This was the last missing piece of the Spirit Of Youth puzzle I needed for the collection and for the reconstruction of their history. It’s the infamous Engine / Darkroom cassette. And I will give in this post a short perspective on this cassette single. That is based on the interview I did with guitarist Dominique.
After you will hear this you will realize that the band was already in a transition phase to slower and heavier music under influence of groovier metal. Yes, the songs had already more groove in them than on the “Abyss” 7 inch on Crucial Response and the demo cassette on Warehouse Records.
Later on when the new material for the “Source” LP was ready, they presented the songs again to Peter Hoeren of Crucial Response but he didn’t want to release them because of the same groovier character that started with this release. And he said that the songs weren’t rhythmically fast enough to be representative Straight-Edge hardcore. So they were buried for a while…
So at that moment – when Hans of Blindfold was back in the band – he released those songs on tape on his own new label called Sober Mind Records in the year 1993. This tape was also made for the first European tour of Spirit Of Youth.
This tape seems to have become impossible to find, I think of the few made (300 copies(1)) not many are left. The bassist, Hans made of two of those tracks this cassette. And a few years later the songs were recycled into the “Source” LP.
It’s indeed Hans who played drums in Wheel Of Progress and later sang for Liar who released this on his new label Sober Mind Recordings. This cassette is the first release of that label also. It was mainly pressed to be sold on the Spirit Of Youth tour in Germany. So most likely Germany is the place to be if you want to find one of these.
Sources:
(1)H8000 Central; Hans Verbeke