Ebola - "Imprecation" 7"

1997, Flat Earth/ Rufusenik Records, UK
A:
1. Fortress Europe
2. Dysphasia
3. Bombed Out
4. Scream Inside
5. Seized Up
B:
6. Smoke Screen
7. Strategically Unimportant
8. Spreek Op Of Anders
9. Avenging The Dead

http://www.mediafire.com/?mmst2gm4o3n

A pretty apt follow up to the last post. Made 10 years (approx) after Generic’s debut, this record features on guitar, previous Generic/ One By One member Mickey.

It’s hard to pick your favourite record as there are so many out there - but after years of careful deliberation, I decided that if I had to go somewhere and could only take one 7” and one 12”, this would be the EP! For me, it is everything a hardcore record should be, it sets the standard. The packaging is incredible - a 16 page card booklet full with the beautiful cut and paste artwork and pen and ink drawings. The lyrics are highly intelligent, critical and political with out being dogmatic or mere sloganeering, and the music, well the music is something else. The booklet, which is worth the record alone, is fully scanned and included in the download.

This was one of the first hardcore records I bought. I remember been blow away by the sheer pulverising force of the first track, “how is this punk rock?” I remember asking myself. From start to finish it is just one intense stream of passion, each song perfectly leading into the next. Try singing a long with the words - I can get maybe half way through the first song before loosing it completely. The vocalists, yes there’s two, have some weird smokey Darth Vader-ish sound going on. There’s even a jazz piano kicking in towards the end! In later records they were to sample extreme-white-noise/power electronics.

I believe there’s 3600 copies floating around in various pressings. The initial 3000 on Flat Earth/ Enslaved have the brown sleeve as shown above, but there was a later repress on Enslaved, which had two different variations. 100 copies had the same artwork but screened on black in blue card, while a further 500 had a new gold design on blue card.

Nick, one of the singers, ran Enslaved records and later went onto sing in Boxed In, while Karin, the other vocalist had previously served time in One By One. Jonathon Lobster, the guitarist, sadly passed away last year. Before that, he recorded with Southampton based thrashers Minute Manifesto, who I hope to share with you sometime in the future.