Sunday Vinyl - Punk & Dubstep

Sunday morning, spent digitizing some records - another album out of the Bad Religion Box Set and a Dubstep 12" I picked up a while back.

Bad Religion - Stranger Than Fiction
Label: Epitaph Records
Released: 1994
Genre: Punk
Side A - This side is hit and miss, it feels very generic Bad Religion. But there are some tracks on here that get stuck in the head, the title track, and The Handshake both are excellent songs.  Incomplete and Infected can both be left on the table, they just don't excite me much. Side B, now this side is much better I think, faster, a little more punch. Television opens the side up and reminds me immediately of the early 80s Hard Core scene. Marked and Slumber are both great tracks, and you can hear an evolution in the sound of Bad Religion here, they're moving away from the formula a little, expanding the riffs. And the last track 21st Century Digital Boy is awesome, really, could easily fit into a Bad Religion album another half a decade down the line without skipping a beat.

The album is a definite bridge between the 80s and 90s here, as punk rock takes back off in the 90s the next album from these guys is The Grey Race, one of my all time favorite albums out there.  They're finally letting the guitars go further out from the basic riffs and rhythms they've been using for a decade or so.  Late 90s Bad Religion is one of my preferred eras of listening to that.

Downlink - Biohazard / Vasik - Zombie Apocalypse
Label: Rottun Recordings
Released: 2011
Genre: Dubstep
This split 12" is a 2-track single. Biohazard is a fuzzy, dirty track. Good on the dancefloor, not quite a heavy pounder on the bassline, still it delivers with the drops and grinding bits. At over seven minutes, the opening is a little slow, it doesn't really get started until about a minute fifteen seconds in. Slow, methodical rhythms with synth breaks keep the song from becoming repetitive at least. It also exits slowly with synths repeating the outro until it just stops, not fades. The AA side is Zombie Apocalypse, which opens with the speech from Night Of The Living Dead, then some piano, then a slow dubstep fuzzy beat. This one plods along nicely, just like a zombie apocalypse, chasing you down until you just run out of energy and can't run anymore... scattered with zombie grunts and noises as well, which it could probably do without, but aren't completely out of place. These two are heavy bangers meant to keep a dancefloor at high energy, but they aren't so slow you lose energy, just enough in here to keep the floor going without wearing it out too quickly.

Next week I continue to go through the Bad Religion box set...