The Worst - The Worst Of The Worst

So back around 2001, some amazing soul released ten fan club 7"s of early 80s American hardcore under the label Reagan Era HC. When you've only heard old heads talk about how great YDI or Offenders were, and you suddenly can cop a bunch of their master works at $4 a pop, you don't quibble over the morality of buying bootlegs. You just gobble them up. That's how I heard the Worst for the first time.

Their 1983/4 12" Expect the Worst, a proto-crossover classic, was suddenly available in a conveniently inexpensive format. And I was hyped. Expect the Worst was short/fast/loud...just perfect for what I was looking for. It took me down the road of exploring all the Mutha Records catalog...this really fun suburban New Jersey 80s label that stood as this counterpoint to the super-serious NYHC scene of Agnostic Front, Cro-Mags, and Warzone. I mean, any label that put out Chronic Sick records had to have a good sense of humor.

Flash forward almost 20 years, and I'm making the rounds of local thrift stores. I hit this cache of what seems to be someone's hardcore/grind/emo CD collection. Lots of fun stuff...most of which I already owned. The best finds were the White Cross discography on Grand Theft Auto, a CD version of Propaganda - Russian Bombs Finland, and what you have below: The Worst of The Worst.

So what you get is pretty comprehensive. The Worst of the Worst starts off with their self-titled 1982 7", then crashes into the aforementioned Expect the Worst. THEN you get an unreleased 12" worth of material that was recorded for a 1984 release. The CD is capped off with a portion of a Worst live set from Max's Kansas City in 1979, all with unreleased songs. All told, it's a 29 song, 43 minute banger. Sadly, it's out of print, and currently selling for around $20 online...if you can find one. It's worth finding one. Stuart Schrader wrote a fantastic set of liner notes that serve as a loving history for this band that might otherwise be a footnote in some granddad's remembrance of the "good ol' days".

Yeah, here's the discography. If you like trashy, thrashy 80s hardcore that sounds like it was recorded on a boombox (and, yeah, that's a GOOD stylistic choice), then this is right in your wheelhouse. I picked this up for $3.

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