I absolutely could not pass up the chance to see legendary ragers Raw Power from Italy on their US tour in 1998. This is such a cool lineup too: What a great snapshot of the growing scene outside of the “88 in 96” one that was brewing in New Jersey at the time. Degenerics were becoming a really hot band in NJ in 1998 and had progressed so much from when I saw them a few years before. Dead Nation were also coming into their own.
Raw Power were great and played all the hits. There was a huge pile on for “State Oppression.”
Cool note afterward: On my college campus, we had befriended a few older punks and one of them was this goth dude who also saw basically every cool hardcore band back in the day and could talk about them. We were eating lunch during the week one day and as he sat down he heard me talking about seeing Raw Power, and he did a triple-take basically and was so bummed that he did not know about the show. He had seen them in 1985! Very cool.
Is “State Oppression” the best opener to a hardcore record ever? Is “Fuck Authority” the best compilation song ever? Maybe!
