometime in 2007 when someone directed me to their myspace page. Having some contact with their singer, Mike, via various message boards, I acquired a copy of their demo. The 3 songs on the demo were really good, but suffered from a poor recording. Fast forward to December 2008, and Reflect now have a full length out on the newly formed Skinned Elbow Records out of Salt Lake City. [On a sidenote: I love SLC hardcore. My old band, The Dead Unknown played Utah more than any other state outside of the Pacific Northwest, and I've developed some great friendships with members of some of the bands to come out of that scene.] Paypal isn't used by Skinned Elbow, so I got to put some well concealed cash into an envelope just like the good old days of mailorder hardcore. "The Hourglass End" showed up in my mailbox yesterday, and I absolutely love this new recording. Take 1 part 108, 2 parts Mean Season, a few eerie riffs reminiscent of Starkweather and a dash of Eyelid, and you should have a decent picture of what Reflect sound like. I can safely say that this is the most excited I've been about a newer band since the days of Make Move. What I'm getting at is that you should head over to www.myspace.com/xreflectx to check out some of their new songs, and then head over to www.myspace.com/skinnedelbowrecords to get all the info you need to order a copy.

Hourglass & New Day Rising split

Here's another great release from the legendary Moo Cow Records. Hourglass and New Day Rising were two great bands from the 90s. Hourglass were from Buffaly, NY, and New Day Rising came out of Ontario, Canada. Both of them had a sound that ranged from the heavy, to moments of screaming punk rock abandon (NDR even throw in some emo elements). New Day Rising released what could only be called a plethora of material during their time together. A multitude of 7"s and splits, followed by a full length on Eulogy, and a discography cd on the same label. As far as I know, Hourglass only released this split and a 7" on Immigrant Sun prior to the split. I intend on ripping that Hourglass 7" sometime soon, because I always liked it even more than the songs on the CD. It's actually been quite some time since I've listened to this release, because it came in 7" size packaging, so it isn't filed away in the same manner that my other CDs are, but upon listening to it again, I remember why it used to get so much play on my stereo.

Hourglass & New Day Rising split
Moo Cow Records [1996]
http://www.mediafire.com/?nee1nenmhjy