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THE LEAD
"HARDCORE FOR JESUS: 1985-1989"
Release Date: October 7, 2006
Record label: Retroactive Records www.retroactiverecords.net
Distribution: Brutal Planet Distribution / brutalplanet@gmail.com
Product ID: RAR7820
Style: Thrash/Metal
Insert: four panel
Tracks: 48
Time: approx. 160 minutes
Bonus Tracks: No
Lyrics: No
ABOUT THE ALBUM
In probing the iron clad hardcore speed metal of THE LEAD's historic, career spanning releases and the manner in which the group effortlessly blends old school speed metal and punk, the term "metalcore" is never one that comes to mind. That term is reserved for bands of labels like Trustkill and Victory. With all due respect to those labels and bands (and wishing them contnued success!), the style played by THE LEAD is best captured by a genre description rarely used these days" "crossover" (think D.R.I., The Crucified, Suicidal Tendencies).
HARDCORE FOR JESUS is a sonic assault from beginning to end with 2 CDs containing: ’86 self-titled 4 song 7” EP, ’86 Return Fire 19 song (cassette), ’86 Automoloch 6 song (vinyl) 12” EP, ’87 The Past Behind 6 song 12” vinyl EP (1st recorded version, not the R.E.X. recording), and ’89 Burn This Record (R.E.X.) all of which provides a lesson in stamina that invites the listener to question if the band will outlast the listener or vice versa.
When THE LEAD hit the scene and released their debut self-titled, four song 7’ record on their own, it seemed to many a nearly impenetrable cacophony of sound (which is great for fans of punk-n-thrash!). And, with each release, the band seemed to get heavier and faster. Over two decades later, it’s easy to see that The Lead’s music was incredibly ahead of its time. Touring nationally, and opening for such legendary bands as D.R.I. and Suicidal Tendencies only cemented the bands place in the early hardcore/metal scene.
The ’85 four song debut EP is full of The Crucified-styled aggressive punk that would make any fan of the Sex Pistols, Black Flag, and the Dead Kennedys rejoice. Music critic, Brian Quincy Newcomb dubbed them the “God Pistols”. 1986’s Return Fire only intensifies with 19 live songs that are harder, faster, and very raw! Automoloch made it clear the group’s love of pure speed remained in tact. You even get a cover of Resurrection Band’s “Alienated,” complete with speed metal riffs! With The Past Behind EP, the band began adding the unusual arrangements, varying tempos, and dissonant nuances that paved the way to a wholly distinctive sound all their own. These experiments (rooted in the works of both Venom and early Slayer) were fleshed out even further on Burn This Record, which took the band deeper into heavy thrash and metal than they had ever gone before.
THE LEAD was always about old school spirit, and this is a metal band that happens to love thrashing it up! This is about tough rhythms, and no frills speed riffing, that recalls the teeth-splittin' fare of Slayer covering Black Flag! Just remember, the beatdowns and thrashing you hear on HARDCORE FOR JESUS have nothing to do with metalcore and everything to do with the real possibility of well, being beaten down and thrashed at a LEAD show...and the guy doing it won't be wearing eyeliner and a My Chemical Romance t-shirt.
KEY SELLING POINTS
· HM Magazine ad campaign
· Heaven’s Metal Fanzine ad campaign
· Song on HM subscriber Compilation CD (5500 subscribers)
· Radio Promotion / Magazine & Reviews campaign
· Tracks on the Lighting Strikes Twice and Lightning Strikes Twice…Again promo compilations
· Digitally Remastered
· Limited Edition of just 1000 units
· 2 CD set with 49 songs!
· Inserts include original artwork and rare photos
· For fans of Venom, The Crucified, Slayer, Overkill, D.R.I., Suicidal Tendencies
SONG TITLES
CD 1
1. It's Thru You
2. Better Off
3. Get Out Of My Face
4. Question What Authority?
5. You Don't Know
6. Kill Satan
7. It's Thru You
8. The Law Of Love/Throwaway
9. Second Chance
10. Lead You To Repent
11. Question What Authority?/One Step Ahead
12. Death Of A Gunfighter
13. Better Off
14. Lead Us To Salvation
15. Take Him Home
16. Get Out Of My Face
17. Hide His Name
18. It's A Crazed World
19. No Religion
20. Emergency
21. Revolution In The Heart
22. No One's An Atheist
23. XB
24. Sick Of This
25. You Don't Need Him
26. Calling Out To You
27. Alienated
CD 2
1. Abomination/National Pride
2. He Won't Take A Joke
3. No Religion
4. Old Warrior
5. Tunnel Vision
6. Puritan
7. Jesus Became Sin
8. Change The World
9. Boring World
10. Suicide Is A Lie
11. Internal Pain
12. Hope You Stay Alive
13. Oh No! Not Again
14. To The Ends Of The Earth
15. Losers
16. Who's The Victim
17. I Can't Find It In My Heart
18. Skate Or Die
19. Kill Satan Mosh
20. The Empty Sepulchre
21. Defiance
REVIEW FROM WWW.PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH.ORG
The Lead digitally re-mastered? I guess it had to happen. This band's radical, God core, punk music fueled by Nina Llopis' mono-scream vocals and Julio Rey's breakneck guitar is long remembered for its speed, cutting, literate lyrics and raw power. Finally available is The Lead's first EP. _Return Fire_'s 19 live songs, all here. So is _Automoloch_ and _Burn This Record._ Sadly, there are no bonus tracks.
Think D.R.I., The Crucified, Suicidal Tendencies, Black Flag and Slayer in sound. Christian hall of fame journalist Brian Quincy Newcomb tagged the band with the term the "God Pistols!"
There has never been a band like The Lead--not ever. Not for me. They were always about spirit, raw energy and going-for-it! Though there were mistakes, their records were perfect. The Lead packed more into a two-minute song than anyone I've ever heard. The minute "Question the Authority" on their 7-inch back in the mid-80s came busting thru the speakers, it was all over. We must have started our radio show with this song for weeks. So glad to see it available again.
Warning: If you consume to this two-CD set at one sitting, you may need oxygen.
Bob Felberg December 18, 2006
The Lead digitally re-mastered? I guess it had to happen. This band's radical, God core, punk music fueled by Nina Llopis' mono-scream vocals and Julio Rey's breakneck guitar is long remembered for its speed, cutting, literate lyrics and raw power. Finally available is The Lead's first EP. _Return Fire_'s 19 live songs, all here. So is _Automoloch_ and _Burn This Record._ Sadly, there are no bonus tracks.
Think D.R.I., The Crucified, Suicidal Tendencies, Black Flag and Slayer in sound. Christian hall of fame journalist Brian Quincy Newcomb tagged the band with the term the "God Pistols!"
There has never been a band like The Lead--not ever. Not for me. They were always about spirit, raw energy and going-for-it! Though there were mistakes, their records were perfect. The Lead packed more into a two-minute song than anyone I've ever heard. The minute "Question the Authority" on their 7-inch back in the mid-80s came busting thru the speakers, it was all over. We must have started our radio show with this song for weeks. So glad to see it available again.
Warning: If you consume to this two-CD set at one sitting, you may need oxygen.
Bob Felberg December 18, 2006
Punk rock wasn't always the domain of photogenic young things given to emotionalism and the leap from MySpace to the hope for a platinum album. When "hardcore" was the adjective commonly used to modify "punk" in the 1980s, primal musical aggression and tempos verering toward the supersonic demanded equally forceful lyrical content delivered with commensurate conviction.
Entering the hardcore fray in mid-decade were The Lead. Nearly all of the co-ed Florida trio's studio output is now collected in Hardcore For Jesus. The four years of artistic evoltion it evidences is as revelatory as its evangelistic/testimonial fervor.
From their debut four-song 7-inch EP in '85, The Lead distinguished itself , but not only by their Christianity. Having dual lead vocalist-songwriters in guitarist Julio Rey and bassist Nina Llopis set them apart, as did a vanguely English attack on such numbers as "It's Thru You" and anti-abortion "Better Off."
Drummer Robbie Christie began contributing verses and vocals with the act's longest release, '86's cassette-only Return Fire. A virtuosic tightness began to develop amid the lo-fi cacaphony. "Lead Us To Salvation" evinced a power-boogie spawl, "Emergency" and "The Law Of Love" messed with club beats before the latter skidded into a hyper-frenzied 180 with "Throwaway." Llopis begins to sound all the more feminine on numbers such as "Take Him Home," and Rey maims blues influence on "No Religion."
A pair of 12-inch EPs followed, and with them, slightly cleaner production values. Automolech delved into drum effects perhaps not replicable in a concert setting, an epic song length or two, and a Resurrection Band remake ("Alienated"). And Llopis speaks directly as ever to non-believers on "No One's An Atheist" and "You Don't Need Him." The passion she conjures result in arguably her most powerful vocal perforances as well. Such spiritual bravado didn't win the band any fans among writers for such doctrinairely secular punk 'zines as Maximumrocknroll, but general market hardcore bands still called on them as an openning act when touring the country's southermost peninsula .
The Past Behind, included here in its original indie incarnation before being remade for R.E.X. Records, signaled the final intermediary step between The Lead's punk roots and culmination as an extreme metal unit. To that effect, "Puritan" blurs by in nearly abstract noisiness as a re-recording of 'No Religion" and "Jesus Became Sin" are clarion declarations.
Second guitarist Andy Coyle joined for The Lead's finale, Burn This Record. Perhaps proving that at least some of the chasm between punk and metal was in how the guitar feedback gets processed, this is the group's sonically darkest record, owing aesthetic debt to their home state's then-burgeoning death metal and contemporaneous Northern California thrash. As they had on previous outings, they recycled their own past. "Kill Satan Mosh" reprises the apparently less pummelling "Kill Satan" on Return Fire. Gallows humor creeps into "Hope You Stay Alive" and "Oh No, Not Again." Llopis adds both gravitas about abortion on "Who's The Victim" and skirts the edge of silliness with "Skate Or Die" (prehaps sillier for those of us who can't balance wih wheels on our feet to save our neck).
What makes Hardcore a nearly complete compilation, and not the whole enchilada, is the accidental exclusion of Burn's concluding track, "Wink Of An Eye." You, however, can find it as a free download on-ironically enough?- www.MySpace.com/TheLead.
As a nostalgia trip for those who lived it and the Living Word wed to aural adrenaline that has maintained its urgent, plainspoken power, this is Hardcore indeed.
Jamie Lee Rake
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