Void - Sessions 1981-83 (Dischord)

While I don’t usually write reviews as a response to another review, I felt the immediate need to write a review of the new Void reissue after reading Pitchfork’s take on it, which you can read here.

First things first, I have no problem with MOST of the substance of this review. It’s intelligently written, the music and packaging of this release is analyzed well and their place in history of hardcore punk is noted as well.

However, two things jump out at me. The first thing is that the score (a 7.3, a good but not great score) doesn’t seem to jibe with the praise given in the review. Now I know that the reviewer doesn’t decide on the score, but this just feels a bit off to me. The other thing is more significant and indicative of a greater trend having to do with the acceptance of some hardcore and punk bands into the indie rock milieu in recent years. The (relative) indie success of bands like Pissed Jeans, Fucked Up and OFF! (all great bands so don’t get me wrong) attest to this. Generally speaking, I think that the attention that these bands have received from entities like Pitchfork in recent years is a good thing. It’s exposed them to people who otherwise may not have ever heard about them and gotten their music to a slightly larger audience (though still far from a mass one, of course). However, there is a trade-off and this is what I’d like to address. Simply put, reading Pitchfork’s Void review made it clear that though it may or may not have been written from the perspective of an outsider to hardcore music and culture, it was definitely written for a general audience that has never experienced the thrill of weekly matinees, buying records from kids at distro tables, house shows and all of the (admittedly insular) other things that go along with it. When bands like Void were making records, the idea of an indie-rock culture (which is a direct byproduct of the hardcore/punk D.I.Y. ethic) was nonexistent or a pipe dream at best, so to try to put it in this modern context is missing some of the point. Furthermore, Void influenced TONS of even more extreme hardcore and metal bands and have been seminal figures for almost 30 years. Just read some reviews of their split Lp with The Faith (including one in an early issue of Maximum Rock and Roll) here and you’ll understand the kind of impact they had on the underground punk scene at the time.

With all that said, what about the music on here? Well, it’s amazing. There are 33 tracks here, 20 of which are the Hit and Run demos previously only available on awful sounding bootlegs culled from an nth-generation cassette. 10 more come from two different sessions at Inner Ear. These are more well-known, as most have been released as the “Condensed Flesh” 7” in the mid ’90s on Lost and Found and several others were released on the seminal Flex Your Head compilation Lp on Dischord during the band’s existence in the early ’80s. The two live tracks are gravy, but admittedly the version of “My Rules” that ends the record is funny for the same reason the ending of “Go South” (to mention just one of several moments) is.

Make no mistake, though. This is balls-to-the-wall, full-throttle hardcore punk that still manages to be catchy while being chaotic and basically a distillation of teenage frustration. Song titles like “Suburbs Suck” make the latter point clear, but there’s also some poignant social commentary on songs like “Black, Jewish and Poor” and “All White Neighborhood”, a point that the Pitchfork review admittedly got right.

As for the packaging, while the cover could’ve been better, we do get some never-before-seen photos of the band and the usual liner notes on the back of the Lp written by Ian MacKaye, though unfortunately no lyrics. Still, for anyone who likes early ’80s DC hardcore in general and Void specifically or for anyone who already has the split Lp with The Faith and is curious to hear more, this reissue is an absolute must.