Not only is this Volume 6 of our Listening Party Series, but it also marks our 100th article since we started the site earlier this year. So we at the FSS decided that we needed to review something with a little weight to it. Who better than Agnostic Front?
P’s Take: So one Saturday morning me and Uncle T sat down to listen to Agnostic Front’s reissues of “Victim In Pain” and “United Blood” on vinyl on my fathers system. It has been 25 years since “Victim In Pain” came out and a lot has changed. The NYHC has more or less died. New York itself is no longer what it was, it’s more like a city sound-stage designed by Disney. On the Lower East Side it is now a lot easier to find a pumpkin nutmeg latte than a bag of angel dust, you know, not that I’m looking. The circumstances that helped create AF just don’t exist anymore.
That being said, both these albums still stand up. They are both full of macho posturing and Hardcore cliché but you have to remember that when these albums were cut, there was no Hardcore cliché yet, it was still too new. The topics they touch on; crime, scene bullshit, violence, “realness”, all this stuff that sounds to us now like more of the same was then accurate reporting. And exactly none of it sounds hokey, they mean every word. AF, for better or worse was the architect of NYHC and what it became and these albums represent the best of the scene at the time.
Both these albums are nostalgia; there is no way around it. It was strange to listen to these sounds on my dad’s expensive set up, you don’t need and shouldn’t use audiophile shit to listen to Stigma’s guitar work, your amplifier becomes retarded. Whenever I hear United and Strong I remember brown-bag 40 drinking on St. Mark’s, me and the crew and a couple hundred other skins that used to line both sides of St. Mark’s Place from one corner to another every Friday and Saturday night. Now that area is a good place to hit if you need to go to The Gap or are in the mood for Afghani food, whatever that might be. Times change people and places but both these albums still make you wanna run into somebody. So there’s always that.
T’s Take: When you think about it, it’s kinda unbelievable that Stigma, Roger Miret, and Ray Beez can all be found together on the same 7”. These are the founding fathers of NYHC (as it’s commonly known) for chrissakes. If you grew up in NY or NJ or anywhere on the East Coast you know Agnostic Front. You grew up with them. You yelled “why am I going insane, why am I the one to blame” along with them. If you consider yourself a fan of Hardcore or any of its substrata but not of Agnostic Front, it’s probably not AF’s fault. You see like with all scenes, eventually things get out of hand and become a parody of what they once where. Kids get behind a mic and a guitar and sing about something or other because they think they’re supposed to. Unity this, backstabbers that…oi oi oi, something about the streets or respect or respecting the streets. You know what I’m saying and you know that these bands that do this are bullshit. But let’s not hold that against AF.
If you consider yourself a fan of Hardcore, particularly of NYHC you should own these albums. And thanks to the folks at Bridge Nine you can readily find them again in all their vinyl glory. You’ll be surprised when the records start how much of them you already know. United Blood is filled… FILLED… with classics. From the opening chords of No One Rules, to the chorus of Last Warning, all 73 seconds of United Blood you’ll remember all that was once great about Hardcore music. I think only two songs between both of these records break the two-minute mark; most hover between 25 seconds and just over a minute. If you read our review of “You Weren’t There” about the Chicago Punk scene and how they never quite formulated a true Chicago sound then you’ll be even more amazed that AF helped create and popularize a New York sound with about 6 minutes worth of music that people still remember and hold dear over 25 years later.
Stigma!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!(insert guitar solo here)
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