Artist: New Bomb Turks
Album: Live ’93 VPRO Radio Holland
Year: 1993
Engineer: Paul Weijenberg
Label: Anyway Records

Summary: blistering punk, snarling vocals, bilious lyrics. It rocks.

On one of my excursions to the now defunct Sound Exchange in Austin, TX, I stumbled upon an oddity: a 45 rpm 12” of the New Bomb Turks on a radio show in Holland. It only had 5 songs, one of which was the title track on their debut, Destroy-Oh-Boy!!, but I figured that at $5, it was worth a shot.

That was sometime in 2002. Today, I can say that it was easily the best music buy I made that year. The first two songs, Taller Order and Girl Can Help It, are my favorite NBT songs (I own two NBT cds). I thought that Destroy-Oh-Boy!! was a fairly impassioned album, but those two songs on the LP raised the bar. They are seething with energy.

What I noticed first was how the record was mixed. My personal preference for high-speed punk bands like NBT is to turn the guitar’s midrange frequencies all the way up and bring the guitar to the front of the mix. I basically want the guitars to cut through everything else.

Thankfully, this NBT record is mixed just the way I like it. The guitars are so prominent it sounds like the amp is in your room. As for drums and bass, they are right where they should be. They don’t overshoot the guitar but don’t take a back seat either. To balance the mid-saturated tone of the guitar, the bass is set mellower and motors away at a steady clip, keeping the guitar in check. Vocals also have their place- somewhere above bass and drums but below guitar.

I’ve come to expect a certain writing style from NBT. Simple, short, to the point. They don’t waste time on solos or intricate melodies. (Not that those are bad things, but when playing punk at the pace they do, there’s little time for intricacy). The song is over as soon as it started and you feel like the wind was knocked out of you. Most songs clock in under three minutes.