Fuel - Monuments To Excess

Fuel was derisively introduced to me as "Fuel-gazi". And, yeah, I obviously can hear the similarities; a propulsive two-guitar quartet with hollered vocals. I was told they were the Gilman Street counterpart to the Wilson Center's Fugazi. But these were Bay Area kids, doing their first band, not the former members of hardcore and emo royalty. And even if they were consciously aping another band's sound, fuck, they were good at it.

The key revelation here is a pre-transition Sarah Kirsch on guitar and vocals. Long before she pushed the boundaries of hardcore with personal favorites like Please Inform The Captain This Is A Hijack and Baader Brains, she made an immediate impact with these amazing sonic textures on guitar throughout Fuel's 17-song catalog. For me, that's the standout. Was anyone in their peer group playing with such speed and technique? I dunno: I was 13 and still two years from my first punk show when they broke up.

"Monuments To Excess" collects Fuel's self-titled LP, a 7" released on Lookout!, and a pair of splits with Ontario's Phleg Camp and Angry Son from Oklahoma. The artwork and design is some of my favorite John Yates work, and is adapted from his earlier cover for the LP. He also compiled the songs for his Allied Recordings; Ebullition handles the vinyl compilation. By the time this came out, Kirsch had moved onto Torches To Rome, while her former bandmates had disappeared from recorded bands. San Francisco's Broken Rekids would reissue this in 2000, but it's been out of print for a number of years. That sucks, because, along with Leatherface, Fuel would set the template up for .org-core to be a thing starting in the late 90s. And if folks are going to pick on Fuel for having a similar sound to Fugazi, then Hot Water Music and Braid and a bunch of other bands owe Fuel some royalties.

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Amber Inn - All Roads Lead Home

This wasn't the first record I bought that was released by Ebullition Records (that honor goes to the Downcast 12"), but it still ranks as one of my favorites. Staffed by ex-members of Sinker, Amber Inn existed during one of the great stylistic schisms in hardcore. The summer this came out, almost every kid I knew went straight edge, started listening to Floorpunch and Ten Yard Fight and called anyone who disagreed "a fake-ass faggot". Good times, right? 1998 was the year I where I went off the deep end. I drank too much, shit all over most of my friends and went batshit crazy one night on my radio show after some Xed up thugs showed up with ball bats. But Amber Inn was the band that kept me listening to the underground. It led me to Yaphet Kotto, Orchid, Sweep the Leg Johnny, the Ottobar, the Fuses, League of Death, out of the north Baltimore suburbs and into my twenties, which were roaring indeed.

This rip comes from the Amber Inn discography CD, All Roads Still Lead Home, still available from Ebullition Records. The CD is a must own for folks who still love emotive hardcore, or for people who weren't around during a time when Goleta was ground zero for a lot of great music.










Amber Inn - All Roads Lead Home LP

RIYL: Indian Summer, Navio Forge, HeartattaCk