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Discharge are one of the greatest punk bands of all time, and this 1983 set captures them in ferocious form. Rescued from an old tape, the sound is violent, dirty and powerful, a raw document of a raw band blazing through 14 tracks of relentlessly furious hardcore. First 150 copies on opaque red vinyl for mail order only. Fully legit and authorised, not a bootleg.
Comes with huge foldout poster!
Our take: Ugly Pop bring their finely honed reissue skills to bear on this 1983 live set from Discharge, recorded in Simon Ugly Pop's home city of Toronto. It's funny, this 1983 US tour was previously documented on the Live at the City Garden New Jersey LP on Clay, on which the band play an identical set list to this one (with the addition of two encore songs that aren't present on the Toronto set captured here). At this point Discharge were probably starting to lose some people, but weren't yet gone to the point where they were getting booed off the stage. Don't get me wrong, this is full of hits... "Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing," "Decontrol," "Never Again," etc., but at least half of the set is comprised of material from Warning and later singles like "Protest and Survive" and "The More I See." Fidelity-wise, this is probably an ideal representation of this material... the sound is raw and with a bit of crowd noise, but you can hear everything clearly and the sound seems to have been punched up to be as powerful as possible. I hesitate to say this is a "fans only" record because it's definitely on the higher end of that, but it is definitely raw. And since this an Ugly Pop reissue you know you'll get a ton of extras, like a big poster of the classic three skulls design and an insert with liner notes by Simon. And of course the whole thing is wrapped up in period-appropriate artwork that looks like it could have been released alongside Discharge's original records (and in those respects this is clearly a far superior product to the City Gardens LP on Clay). So, yeah, not essential by any means but if you're on board with listening to live Discharge recordings you probably aren't going to do any better than this.