Labels: Say 10 Records
Review by: MH
This is a posthumous release of the now defunct The Riot Before’s material from between 2005 and 2007 “” hence the title. This is being released via a Kickstarter project to put their early releases and some unreleased material from that period out on a double LP. The Kickstarter is closed now and it looks like they made their target with $30 left over. The guy from the label has a lot of good things to say about this band as they were apparently the reason he set the label up in the first place. I quite like a bit of The Riot Before. I like the heart and honesty of the songs and enjoyed them on the occasions that I saw them live. For anyone unaware of them and keen to get into them I would probably say that the last album they did, “Rebellion”, is their best stuff. However, there are plenty of good songs on here. I would point to songs like “We Were Wild Stallions” and “You Rock, Rock” as amongst their best material and they make reappearances here. As far as the previously unreleased material goes, there are a few stripped down acoustic tracks here. The inward-looking “Lather, Rinse, Repeat” is a good one with its personal lyrics and words that are somewhere between spoken and sung. Whether you really need 22 songs by The Riot Before is probably open to question and I find 22 songs by most bands to be too many in one sitting. However, it’s a good document of their early career and does have a number of highlights.