Wartime - Fast Food For Thought
Label - Chrysalis (Promo Only)
Released - 1990
Style - Rock/Hardcore/Funk/Go Go
Wartime is one of the most underrated and least well-known Henry Rollins side projects. This is the only release they ever put out, and it's unclear whether it ever got a full release. The vinyl says "For Promo Only" (which is what I'm doing now) and only has 4 full 'songs.' But this is possibly my favorite Rollins record outside of the Black Flag stuff. This cassette had heavy play back in '91/92, but I never appreciated the go go flavor until I just recently found it again on vinyl... I believe it's just vocals, drum machines and various layers of bass. The bass is what pulled me the first time around... Lots of distortion, flange and envelope filter - which really gives it alot of rock guitar character at times. And the percussion is all drum machines and go go rhythms. Excellent.
Tracklisting:
A1 Mindfield (1:34)
A2 Wartime (5:46)
A3 Right To Live (7:43)
B1 The Whole Truth (5:50)
B2 Franklin's Tower (7:38)
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2 comments:
Thanks a lot for this gem! I've actually got a viny copy, but unfortunately my favourite track Right To Life is scratched. My copy has five tracks, by the way, and I bought it regularily at a local record shop. So it was officially released, but only in Europe if memory serves me right.
The music really is almost exclusively drum machines and the bass of Andrew Weiss, then-bassist of the Rollins Band. I actually did an interview with Rollins shortly before this came out and he was quite bemused because he had managed to sell this project to a major label as a kind of club music thing. (It was released on Chrysalis.) Great record, the Wartime project definitely had a lot of promise. Don't know why nothing much came of it, but maybe Rollins and Weiss had a fall-out. At least Weiss left the Rollins Band a year or two after the Wartime release.
I definitely think it had something to do with their rift. If I ever meet Henry Rollins in person (not too far-fetched... we share the same hometown) - I am demanding another Wartime album be released. It would be so appropriate right now.
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