Disrupt Unrest [reissue] (2007) Relapse

Think back, if you will, to the late `80s and early `90s. In `92, I was running around and falling down a lot, but, considering the disparate ages of Punknews readers, who knows what you were doing. You could have been floating in uterine fluid, or learning how to read, or you could have had your first innocent sexual experience with an older cousin, or you could’ve started wondering why Mommy always had black eyes and bandages on her wrists. Disrupt were not doing any of these things. Disrupt were smashing the motherfucking state. For you see, Disrupt is a crust band. And smashing the state is what crust bands, especially early American ones, do.

So yeah. Disrupt came outta Lynn, MA right at the peak of the American crust explosion. Other bands from that era -- Nausea, Destroy!, Dropdead -- may have become more famous, but Disrupt kinda kicked the shit out of all of them (well, not Nausea). For you see, where Destroy! played Napalm Death worship, and Dropdead played Siege-core, Disrupt was firmly in the Extreme Noise Terror camp -- and before any of you say, “Extreme Noise Terror Are Afraid of Us,” ENT is amazing. A Holocaust in Your Head, ENT’s debut album, is one of the greatest hardcore punk albums ever recorded, and Disrupt’s lone LP, Unrest, is essentially a drawn-out version of that album. Unrest has recently been repackaged and remastered by Relapse Records, so it can be re-consumed by real punks. Really.

Now, everything here is straight-up typical crusty hardcore, heavily influenced by ENT. There’s, uhhh, 30 tracks of this -- 20 from the album and 10 from the Deprived 7”. It’s enjoyable, certainly, and it’ll get you angry about the state of society and the world in general, and it’s reasonably moshable.

I’ve decided to include a little checklist to show you how fucking crusty this album is:

1. Two vocalists, one that goes “rahr rahr,” and one that goes “blah blah,” like ENT.
2. Blast motherfucking beats, like Napalm Death.
3. Songs based upon the Discharge pattern, like…Discharge.
4. Sporadic female vocals, like Nausea.
5. Lyrics about animal rights, feminism, equality, anarchism, and pretty much every other libertarian-left cause, like every crust band ever.
6. A band name that begins with, “Dis-“, like Disclose, Disfear, Diskonto, Disorder, Disrespect, Disarm, Dischange, and the Dislawrence Arms.

So yeah, I’d say they pretty much fit the crust stereotype. However, Disrupt did it before it was as cliché as taking a band’s photo in front of a brick wall. At some point, this sound was scary and new to the States, and, I guess, even though I hate reviewing things in context, that’s what makes Unrest so good. If you’re just beginning your crustification, then this CD is as good as any to start with. It’s not the greatest crust album of all time, but it certainly deserves a place on the mantle of the abandoned home you’re squatting.

(feeeding5000)