Like you during your fabled 10-year break from metal
Oh man, you wanna go there?
Great!! Let's. Many here could use the education!
Let's rewind, shall we???
Sure, to you, in retrospect, Combat was that great label that brought the metal world such great bands as Bathory, VoiVod, Running Wild, etc, etc.
For us who "WERE" there, Combat also introduced a subsidiary label called COMBAT CORE. That exposed a LOT of metalheads, such as myself, here in the United States to bands like GBH and the EXPLOITED for the first time amongst other US crossover bands like the CRUMBSUCKERS and LUDICHRIST and AGNOSTIC FRONT.
It was a natural progression that many metalheads got turned on by the DIY nature of such bands. This was also the rise of other cross over bands on larger labels (IE - ENIGMA) such as DRI and COC.
To further the interest in punk, many long running European bands were fading into obscurity here in the States. Do you think at that time you could easily find Helloween's "Pink Bubbles" or Destructions "Them Not Me" EP in the US? Hell no!!! most in the States didn't even know they existed!!!
This was the beginning of the US death metal movement as well.
The cross over bands were closer to the thrash stuff that I liked.
Once I got into cross over, I heavily discovered the US Hardcore underground, and bands like 7 Seconds and Government Issue and Naked Raygun quickly became my favorite bands.
I know you didn't ask for it. But I had to tell this "fabled" tale........
It was something we lived through.
It wasn't something we read about online.
Believe me though. It is a HELL (no pun intended, well maybe a little!), of a lot better today in the ability to discover bands. It has just made the process a heck of a lot easier, and lets face it. Enabled you to know 10000 Black Metal bands most of us haven't heard of!! But its all fun, eh???
