Face Value - Rode Hard, Put Away Wet: Clevo HC 89-93 (Smog Veil)
In an era during which hardcore bands have the ability to reach larger audiences than ever before, it can sometimes be difficult to recall that at one point this music was infused with a palpable sense of danger. Hardcore was a subculture whose adherents were drawn more from genuine misfits and outcasts than from suburban kids trying to vent a few years’ worth of adolescent aggression before settling into the normalcy of the adult world. Those are the years that seemed to produce genuine characters, some famous and some infamous, who were as polarizing as they were memorable. These characters have become rarer with each successive year, with hardcore musicians becoming as faceless as the music they play. One of the major polarizing figures from that era is Tony Erba. As a member of bands like 9 Shocks Terror, Gordon Solie Motherfuckers, and most recently Cheap Tragedies, Erba, with his shrill voice, a decidedly non-politically correct stance on just about everything, and a propensity for directing live shows towards destructive mayhem, has provided a strong counterpoint to whatever trends currently dominate hardcore. When popular bands were playing more intricate, technical material, his bands played faster and simpler. When audience participation at shows was characterized by the dichotomy between fans who would stand as still as possible with their arms folded and those who would try out the kickboxing moves they had practiced in the mirror before the show, Erba threw bricks and firecrackers in the audience – anything to be as confrontational as possible. But what many hardcore fans also don’t recall at this point is that Erba got his start singing for Face Value, a Cleveland band, existing from 1989 until 1993, who, at their best, stood out like a sore thumb from the post-Youth Of Today doldrums which predominated in much of that era’s hardcore.
Rode Hard, Put Away Wet combines both a CD discography of Face Value’s recorded material and a DVD of live performances spanning the length of their existence. The track sequencing of the CD seems odd at first, skipping around chronologically between releases, starting in the middle of the band’s career and then fluctuating between earlier and later material. Upon listening, however, the choice of song order becomes more readily understandable, and often seems like the material was arranged by quality. The first songs, from the 1991 album The Price Of Maturity, showcase Face Value at their peak. It’s easy to see why, despite the catchiness and the aggression of songs like “Men From The Boys” and “Emotional Addiction,” hardcore devotees more acclimated to the polish of Insted or Gorilla Biscuits might not have known how to take Face Value. The most notable element of the album is the band’s ability to almost perfectly balance fast hardcore a la SSD with an unabashed love of classic rock. Had they not been so fast, many of the songs sound like they could have been long-lost Grand Funk Railroad or Mountain songs, an element which was the band’s strong suit. The only band working in comparable territory at the time was Poison Idea (especially on their Feel The Darkness album), but Face Value eschewed that band’s gloomy nihilism in favor of something more – dare I say – fun. This era of Face Value was easily their peak, as the subsequent material on Rode Hard, Put Away Wet demonstrates.
The Coming Of Age EP, released in 1990, is decent but hardly groundbreaking. Songs like “Can’t Take Much More” and “Holding The Grudge” are not far removed from the gruff bluntness of Judge, but fail to distinguish themselves from the vast number of other bands with such influences. Next on the discography is 1993’s Kick It Over, which sees the band falling into a slower to mid-tempo sound. This sound, while keeping the classic rock influence intact, causes Face Value to gravitate towards a vibe not unlike many of the early Victory records bands – a sound which proved highly popular, but failed to do Face Value’s potential for energetic performance much justice. There is still an aggression present which saves Kick It Over from joining the ranks of such failed hardcore/hard rock crossovers as SSD’s How We Rock or the second Void album that never got released [EDITOR'S NOTE: Graham is talking about Potions For Bad Dreams, copies of which are floating around on the internet for the morbidly curious among you]. The final tracks on the album, from the band’s 1989 Clevo Hardcore demo, showcase Face Value in its roughest form. One of the songs would end up on the Coming Of Age EP, and the rest share that record’s tendency towards fairly basic and unoriginal, while not necessarily terrible, material. While the latter three releases are an interesting historical document, only the material from The Price Of Maturity justifies any renewal of interest in this band.
No lyrics are provided with the album, which is unfortunate as Tony Erba has shown a long-standing ability with wordplay. While titles like “Sellout,” “Naivete,” and “Coming Of Age” sound like fairly standard late ‘80s/early ‘90s hardcore lyrical fodder, it would be nice to know one way or the other. Instead, the album includes a large poster which features Erba and a cast of characters, including members of bands as disparate as Endpoint and Hatebreed, waxing nostalgic on the influence and importance of Face Value. The quality of the ruminations varies (though Erba’s are unsurprisingly the best-written and funniest) and they tend to walk a line between actual history and the sort of grandiose hyperbole that only a few decades worth of hindsight can provide. But if hardcore is to be viewed as a genuine and viable subculture rather than as a marketing tool or an adolescent phase, these are the stories that need to be recorded. Their inclusion is an excellent addition to the album.
The video content is nice to have, but isn’t necessarily required viewing. Though each video gives a good impression of the band’s live energy (something not always captured by the sterile studio production of many of that era’s hardcore bands), the videos don’t really live up to the sort of chaos implied by the band’s mythology. Much of this deficiency is likely related to the poor ability of older camcorders to handle the volume of a live band, as well as the stark contrast between bright stage lights and the darkness of the rest of the venue. The videos seem like a grainy artifact of a bygone era, more likely to be of importance to punk rock historians than anybody looking for anything entertaining enough for repeat views. Certainly worth watching for any fan of the band, but not necessarily essential otherwise.
On the whole, though, it’s great that this album exists. Given how much attention has been lavished on even the most generic of bands from this era of hardcore, it’s a shame that Face Value has languished so long in relative obscurity, despite their popularity at the time. While not all the material presented here is as essential as the first LP, a new generation of hardcore acts could still stand to take notes on a band like Face Value, one that set out to break molds rather than forge them and, at their best, did just that.