The Price of Silence / Born to Die in the Gutter

The original run of Discharge had a very tragic trajectory indeed. After their ridiculously godawful 1977 demo they got their act together and released a string of singles and EPs that progressively got faster, heavier, angrier and dirtier. This culminated with their 1982 debut album Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing, an album so ahead of the curve musically it still sounds fresh and aggressive well over 30 years later. What followed that was departure and replacement of their original guitarist, which ushered in a new era for the band that sadly would lead to them falling as quickly as they had risen in the previous two years. The first release of this era was the Warning EP, an admirable stylistic shift into a fusion of hardcore, hard rock and heavy metal that worked well. On subsequent material however, the band would go further down that road and initiate a death spiral that would lead to the flaming wreckage known as Grave New World, an album so bad it killed their career - this single marks the start of that decline.

Hard rock and heavy metal had seeped into Discharge's music on the Warning EP - but while on that release it was merely a complementary element to the classic Discharge sound, here it is now the predominant sound. The problem is that while Discharge is great at 2 minute noise blasts of sheer righteous anger; stripping away most of that anger and fury does no wonders for their music. In place of the grinding, monolithic riffs and the dissonant, chaotic solos that defined their classic material there are more melodic rock/metal riffs that have are nowhere near as aggressive or driven, as well as conventional melodic solos. In place of the harsh crashing of the drums in the background there is altogether more muted sounding kit. In place of the commanding and powerful shouts from Cal and subversive, hard-hitting political slogans are weak and wimpy yelps that make the fairly politically charged lyrics here sound far less convincing. In theory these tracks aren't any more repetitive than what they had done before but they feel a lot more repetitive as what the band present here was never that good to begin with, and there's very little drive or power to anything they do. Behind all of these elements there is still some of that anger and energy that made their past works tick but overall this pair of tracks has had all the core elements of what made their music so special removed, and instead the band neuter the impact of their music by moving towards hard rock/heavy metal.

There is no reason to seek this out; this is a sub-par release from a band that had done great things. It is the disappointment that started a truly tragic and embarrassing decline, one that would kill the band and stay with them for years. There's worse out there, but there's much better too; like what put this band on the map to begin with.