XXX: Some Ideas are Poisonous -- 2 x LP Compilation [EBULLITION RECORDS]

Monster X "The Gift"

VIA "Homage"

Well Away "Embodied"

Frail "Drought"

Policy of 3 "Autronic Eye"

Trees Without Leaves "A Drop in the Ocean"

Prozac Memory "To Have Voice"

Pogrom "Laughing at the World"

Groundwork "Willing Victim"

Portraits of Past "Sticks Together"

Threadbare "Feed"

Shatter the Myth "Fuite (Escape)"

Endeavor "Nothing More / Burn in Hell"

None Left Standing "Station Identification"

First of all, let's get this out of the way -- I've always had a bit of a hard time with Ebullition comps. Kent definitely had a tendency to showcase a lot of bands because of their lyrical content rather than the musicality, and a lot of that stuff never did it for me. There are definitely bands on this comp (Pogrom, Shatter The Myth, VIA) that I never bothered to explore further, but there are also incredible songs by some legendary groups like Portraits of Past and Prozac Memory, and some weird forgotten novelties like None Left Standing.*

Secondly, I just wanted to mention that although this record is named "XXX: Some Ideas are Poisonous", I never heard it referred to as anything other than "The Straightedge Comp" in real life. So if you've heard people talk about that, they're probably talking about this record. This was definitely a big jumping-off point for a lot of people's excursions into more politicized hardcore, and was an important record at its time for presenting straight edge as a personal choice, rather than an ideology.  Definitely worth checking out.

[POINT YOUR FINGER AND YELL "GO"!]

* It's worth noting that the guitarist from None Left Standing was a founding member of the Promise Ring later on, which is a pretty bizarre shift in genres, but says a lot about where things were musically in the mid-90's hardcore scene!