Entry the 16th: Strife - One Truth

Strife's first full length, One Truth, was a fine record, but unfortunately it suffered from not being In This Defiance. Too bad for this record, because it really was pretty good, and if I had gotten it before In This Defiance I would have listened to it a lot. Alas this was not the case, and so whenever I felt like listening to Strife, it was rare that this found its way to my CD player.

I still feel this way about One Truth but I think that might not be entirely fair. If this record had the same production as its successor then I might be singing a different Strife tune. Some of the songs on In This Defiance were older songs, and they are probably my favorites, so what if?

Check out: Arms of the Few

Entry the 14th: Strife - In This Defiance

We come to Christmas 1997 with this entry, back when my family wasn't too fed up trying to find me records I like. Strife was one of the bands from Victory Style that I actually really liked, and it took me nearly a year to pick something up by them. Well Merry Christmas to me, this ended up being one of my favorite albums then.

This is good stuff, as I'm currently on my fourth listen. This is one of those albums where each song that comes on I think it's my favorite. With most of them I'm wrong, since my favorite is Force Of Change, but it's a close race. I suspect that I'd not be alone in that choice either.

Check out: Force Of Change

Entry The 4th: The California Takeover

It's probably readily apparent at this point that I didn't really know where to look for anything except in the Victory Records catalogue, or that I was only listening to a few bands. I was still listening to that Victory Style comp, mostly for Firestorm, but also for the lovely sounds of Integrity, Strife, Snapcase, and Deadguy. Enter The California Takeover, my first live record.

Even though live versions of Ecocide and Firestorm were on here, there's not much that makes me play this record these days. The best Strife track, The Essence, isn't even a Strife song, nor is it sung by Strife's singer, and there's not much else to get excited about. The appeal so long ago was to hear what these bands sounded like live, and considering that it seemed pretty unrealistic that I would ever actually see these bands live (it didn't occur to me that I would travel for shows some day) this was a pretty exciting thing to listen to.

Check out: The Essence

Entry The 1st: Earth Crisis - Destroy The Machines

Technically, my first CD was a compilation called Victory Style. It had a slew of bad bands on it as well as some pretty good bands, like Deadguy, Snapcase, Strife, Integrity, Bloodlet, and most importantly Earth Crisis. The songs Firestorm, Forged In The Flames, and Wrath Of Sanity really got me excited about music in a way I had never been before. This led to me receiving this album, my second CD by Earth Crisis called "Destroy The Machines" for my 15th birthday. I actually had been listening to a cassette copy that belonged to a friend's older brother for months, and finally I could listen to it on something other than my Walkman.

This is an album that has pretty consistently made it into the rotation in the many years since I first got it, and I still love it. I've listened to it consistently enough that listening to it again today doesn't "take me back" like listening to some other discs does and I love it enough that I listened to it three times instead of just the one. At this rate I'll never get through them all.

Check out: The Wrath Of Sanity