Fear of God

For my money, of all the throat bands of the mid 80s, Switzerland's FEAR OF GOD was definitely the throatiest. Amazing. One of my favorite tracks is Prisoner of Your Ideals, which is all of 14 seconds long!

I bought this record (in 1988?) knowing nothing about the band, but figured any band that covered an Infest song was something I should buy. As it turned out, Erich, the singer for this band, actually put out the Infest LP posted elsewhere on this blog.
When I first heard this record, I assumed the band was taking grindcore (or crust-core, whatever you wanna call it) to its logical, perhaps even parodying extreme, as Sore Throat did on their Disgrace to the Corpse of Sid album. My friend and I decided that the main singer (which, I believe, is Erich) sounded a lot like Cookie Monster and, in fact, on two songs ("Which Way" and "Trouble Maker") there are times where I'd swear the singer WAS saying the word "cookie" ... were the lyric sheet not available to correct me.

That said, however, Erich, a band member who runs the awesome Good Bad Music for Bad, Bad Times blog (where he has some live stuff posted), writes that "the label 'Grindcore' that was attached to the band from 1989 never felt right for us. We thought of FEAR OF GOD as a Hardcore band, because apart from bands like MASTER or REPULSION, Hardcore and poststructuralistic Noise was our main influence."

I removed some of the songs at the request of Erich, who informed me that FEAR OF GOD is about to do a reissue of a lot of their stuff for their 20th anniversary and that this 7" I have is a bootleg anyway! He says that there are more bootlegs of this band than actual official releases. I believe it. I'm sure the Japanese went apeshit over this stuff.


Side 1
Rubbish Planet
Controlled By Fear
Prisoner of Your Ideals
Under The Chainsaw
Trouble Maker
Proud On Your Pride
My Hands Deep In Your Guts
Which Way?
Pneumatic Slaughter
A Life In Rigorism
7 Up

Side 2
Circle A
Running Through The Blood
Raise The Siege
Pelzfotze
I'm Positive
The Two Sides Of The Coin
Locked Away
I've Seen
Absolution
First Class People
Chain (Infest cover)