Cable - "Variable Speed Drive"

In 1996, I was living by myself in a shitty one bedroom apartment in Bensalem, Pennsylvania. I was also ordering a lot of records, spending way too much money buying stuff from the Very Distro catalog (remember that 90s hardcore gem?), as well as directly from various labels. I bought quite a few of the earlier releases from Jim Burham / Moo Cow Records: the Atlas Shrugged / New Day Rising split, the Scout 7", the New Day Rising / Despair split, and the Cave In / Piebald split, among others. You could say we were penpals. Another one of these purchases was the Malcolm's Lost / Cable split 7", which I'm holding in my hands right now and is Moo Cow #9. This split was my introduction to Connecticut's Cable, who played heavy, noisy and somewhat spazzy hardcore. "Variable Speed Drive" came out on Doghouse Records during the middle of 1996. It was their first full length and, in my opinion, is the bands best record by far. Additionally, I still consider this release to be of Doghouse's best offerings ever, right up there with the two Threadbare discs and "Fate's Got A Driver" by Chamberlain. Cable definitely had an Amphetamine Reptile / Unsane influence going on. Another decent comparison would be to imagine the first Lincoln 7", but with the added pleasure of having the heaviness cranked up to thirteen. This stuff was way louder than most of what was being released on Doghouse, which was a nice surprise. Because I've always dug heavier shit.

I only saw Cable live one time. It was in 1998 at the Melody Bar in New Brunswick, NJ (great venue, R.I.P.) with demo-era Isis (who I thought was awful then, as I do now), Nora (who was, uh, also pretty fucking terrible), and some headliner who I am forgetting. Cable had just gotten a new drummer, so they only played new stuff and not a single fucking song from this LP, which bummed me out to no end. This, they explained, was because they hadn't taught him the old stuff yet. Wait, what? How did you even try him out, bros? YOUR BAND IS ON FUCKING DOGHOUSE RECORDS, YO, GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER. Also, I'm 100% positive that I was the only person there who gave a poo about seeing Cable play, as there couldn't have been more than eleven or twelve motherfuckers who watched them, and nobody seemed interested. That is something I'll never understand. Shame on you, New Brunswick...shame on you. Their set was good, I was just a bit butt-hurt, I guess. The silver lining of this afternoon, however, was the fact that after the show I scored a copy of their demo cassette from them, so that ruled. Two pics of it can be found below for shits and giggles. The songs on "Variable Speed Drive" were recorded in March of 1996.

-best friend with a firearm-

Tracklist
1) Needles Vs Nails
2) Steel Cage Match
3) Sick Little Ritual
4) Water.Down.Rock
5) Carolina Eyes
6) Lie Detector
7) The Sinking Vessel
8) Paperplanecrash