Oftentimes a band’s début album is the best thing the band will ever do. I chalk it up to the fact that by the time they get around to getting in a studio to record their début they’ve had a lot of time to really polish their songs. I also chalk it up to the youthful energy and excitement that is magic in a bottle for most blossoming bands that can’t be recreated once they have more miles under their belts and they get older.
In the world of what is now called classic punk, it was almost universal that a band’s best album was their first one and that certainly holds true for the Adolescents, Christian Death, and Suicidal Tendencies. All three bands released their first albums on the legendary Frontier Records and all three bands, despite continuing on and making good music, never released anything close to the greatness of their debuts. All three of these album are considered among the all time greats and all three bands were hugely influential in their own ways on bands that followed them. It really says something that three decades after they were released these are still some of the most popular punk records of all time.
Since people keep buying them (proving that great music is timeless), the label keeps making them and every time they run out they switch to a new color of vinyl for the next pressing and here we have this punk rock trifecta pressed up on what the label calls “ectoplasm” colored vinyl. It is a semi-translucent milky white with a gray hue. I think the name is pretty fitting and they look pretty neat, not to mention I can’t think of any other records that look like this. The Suicidal Tendencies one is particularly complimentary to the colors on the cover.
Each of these ectoplasmic platters is available for a limited time while supplies last and can either be picked up from your local record store if it is a good one, or you can get them directly from the Frontier Records website. Either way you go about it if you don’t own these records already you should be ashamed of yourself and if you are a crazy collector type like myself who likes to have all the different colored vinyl variations of your favorite records, here’s your latest fix!
