A 1989 EP, reissued in 2003 with a load of bonus tracks (not unlike Outburst’s Miles To Go, also reissued by Blackout around the same time), most of Uppercut’s Four Walls is utterly pedestrian, late-’80s hardcore, recorded around the time that the genre was about to go underground for a few years, biding its time while the more commercial grunge era reached a much wider audience. However, while at least two-thirds of these 14 songs are of interest only to devout hardcore fans, the remainder are more wide-ranging and intriguing. The best of the bunch is “Salvation,” which adds a Screaming Trees-like dose of woozy psychedelia to the hard-kicking sound, although the choppy “The See,” with its Flea-like popping bassline, also shows that Uppercut had the ability to outgrow hardcore’s more tiresome dictums. Uppercut broke up in 1990, almost immediately reforming as the Mind’s Eye, a much more Seattle-inspired heavy alternative rock band. – Stewart Mason
more »