Deuter Róbrege ’84 LP

A couple of us were debating and mostly agreeing that many reissues don’t need to be pressed to vinyl in this day and age, with the decrease in demand for physical media and the climate crisis begging us to question whether we should be producing more things. Deciding whether an old live or rare cassette recording is deserving of a vinyl reissue is subjective, of course. This 1984 live recording greatly suffers about a fifth of the time (as noted in the liner notes) but DEUTER’s energetic and aggressive punk style does translate well in this setting. It’s like DEZERTER with a sax! What balances this release is the slick presentation including history, great layout, lyrics in Polish and English, and a three-panel panoramic poster. I think it’s worth the effort, especially considering how much harder it was for independent bands in Eastern Europe to release records. This is not the definitive DEUTER release for global punk fans, but a well executed document of ’80s punk in Poland.

• Reviewer Matt Badenhop
• Label Warsaw Pact
• Issue MRR #442 • March 2020