Mediafire - www.mediafire.com/?ohjg7e5i4py
Release - 1995
Story by Davin Bernard, singer of Kingdom.
My first hardcore show was a monumental event in my life. I was an analytical, forward-thinking 12 year old female metalhead living in rural Maine- so out of place I was like a Polar Bear at a Costa Rican beach resort. But then I went to a hardcore show and I felt... right. It was like a home coming to a home I never knew I had. A local band called Polyglot played, and as they were the only hardcore band I knew I became infatuated with them. The singer, Jay (whose first name I’m using here like I know him but to this day I’ve never actually talked to him), worked at a local record store I hung out at called Bull Moose, and one fateful day I noticed their employee recommended CD shelf. I scanned frantically for Jay’s recommendation, hoping he would introduce me to more hardcore. I pulled the plain white case off the shelf, inspected, shrugged, and brought Man Is The Bastard’s DIYCD to the cashier.
Like all punk and hardcore kids, I had all sorts of unfocused slogans I half-understood rolling around in my mind. Us against them. Fuck the system. Smash your TV. And in my own 13 year old way I believed them all, but they didn’t satiate my disdain for the world. I hated vaguely, and hated broadly, and hated angstily. And then Man Is The Bastard came along.
First off, the music wasn’t like the hardcore I’d heard (mostly Hatebreed-type stuff, that was all there was in New England those days)- it was strange, raw, stripped down, angry, and intelligent. And it was challenging in every way. To see noise as music. To hear discord as melody. To see social issues as something relevant. To stand FOR something and not just AGAINST it. To be hateful while being caring. To be negative while being positive. These ideas, these contradictions, this stark black and white no-fucks-given love/hate hardcore/punk amalgamation, this wasn’t just music, this wasn’t just a record... this was a lifestyle. It was my lifestyle. It was an interconnectedness of hardcore, of punk, of ideas, of rebellion. It was anger with purpose. It plainly stated: this is who we are, this is how we feel, and this is how we live. And with a large collection of MITB records on one side of my room and two tattered MITB posters on the other, approaching 30 and still believing that hardcore/punk does and will continue to change the world, I still live it.
“Peace is coming.
Courtesy is king.
Love is power.
Take that to the fuckin bank!” - Man Is The Bastard
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