I mentioned the Burnt "Where's My Head?" LP yesterday, so here it is. I'm not gonna act like this is a classic album or anything like that; it was a middle-of-the-pack hardcore punk record when it first came out almost 25 years ago, and time hasn't really improved on things all that much.
This was one of the first few dozen or so hardcore LPs that I ever owned-- I had just moved to Waterbury as a teenager around that time, and it took me a month or two of walking around before I discovered that, dang, there's actually stores around here that sell honest-to-god punk zines and records. Full-length hardcore records weren't anywhere near as common back then as they are now, and in my willingness to blindly buy whatever popped up in the LP section, based upon if I recognized the band's name from the one issue of Flipside that I had, I ended up with some real stinkers (don't let anyone kid you-- Channel 3's "Airborne" and Code of Honor's "Beware The Savage Jaw" are some sucky fuckin' records). Likewise, "Where's My Head" wasn't really thrashy enough for me at the time, so I got rid of it fairly quickly. A couple of decades later, I stumble across a copy in near-perfect shape sitting in a rack for only eight bucks, and I had to buy it again, if only because (thanks to eBay) you hardly ever see old stuff like this in an actual record store anymore.
Objectively, this isn't a
bad record, just nothing amazing. It's loud enough, I suppose, and it has a few catchy vocal parts that used to stick in my head when I was younger ("No more drinking! No more driving!", "Action, action, I want action!", "F-f-f-forget about it!"), which all together means The Burnt were probably a fun band to sing along to if you were a part of the local NJ scene back then. When I listen to this now, it reminds me of the stuff they play over the PA at Cafe Nine in-between bands, which if Cafe Nine ever happened to play this record and I didn't recognize what it was I'd probably think that it was just okay, or that it was the Black Noise Scam or something.
As a cheapo record store find in the '00s, though, this ranks a lot higher, especially considering that if I ever run across a copy of "Airborne" again-- even if it's only 50 cents-- I'm leaving it right where it is.
The Burnt -
"D.W.I."
"I Hate You"
"Let's Fight"
"Garbage Can"
"Who Says?"
"Forget About It"
(these files are now listen-only)
