Avail: Satiate

Avail: Satiate

1992

Catheter-Assembly Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. March  2. All About It  3. Forgotten  4. Bob's Crew  5. Observations  6. Upward Grind  7. Stride  8. Timeframe  9. Pinned Up  10. Predictable  11. Twisted  12. Hope 


I'd been looking for a copy of this album forever (which was a favorite of my high school/college years)  and recently found it on vinyl...I used to have it on CD, which had a couple of bonus tracks that this vinyl version doesn't have...

So no "Connection" or "Mr. Morgan" for me...Which is really sad! I love "Connection" and its catchy "No one turned your rally of peace! Into a! Into a!" chant..."Mr. Morgan" is also interesting for its overt Fugazi-ness and for hearing Tim Barry rap! The CD also had that cute cartoon drawing of the band...My vinyl copy has some xerox-y photo...
 

 

To be honest, "Satiate" isn't even close to being one of my favorite Avail albums...Whereas most punk bands start off harder and more fierce and end up softening with age, Avail's first full-length is much calmer than their subsequent albums...It all sounds like classic Avail, but it just seems to have  a softer touch...There's also the matter of two songs on the album that are so staggeringly awesome that they almost invalidate everything that follows:

"March" is such a perfectly anthemic album opener that nothing else on the album could ever possibly live up to it...It has everything: Militaristic drums, punchy guitars, soulful female backing vocals, about a hundred different vocal hooks...If this one song was the only thing the band had ever released, their place in punk history would have still been assured...Flawless in every way and captures that hard-earned, positive spirit that you can sometimes find at a particularly transcendent punk rock show...

The other towering moment is "Pinned Up" which is just so much more ferocious than anything else here...This, more than anything else points the way to the direction the band was heading...Blasting, melodic hardcore with a hook so sharp that I could still sing along to every word despite not having heard it in 15 years...

The rest of the album isn't bad by any stretch...Lots of good, gut-punching, emotional punk rock like "Bob's Crew" and "Stride"...The pair of ballads that close the album often cause me to check out early though..."Twisted" is interesting, since it's a surging, 5-minute plus monster but by the time they bust out the acoustic guitar for "Hope" the mosh pit is empty and the lights are on...Avail would quickly learn how to better incorporate melancholy into their sound, but they haven't quite nailed it yet...Oh, well...

For all its flaws, it's still a huge cut above most 90's pop-punk and my college playlist would have been a much emptier place without "Satiate"...

Here's "March" by Avail...Enjoy...