Story time - it'll be a little disjointed perhaps but the shit is all super (?) important...
I heard about BUZZOV•EN when ANCIENT CHINESE PENIS were in North Carolina in 1993. I was eager for anything new at that point in my punk life - I grabbed Hate Box and Wound based on someone's recommendation, and my mind was blown. The next year when MULTIPLE CHOICE were on tour, we listened to a promo cassette copy of Sore until the reels fell the fuck off. The singles I snagged on that ACP trip were good, but Sore was (still is) something else entirely, and when we saw them in Providence on that '94 jaunt? Fuck. Top ten sets ever - period. My first real experience being scared of and/or by punk...shit was actually dangerous and you were experiencing a band on the very brink of collapse just by being in the same room. That set had (has) staying power.
Fast Forward Four Years.....
MULTIPLE CHOICE morphed into FUCKFACE and then crashed into a brick wall in 1998 leaving shards that birthed ARTIMUS PYLE. The three of us recorded with Billy Anderson in April. There were a lot of drugs. There was a whirlwind couple of weeks that included WORD SALAD covering "Angel Of Death" with Dino on vocals and DAMAD was in town too and we woke up a dude from HIGH ON FIRE at three something in the morning because we felt like we needed to hear what our recording sounded like on a stereo that wasn't John's Honda's tape deck and we played our first show. I'm not sure what exactly happened in what order, but a lot happened (and there were a lot of drugs). Shortly after Billy finished our single, he rolled into Toast Studios in SF with BUZZOV•EN...who showed up with no riffs. No songs. They just showed up with several days booked at an expensive recording studio on some label's dime. Billy called me a few days in, said that Dixie was recording conversations with crackheads on Mission Street while Kirk was scouring porn VHS tapes for potential samples (because it was the '90s and you couldn't have a sludge/crust record without samples) - he asked if I had anything they could use. I brought a few things down to the studio, including an educational record filled with first person testimonials aimed at keeping kids away from the horrible world of drugs. I offered that whole record, but noted one bit that FUCKFACE had used on their then-recent LP (guess which bit BUZZOV•EN used....? Cant think...can't think can't think can't think). After they finished the recording, BUZZOV•EN played a matinee show at Gilman. I walked in with Kirk and Billy and stared slack jawed as Kirk snarled at the teenage volunteer working the door "I'm gonna burn this place to the fucking ground" while getting his hand stamped. Their set that day was....something. There was fire.
Fast Forward Some More Years....
I was in a record store in Echo Park shooting the shit and drinking some beers when BUZZOV•EN came up in conversation. Turns out I was shooting the shit with the person whose label's dime funded that 1998 recording session - a session that had (at that time) still not produced a physical release. Small world, right?
••••
This is my copy of the 1998 San Francisco session that Billy gave me before the mix and master was complete - the tracks that eventually became Revelation: Sick Again that finally saw a proper release on Hydra Head in 2011 or so. There were a few forgettable recordings that came out after Sore (most notably that awful Gospel According...II on Allied) and there are some more recent releases that I admittedly haven't spent time with, but this....? This is BUZZOV•EN. If you listen with a discerning ear you can probably tell that some of the songwriting is phoned in, but you can also tell that these dudes were absolutely in the pocket on that tour - I think it was the first with Dixie on bass and he seemed to kick Kirk in the ass in a really good way. There's aren't many bands like this in the world - not now and not ever. Welcome to violence.
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