By: Brian Peterson
1994 was a landmark year in my life.
I graduated from high school and started college, was playing in bands, met some great friends, and in some ways I was coming into my own.
But despite what was propelling me forward, most of the time I felt like I could hardly breathe.
I felt awkward, unsure of myself, and felt like I didn’t belong. I was confused about everything: humanity, God, family, the opposite sex, death, life. Every step led to disorientation. My emotions were a mess because I didn’t know what the hell I felt half the time.
Truth be told I felt this way for quite some time, but everything was intensifying. I was headed toward a crossroads with blinders on.
Hardcore was one of the things that guided me through this tough time. I could identify with the anger, the passion, the rage. I was pissed about a million things right in front of my eyes and a million things I couldn’t even articulate, much less understand.
As cheesy as it might sound, there were a bunch of hardcore and punk bands that gave me hope: Endpoint, Shelter, Screeching Weasel, 108, Unbroken, Face to Face, Jawbreaker, Threadbare, Undertow, just to name a few.
But there was one band and one record, in particular, at this specific time that somehow spoke to all those unspoken emotions that clawed at me, those feelings and thoughts I couldn’t shake.
I remember the first time I heard Ressurection’s I Refuse LP. My friend Greg, an older, longtime hardcore kid who was one of my “hardcore” mentors, taped it for me. I remember hearing and reading a lot about Ressurection, but my friends and I always missed them whenever they came near our area (at the time I lived about three hours west of Chicago in the Quad-Cities). I’d wanted to hear the record for a while and Greg was the only person I knew who had it.
The first thing he said when I asked about it: “It’s pretty good, but you’ve gotta crank it to really hear it.”
And that’s the slam I’ve heard about I Refuse a thousand times ever since.
“It sounds like shit!”
“I didn’t realize straightedge bands hired crack-heads to man the mixing boards.”
Sure, the sound was muddy, but I never really cared that much. It was hardcore, right? Not some Bob Rock extravaganza. Hardcore was meant to be played loud, speakers cranked to the hilt.
And that’s exactly what I did when I put Greg’s tape in my fuzzy car stereo in my shitty brown 1981 Toyota Corrola Tercel.
I remember sitting at a traffic light and hearing the bass driven build-up to “Build.” I nodded my head for a moment and when the light turned green the guitars and drums kicked in and I floored the gas pedal.
There was a deeply personal intensity to the music and vocals of “cuts like a knife,” much like Rob Fish’s lyric in the song.
The rest of the ride home was a blur. The only thing I remembered is being totally absorbed in the chaos.
I must have listened to that tape five times that night.
Since I didn’t have the lyrics, I put on headphones and tried to pick the words out carefully. Over the next few days, I kept listening and found certain lines running through my mind at odd times.
“This feeling rules my life. This feeling steals my mind!”
“Is it so easy to prepackage me?”
“Lost to a show, a show nothing more…”
“I am more than a body. I am more than this machine!”
Although I didn’t know the stories behind the lyrics, I felt like they were somehow telling my own tale as well.
As muddy as the production was, there was also something “different” about what Ressurection was doing musically. I didn’t think about it much at the time, but along with bands like Rorschach, Ressurection was among the forerunners of the amalgamation of metal and noise within hardcore. Bands such as Deadguy, Coalesce, and Converge would all take this style in unique directions later, but Ressurection was the band that made a major impression on my friends and me and what we were trying to do musically.
To listen to I Refuse was painful but cathartic. Ressurection played like the members’ lives depended on it. At that time in their lives, I get the feeling that it did.
The more I got into the record, the more Ressurection’s songs became my songs. This happens a lot with music. It’s happened to me before and since. But for quite a while nothing hit me as hard as I Refuse.
A few weeks later I remember having a really bad day. About as bad as it could get emotionally. I just felt frustrated and absolutely spent.
By this point I had mail-ordered I Refuse on CD and I remember coming home, popping it into my boom-box, cranking it, and lying facedown on my bed.
I must have screamed half of the lyrics to the album into my pillow, which was wet with tears.
But afterwards I felt better.
I was always tempted to write Rob Fish a letter about this back in the day, but I was embarrassed.
Nearly 15 years later I’ve become more comfortable in my skin…
…and I Refuse still evokes the same feelings as it did back then, though this time I don’t have to crank it full blast to get the same impact.
