Various Artists

Jobcentre Rejects Volume 1

scum stats: couple different color variations, hard to tell what quantities they exist in

Maybe it's been said before, but if not, it bears repeating...EVERY underground musical subgenre/movement needs a compilation. And I will buy every last one of them. I've been waiting on the LP of this for a while now with the CD gifted to me almost two years ago still a consistent spin in the Scion that I drive approximately 5 miles a day.

The New Wave of British Heavy Metal got its name from an article in the May 1979 issue of Sounds magazine. Abbreviated to NWOBHM, higher profile bands of the genre tend to include Iron Maiden, Saxon, Tygers of Pan Tang, Def Leppard. I've been tangentially aware of the genre (even talking about it with Lars from Metallica on one of his visits to the TMR Nashville HQ) but had never really given it any attention.

But seemingly every little town in England was teaming with local outfits doing their best to emulate the successful groups and/or just trying to make it on their own. In the same way the original British Invasion inspired all the American teenagers in the 1960's as documented on compilations like "Back From the Grave" or that the Ramones and Sex Pistols inspired the bands on the "Killed By Death" compilations, "Jobcentre Rejects" does an imperative job of contextualizing this crazy compelling time and place.

Every song on here hits hard (and there's two subsequent volumes as well) but all I really need to leave you with is Baseline's "Suspended Animation." As brilliant a kick-off track as could ever be divined, while I may have never THOUGHT that I'd have any interest in NWOBHM, this song is undeniably perfect in a thousand different ways. I am now in the market to pay the $2-300 range for an original copy of the single. This is how madness starts.

If you have the FAINTEST interest in any underground, pre-globalist musical subgenres, then I give this compilation my HIGHEST recommendation. Search it out with due speed.