Objective Complete

When you think about all of the records that have turned 25 or 30 in recent years, and all of the different sounds and styles that all cohabited under the banner of 'hardcore', it's pretty clear that the 90s was the peak of music. And one of the things that I love about the 90s is that there were so many bands that flew under the radar that I am still hearing stuff to this day that I never heard back then for various reasons. And no doubt it's the same for a lot of other people that lived through the 90s too. So here's an example of a record that most of you will have either never listened to, or listened to once and decided was not worth a second go.

This is a test press of a long forgotten 90s record that I picked up a while and ago (before xmas) and promptly forgot about as I left it in a stupid place. But I found it this week after tidying my records and realised I didn't get it up on here yet. So here we are.

This is a test press a record titled 'Objective Complete', released by a band called State of the Nation by Jade Tree Records back in 1994. Here's a pic of it next to the regular cover:

I bought this album back when this came out for two main reasons. Firstly, because I had worked out at that point that Jade Tree was a cool label doing cool things, and secondly because of who was in the band. The band was a three piece outfit, two of whom were the Haworth brothers - Rob and Mark. They played together in a band called Hard Stance, and then Mark went on to play in a band called Inside Out, whilst Rob went on to a band called Farside.

The Jade Tree site tells me that State Of The Nation apparently tourned with Rage Against the Machine back in the day. This makes sense, as both bands were pretty damn political, and the Haworth brothers would have known Zack from their days together in Hard Stance. But State Of The Nation sound a world away from Rage Against The Machine, and I don't imagine many of the Rage crowd went home keen to check out the support band they'd just seen. I'm not exactly sure how to describe this band's sound, but as much as I liked their records back when they were an active band, I can't imagine that their live shows would have been particularly energetic.

They went on to have a second LP released by Rev, which I think is a much better record that this one, but still, this has a special place in my heart as it takes me back to a great period in life.