siLLy puPPy
The year 1980 was pivotal in the world of extreme music. Venom released their debut album ushering in new shocking musical images of dark, underground and hellish realities influencing the soon to blossom worlds of thrash, death and black metal with their lo-fi and aggressively distorted metal fury. The NWOBHM was taking off full force with Iron Maiden, Saxon, Angel Witch and a gazillion others launching metal into the mainstream and then there was DISCHARGE who dropped their own musical bomb in the form of REALTIES OF WAR as a short 4:50 EP that in its short and sweet aggressive march through a less than five minute run ushered in yet another influential marker on both the punk and metal worlds.
DISCHARGE began as a punk band in the vein of The Sex Pistols and The Clash but something happened in the few years from their formation to their first release. They got really, REALLY pissed off and display it full force in the music. The music really amped things up from anything heard in the 70s. The music was now full-on headache music with wall-of-sound guitar motifs and the debut of the d-beat drumming style which was merely a tweaking of Motorhead but proved to be a highly successful adaptation and influential to much of the extreme metal styles to follow including thrash, black, crust punk and grindcore. Chaotic guitar buzz with relentless d-beat drumming and raging shouted nihilistic lyrics make this one of the earliest extreme releases which many a band would adopt from hereon and one that earned the band their very own place in the history books.
Originally only released on vinyl as a 7” it can now be found as bonus tracks on the 2007 remastered edition of “Why.”