Customer Reviews

When You Least Expect It

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

 

 

"This is the Voice" came out two years after "When You Least Expect It...".

Living in Darkness (Posh Boy) 1981
Bitchin' Summer EP (Posh Boy) 1982
When You Least Expect It ... EP (Enigma) 1984
This Is the Voice (Enigma) 1986

"Out of Limits" is amazing. If this cd had nothing but Celine Dion with "Out of Limits" as the secret track it would still be worth owning. Even better go look for the vinyl, spin it on your Close n' Play, and make your daddy proud.

After monkeying around with a more contemporary sound on "This is Voice," Mike Palm and company returned to the studio and put out this EP that has a comparable sound to "Living in Darkness."
Clocking in at 15 minutes it's a shame that AO never returned to this sound in the studio with its original members.

Don't get me wrong; I grew up on Agent Orange in SoCal, and I even had this album on vinyl "back in the day". The reason I say save your money? The sound quality is atrocious, just like the vinyl was. I don't mean "atrocious" like fuzzy gnarly distorto lo-tech punk recordings- I love those! I mean the music is so poorly engineered & mastered, so compressed, so flat & muffled, it never sounds "loud" even when it really is.
You can get these same tracks on Sonic Snake Session (along with the live album & some other good stuff) and the sound quality is way better. It's not good enough to be called "remastered" but if you play the CDs side by side there's a huge difference. So, yeah, save your money to buy a better Agent Orange CD!

I completely disagree with Matt the Man ... this music holds up over time extremely well. I almost played the first copy I had out. Then the 1987 re-mix re-sparked my interest and my cassette version of that is now about to fall apart from use. I still listen to this more than almost anything from that time frame, and that is not based on style preference seeing that Agent Orange are the only surf-punk band I listen to anymore. This is just excellent material played with a vengence !!

I saw Agent Orange at a skateboard competition in Florida in 1988; they did a few tunes off of this disk, but even back then the ep was hard to get a hold of. I would consider this disk a necessity for both fans of AO and of old school surf punk. Their version of Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody To Love" is amazing; the song and ep are enough to get the blood moving...

I remember buying this album in the early 80's.
I liked to skate around the university district
(Seattle)and browse record stores.
I knew nothing about the band, but bought
the album anyway. I really liked the
album then, and now.
I guess these guys have moved up
in the world (Tony Hawk skate game).

This is a definate must-have, along w/This is the voice. While The "latest and greatest" is mostly rehashed stuff w/o Scott or James, do yourself a favor and listen to the originals.

It pains me to say this, but this music just doesnt hold up over time. I first heard this album
as a 13 or 14 year old skater punk. 15+ years later I decided to take a stroll down memory lane
and got this CD. It just doesnt give me the same chills I remember it giving me as a young kid.
In its defense, I guess it is difficult, if not impossible, to relive those teenage years. Alas,
it is time to get back to reality.