Blogspot Days Revisited: Lahar
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Since this is my last week at IO (though some of my writing, including the rest of the Metallica series, will post after I leave), I thought I’d revisit some highlights of the first two years, ’06-’08. The site was on Blogger then, and hardly anyone read it. It was technically never a Blogspot, since I used the domain name invisibleoranges.com since day one. But in spirit, it sure was. Ah, Minima Black theme. You and I had some good times.
It’s a trip seeing how my tastes have evolved. When I started IO, I was evidently into lo-fi black metal, post-metal, grindcore, and metallic hardcore, none of which interest me much now. My tastes stemmed partly from location. I was living in Berlin, DE, and since I got no promos then, I sourced CDs one at a time. I’d request them from bands on MySpace, or I’d buy them in stores. German record stores were much different from American ones (lots of heavy metal, lots of techno), so I got all sorts of stuff I wouldn’t have gotten in the States, such as used obscure thrash CDs.
I lived near a record store called Core Tex, which had some metal, but mostly specialized in hardcore punk. One time I went in, heard something awesome playing, asked what it was, and bought it on the spot. It was Provide & Conquer by Lahar. Now, hardly anyone remembers Provide & Conquer or Lahar. Lahar was a Seattle hardcore band on a now-defunct Philly label called Spook City. Metal-archives.com, which has strict genre police, has a listing for Lahar, which shows how metallic they were: very. A good number of hardcore bands then basically played thrash, just with hardcore-style vocals, and Lahar was one.
Provide & Conquer isn’t one for the ages, but it still rages six years after its release. I like the seat-of-the-pants quality that the slight underproduction provides; most stuff like this now sounds overly perfect. I bet these guys listened to a lot of Bonded by Blood and Pleasure to Kill. They put out one album and are now history. I wrote about them almost four years ago, and I’m writing about them now. If I remember your music after four years, that says something.
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Blogspot Days Revisited remembers highlights from Invisible Oranges’ first two years.
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HEAR PROVIDE & CONQUER
“Children of War”
[audio: LAHAR_CHILDREN.mp3]
“Heartbreak Press”
[audio: LAHAR_HEARTBREAK.mp3]
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BUY PROVIDE & CONQUER
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