Purge
The Joy of Throwing Things
Reviewed by Roadrunner
The band to put little ol' Joplin MO on the map, so to speak, could well be Purge. For all that was put into this 8 song, color covered, self-released cassette, unfortunately it sounds as if Paul Corley didn't know how to mix this band. Although there's room for improvement, partly in the tightness department, the songs themselves are fairly interesting enough, albeit simple. They do however seem a bit methodical and too slow. Live, front guy Ryan Ballard's stance is predominately "hardcore", here he's mostly "grindcore", along with the band behind him, with the BGV's being hardcore-like. Appropriately, the words are of a dark nature, of abortion in "Pro-Death", end times in "Phile Thumo (Rev. 16)", lukewarm Christians in "Abandoned Truth" and even nuclear destruction in "Green Run". Maybe if you get this and crank it, you can come close to the live Purge encounter.