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180 Gram record housed in a paste on board sleeve. Indiscriminate cruelty to common people: the slogan could be about war or it could be about your eardrums while listening to 'Tragedy.' Disclose's first LP is a landmark of cacophonous, guitar-forward noisy hardcore. Heavily influenced by classic 80s Swedish raw punk, these fifteen songs perfect the unrelenting formula as only Kawakami could. Originally released in Japan on the cult label Overthrow in 1994, this reissue restores the fierce original mix two decades later. It differs from the mix on later represses hailing from Uppsala, where Swedish bombshelter-dwellers keep the flame alive. This authorized reissue reproduces the original artwork, with insert. Crack your brain up!
Our take: So, La Vida Es Un Mus has seen fit to reissue what are arguably the two best Disclose 12"s, and I couldn't be happier. I hadn't spun Tragedy in ages and I've been pretty much obsessed with it since this came in to the shop. I'm not sure if it's because I had the Swedish version of this LP (which apparently suffers from an inferior mix) or what, but really I've never been grabbed by this record like I am now. I think that what really sticks out, weirdly enough, is how un-Discharge-like it is in many ways. While obviously you could point toward any number of blatant Discharge nods on this (or any other Disclose) record, so many aspects of the songwriting are things that Discharge never did, or things that Discharge did but they're tweaked slightly in a way that makes them stand out against the background of total d-beat worship. It's an incredibly subtle thing that's difficult to pinpoint and articulate, but at the end of the day it's these subtleties that are the x-factor that separates a band like Disclose--who were as exciting and as vital as punk music gets--from bands who imitate other bands' sounds or styles in ways that are obvious, boring, and/or goofy. Stuart Schrader touches upon this point in his excellent liner notes to Yesterday's Fairytale, Tomorrow's Nightmare, so if you're interested in the philosophical underpinnings of d-beat you'll definitely want to read that. Otherwise, if you want to "get" Disclose, this particular reissue is probably the best place to start, because if you can't rage out to this record then Disclose probably aren't the band for you.