Rival Time

New Radiant Storm King: Matt Hunter (vocals, guitar, bass); Peyton Pinkerton (vocals, guitar); Elizabeth Sharp (drums).
Producers: Mark Alan Miller, New Radiant Storm King.
Recorded at Slaughterhouse, Amherst, Massachusetts in March, 1993.
Personnel: Matt Hunter, Peyton Pinkerton (vocals, guitar).
Recording information: Slaughterhouse Studio, Amherst, MA (03/1993).
A much stronger release than the band's ramshackle debut , My Little Bastard Soul, 1993's Rival Time is the album on which New Radiant Storm King's promise finally becomes apparent. Opening with the sharp one-two punch of "Viral Mind" and the Mission of Burma-like "The Opposing Engineer (Sleeps Alone)" (which Guided By Voices' Robert Pollard called the direct inspiration for his band's breakthrough single, I Am a Scientist), the album is overall much crisper and more focused than the shambolic debut, with the band's obvious inspirations (Sonic Youth, Wire, Pere Ubu) pushed into the background enough for the band's own personality to be revealed. Between the tense, anguished vocals of Peyton Pinkerton and Matt Hunter and the roiling and slashing guitars, Rival Time is in many ways one of the prototypical emo albums, as (largely tongue-in-cheek) song titles like "Happy for the First Time in Weeks" and "Do It for the Sensitive Guy" attest. The drawback, however, is that Mark Alan Miller's production is a little too lo-fi; the bad sound often obscures the power of the songs and their scrappy arrangements. ~ Stewart Mason