Finally after 23 years, the legendary Hard-Ons LP Yummy is available as a remastered and expanded 2CD set. Encompasing the said album, the mini-LP Dateless Dudes' Club, and the infamous collaboration with Henry Rollins Let There Be Rock single, This tremendous 2CD set encompasses a strange and uncharted period in Hard-Ons' history.
1990: The year underground heroes Faith No More broke through to the mainstream. This was the year, Waterfront Records label, fearing for an exodus to major label-pastures, signed a lease deal with music industry behemoth Festival Records for the Hard-Ons. Armed with political and financial clout of Festival Records, and saddled with an expectation of greater success, the Hard-Ons entered a period of musical experimentation. Enter: the full-length Yummy and Let There Be Rock.
1991: The year Nirvana went from unwashed quasi-metal footnotes to the biggest band in the world via their major label debut. This was the year the Hard-Ons entered a period of relentless touring and demoing. This was perhaps the year the band realised they either will expand upon their brilliant and exciting yet limited musical vocabulary somehow, or die. Enter: Dateless Dudes' Club.
Flawed yet supremely exciting, the Hard-Ons' secret weapon truly comes to the fore on these recordings: THEIR SONGS. It is power-pop heaven as hook after hook enters the fray. Keeping things guessing are the usual chugging metal and thrash. Mercifully for the pop fans, these are quick diversions as sophisticated and updated melodies fill the 2CD set to the brim.
On the second CD one will find the entire demo versions of Yummy and Dateless Dudes' Club. Raw and uninhibited as usual, these demos clearly display a fascinating maturing process for the band. On the flipside of this, on the first cd, the four live tracks from Dateless Dudes' Club clearly displays a blistering no-hold-barred punk band that trades in both supreme melody and devastating distortion.
Yummy 2CD Set: a fascinating and exhaustive look at the greatest underground Australian punk band of the 80's entering the 90's fighting their way out of the burden of expectation, with renewed sophistication.
