Brotherhood

D.Y.S. | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (January 25, 2005)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Taang Records
• ASIN: B0002N5B18
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #83,653 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

CD version of DYS's 1983 debut 12" (originally released on X-Claim). Cla_s.c Boston hc from Dave Smalley and company....see site for more info.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Classic Boston Hardcore, September 15, 2005

By 

Ferguson "blahblah" (Evolving) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Brotherhood (Audio CD)

S.S.D were the first Boston straight edge hardcore band (even though Springa was far from being Straight Edge) and pretty much ran the scene with many of their cult followers starting groups who made up the infamous Boston Crew aka The Wolfpack, a mob of cleancut, clean living, suburban kids from Boston ("a mini-army of angry youth" as D.Y.S themselves put it) who'd beat up kids at shows who weren't straight edge, particularly New York and Jersey kids. D.Y.S (that's Department Of Youth Services and not, as some people suggest, anything saucy to do with your sister) were one of those groups.

3 or 4 years before Dave Smalley would go on to front the second Dag Nasty line-up that'd make the classic D.C album "can i say" he was a gawky, shaven headed teenager sporting jeans with the Black Flag logo drawn on screaming about brotherhood, standing proud and Straight edge unity. "Brotherhood" was their original 12" released on Al Barile from S.S.D's X Claim Records in 1983 and it's everything you could possibly want from an early 80s hardcore album. Musically, it's a blast full of raw agressive buzzsaw guitared Boston H.C and chant along anthems. As with most of the key Boston bands of the time, D.Y.S were adept at doing mid-tempo growling as they were at doing fast and furious. Naturally, the godly Lou Giordano helped produced and engineered it. Was there ever another producer who knew how to capture the raw energy of hardcore that quite so well? Historically, it's a crucial snapshot of the early Boston scene and the blueprint for the whole '86 - '89 Noo Yawk Youth Crew.

"Brotherhood" got re-released by Taang in 1991 as "wolfpack" with four terrible comedy songs including an atrocious cover of Sabbath's "iron man" and a really hilarious (or so the band thought) reggae song with Dave Smalley doing an embarassing faux-Jamaican accent. You can find this on the cd alongside the second self titled D.Y.S album where they went metal (which is now called "fire and ice" for some reason..confusing, huh?) called "fire and ice"/"wolfpack" but you really shouldn't waste your money on that as everything D.Y.S recorded that you need is right chea on "brotherhood".

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great music, questionable marketing by Taang!, August 16, 2007

By 

Bangsmith (Cumberland, RI) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Brotherhood (Audio CD)

This is the original 12" by DYS before it got lengthened into "Wolfpack" (I know, I had all the original releases!). If you're a collector, you'll want this, but otherwise, you might as well get "Fire and Ice/Wolfpack", since it is all on one CD (If you can still find it) which originally sold for the same price as this abbreviated CD does! What Taang! should have done is re-release the two albums separately and complete if they really wanted to highlight the original albums, as they did with Jerry's Kids. At least the music is all top notch!!

4.0 out of 5 stars Short and (not so) sweet, August 22, 2009

By 

Tom P. the Underground Navigator (Park Forest, IL USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Brotherhood (Audio CD)

Recorded at Radiobeat Studio (where many other quintessential Boston hardcore bands had previously worked) in May of 1983, D.Y.S.'s "Brotherhood" was yet another release on the short lived but crucial XClaim! label of Lynn, Mass., that came to define the old Boston hardcore sound. Along with their peers Jerry's Kids, the F.U.'s and GangGreen, D.Y.S. at this point were into short, furious bursts of hardcore energy, nothing more, nothing less. The average song length here hovers around one minute, with the last 12" track "Escape" being the "epic" at just over two. The B-side of this record is the stronger of the two, opening with the title track, a high speed number that must have created many furious pits when these guys were gigging at (most likely) hole in the wall dives or VFW halls in 1983. My favorite track here is "Stand Proud" -- great riff, awesome reverb. The whole record boasts a vintage, period "done in one take" sound that characterized all of the best early '80s hardcore, that cannot be reproduced.

I understand that this album had actually been previously available on CD as bonus tracks to one of the band's later releases, but I'm all for Taang's decision in 2002 to re-release some of the classics of Boston hardcore, all of which were very short in length, as individual CDs. I for one was happy to pay full price for what amounts to less than 15 minutes of music, because this really highlights the original release (as the original vinyl would be nearly impossible to come by). Included are lyrics and vintage photos of the band, who were probably around 16 or 17 at the time, one featuring one of the guys among rack upon rack of comic books at what I'm guessing must be Newbury Comics, which remains a mecca of Boston hardcore history. (Some of the comics in the photo would probably now be worth almost as much as an original vinyl copy of "Brotherhood.")

All in all, relive your youth and revisit this long lost piece of hardcore history today.