various artists - Cleanse The Bacteria

I really shouldn't have to explain why this record matters, why I hold it such high regards, why it sucks that it's not readily available. This is the good shit, from a time where the conventional wisdom was that punk was dead, hardcore was something to outgrow, and maybe this whole music thing could make some bread if you just took the hard edges off your sound. Yeah, C.o.C. and 7 Seconds ended up on major labels within five years, and Pushead was designing Nikes within 10, but the whole damned enterprise here is a quarter century ahead of its time. You have a handful of America's finest, Poison Idea and Siege joining the aforementioned bands from Raleigh, Reno, and San Fran. There's also a great sampling of international talent, from Swedish (soon-to-be) legends like Mob 47 and Crude SS, to Japan's the Execute, to deathrock from the likes of Part 1 and Holy Dolls.

My physical copy is the "standard" Pusmort release I copped from Disk Union about 10 years ago during my first trip to Japan. What I'm sharing here has lived on my various computers since the early aughts, and includes the songs from the mailorder-only extra 12". This includes Poison Idea's ripping cover of the Stooges' "I Gotta Right", as well as six other songs. There are a few wild ass bootlegs circulating of this; I wouldn't mind laying hands on this edition, featuring what appears to be a green ink silkscreened cover along with green-tinged center labels on the vinyl. Gnarly.

Discogs

Click here to download.

various artists - Thrash Til Death

This is not my rip, but seeing as how I own a physical copy, I don't feel bad about sharing.

I have had a rip of this since the early Limewire days, and it was with some joy that I found my copy of "Thrash Til Death" at Disk Union during my first trip to Tokyo in 2010. I didn't expect to find a long-sought-after Pusmort release on the other side of the world from home, much less at a pretty reasonable price ($20, if memory serves).

It's up there with the Gauze and Assfort 7"s that Prank put out in the late 90s, as well as 625's circa-2000 thrash revival releases, that opened me up to the sicko world of Japanese hardcore, in all of its various iterations. Not a bad song in the whole lot.

Discogs

Click here to download.