In a generous move akin to getting five hundred free boxes of peanut butter Girl Scout cookies, Havoc offers up reissues of this venerable band’s first album and 12” EP, both from 1983 and, frankly, the world is suddenly a better place. From its opening cover of the Varukers’ “Protest and Survive” to the closing “Kukaan El Välitä,” Valtion Vankina is Finnish thrash of the highest order, the aural equivalent of being slapped around for a few days by a four-thousand-pound gorilla with a toothache. Its unrelenting ferocity has withstood the test of time and could easily hold its own against damn near any hardcore band currently walking the planet. While it isn’t wound up quite as tight, Skitsofrenia is no less crucial a listen, with more than its share of wild, energetic thrashing, supplemented by the occasional slower-burning tune to stave off any potential eruptions of spontaneous combustion. I gotta remember to give Felix Havoc a hug and thank him profusely if ever I meet him for bringing these, and so many other fjordcore classics from the likes of Kaaos, back from obscurity, even if it is in this case for only five-hundred copies of each. Maybe I’ll send a couple of boxes of Girl Scout cookies instead. So mandatory for the collection that to even say so is a wasted effort.
–jimmy (Havoc)