Lagwagon – Trashed

This version of "Choke" should've been on Trashed, the rewritten one 2 albums later in what I consider their only boring album (DP) has only half of the heart of this one here, I wonder why they changed it, the fast part at the end is still hair raising since I heard what I consider to be the real version of "Choke" back in 2011 when the 20th anniversary remaster with bonus tracks came out. I don't think Dave couldn't have played Derrick's drums on here and well, the studio guitarist they had on DP who replaced Sean likely had no say in the writing process (it showed on DP that they had just lost 2 great musicians and songwriters). Glad it's been unearthed for sure.

man, this pressing sounds so good. super clean. super quiet. the low end is really tight. high end doesn’t get fatiguing. it’s super clean and minimal distortion on the inner groove tracks too. just a really great listening experience with this first pressing. i haven’t compared it to any of the represses, but i’m guessing this one is pretty hard to beat.

Their absolute best album. Perfect melodic hardcore punk album, although after a few uninteresting albums after Derrick (RIP) and Sean Dewey left the band during the Hoss tour where they took a pop-punk turn, like many of its peers, where it became an annoyance to say you liked them, NUFAN or AFI, when they almost entirely changed band except for the singer (Lagwagon had a more stable line-up, until Jesse quit after that pretty good 2008 EP, where only Joey and the tall Chris remained from the original line-up, filling up the rest with ex RKL , they went on to make something close to this one with Hang, I don't know if Hang will stand the test of time like this one though, and I wonder why their much superior version of Choke here on the re-release wasn't included, a lot more hard hitting and sad at the same time song that was diluted in Double Plaidinum, their worst album, with a session second guitarist and that weird production...one can detect the unreleased songs from their first 4 albums on that Let's Talk About Leftovers compilation of rarities (which was nowhere complete as the Duh, Trashed and Hoss re-releases have shown) that what was left-out of that weird muffled production on DP should have been included and others removed.

While as for Trashed, even the regular no-bonus album is amazing from beginning to end. I've listened to this album at least once a year since I got it on cassette back then (I had one of the last very high-end Sony Walkmans and the sound was just as good as the CD). It's a pretty serious album and the lighter songs still have enough energy and velocity not to be considered pop-punk, like what they did in Hoss where some songs are skippable, although the good songs on that one redeem it as to be considered a classic, their first 3 albums being up there with Pennywise's and No Use For A Name's first 3 albums. It seems like only Propagandhi didn't get poppy in the late 90's from those socal punk/melodic hardcore punk bands ( a big generalization, but it happened even with bands like F.Y.P and NOFX's worst album "Heavy Petting Zoo", where I can only 3 songs being great, although that band, and Lag themselves corrected their direction (in my opinion, of course) with Blaze.