Gorilla Biscuits
Start Today

THE REVIEW

In 1989, Hardcore was a niche interest, limited to a few overexcited and outdated kids. In 1989, Hardcore music, with its classic hard and fast style, had largely worn out its welcome with audiences and musicians alike. This axiom was true across America, except in New York. Hardcore was brought to New York by the Bad Brains, and the lives of drug-addled, decaying punks, who spent half their time hustling and the other half scrounging for some cheap drugs, began—or rather, received a new soundtrack—for a fair number of kids. The lack of money, the tough life, and the drugs didn't allow for real-time documentation of what was happening musically—not talking about the D.C. districts and their high bourgeois offspring or the Sri Lankan ambassador's son—and this explains why in 1989 an album like "Start Today" can sound genuinely real, spontaneous, necessary, and, why not, outright toilet-smashing in profusion.

Henry Flanagan, the ultra-tattooed skin symbol of the Cro-Mags, would deserve a description fitting for a bastard, but not the Gorilla Biscuits, who in '89 were just in their twenties and boasted two members from Youth of Today in their lineup, who, having swapped their original Connecticut for New York, became among the few straight-edge or presumed straight-edge bands that could watch from their windows as smoke rose from the manhole covers.

Walter Schreifels, later of Quicksand and Rival Schools fame, was the bassist for Youth of Today from 1987 to 1990, and from 1987 to 1991, he was the guitarist and composer for Gorilla Biscuits. He is credited with creating Hardcore that memorizes the lesson of the Bad Brains and reinterprets it by blending it with Metal—as was fashionable in the second era of Hardcore—on which the voice of Civ (Antony Civarelli), who must have always dreamed of kicking that nerd Milo Aukerman from the Descendents out to take his place, rests. The result is a hefty Hardcore that anticipates Helmet in its guitar weaving, doesn't forget to make you sing and smile with its melodies, in a burst of energy that leaves you drained and sweaty afterward.

Unmissable for all the kids who make their exit from being outdated a matter of principle.