VA - New Breed Tape Compilation CD

You know doing this thing for the past five years, I have met some really cool cats...the latest being Mr. Freddy Alva of Wardance Records, an internet friend of a friend.  Recently got a beautiful package from him, a mix of some 7"s, a CD and a cassette, so some reviews were obviously pending.  Freddy also has a killer blog of his own over at Quixotic Dreams...a great read.  So anyway, the first thing I thought I'd review would be one of Feddy's biggest and earliest outputs, the New Breed Tape Compilation.  Originally released as a cassette in 1989 and now brought to you as a CD/2xLP, it's basically a who's who of New York hardcore from that era.  To be honest with you, not an area I'm all that familiar with, most of the bands were new to me.  The man did not fuck around when he put this out, it's beastly, with 20 bands doing 36 tunes (5 extra tunes on the vinyl version).  I don't know my music history as well as some, but I guess this represents 2nd generation New York Hardcore (1st being Bad Brains, Agnostic Front, and the likes...right?).  It's metallic hardcore, but not crossover, does that make sense?  These days I've kinda strayed away from the grunted and growled vocals (my buddy Mike calls it Cookie Monster), like anything it has it's time and place, but on this thing just about every band has the common feature of having intelligible lyrics.  Don't get me wrong though, this is angry, sweaty hardcore at it's best (I used to have a t-shirt with a cartoon monster on it that said "wicked mean and nasty"...that's what this is).  And best case scenario has occurred here, the lyrics are included in a really nice booklet.  In fact the packaging on this bad boy is top notch, this ain't no CD-R in a paper envelope (although there's nothing wrong with that either).  I'm not even going to try to pick any favorites here, EXCEPT one, I really like the Show of Force track, they kind of break it down a little bit.  Anyway, my words can't really capture the immensity of this thing, GO HERE and get it. In the meantime...these samples, are just the very tip of the iceberg... Breakdown - Don't Give Up True Colors - Finding It Hard Raw Deal - Wall Of Hate Direct - One Life Uppercut - Down For The Count