1. Better Still if they Don't Know
2. Every Minute's Sucker
Dischord/TC Ruin 1995
7:37, 14MB 256K MP3
A lot of the music from this period (and well.. pretty much any period) feeds off, borrows, steals and appropriates from its contemporaries. Hoover and Indian Summer were some of the first bands birthed from the hardcore scene that more or less got the 2nd (or 3rd, depending on how you want to look at it) wave "emo" ball rolling. I don't want to bore anyone with explanations of what emo was then as opposed to now (Andy Radin explained it years ago at fourfa.com) but long story short: before Dashboard Confessional (which itself is an amusingly out of date reference point) and the floppy haired Myspace bands (ditto) turned post-hardcore into pointless melodramatic histrionic hissy-fits, people bored with the then reigning hardcore template started experimenting with slowing down, adding dissonance, loud-soft dynamics and basically throwing some wrenches in the mix as far as playing with what was up until then primarily a by the seat of your pants, immediate music style. Plenty of bands had broken with the mold before all of that: The Minutemen upped punk/hardcore's musicality and even Black Flag slowed things down and got dissonant and introspective as time went on. DC had their own take on things with the famous "Revolution Summer" and post that, there was a lot of slowed down weirdness happening that made moshers scratch their heads. Some of it morphed into bland college rock and some, like Hoover, retained a bit of a sinister bite.
Anyhow, yeah. Back to Hoover. Seeing as I was raised in the midwest during the early 90's (ie, pre-internet) we were always last to catch wind of any musical trends. I went with some friends to see a local band and they ended up opening for Hoover. I wasn't sure what to think at the time. The energy was undeniable, but I couldn't really figure out what was supposed to be happening. The time signatures and tempos changed constantly and it wasn't something that my up until then Gorilla Biscuit saturated musical palate knew how to digest. I remembered being wowed and getting the record, but it took months for me to "get it". Once this wave of music started happening, you had everyone wearing sweaters, highwaters, clunky work shoes and gas station jackets.
Fast forward a year and Hoover splintered into Regulator Watts and The Crownhate Ruin. I personally Think Hoover was greater than the sum of its parts, but what always struck me was the fact that both of those bands sounded like Hoover, yet sounded nothing alike.
Fred Erskine is a big part of why I picked up the bass instead of guitar back in my formative years. The bass really carried Hoover and The Crownhate Ruin's music, and again, after a steady diet of hardcore and crossover, it was encouraging to see that the bass could play a more prominent role than just "lower guitar". I was lucky enough to see The Crownhate Ruin a couple of times. Once with Vin on drums and once with his replacement (if I remember correctly) who while a competent drummer really struggled to play his parts live. Vin is an was a beast on the drums and his absurdly quick rolls and cymbal grabs are pretty intense. Vin's previous band, 1.6 Band, is somewhat active again and they're definitely worth checking out.
Anyhow, for whatever reason all of The Crownhate Ruin's material was released at more or less the same time. They put out 3 7"s, a split with Karate and a sole LP: Until the Eagle Grins. Intermediate was recorded about halfway through the band's lifespan, but before their LP.
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