X: Hate City 7"

These four songs, recorded in 1977, are the only recordings of the original 4-piece line-up of the Australian band X featuring Ian Rilen (Rose Tattoo), Steve Lucas, Ian Krahe, and Steve Cafiero. Three of the songs (Home is Where the Floor Is, TV Cabaret Rules, and Hate City) were released on the 1985 compilation "Why March When You Can Riot" while Good On Ya Baby was later re-recorded for the X-Aspirations LP.

While their debut LP, X-Aspirations, is rightly lauded as an Australian punk classic, this batch of songs is often overlooked due to the fact that they never received a wide release. This is the band at their most snotty and rambunctious.

This is an authorized one-time press of 500 copies on black vinyl by Dirt Cult and Green Noise Records.

Our take: Dominic wrote about X-Aspirations, the classic debut album from this 70s Australian punk group (not to be confused with Los Angeles’s X) in his staff pick a few weeks ago, but the four tracks on Hate City capture an earlier four-piece version of the band that splintered before they released anything. This version of X is more straightforwardly punk, these tracks buzzing with loose energy and built around simple and memorable hooks. “Good on Ya Baby” (which also appeared on X-Aspirations) and “Cabaret Roll” remind me of the gruff sound of the Chosen Few, while the title track’s classic-sounding rock and roll riff and call and response chorus approach the amphetamine-fueled transcendentalism of the Saints. My favorite of the four tracks, though, is “Home Is Where the Floor Is,” another high-energy rocker with a super melodic chorus that fans of the early Scientists records will love. These four tracks are an important piece of the early Aussie punk puzzle, and while I wish this lineup had recorded more, I’m stoked to have a hard copy of these four lost classics.