Entry the 24th: Refused - Everlasting

Further joy on my sweet sixteenth, I picked up Everlasting due in large part to my love of Songs To Fan The Flames Of Discontent. Too bad I didn't like this EP quite as much. That being said I really enjoyed it, even though it was perhaps a little less heavy. Too bad I was so single-minded at age sixteen otherwise I might have listened to this more, though the lyrics were attractive to my teenage sense of the world being unfair.

Short and sweet this thing plays through in under twenty two minutes. Punkier than I liked back then, I can enjoy this a little more musically as my heart has mellowed, and a little less lyrically as the same heart has hardened somewhat against their teenage-pinko politics with time.

Check out: The Real

Entry the 17th: Refused - Songs To Fan The Flames Of Discontent

My first foray outside of the USA was into Sweden via hardcore band Refused. I had been missing out! I'd learned about them through the second Victory Style compilation with the song It's Not OK... I remember the day I bought this album at The Cellar with my friend Joe, and listening to it for the first time at home, the intro to Rather Be Dead being so exciting, and then the song itself being so fast but also nice and heavy at the same time.

I still love this band, although this isn't my favorite of their albums. It seems so much smarter than so many of these early selections of mine. Not necessarily in the lyrics, as I think they're just as naive as any other, but in the songwriting. Not so heavy a reliance on breakdowns or singalongs.

Check out: Rather Be Dead