Life's Blood - Live Recordings

In anticipation of the Life's Blood discography that's coming out on Prank Records i've decided to post some great sounding live sets. Enjoy!

Life's Blood - Live NJ

The first set was recorded live on Pat Duncan's radio show on WFMU in NJ on March 17, 1988. Four of these songs (It's Not In Your Heart, Resist Control, Maximum Security, and Left Out On The Ice To Die) wound up on the Life's Blood / Sticks & Stones split 7" released on Forefront Records in 1990. The set was engineered by Dan X. of the mighty NJ punk band A Priori. Three of these four songs were never released until this split, and the only studio versions that exist (that i know of) are the Don Fury studio outtakes from the demo. You can download those songs here. I was lucky enough to snag a copy of this split from Pat Duncan when one of my old bands played live on his show back in '90. I played the hell out of that record, and since then have always considered the WFMU set to be my favorite Life's Blood recordings. This is a really nice sounding set, super clean, perfectly re-cut, and ripped at 320.

The second set was recorded live at the Dirt Club in Bloomfield, NJ on January 21, 1988. Probably the best sounding Life's Blood live set i've yet heard. This was the band's first show.

The cover image i used was the original art for the Defiance 7" (released on Combined Effort Records in 1988), which was scrapped in favor of the Lamont W. Harvey illustration.

Jason O' Toole - vocals
Adam Nathanson - guitar
Neil Burke - bass
John Kriksciun - drums

Confusion - The Live Recordings

Confusion - The Live Recordings

Following text by bassist Mike Scondotto

CONFUSION
Live @ City Gardens - Trenton, NJ
March 1993
also on the bill - Breakdown, Power Move and Worlds Collide (or Worlds Apart?)

1. Intro
2. Storm The Walls
3. Confusion
4. The Seeds of Greed
5. Distorted Visions
6. Gasping for Air
7. Half Dead
8. Trendy World
9. Outro

Mike - vocals
Mike - bass
Mike - guitar
Ralph - drums

This was a really good show.
Not packed, but the kids who were there were into it for sure.
A fight broke out during our set and our singer was pretty vocal about his opinion on it to say the least.
The drummer for Breakdown at the time got arrested after they played for attacking the promoter over $.
The promoter Randy did indeed pay us though... perhaps because we didn't threaten his life?
I made friends at this show with people I still know to this day, nearly 20 years later.
I was wearing a sweet Carcass shirt at this show.
My hair was long as hell. 
We had no shirts for this show and had ran out of our 7" at the time.
Good memories of this whole set for sure!

CONFUSION
Live on WNYU's Crucial Chaos
February 13th 1992

1. Confusion
2. A Fatal Infection
3. Distorted Visions
4. Early Frost
5. Without Hope
6. Selfish
7. Taste of Hate

Mike - vocals
Mike - bass
Mike - guitar
Frank - guitar
Ralph - drums

I remember it was really really cold out, the day before Valentine's Day.
I remember Johnny Stiff was the host and he was cool to us... still cool to this day! 
I remember this was my second time playing on Crucial Chaos, as my first time was in 1989 with CLOSE CALL.
I remember no one could hear a word I was saying as the 2nd mic was not on, ha!
Listening to it again, it is funny how hard we were promoting a 7" that was not yet finished and would not even come out until about 7 months later. 
Fun times! I miss Crucial Chaos.

Damn, this took a year to get here., but i'm really excited this finally made it to the blog. If you're a fan of this band's demos you will be floored by these recordings. Massive stuff here. The Intro to the City Gardens set is such a monster song. Kills me every time. For band bio check out the previous Confusion post. Enjoy!

Blogged & Quartered is back up and running...

Thanks to Seth for letting me host my files on his server on Firstpress, everything should be running very smoothly from now on. All links are working great, and no more being directed to online media servers, these are (mostly) all direct downloads. I'm also in the process of revising certain collections i was never too happy about. In the next few weeks i'll be re-doing the Absolution, Warzone, and Infest collections for starters. I'll also be posting live sets by Confusion and Close Call (thanks Michael Scondotto). And as usual, i'm always open for suggestions / requests. Also, if you are, or have been in a band (preferably '80s though mid-'90s) and have any obscure and/or long lost recordings you'd like to see on here, please get in touch. I'll do my best to make any recordings sound better if possible, and do the artwork etc.

I'm psyched to be doing this again, and until Seth contacted me, i never thought it would happen. I could never thank this guy enough.

I Figured i'd contribute to this revival post by uploading the new and improved Supertouch collection. Similar to the one posted way back, but this one has the 5 song unreleased demo from 1988 with the speed and pitch corrected. If you've heard those songs you'll know they're way too fast, with Mark Ryan sounding like Alvin Chipmunk at times. Great to finally hear this the way it should be heard. As a bonus I also threw in 3 comp tracks. Hope you like it.

It's a shame this stuff was never documented, as most of these songs were never released, and some never even recorded in a proper studio. So here you go, 22 tracks recorded between 1987-2000, as the band made their transition from Death Before Dishonor to Supertouch. All files cleaned up to the best of my capabilities. Enjoy.



Supertouch: The Early Recordings  
1988 lineup
Mark Ryan - vocals
Jon Biviano - guitar
Joe - bass
Andy Guida - drums

The first 5 tracks were recorded at Don Fury Studios in late 1988 to be released as a 7", which obviously never happened, although 3 of the 5 tracks were later re-recorded for the "What Did We Learn" 7" on Combined Effort Records in 1989. Excellent sound quality on these 5 tracks which were recently adjusted to have the correct speed and pitch.

Tracks 6-12 were recorded live on WNYU's Crucial Chaos in March of 1988. Some of the tracks here, like Stugglin' To Communicate and A Death In the Family were never recorded outside of the WNYU Studio, and various live shows (most of which suffer from awful sound). The first track sounds a bit rough. It sounds like whoever was working the boards was adjusting the levels during the intro until they got the guitar right (about halfway through the song). After that, the set sounds great.

Tracks 13-19 were recorded sometime in 1987 when the band were still called Death Before Dishonor. Although they started playing live in the early '80s (according to some of the flyers i've seen), they never recorded any material until just before they changed their name. Supposedly these tracks were recorded to pass around to friends and hopefully find new band members, and never actually released as a demo, although it's usually labeled as the '87 demo. The original Death Before Dishonor lineup consisted of Mark Ryan on vocals, Mike Ferraro on drums, Jimmy Yu on Guitar and Steve Yu on bass, although i don't think that's the lineup that played on these recordings. Mike and Steve of course went on to play in Judge shortly after leaving Death Before Dishonor.

Ending the collection are three compilation tracks.

goodbye

In the words of the mighty GO!, "It's been fun"! I met lots of great people doing this blog and discovered lots of great music, even recordings from some of my favorite bands that i never even knew existed. I just want to quickly thank all the bands and labels who provided so much music, info and pictures. All the people (including band members and others involved in the scene) who left informative comments, or just dropped in to say "thanks. That's basically what kept this blog going for so long.

Unfortunately Mediafuckup deleted all my files because of copyright laws on ONE file. The Corrosion of Conformity collection, which has been up and working for years. Why not just delete the one problem file instead of deleting over a hundred files? I'll never understand the razor sharp intellect behind that decision. Ever. Besides that, the comments sections have become flooded with hundreds of spamshit.

In my current situation - I moved to Florida with my wife and kids and am looking for work - i doubt i'll ever have the time to find all the CDRs, re-upload all the files to some other server, and delete hundreds of useless spam posts. It's a huge undertaking that i definitely cannot handle right now. Maybe someday.

Take care everyone. Thanks for all the support.

Confusion (NY) studio recordings 1990-1993

Heavy metallic hardcore from Brooklyn, NY. The demos are in the vein of the heavier NYHC bands like Breakdown, Fit Of Anger, Maximum Penalty, Dmize etc. As time went on the band tuned to a more metallic approach, while still retaining an angry as fuck hardcore vibe. They pulled it off better than most in my opinion. Killer shit. Enjoy.

Confusion: The Studio Recordings

My next post will be a Confusion live CD with a set recorded live on WNYU's Crucial Chaos on Feb. 13, 1992 and a full set from City Gardens recorded in March of 1993. That should be up in about three weeks. The live stuff kills as well. I want to thank bassist Mike Scondotto for all the great music he's decided to share, for all the art and info, and especially for choosing my blog as a home for this monster of a collection. Cheers!

CONFUSION LINEUP:
Mike Fried - vocals 1990-1994, 2003, 2007
Mike Scondotto - bass 1990-1994, 2003, 2007
Mike Price - guitar 1991-1993, 2003, 2007
Dennis the Kid - drums 2003, 2007
Ralph Canovic - drums 1990-1994
Pete Melucci - guitar 1993-1994
Frank Collins - guitar 1990-1992

CONFUSION DISCOGRAPHY:
1990 "Four the Force" demo (100 made, possibly less) recorded in the Fall of 1990 @ Fastlane Studios Brooklyn, NY
1991 "Distorted Visions" demo (100 made, possibly less) recorded in early 1991 @ Fullmoon Studios Brooklyn, NY
1992 "Taste of Hate" 7" on Hardway Records (1,000 pressed) recorded in the Spring of 1992 @ Fastlane Studios Brooklyn, NY
1992 "Beheaded Cadaver" compilation cassette (a Death Metal comp.)
1993 "East Coast Assault" compilation CD on Too Damn Hype Records
1995 "A Call for Unity" compilation CD on Back ta Basics Records, features the track "Storm The Walls", recorded in 1993 @ Fastlane Studios Brooklyn, NY

CONFUSION BIO: by Michael Scondotto
Confusion started in the summer of 1990 as the second wave of NYHC was coming to a violent end. Bands that had initially inspired Confusion (like Killing Time, Breakdown, Sheer Terror, Outburst, etc.) were either breaking up or changing their sounds, and the CBGB Sunday matinees were gone by the fall of 1990. It was also during this time that Brooklyn forged its own scene outside of NYC at places like L'amour and the infamous Crazy Country Club. The bands that made up the Brooklyn scene were Confusion, Patterns, Lament, Merauder, Life of Agony, Darkside NYC, Nobody's Perfect, Judgement Day NYC, and non-Brooklyn bands like Subzero, Dmize, and a little bit later bands like Starkweather, Next Step Up, and All Out War. Confusion's first show was in August of 1990 in a backyard in NJ with Lament, Patterns, Merauder, Dmize and Social Decay...I was there, but I was not the bassist yet. I did become the bassist about a week or 2 later after they kicked out the original bassist and asked me to audition. I was a high school senior and about 2 and half years into Hardcore and my old band Close Call was done so I was like "why not".
 
I don't think by any means that Confusion invented "Deathcore" or the idea to mix real hardcore with Death Metal. One could say that in NYC maybe Sheer Terror may have done that accidentally as early as 1985 on their first demo. But by 1991 our initial HC heroes were dropping like flies and Confusion had become pretty obsessed with bands like Obituary, Morbid Angel, Malevolent Creation, Entombed, Death, and Deicide. So much so that NYHC was no longer a part of our sound, but only in our roots and attitude. We were a metal band completely by 1992, hardly even playing the songs on our 1990 or 1991 demos. We wanted to be the most "brutal" band in Brooklyn and we eventually did just that I would say.
 
In the spring of 1992 we recorded our first and only 7" EP called "Taste of Hate", for the French label Hardway Records. How the owner Stephan (Kickback) found a small band from Brooklyn? Tape trading..ah the lost art! The cover art hand drawn by our friend John from Patterns, who went on to become Candiria's guitarist many years later. Candiria was around back then too, but they were a satanic Death Metal band that didn't even play with hardcore bands until after Confusion called it a day. The record finally came out in the early fall of 1992. Only 1,000 were pressed and it didn't even sell all that great initially since the band didn't tour and "distros" hardly existed. But eventually they all sold and it was never re-pressed to this day. As opposed to the demo songs, the songs were longer and had a Death/Thrash vibe mixed along with it's Hardcore parts for sure.
 
Confusion played both Hardcore and Metal shows, but by 1993/1994 the Metalheads were embracing us much more due to how heavy we had become. We were quite popular in the states of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey due to the fact that outside of the five boroughs of NYC, those were the only places we played. The best Hardcore shows for Confusion were the out of state shows and those that we played with our friends' bands in Brooklyn or NYC. But the biggest shows as far as attendance goes were Death Metal shows. We played with Cannibal Corpse, Disincarnate, Cancer, Unleashed, Incantation, and countless others. I remember one show in 1993 with Deicide, Dismember, and Vader in front of 600 kids in our hometown of Brooklyn at the defunct club L'amour. Glen Benton told us how much he liked us and the Hoffman brothers smoked weed with my singer and guitarist.
 
Confusion as a band didn't really get along all that well sometimes. We fought a lot and there was even a time when I was kicked out of the band for like two weeks! Our lead singer Mike was going off to college in Florida and in the summer of 1994 we decided that we would end the band at the end of the year. Our last show was in December at L'amour with the mighty Deicide, and it was a good one. In 4 years time we did 2 demos and a 7" and played a ton of shows. My biggest regret was not ever recording our best material though - the songs that make up the brunt of the infamous City Gardens show in 1993 like "Half Dead", "Gasping For Air", "Seeds of Greed" and later on a sick song called "The Fire Burns All". These songs are very Death Metal, but have mosh parts, no real guitar solos, and are kinda short, thus in my opinion what "Deathcore" should sound like.
 
In the summer of 2002, original Confusion guitarist and founding member Frank Collins was killed in a motorcycle accident in Brooklyn. Although Frank was kicked out of the band in late 1992, we were all still friendly and were shocked by his death. A benefit to raise money for his mother was organized by Rich from Darkside NYC and myself and was held in January 2003 at CBGB's. 

Confusion reformed for the night and played one more time in honor of Frank. It was a sold out show that also reunited Darkside NYC, our "Deathcore" brothers. The lineup also included All Out War, Next Step Up, Shutdown, Bulldoze, Subzero, Kickback, Most Precious Blood, Inhuman, and many more. It was Confusion's first time on stage in nine years and it was a lot of fun, but there was no talk of an actual reformation.
 
Confusion decided to start jamming again in the summer of 2007 and managed to play 2 shows and a small amount of t-shirts were made. One show was in Kearney, NJ with DARKSIDE NYC and ALL OUT WAR and one in Peekskill NY, a festival with a ton of bands including DARKSIDE NYC, INHUMAN and many more. Our next show of that year was supposed to be the memorial show for our friend Javier "SOB" Carpio of MERAUDER, but the Confusion curse struck and we did not end up playing.
 
I have to say, there were a lot of fights at our shows in the 90's and at the shows we were attending at that time. 
 
Brooklyn was pretty crazy, the NYC shows at the time were really crazy and so were our fans and friends...just plain crazy and angry! There was this vibe back then where you really did not know what was going to happen at a show and looking back, it was fucked up a lot of the time. But, I wouldn't trade those days for anything and I have many friends I made from that era that are a part of my life today. You experience good and bad together and you grow up together. So "hello" and "cheers" to everyone from back then who is able to read this and smile or remember this shit fondly.
As I type this it is late November 2011 and after a lot of personal back and forth, I decided to put all of the CONFUSION stuff here on Blogged & Quartered for FREE as a gift to the fans and friends. In the scope of things, Confusion was a small band, but for some reason or other, I get asked and emailed about the band and it sometimes blows my mind. The early 90's were an odd time for Hardcore. Confusion got heavier and heavier, eventually having very little "Core" in our sound, but we were Hardcore kids in our attitude and background for sure.
 
I want to say thank you to Vinny of B&Q and thank you to all who care.
I hope you enjoy the music and I am looking forward to the comments section!
 
CONFUSION:
www.facebook.com/confusiondeathcore

MCS
inh722@yahoo.com

Radio To Saturn - Unreleased LP

Early Guns
Exiled in Pairs
Small Fry
Bleeding Kansas
American Cousin
Puddle Drinking Crow
Rumble Seat
Bee Stung Lips
Beat Down
Porridge

Danny Leo - drums/vocals
Andrew Reuland - guitar/vocals
Nick Forte - guitar/vocals
Tom Marsh - guitar/keyboards

Recorded at The Cold Room in Boston during the winter of 1995/96.I feel like the material all hangs together really well as an overall statement, but for archival reasons:
The first 7 tunes are all from the same recording session, at some point in 1996. "Beat Down" is an early track of ours, recorded at the same time as our first 7", and it appeared on a limited tape compilation, the name of which escapes me, but also on the comp were some of the earliest released recordings by Modest Mouse. Porridge was the last song we ever recorded at our very last rehearsal, it's just a live demo with overdubbed vocals, but came out really well, and further points towards the direction the band was moving in had we stuck it out.
Enjoy
-Nick Forte

Ripped at 320kbps.
Radio To Saturn - Unearthed

If you saw my previous Radio To Saturn post you know how much i love this band. Members of Native Nod, Rorschach, and The Holy Childhood (just to name a few) playing unique, spacey pop. The music on this unreleased LP has a much more laid back, mellow feel compared to the ep and split recorded a year earlier. I hear a definite Chisel vibe in some of the tracks. Always a welcomed sound. I haven't been this excited about an album in quite some time.

Endless thanks to Nick Forte for sharing this.

For more band info from Nick and others, check out the comments section of the previous RTS post.

Enuf - 1988 demo (restored)

1987 was the year i got into hardcore. The amount of stuff coming out of the East Coast at the time, especially out of NY and NJ, was overwhelming. Dozens of classic demos, records, and other recordings just flooded the scene between 1987-1989. For me it was like discovering a new world. The 3 demos from the Jersey scene that stand out the most of me would be the Turning Point demo, the Release demo (both would go on to continue recording into the early '90s), and the classic Enuf demo. Half a dozen recorded songs, a handful of shows, and then they were gone.

So here is is. Fully restored. Songs that still sound great after 25 years. Enjoy!

Enuf 1988

Demo lineup:
Ajay James - vocals
Andy White - guitar
Pete Sanchez - bass
Ari Katz - drums

After the demo was recorded, Chip Laturo joined to play 2nd guitar. When Pete left the band, Chip stayed on as the guitarist and Andy moved on to bass duties. The band split up in 1989. Sucks they never recorded more material during the years they played together.

Ari Katz also played drums in Up Front, Courage and Lifetime, just to name a few.

Pete Sanchez was kind enough to write to me and share some info on the demo, his time in the band, and some of his favorite shows with Enuf:

The demo was recorded to my recollection in August/September 1988 at Trax East in South River. The studio was brand new and it was my impression we were one of the first Hardcore bands to record there but I could be wrong. It was also down the street from Andy's house.

When I was in the band there were a couple songs we just stopped playing as they were not that great we probably played some of them at our first couple shows.. After my time I have no idea.

My favorite shows was the first and my last. Our first show was in March of 1988 at Middlesex County College in Edison NJ and we played with Vision and P.E.D. I recall being both nervous and excited and remember drinking a lot of Jolt that night. It was a pretty good debut as I recall. My last show was at Scott Hall at Rutgers in New Brunswick and we played with Vision and Bold. I thought that was by far our best show to date.

As I went back to school full time and then law school, I never really had the time to devote to any band. As for the other guys I am not sure whether the played in any other bands as I have not spoken to them in a long time. But it was a great experience and I am just surprised that anyone even remembers the band never mind the demo.

- Peter Sanchez

For interviews, pictures and other info on the band, check out the always amazing Double Cross site and do a search for Enuf.

The image used for the cover in this post (photo by Ken Salerno) is not the actual demo cover, which i couldn't get a quality scan of unfortunately.