Review Summary: The discography of one of the forefathers of screamo.
Heroin formed in 1989, during the oft-called emo explosion that took place on the East coast of America. Yeah that’s right, the
oft-called emo explosion. Anyway, around this time, a number of bands were taking the stylings of the hardcore punk scene in a new direction. Yells and screams as opposed to shouts and singing were in more common usage and there was a development of more melody, etc into songs.
This release is their discography, containing the tracks from both their EPs and their self-titled full-length. First up are the six songs that were on their All About Heroin EP with my highlight being the opener, ‘Headcold’. Personally, I think that EP is the best example of Heroin’s work. Every song is an excellent representation of their energetic, angsty style, with relatively simple song structures but punchy vocals and strong guitar lines. Tracks like ‘Leave’, from their second EP, maintain these ideas, which for the time, were fairly innovative. The songs from Heroin (the LP that was released in 1993), are effectively a development of the songs from their EPs. I suppose you could say the guitars are more tuneful but to me, the bass is less weighty and their sound is less appealing than it was on the EPs. I’m not saying the tracks are bad, far from it, they just tend to be less memorable.
Heroin’s straightforward approach to what was a new direction for hardcore punk at the time would prove to leave a huge influence on the scene. The vocalist would later be a member of
Antioch Arrow, another band whose very original, sometimes bizarre style lead to more development in the genre. Listening to Heroin’s discography in full would take you less than an hour and would probably be a very good listening experience for most, but I’ll forgive you if you decide to pass and just listen to their first EP, All About Heroin.
