Painesville City Hardcore

During the whole 00s', it seemed that worldwide hardcore kids fave hobby was complaining about how much 90s' hardcore sucks. 90s' were my formative years and lots of my actual favourite bands are from that decade. Here in italy Cripple Bastards were at their peak, japan had Bastard, Deathside, Gore Beyond Necropsy, Disclose, Judgement and Gauze released their best full lenghts during the 90s. Australia had awesome bands like Rupture, Warsore and Arms Reach. Colombia unleashed some of the fiercest bands between '88 and '92. Do I have to talk about the whole Slap A Ham scene in california? This is just to drop a few names, a complete list would be endless. My point is that 90s' didn't suck at all. It was just that you were listening to the wrong bands. So please stop blaming the 90s' and start to blame yourselves for wasting your time listening to the worst crappy sxe metalcore band that Victory Records was hyping at the time.

Just think about what was going on in Cleveland in that decade. A bunch of scumbags who didn't care at all about the flavour of the month got together and started to form the core of a scene that would have unleashed quality hardcore for the next 20 years. Of course nobody give a shit in the 90s'. Now all these bands are revered worldwide but that's another story.

One of the very first Clevo band was Gag Reflex. They released a couple of demos before disbanding into obscurity after a couple of years. Their only vinyl output was released posthumous in 1996 by Hibachi Records in the form of a split 7" with Hangnail. If you're familiar with Clevo bands such as Cider, 9 Shocks Terror or Inmates, you know what to expect from this. Raw, fast and extremely pissed off hardcore not too dissimilar from the aforementioned bands. 

While all those records usually pop up frequently, this one seemed to be one of the hardest to get, even if it was pressed on 500 copies instead of 300 like many others Clevo classic gems. Never saw a copy of this on eBay in the last 6 years. Suddenly, some copies appeared nowhere but in Poland a couple of months ago on discogs. I guess it was old distro stocks by some folks from that polish band that did a split with Hangnail many moons ago? Anyhow, I've been lucky enough to score a copy of another rager that proved me again that 90s' didn't suck at all.