From Amazon.co.uk
Before
Limp Bizkit and
Kid Rock, there was Biohazard. Taking their lead from the thrash-hop hybrid created by
Anthrax's classic collaboration with
Public Enemy (on "Bring The Noise"), Brooklyn's Biohazard spent the early 1990s mining the previously under-exploited overlap between hardcore metal and hip-hop cultures. In retrospect, the combination was a natural one: both types of music were, at the time at least, created as vehicles for the expression of rage and disaffection. Biohazard saw this and, on their breakthrough album
Urban Discipline, made the fusion seamless. Vocalists Billy Graziadei and Evan Seinfeld swap lyrics over a backdrop of heavy beats and heavier guitars--perfect mosh-pit fodder. But where later bands would take this rap-metal sound down the route of baggy shorts and "stoopid" lyrics, Biohazard had a genuine political agenda: songs such as "Punishment", "Loss", "Mistaken Identity", "Hold My Own" and the title track aren't just incendiary rockers, they're also rallying cries against violence, injustice, crime--the pitfalls of the urban scene that spawned them. Biohazard continued to make great albums, but
Urban Discipline stands as the album that influenced an entire scene. For aficionados of hip-hop and heavy metal, it remains an essential purchase.
--Robert Burrow
Album Details
Eight years after it was first released, Urban Discipline is still as fresh as the damage from a smoking gun, still as human as the ambulance crew that takes away another victim, still as angry as the friends that are left behind, and of course, still as loud and powerful as the initial blast. See, by capturing their own little piece of tough city life so well, Biohazard had, without even realizing it at the time, captured so many of our lives. ''I would have to say that Urban Discipline is the definitive Biohazard album,'' considers Evan. ''It embodied a very powerful balance of raw unbridled energy, band focus and our diverse musical tastes''. 18 tracks including 4 on vinyl for the first time. Roadrunner. 2007.
