Raw Nerve is the new successors to the Sex/Vid and Cult Ritual throne of ultra-hyped hardcore. Raw Nerve shares the "mysterious" aesthetic, the whole "immediate collector bait" shtick in regards to printing records and a general sound: noisy hardcore with huge Void and general Mark McCoy inflections.

"Stay Staid" (the lone holdover from their demo) and "You Live" make up the A-side. It's 1:30 of chaotic hardcore where unless you're giving the music your full attention, you won't notice the different songs. The B-side's title track is actually the strongest of the four tunes, what with having a couple different parts (slow intro, buried vocals, thrash part, slow part that's not a breakdown per se, etc.) that don't sound arbitrarily forced together. Though I've never enjoyed X-Ray Spex all that much themselves, the ending cover of "I'm a Cliché" is pretty goddamn fun, not a word you'd normally associate with this sort of thing.

Video Disease made up 300 copies of the record and all were sold over the course of one weekend in early October. Already these fuckers are fetching $40 on eBay, if you can believe that. Do some investigating in distros to pay the intended price or go blog searching. Despite the inane amount of hype given, Raw Nerve delivers musically. The upcoming LP on Youth Attack (naturally) should be a doozy.