Outface ‘Friendly Green’ (1996)

There was an endearing “sameness” to the hardcore bands of the mid-’90s.  It made most of the CDs of that era an easy buy: “if you like Quicksand or Orange 9mm…you’ll probably like Outface“.

They sounded much as you would have expected, with perhaps the pronounced defining characteristic of their warbly singer. While tense, rhythmic shouted vocals were commonplace for this sort of act, the melodic yowling over Outface’s muscular groovy crunch was more akin to Sam Black Church or (less so) Bad Brains.

Around 1998, when Outface vocalist Derrick Green was unveiled as the new frontperson for politicking thrash-metal greats Sepultura, I was quick to recall this long lost CD.   Surprisingly, it was not an easy find: scarce used copies, no shared rips on blogs…

My search led to the discovery that you can exclusively purchase ‘Friendly Green’ in MP3 from Amazon, which increased my respect for the .com giant tenfold.   Out of print and rare audio is precisely the sort of value add that will make me recommend Amazon, or – even more notably – eMusic, who basically make it their mission to celebrate and preserve obscure releases of these kinds of not-so-famous musicians.

Are you looking for a recording that you can’t seem find anywhere?

Give them (or me) a try.