Violent Apathy

This 7" EP from German punk archive label Lost & Found pulls together 14 songs from the faster! louder! days of Midwestern hardcore pioneers Violent Apathy. The first 11 songs are from a 1981 demo tape (recorded in East Lansing, MI, not Ohio, no matter what the sleeve says) that previously surfaced on the cassette-only compilation I Estimated Your Worth Today, while two cuts appeared on the punk comp The Master Tapes and the remaining track was their contribution to the legendary 1981 Touch & Go EP Process of Elimination. Most of these songs are hyper-aggressive minute-long blasts of hard guitar and barking vocals that shout down authority on any number of levels, though "Society Rules" and "Desperation Takes Hold" (which were recorded in 1982 and feature a later lineup of the band) take a slightly more measured approach with equally high-impact results. Anyone looking for a potent dose of Reagan-era punk rage would do well to pick this up, though it would have been nice if Lost & Found had done a better job with the notes, which are both faulty and incomplete (and suggest this has something to do with Violent Apathy's later Here Today EP, even though the two records share no common material). ~ Mark Deming, All Music Guide