Future Awesomeness – Part II

Visual Discrimination was a self-proclaimed punk band from Southern California, which may be a bit surprising considering their sound, their appearance and their lyrical content, which all always screamed “straight edge hardcore’ to me. I couldn’t have been all that far off with that impression because Jeff Banks, the guitarist, went on to form “A Chorus of Disapproval”, a band that embodied the militant edge like few others (almost to the point of caricature).

Visual Discrimination’s first release in 1988 was "Step Back and Listen", which also was the first release on the California-based Nemesis label (NEM 001). Nemesis was quite influential in the (straight-edge) hardcore scene on the West Coast in the late 80s and early 90s, and released stuff by A Chorus of Disapproval, Uniform Choice, Vision, and even the first LP and 7” of The Offspring.

“In Vain” was released in 1990 as NEM 13 and was produced by Brett Gurewitz of Bad Religion fame. I am not sure what magic Brett Gurewitz worked at the knobs, but “In Vain” is a marked improvement over “Step Back and Listen” (particularly the drums on that record were just horrible; but overall everything sounds much crisper and cleaner on “In Vain”, plus the songwriting is much improved here).

The 8 songs on this record are:
crawling / 6ft. under / enough said / vain // money is freedom / potential statistic / inevitable / united blood

The always very poignant Flex discography says about this album:
“Fast & powerful hardcore from California; solid stuff but kind of simple and un-original. Strong Agnostic Front influence, apart from that it's the macho/metal/sXe/NYC hardcore sound with some guitar solos. Still OK. [7]”.

Clearly there are worse things than being compared to Agnostic Front. And indeed, VD sound a lot like a California version of the NYHC sound of that era. The AF comparison is also obviously justified because the last song on this album (if you didn’t guess so already) is a cover of AF’s United Blood.

“In Vain” isn’t earth-shattering, and from what I can tell it also didn’t prove to be particularly influential for future generations of hardcore kids (I’m sure most newer artists would instead rather name-check “A Chorus of Disapproval”). However, as the years go on I feel myself drawn back to my early years of hardcore. In that process I sometimes re-discover things and I am surprised how well they still hold up. And “In Vain” definitely falls into that category. It’s fast and powerful, with great riffs and strong vocals. In short: It kicks ass!

So, it’s still OK.

In Vain

Visual Discrimination’s complete oeuvre was released on one CD as “We got the edge” by Lost and Found Records in 1996. This CD is also out of print, but it might be worth keeping an eye out for, because it is probably easier to find than the original releases (or if you ask nicely, I’ll upload that, too)