The Hated: Best Piece Of Shit Vol. 4 12″

Description

This ones been teased for awhile, decades even. The Hated box set was an idea before Numero was an idea. Today were pleased to announce the first of five planned Hated collections that well be rolling out over the next several years. Up first is Best Piece Of Shit Vol. 4, which compiles the Annapolis quartets earliest explorations into revolution summer emo. Spread across two LPs is the bands 1985 debut cassette, the No More We Cry EP, and 14 period bonus tracks from these hardcore hooligans. Weve also made a limited 7+CD+tape edition with an additional five bonus tracks. Andrew Gephardt and Ken Shipley provide lengthy essays on the band and scene, illustrated by dozens of photographs from the bands archive. Weve got 500 copies broken bone white wax on both, but not for long. The Hated on Numero Never said itd be like this, right?

Our take: Numero Group turns their best-in-the-game reissue skills toward Hated, an obscure band from 1980s Annapolis, Maryland with a cult following, for the first of what promises to be a multi-volume reissue series. Hated (or the Hated, as its sometimes written) has always been a mysterious band for me. I knew their 1985 7, No More We Cry, as an odd four-song EP with two tracks of top-shelf, Revolution Summer-influenced melodic hardcore bookending two acoustic tracks that are like a no-polish version of acoustic Hsker D tracks like Hardly Getting Over It and Never Talking to You Again. I was dimly aware there was a lot more Hated material out there and that the band had a small but devoted following (I knew this from the Hated box set proto-meme on the Viva La Vinyl message board), but Best Piece of Shit Vol 4 fills in the gaps in Hateds story and brings together the bands disparate early material in a way that makes sense. It turns out Hated had roots in primitive and playful sound collage, briefly coalesced into a shit-hot first-wave emo band, then splintered into a more nebulous project that encompassed earnest acoustic songs, Flipper-esque anti-punk, elaborate parody, field recordings, and cut-up collages that mixed those elements. Some people will only be interested in the most straightforward punk iteration of the band, whose output Numero Group collects on side A of this double album. Annapolis, Maryland was just close enough to DC for the young and impressionable members of Hated to fall under the spell of Revolution Summer emo, and the a-side tracks bring together their youthful energy, rigorous work ethic, and budding songwriting ability into a record that you must hear if you appreciate bands like Rites of Spring, Marginal Man, and the obscure but underrated Rain (seriously check out their 12 on Peterbilt Records). As for the other three sides, they demand a more open set of ears, but theres so much here. There are two versions of Hateds signature song, Hate Me, which combined Flippers drone (the songs lyrics are its title repeated over and over in an incantatory chant) with the psychedelic freakouts Hsker D liked to close their records with, and Hated would often stretch the song out live, feeding off whatever vibes the audience was giving. The two acoustic tracks from No More We Cry appear here along with a few others in the same vein, and theres also the We Are the World parody We Are the Cheese, and a bunch of other fragments and experiments. In contrast to the more sober and straight-laced DC scene, theres a druggy quality to Hateds experimentation, and some people will connect with the dark undercurrent that runs through everything Hated did. Im a sucker for art freaks expressing themselves in a constricted, small-town environment, so I enjoyed Best Piece of Shit Vol 4, particularly since Numero Groups incredible packaging (the label has won several Grammy awards for packaging design) contextualizes everything so thoroughly and eloquently. You may or may not love every second of music on Best Piece of Shit Vol 4, but iflike meyou have a home crammed full of books and records, youll appreciate this portal into Hateds world.