American Steel - s/t 1998

Alright, first real entry time.
Firstly, there isn't a single good picture of this album on the entire internet, and my camera's MIA at the moment, so it looks like we'll have to deal with this muddy, resized, P.O.S until further notice. Secondly, seeing as this ranks amongst my top 10 albums of all time, punk or otherwise, I felt it'd be a great way to kick off this high-crime blogging operation (ie a blog that offers downloadables sometimes).

American Steel started up back in '95 in West Oakland, playing shows all around the East Bay before swapping a bandmate or two, touring the shit out of this shit, and ending up in the studio in '98 with the heroic Kevin Army, producer of a metric fuckton of awesome Cali punk bands and uh, guitarist (?) for the Bomb Bassets. The result was this 17 song condensed epic of gritty melody, aggression, dual guttermouths, and even some ska punk. If you're familiar with any of the other American Steel records, you have to understand that this album sounds nothing like any of them, barring perhaps 1999's Rogue's March, which is dynamically similar, but quite a bit slower and way less gritty. The songwriting here is fantastic, balancing raw aggression and purty melodies in a way which one never detracts from the counterpart and typically results in a chest-thumping anthem.
If I had to make a comparison, I guess it sounds kind of indebted to Crimpshrine and Operation Ivy, but if the two collaborated on the recording and screwed around with the tape speeds. The amount of hooks and riffs in some of these songs makes it sound like half of them used to be 5 minute long compositions that got boiled down into 2 minute ones, keeping all the parts intact but careening between fast and slow parts like they were being charged by the minute. I know it sounds kind of awful in theory, but it's the complete opposite in practice.
Listen to "Cheer Up" for a good example of this.
Also: it kinda sounds like the band has been buried in sand, but it's still an awesome song:

For years I was under the impression that this album was super-duper difficult to come by, but as it turns out, it's just massively, depressingly, unloved at this junction in history. In fact, when you consider how much attention these guys get on punknews.org for their later records (particularly Jagged Thoughts and Destroy Their Future), it's kinda difficult to believe it hasn't been reissued by one of the bigger labels like Fat Wreck or No Idea yet. You can actually buy this sucker from New Disorder still:

try it here: http://www.mediafire.com/?znah1erheli6c2r
fulfill the capitalist agenda here: http://www.newdisorder.com/oneband.eml?band=American+Steel

I picked up this album in 2006 and I've been listening to consistently ever since. It's really an amazingly good album. Maybe not perfect, but so completely exuberant and raw. All of American Steel's stuff is worth checking out, but if you haven't heard them yet, start here and go in order. A few people I know have had a hard time getting into this one after starting with their more polished stuff, but STAY STRONG, it's worth getting into.
Just don't expect too much from Dear Friends And Gentle Hearts, though...