Customer Reviews

Joke's on You

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Cut from the same cloth as Mike Muirs Suicidal Tendencies, Excel comes with a classic cut of skate influenced thrash. You could always find this CD in thrasher magazine on the Dogtown skates page along with Suicidal Releases and Beowulf releases (back when it was in newsprint, mind you). Makes perfect sense considering Jim Muir was an orignal Z-Boy and Dogtown skater breakign away from Z-Boys to start to start his own skate company and helping his little brother Mike out in the process by releaseing his (and his buddies music.)

Excel was once conisderded "Suicidal Tendencies little brother." Not as morbid or influential as S.T. but still just as prominent.

"The Jokes on You" is a good headbanging piece of hardcore late 80's skate punk. Their cover of the Police's Message in the bottle was rewound and played heavily.

If your into stuff like Post-punk DRI (Crossover and later), MOD, SOD, Kreator, Death Angel and mid to late 80's thrash/hardcore crossover then check this out.

Excel flowered into bandhood smack-dab in the middle of the the "crossover" movement (Discharge circa 1982, meet Black Sabbath circa 1975. Black Sabbath, meet Discharge) that happened in the mid-1980s. Their first album, Split Image, is a crossover classic, though it wasn't what you would call a "wildly successful" record, even by 'punk' standards. As the 1980s drew to a close, the crossover movement began to fade a bit, as is evident on this, the follow up. The Joke's On You was actually recorded in two sessions. Side 1 of the LP was recorded in 1988, and originally intended to be an EP. The songs on side 2 were recorded a year later, to round out an entire album. (It was released in 1989, not 1986. Split Image was released in 1987.) While not sounding too drastically different from the first album, these songs contain LETHAL doses of "groove" and "boogie". It's still metallic and very hard, but it's also definitely a more mature sound. These guys are all seriously talented musicians, and Randy Burns' production was spot on as always. Get it.

Note that this Rotten Records re-issue (the original was released by Caroline) contains 5 unreleased demo tracks of later material, recorded in 1991 and 1992. And it really is unreleased, none of it appeared on 1995's Seeking Shelter.

I don't know why I bought this album, but I sure am glad that I did. I always considered Excel more Heavy Alternative than Heavy Metal, but all there songs are fast and heavy, albeit with more of a Punk / Alternative feel to them than anything else. A friend of mine said about them "Nothing special, there are tons of bands like this out there", but he was definitely wrong! It's too bad they never achieved mainstream popularity and made it big, because I would have loved to hear what they would have come out with next. Oh, and song 4 from this album starts off amazingly like "Enter Sandman", but it was released 2 years before Metallica's "black" album, so you can judge their talent level for yourself! A definite recommendation.

sounding a bit like early suicidal tendencies(of couse they are friend and from vinice beach)fans of uncle slam,pennywise,DRI,suicidal tendencies,beowolf and other crossover acts will find these guys easily accessible.excel has alot of history with local bands but are still an underground favorite,very solid band and have even been ripped of by metallica(enter sandman riff) but never recieving the credit for their music from the mainstream.

good cd its not as good as jokes on you.but if you like thrash,suicidal,or your from venice you should pick this album up.

California, hardcore with trash influences, adrenaline in the veins, so speed, so incendiary, total madness, I loved this heavy skaters back in the 80s.
The Joke's on You is the most representative Excel album, after they changed their style in the 90s for more groovy , stoner, sabathesque influences and they did it great but never worked out the way it worked for this masterpiece, time goes by but memories remain

HM

This is the epitome of great hardcore. Everyone should own this...

This is the epitome of hardcore. If you are a fan of fast hardcore metal with a punk influence, then this is a must for you...