V/A
Public Safety Compilation
Maximum Rock N Roll Records
For a substantial period of time this record has been hyped to death. At one point there seemed to be some mystery about who exactly was even going to be on the compilation. The long wait wasn’t really worth it for me. This isn’t a bad compilation necessarily; there are some great bands like Direct Control, Nightmare, and Signal Lost. Most of the bands don’t really seem to bring their A-Game however. Beyond that, even the bands I don’t enjoy are so unpleasant that I find myself jumping around. The best songs on here are easily Career Suicide and Signal Lost’s contributions, but even those songs feel like leftover b-sides. The rest of the good band’s (Limp Wrist, Nightmare, Direct Control, etc) efforts I could take or leave honestly. Still, an average Direct Control song is pretty good; but being the worst Direct Control song isn’t exactly the same as being the worst Krakdown song. If you know what I mean. In the future, I am sure these songs will be collected on various bands discographies, so I don’t foresee a desire to listen to this again. That said, Public Safety, for the rager in training, could be a useful introduction to what is going on in the hardcore scene right now. If being used for that very practical purpose however, I think Public Safety could have used a more diverse sampling of bands from outside of North America also. Perhaps when you dub this compilation for Rager Junior you should also include a CDR of the P.E.A.C.E compilation?
