GRAND HALLS 19

DISCHARGE – “Hear Nothing, See Nothing, Say Nothing” 1982 (Clay, Eng) – I love subtlety, really do: the well-structured melodic song, the carefully-placed acoustic passage. However, there are times when subtlety is to be damned and that’s when I turn to this album before all others. Released in 1982, “Hear Nothing…” is DISCHARGE’s finest hour (well, not nearly an hour!) and a virtual masterpiece of aggression and anger. If most of today’s hardcore bands could only capture an ounce of the genuine power and feeling here, they’d improve 100-fold. The interesting thing about the songs on this LP is that they aren’t blindingly fast, as many people began to feel was necessary when hardcore exploded in the later ‘80’s. Instead, this band locks into a sick groove and pummels the listener senseless as cuts like “A Hell On Earth” display. Three major things stand out to me about DISCHARGE on this record and they are: Kelv’s emotional-yet-nearly-monotone vocals, his hard-hitting socio-political lyrics and Bones’ 500 ton wall-to-wall guitar onslaught. “Hear Nothing…” is a classic and is recommended to all lovers of pissed-off hardcore punk and aggressive metal alike. 10.0