Razors Edge - Magical Jet Light

[[[If you can, PLEASE listen on SPOTIFY () or BUY THE ALBUM ()]]] 1.) The Close Game (0:00) 2.) Str8 to Space (2:06) 3.) Jet Stream (3:36) 4.) Mynas (5:12) 5.) Save Our Rights (6:15) 6.) Short # Sick (8:19) 7.) Postman (8:59) 8.) Stereotype (11:45) 9.) Stand Up or Fall (14:27) 10.) Mountain Mountain (17:10) 11.) Party Is Round (18:45) 12.) Dance My Dance (20:19) 13.) Ojisan (22:22) -- “伯父さん“, Japanese for “Uncle“ or “Old Man“ 14.) Stupid Lines (22:48) 15.) Wash Off (24:44) 16.) No Pain, No Gain (26:00) 17.) Kill Your Television (35:10) Everyone thinks I’m insane when I say this, but I actually get extremely emotional listening to this album. I had been listening to this band for six years (borderline religiously in the latter half of my high-school years) until I finally picked this album up about half a year ago. “Thrash ’Em All!“, “Razors Rising!!!!“, and “Sweet 10 Thrashers“ had been on infinite rotation for over half a decade by this point, and R.E.’s patented sugar-coated hyper-speed manic thrash attack had become my mainstay for fending off all the doubt, depression, and frustration that accompanied some extremely rough times. Where lots of folks would’ve turned to drugs, I turned to Razors Edge and their genuine excitement about being alive combined with a borderline-psychic ability to draw from precisely my favorite elements of 80’s hardcore punk (which is a kind of ironic trade-off considering that they were totally wasted all through their peak years -- I read that Kenji’s taken a hiatus from all that for the past few years though, which is a pretty impressive and respectable feat for Mr. “Ganja Boy“ himself). Despite the fact that they were one of my favorite bands though, I completely passed over their best album. Somehow I got the idea in my head that “Magical Jet Light“ was just an EP with “Mountain Mountain“ and a couple of other tracks on it. Only very recently did I stumble across the full listing and discover that it boasts a full 17 tracks! Well... 16 “full“ tracks, plus whatever “Ojisan“ is supposed to be. But still! Everything about the album made me ecstatic. Razors Edge had always shown a very steady evolution throughout their careers -- a progressively more uplifting melodic angle built atop their crushing fastcore roots, thrash-influenced riffage, and the craziest snare sound in the universe -- but “Magical Jet Light“ finds them at their apex, launched into soaring new heights with killer production and some sort of phaser reverb effect to blast every other bridge and interlude on the album into the next dimension. It’s track 16 that gets me, though. Listening to “No Pain, No Gain“ for the first time was a monumental experience for me. I had all but graduated from traditional hardcore punk in a lot of ways. Sure, I still loved it, but the visceral thrill had started to soften with time. I was a fresh convert to the next-level virtuosity of Melt-Banana, Boredoms, Fugazi, Lightning Bolt, Gnarwhal, OOIOO, Deerhoof, Swans, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and so on. Still, the mighty snare of Razors Edge pounded in my heart, and my spirit could still “Do the Spin Soul!“ A part of myself was firmly planted in the blitzkrieg thrash that only Razors Edge could deliver... so when I heard them hurl into seemingly yet another of their many melodic fastcore thrashers, timidly dance around the obvious climax of the song, then somehow use those familiar party-hardcore riffs to summon a transcendental spiritual epiphany of an uber-bridge, sustain that moment alone for longer than the duration of any other single song in their entire catalog, then launch out the other side playing the same Razors thrash with a brand new, mightier soul... I lost it. I’m probably the only guy who’s ever shed a tear listening to Razors Edge. But it meant the world to me. So many things had changed in my life, and I was in the midst of a massive personal reformation... that Razors Edge, of all bands, whom I’d begun to discount as a happy-time band of brain-dead party punks, were able to follow me was a truly emotional experience. They caught up with me, then completely surpassed me. The spirit of punk was renewed, and I can hear the spirit of “No Pain, No Gain“ pulsing in hardcore again. More Soul for Beat!!