DISMAY - demo (Tape) Rockhouse Productions #?? 1994

Dismay's demo was released in several versions with different song orders and some with different covers (one version was featured at Middleagedyouth, but this blog is gone now). Their 1995 version is listed at Discogs.com and I am very interested in it since it features different songs. Besides the stuff I own Dismay also released a demo in 1991 and I am very interested in it. I can also remember seeing live recordings from that time in tape trading lists but the MP3 just killed it.

Dismay hailed from Wilton a small town in Connecticut - about 16. or 17.000 inhabitants - and dissolved too early. They only recorded a few songs which all appeared overlapping on different releases, which I will post now. I don't know why they never became more well known. The time - 1994/1995 - was just right for this well played mid tempo hardcore. The production is right, the singer does a great job and the half personal half critical lyrics are well written. Of course one band comes directly to your mind/ear: Burn (sometimes Eye For An Eye too). Dismay just sound like Burn did never stop to exist - until their reunion. Where Burn left a breach Dismay was filling it for me and they did my expectations justice. 14 years later I can still listen to this and enjoy it.
If you have any more informations on Dismay please leave a comment. Thanks.

Sadly their singer passed away in 2007. RIP.

DISMAY - demo (Tape) Rockhouse Productions #?? 1994

side a:
1. untitled
2. lucky grasshopper
3. madness
4. another day in the life
5. overseer
[OGG Vorbis, maximum quality, password: antithesis, mirror 1, mirror 2]

Update:

I was able to find the former Middle Aged Youth posting at archive.org:

"About a year and a half ago, while on a 2-county musical shopping spree, I walked into a local record store that I had never been to and started up my usual A-Z browsing of CD titles. While browsing, my eyes were constantly being drawn toward the wall of cassettes they had, fully stocked and completely neglected. By the letter H, I realized that I wasn't finding a goddamn thing to buy in the CDs, so I walked over to the wall of tapes and saw the sign that said "$1.50 each, or 10 for $10". It's a well-known fact that people do not buy cassettes anymore, and this was obviously a blowout-sale of sorts. I noticed that all of the titles were old, and I started to get excited wondering what I was going to find. It didn't take long before I realized that they had tons of demo tapes in the selection - jackpot. That's a quick way to my musical heart - present me with a feast of demo tapes from unknown bands. I pilfered through the wall-rack and pulled out 20 cassettes, 15 of which were demo tapes from bands that I had never heard of. I took them home like a kid with a new video game, but ended up stashing them away after listening to only a few. I recently pulled them back out and was elated to find some really good shit in the bunch, both Hardcore and Metal.

Which brings me to Dismay. All I know about these cats is that they were a Hardcore band from Connecticut and released this demo in 1994. Other than that, they are a complete mystery to me. There must have been 500 bands called Dismay over the years, so finding any info on them has been nigh impossible. Running a few different Google searches produced nothing except the band Palehorse mentioning them in an interview with Bystander Fanzine and a kid who had this on a trade list. But this shit kills, period. The first thing that jumped out at me was how much the vocalist sounded like Chaka Malik (Burn/Orange 9mm) in his delivery. Dude is almost a dead-ringer for Chaka, but really sounds like what would happen if you could somehow splice together the voices of Malik and Anthony Comunale (Raw Deal/Killing Time). The music has an obvious Burn influence as well, though it is crossed with the CT/NJ HC sound of that era, and is a bit "laid back" at times while still being crushingly heavy. I find myself playing this thing over and over lately, especially "Nowhere" and "Madness". The part in "Madness" where it kicks in with "...there's no way out" just fucking smokes my ass, and makes me wish I had found these guys when they were around. I gobbled up this kind of stuff like it was breakfast in those days, and I still love this style of HC. One confusing thing about this demo is that the songs on the actual tape do not match the songs listed inside the cover, so I wonder if there was another demo and they got crossed, or if it was just a weird decision by the band to change songs after the covers were copied (?). Also, the tape had no labels for Side A and Side B, so I don't even know if this is the proper order for the songs. I'm hoping that someone out there knows more about them and will clue me in, because if there is anything else out there floating around by this band, I have to have that shit.

Nowhere In Doubt Madness Another Day In The Life"