Spike In Vain

Spike In Vain

Jesus Was Born In A Mobile Home [Expanded Edition]

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Ready for some more racket from the titans of the tritone? The deans of decay? The earls of entropy? Until recently it was unknown how prolific Cleveland’s Spike In Vain were in their three year run, roughly Fall 1982 through Fall 1985. Had all the group’s songs been recorded, they would’ve filled five LPs handily. While only the debut album Disease Is Relative, compilation appearances, and a virtually unknown cassette were issued during their run, 2021 saw the band’s unreleased second album Death Drives A Cadillac pulled out from its secret lair, and 2023 will see the release of the Jesus Was Born In A Mobile Home cassette via this much expanded double vinyl edition. Upping the original’s twelve track program with an additional fifteen unreleased or rare tracks, this compilation provides a panoramic view of this mercurial, many-headed beast of absurdity, discord, and death. This release is loaded with surprises for even die-hard fans. Among other highlights, there’s a nine minute version of “Opus.” While the recording on Disease Is Relative is essentially three short songs smushed together, this later live version doubles that, with all new material seamlessly tacked onto the original. “Winter’s Black Hand” is a shocking outtake from the second album with the same insane, harrowing quality as “Children In The Subway.” There’s a 1982 rehearsal recording of “Tenement Housing,” the closest the band ever came to a straight up punk song. Or the rambling, shambling, and devastating “Drunk And Ugly Soul Food (As I Understand...

Spike In Vain

Jesus Was Born In A Mobile Home

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Jesus Was Born in a Mobile Home, a cassette release from the fall of 1984, represents Spike in Vain's first attempt at a second album. Recorded shortly after the release of Disease Is Relative in January 1984, the original group returned to The Island and laid down tracks for nine songs, with a focus on the band's earliest material. Most of these songs were written before those that appeared on the debut album, so the tape functions as a prequel to the debut even though it was recorded afterwards. Some of the tracks have a more traditional hardcore approach than the first album, but there is still the trademark coloring outside the lines for which the group is known. And of course it's mostly quite dark, with the majority of songs addressing death or paralyzing fear. Not long after recording basic tracks, drummer Bruce Allen announced his plans to cut ties and focus on his own group. It was decided to quickly finish the recordings anyway, release them on cassette, and try again later when another drummer was found. Since one of the songs was rejected and the rest only added up to 20 minutes, it was decided to include additional random material to fill out the tape. But what glorious "filler" that turned out to be! There's the very first performance of "Ugly and Damaged" from the band's first gig in early 1983. And "Love Isn't Hollow" from a 1981 rehearsal tape featuring Bruce completely shredding on guitar, the...

Spike In Vain

(color) Disease Is Relative

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The cover art by the band’s Chris Marec tells nearly everything one needs to know about this album: a misshapen, CHUD-like figure wanders in a graveyard bearing a cross, while a mutated fish flops in a polluted ditch and a clutch of factories belch their smoke above it all. The message of the illustration is not to frighten or warn, but to celebrate and admire.Originally released in January of 1984, Disease Is Relative is an unapologetic and wholesale embrace of death, disease, and dystopia, with liberal doses of absurdism and an unrelenting devotion to anything unexpected, chromatic, or evil sounding. Sporting influences as diverse as no wave, death rock, funk, post-punk, hardcore, metal, and prog rock, this music somehow happened in the midst of a first wave hardcore scene, before there was a “post-” to be “post” of. Less surprising is that this happened in Cleveland, which also inspired a desire to recreate the feeling of the city’s post-industrial desolation in sound. There’s also some epic screaming and crazy guitar playing.The album features three songwriters (brothers Andrew & Chris Marec, Robert Griffin), who also divide guitar, bass, and vocals equally between themselves here. Drummer Bruce Allen is the secret weapon, and provides a clue to what a young Bill Bruford might have done in a band like this. And yet, beyond all odds, the end result is cohesive, cathartic, and utterly idiomatic. The distinct vibe of the album, and its sheer quantity of killer riffs, songs and performances have made...

Spike In Vain

Death Drives A Cadillac

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Death Drives A Cadillac was Spike In Vain’s second album, never officially released and unheard in its final form until now. Like many hardcore bands circa ’84 and ’85, the group was ready to further expand its palette and ease off the thrash tempos. Recorded roughly a year after Disease Is Relative with a bigger budget,  the album is even more wide-ranging, and the songs are more fleshed out.“Despair grew inside her, I grew inside her. She named me Spirit Death, and this is my song” sings Chris Marec, the vocalist on half of this LP. Though less “young” than their debut, that album’s darkness lingers, but here has a more removed, observational quality, with many songs sung in character or in the third person, along with a tendency for anthropomorphic allegory. It has a bit less to do with screaming for death to come than with a growing resignation to being the other, a recognition of inescapable alienation and its relation to childhood trauma. —all with a heaping side of absurdity and a sense of wonder at the gradually unfolding endtimes.That said, many of the tracks wouldn’t be out of place on the debut, and some feature exotic tunings. Bits of roots music come into play as well—gospel, blues, and country figure to some extent in a third of the songs, sometimes in convoluted, Beefheart-esque ways, and at other times toying with genre archetypes as a cat does a mouse.

Spike In Vain

Disease Is Relative

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The cover art by the band’s Chris Marec tells nearly everything one needs to know about this album: a misshapen, CHUD-like figure wanders in a graveyard bearing a cross, while a mutated fish flops in a polluted ditch and a clutch of factories belch their smoke above it all. The message of the illustration is not to frighten or warn, but to celebrate and admire.Originally released in January of 1984, Disease Is Relative is an unapologetic and wholesale embrace of death, disease, and dystopia, with liberal doses of absurdism and an unrelenting devotion to anything unexpected, chromatic, or evil sounding. Sporting influences as diverse as no wave, death rock, funk, post-punk, hardcore, metal, and prog rock, this music somehow happened in the midst of a first wave hardcore scene, before there was a “post-” to be “post” of. Less surprising is that this happened in Cleveland, which also inspired a desire to recreate the feeling of the city’s post-industrial desolation in sound. There’s also some epic screaming and crazy guitar playing.The album features three songwriters (brothers Andrew & Chris Marec, Robert Griffin), who also divide guitar, bass, and vocals equally between themselves here. Drummer Bruce Allen is the secret weapon, and provides a clue to what a young Bill Bruford might have done in a band like this. And yet, beyond all odds, the end result is cohesive, cathartic, and utterly idiomatic. The distinct vibe of the album, and its sheer quantity of killer riffs, songs and performances have made...