Suburban Discipline

In the 90s there used to be a late night rock programme on ITV once a week called Raw Power (later rebranded to the much less rock-sounding Noisy Mothers). This was the only source most of us who didn't have MTV (in the days when they actually still showed music videos) had.

One hour of videos, which was generally only about 10 interspersed with dull chat between a woman who lusted after all the men in the videos and a man with a terrible speech impediment. It was rare anything good was played, or at least anything I thought was good. There were occasionally some gems though.

One such gem was Biohazard. The song was Punishment and it sounded like a mix of rap and metal. It kind of was, but it was way better than the Run DMC/Aerosmith or Anthrax/Public Enemy offerings that had made it into the mainstream.

This was something much better.

I bought the Urban Discipline album at the earliest opportunity and discovered it was way, way better than the one track I had already heard.

This album was and still is the pinnacle of Biohazard's achievements.

Chamber Spins Three is the one of the most hip hop of all the songs on the album and it opens proceedings, but it was still reasonably heavy and full of riffage. This was fine.

Punishment was next and this was the song I'd almost warn out a video cassette playing over and over until I bought the album. It starts with a bit that's reminiscent of Slayer's Dead Skin Mask and then becomes a metal song with gang vocals, a hardcore song with fantastic breakdowns and a bit of a rap number. There's a lot going on here.

Shades of Grey was my first introduction to hardcore proper and I loved it. It was like listening to metal but with less fucking about. The song starts without a long intro and does what it needs to do. No lengthy solos, no medieval guitar parts, no song-within-a-song conceptual bullshit. This genre discovery led me towards Madball, Agnostic Front, Sick Of It All, Cro Mags and about a million other bands in the years that followed.

Business, Black and White and Red All Over, Man with a Promise and Disease continued in the same style. I couldn't believe I'd unearthed such an amazing album.

The title track opens up side 2 (yes, I bought the LP when it wasn't cool to buy vinyl any more) and it's another typical Biohazard song (I decided this the first time I heard it with no real proof, but I was proven right the more of their material I heard). The drumming at the start is fantastic and it builds up into a fast circle pit-bothering song which is genius.

Loss is a ballad. To start with and then it becomes hardcore as fuck near the end. Biohazard love to write songs about how tough their lives have been and how some friends have died and how Brooklyn is a fierce, unforgiving place and how they will never leave Brooklyn despite this because they love it really (a lie as at least two of them now live in California).

Wrong Side of the Tracks is another hardcore classic, but becomes actual hip hop at the end and it's more Beastie Boys than Agnostic Front at that point, but Biohazard get away with it.

Mistaken Identity gets things back in the right direction and then there's a cover of Bad Religion's We're Only Gonna Die (From Our Own Arrogance) which set me off listening to a lot of punk bands as well – Biohazard being the catalyst for much of my musical future from that point.

Tears of Blood closes things and it's chuggy and slow, yet still brilliant.

If you get hold of Urban Discipline on CD or one of the countless re-released, remastered versions you will also have some live tracks and possibly demos, but there will be one more studio track too. Hold My Own. This originally appeared on Biohazard's self-titled debut, but gets a do-over here and it's fantastic. Anthemic even. Biohazard still close most shows with this song.

Follow-up album, State of the World Address, was almost as good and has certainly stood the test of time. But then Mata Leao wasn't quite at the same level and most albums since then haven't been up to the same standard either.

Luckily Biohazard are aware of this and pretty much only play the early stuff live. I've seen them four times and every time leaves me with a big smile on my face.

Former vocalist Evan Seinfeld made no secret of his love of hip hop and that did creep into the music more than a little, but the others were a lot more hardcore and that balanced things out pretty well. It was a relief when he left, to be honest. He had married a porn star (who he later divorced) and decided to experiment with starring in films with her. One of these films was shown on TV late at night while I lived in Norway and I accidentally saw some of it. It's hard to respect a band any more when you've seen a member's sex faces. Or a member's member for that matter.