China Drum - XXX LP - White with Black Splatter Vinyl

Mad Butcher (2024)

I haven't really had a chance to write very much about China Drum on this site, despite them being one of my very favorite bands.  That's largely because the records I have of theirs have been in my collection for quite some time, aside from some CD singles I acquired when a buddy was purging many of his CDs a few years ago.  But the vinyl has been on my shelves for ages.

For the (sort of) thirtieth anniversary of three and a half releases, XXX captures tracks from China Drum's earliest output.  There's the Simple CD single, originally self released and then later reissued by Bitzcore.  And then we have the Great Fire 10"/CD EP and the Barrier 10"/CD EP, both originally put out on Fluffy Bunny.  As a bonus we have their cover of "Wuthering Heights" from the China Drum / Flying Medallions split 7".

These are some of the greatest China Drum songs that lead up to their first LP Goosefair.  There's an energy and a songcraft present on these songs that is really in the upper echelon of melodic punk rock.  The only thing I will say that's even remotely unflattering about this release is that when you play the three songs from the Simple EP right next to the rest of these, it's super apparent that the fidelity of those songs is kind of sub par.  Not the songs themselves, but the recording quality is noticeably worse than the rest.  But that can't be surprising when you're talking about some self released tunes from 1993.

It's really great to have all of these songs on one LP.  In addition to getting all of the Simple songs together on vinyl finally, it's a treat to be able to listen to all of these back to back and only having to flip one record once instead of flipping four records six times (I think that math checks out if you count a record switch out as a flip).  There is at lease another LP worth of songs from the singles and B sides that came out during the Goosefair era.  I would absolutely love it if there was a way to compile all of those onto a handy LP next, but those are all from their days on Mantra and I wonder if getting the rights to those are more complicated.

China Drum - XXX
https://chinadrum1.bandcamp.com/album/30-xxx