The Lead

$13 + s/h

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
22. Wink Of An Eye (download only)

Review by Jamie Lee Rake

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.

I edited my profile with Thomas' Myspace Editor V4.4