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E.T.A.: We Are the Attack 7” (2002, Deranged Records)
This 2002 7” from Sweden’s E.T.A. (aka Epileptic Terror Attack) holds a special place in my heart. I picked it up when the band played Richmond in the summer of 2002. I’m not sure I recognized it at the time, but it was a significant moment. I had been gobbling up everything referred to at the time as “Y2K thrash” (Tear It Up’s Nothing to Nothing was probably my favorite record of that year), but there was something even cooler just over the horizon. I had seen Total Fury play the summer before. Brandon Ferrell had joined Municipal Waste on drums and they were covering early Poison Idea. Amdi Petersen’s Armé played Richmond, but I missed the gig (one of my biggest show-related regrets ever), but thankfully I made it out when E.T.A. played at the Hardcore Holocaust warehouse. Within two or three years, it felt like there was a whole scene of retro 80s US-style hardcore bands wearing combat boots, tight jeans, and denim vests, but as these early moments were happening, they felt like glimpses into another world, one I desperately wanted to immerse myself in.
Nowadays, I don’t hear too many people mention E.T.A., but when they do, it’s usually in the context of Regulations, which featured 3 of E.T.A.’s 4 members. It’s easy to read E.T.A.’s discography as the members groping toward the sound they eventually locked in with Regulations. I haven’t spent too much time with E.T.A.’s first few releases on the Swedish label Putrid Filth Conspiracy, but they’re more aggro than the later material, and while Otto’s vocals are pretty much there, the band hasn’t adopted that punky west coast style they’d perfect later. I’ve seen people describe E.T.A.’s early stuff as having a more traditional Swedish hardcore sound, but it’s not d-beat… more like fast scissor-beat hardcore… closer to Filthy Christians than Anti-Cimex or Mob 47.
By the time E.T.A. released their split 12” with Tear It Up and their No Faith LP in 2001, their music was showing more influence from early 80s US hardcore, particularly the more melodic west coast variety. Many songs referenced skateboarding in the lyrics. The guitar riffs were brighter, swingier, and more prominent in the mix rather than taking a back seat to the cacophonous drumming. And while the drummer still relied on scissor beats on the fast parts, they’re a notch slower, giving the songs a steadier, more confident groove, and there are more mid-paced parts that rely on classic surf-punk rhythms. Like the guitars, the vocals occupy more space in the mix, shouted in a youthful hardcore style and with memorable melodies, even serving up some hooky “whoas” on tracks like “Fucked for Life.” And in case you couldn’t tell which way the wind was blowing, No Faith closed with a cover of the Circle Jerks’ “Beverly Hills,” just to drive the point home.
Which brings us to 2002’s We Are the Attack. You might expect E.T.A.’s final record to sound the most like Regulations, and in some ways it does. Certainly they’ve honed those west coast punk parts, as you hear on the mid-paced parts of “Looking for a Spot” and on their cover of “Dicks Hate the Police” (re-titled “Otto Hates the Police”), which makes that song sound like something from the Beach Boulevard compilation. E.T.A. is also confident in their delivery of big hooks, like on the singalong “I’m a Bore.” But on the other hand, We Are the Attack is more aggro than No Faith. Maybe that’s because it’s an 8-song 7” in the early Dischord / Touch and Go format, but the recording is rougher and the band sounds meaner too, with lots of fast scissor beat parts like on their earlier material. At their best, E.T.A. infuses this more hardcore material with their growing propensity for memorable hooks, like on the standout track “Lose My Mind,” a chaotic hardcore song in the Victim in Pain mold. As with early AF, though, E.T.A. weaves a memorable call-and-response vocal and dynamic rhythmic change-ups into the melee.
By the time Regulations released their first 7” one year later in 2003, they’d excised the gnarlier elements from their sound, fully embracing their early SoCal influences with a thinner, more vintage-y guitar sound and bigger punk hooks. I don’t think many people would argue that E.T.A. was a better band than Regulations, but in order to become Regulations, they had to leave behind parts of E.T.A.’s sound. In the context of these musicians’ development, We Are the Attack captures a unique moment where much of what made Regulations so great was coming together, but the musical possibilities remained more open and less dictated by their influences. And it also articulates this brief but exciting moment when the scene was right on the bubble between the Y2K thrash era and “the No Way years.”