I love Breakdown. You love Breakdown. @mike_d617 and his wife love Breakdown enough to play them at their wedding. Everyone loves Breakdown: the liner notes are full of “testimonials” of scene veterans like Hoya from Madball and Freddy Alva spouting their love of this demo, and sharing stories about Breakdown and their hilarious frontman, Jeff Perlin. The sound on this demo is so great - it’s warm and rich but still sounds like a demo; and every song has a weird fun bass line. If I’m ever in a hardcore band, I want it to sound like Breakdown does on this demo. This is probably one of the best pure hardcore demos ever recorded, and it never gets old to me.
People lump Breakdown into “tough guy” negative hardcore, and they’re not wrong, but just listen to YOU GOTTA FIGHT and feel inspired by the posi message. Aside from that, its pretty much a spitefest: you want my problems? You can have them!
Thank you Painkiller / @pkrhq for pressing this important demo in hardcore history, along with the in-depth liner notes and reproduced graphics from the original demo. Side B has a WYNU “Crucial Chaos” radio set, with a few of Perlin’s pearls of banter. The yellow / black splatter vinyl is super sharp.