Thursday, 17 June 2010

Profax-1st 7"

There are many bands and records that get unfairly overlooked and it feels unfair when you look at all the overrated bands and overhyped records that have happened over the years. One victim of this process is Profax-a band that came out of Switzerland of all places in the early 90's and did two 7"s and a 8" flexi. Their biggest exposure came in 1992 on the Ebulition compilation 'Give me back' (which is fucking awesome by the way) when they contributed two two tracks (actually meshed into one) but because there were so many amazing and more well known bands on there they kinda got lost in the shuffle and I bet few people look back at that comp and recall them. Profax were branded posi-core but had a pretty melodic sound more familar with say Vision and verbal assault rather than say the faster Youth of today and Gorilla biscuits. However rather than run through the same topics they focussed more on human and animal rights and you can just feel the sincerity and emotion in their lyrics and even in their sound-it just feels so passionate. Their finest moment however (for me anyway) was their debut 7" released by Speed air play records back in 1990. I've had a second pressing on black since about 1992 but until a while back I wasn't even aware that the first pressing came out on green vinyl when it showed up on ebay. Since hardly anyone either remembers them or knows of their existence I wasn't shocked when I won it after being the only bidder. The packaging was always good on this record as it came housed in a foil sleeve for both pressings. And as you can see it does look nice on green vinyl, although I've no idea how many were done on this colour, maybe all of the first press was, who knows. If you do, then please let me know.

It's a shame that this record is hardly known or at least remembered more as it's a really great little 7" and so much better than a lot of the crap that was about around the time that people actually seemed to like. An LP that compiled all their stuff was released in the late 90's (I think) but that's probably just as obscure as all their other records (apart from the comp of course). Still this is worth hunting down and adding to your collection.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

How funny, i took out the record just today for the first time in 10 years or so. And i still like it so much, that i listened to it today about 10 times and thought i'd google it to see if there is anything on the net about Profax. I used to listen to this record i don't know how many hundred times 20 years ago and even saw them twice live. To me it was the best HC EP at the time.
Reto