Living War Room - The Living War Room CD

Living War Room was a hardcore band from the San Francisco Bay Area, active in the mid-to-late 1990's. They were formed in late 1996 and broke up in 1999, I think. What's so special about them is that they sound like no other band. Most 1990's hardcore bands sound 1990's and dated now. But LWR's music is beyond time. It's just that no other band has tried to play this special brand of doom/hardore/emo before or after LWR, I guess. The first time I listened to this album I thought it was horrible, but now I find it one of the best hardcore records ever... And I don't even have a copy. It was released through the band's own imprint, Spare Organ Records, whose only releases I'm aware of are this and the Self-Titled CD by Nexus Six, a band that featured future members of Living War Room. Speaking of member connections, LWR featured ex-members of Nexus Six, Ruins Of An Empire (does anyone have any music by this band?), Lost Ground, and several other bands, as well as at-the-time and future members of Prevail, Under A Dying Sun (Singer & second guitarist of LWR), Inventing Edward, New Rhythm Method, End On End & Bullets In (Excellent band).
So... How does this band sound like? Their music is pretty dark stuff, but without sounding metal or stoner... The vocals are quite understandable while still being quite aggressively screamed. I like the drumming. The production is quite muddy. A band that sounds remotely like LWR is Dead Man's Right Hand (From Ottawa, ex-Union Of Uranus singer). But this is way better, the whole album is excellent. 5 songs songs in 34 minutes.

Rob (The bass player) has setup a myspace here. Unfortunately it seems that he hasn't logged in since 2006. Download this.
Living War Room - The Living War Room CD (Spare Organ, 1998)

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

cool! thanks, i've been pretty interested to here this band.

anthony said...

cool blog, brother.
i added a link to your blog on my page.

feel free to check mine out if you'd like.

-anthony

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
g said...

good tunes

g said...

linked you by the way

Michael Kardamakis said...

thank you for your comments! i added u on my list as well.

Anonymous said...

Hey, you have a blog!

(I'm back from my summer semi-hiatus on mine)

This band is awesome. I saw them play a lot, and they were always good shows.

btw - a record store near me is selling the black label/champions split. $2!

Michael Kardamakis said...

hey ryan! could you scan that lwr insert/lyrics sheet/whatever and post it? id really love to see it.

but you have a copy, dont u?

Anonymous said...

Ah, you bet. Sorry if you asked me that a while ago but I forgot.

http://blueskiesabove.us/noise/LWR.pdf

Feel free to just link straight to that on your post, if you don't want to make a new mediafire link. I won't take it down.

Michael Kardamakis said...

wait, is that the insert of the cd? thanks!!

Anonymous said...

I dunno. It may have ended up being the insert. They handed it out at a show, without the CD. Maybe they didn't have the CD ready.

spareorgan laboratory said...

here is some living war room live footage from a show in half moon bay, 1998...

part one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSWg-uZmKEg

part two: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSiUOfra9dk

part three: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QgBQ-IouRo

if these links don't work search youtube user: certone