Various Artists – Suburban Annihilation: The California Hardcore Explosion / From The City To The Beach: 1978-1983

Suburban Annihilation: The California Hardcore Explosion / From The City To The Beach: 1978-1983, which will from the point forwards just be known as Suburban Annihilation, is a time capsule from the dawn of the Californian hardcore and punk scenes, the extensive double album also marks the debut release in Futurismo’s new anthology series, Altered Vision. If you getting longer in the tooth it’s more than likely this will be a step back into many artists you are already more than familiar with, but this is not just the same old faces and overly familiar “classics”. Suburban Annihilation spans from the familiar to the relatively obscure, it reflects a time when punk shifted things up a few gears in terms of speed, volume, political dissent and intensity.

Suburban Annihilation takes you on a tour of the SoCal scene in it’s formative years, there are the obvious inclusions, including Adolescents, Dead Kennedys, Social Distortion, Circle Jerks and Suicidal Tendencies, who have all survived the years and are still currently touring. But this not the end of story, Suburban Annihilation takes in snapshots of the scene that veer from The Middle Class, Wasted Youth and Agent Orange to T.S.O.L., The Gun Club and Flipper. Even if you are of advancing years this is such a comprehensive album that there will be bands and songs that passed you by, rather than it just being a parade of the usual suspects.

Suburban Annihilation is a raw and comprehensive collection that reflects a short but influential period in punk history. What my review download really can’t reflect is the packaging and the attention to detail in putting this together, it’s not just a rather lavish double album that features two slabs of colored vinyl. It also boasts a tracklist that was co-curated by Henry Rollins, there are liner notes by Lisa Fancher (Frontier), a bio by award winning author Benjamin Myers and there’s also a booklet featuring an array of images by the legendary punk photographer Edward Colver. This is not just another compilation, as I said at the start, Suburban Annihilation is a time capsule.