bleach | hard

bleach's last two releases was a pair of mini albums, "hard" and "fast". originally this was to be all one album, but for whatever reason was split down the middle.

bleach were one of those bands that never quite surpassed the brilliance of their first two eps, and i was pretty disappointed when this record came out. the sleeve summed it up quite nicely: fake, bland, conventional.

however, listening back to this now it doesn't seem all that bad. sure, it doesn't have the blistering horizons of "dipping" and "bethesda", treading instead a far more conventional path. but there are still touches of excellence (if not brilliance) here in songs like "hit on me" and "dead eyes". true, everything has been tightened up and locked down, where before the guitars were free to flood your speakers with sound, but the basic elements of metronomic reptitionand salli's strident half-spoken vocals remain.

the sleeve is still awful however.

12" released by musidisc in 1992.

some people think bleach is nirvana's best album.