Description

Reduced price due to cover showing storage wear and a date stamped inside the J-card

Polish pressed music cassette. Clear Poker Sound cassette with white text.

Poland is probably the country that had the most record labels in the world that only released cassettes. But even though there were lots of labels the market was still small as they only printed these for their own market inside of Poland. And a label in one town maybe lacked the distribution for another town and so on. A Warzaw or Krakow label might print more copies of a tape then labels from a smaller town. So even if there are thousands of releases you will notice how rare some are if you start to try to list the catalogue number of one particular label. Some cassettes just rarely shows up. One label were Poker Sound. Poker Sound had one office in Poland and another in Romania. At the beginning both had the Poker Sound logo on the cover but then the Romanian part start using a different label that said Poker Sound By Roton and in some cases they also had their own Roton cassettes. When the Polish Parliament passed on a new copyright law in May of 1994 most Polish cassette labels disappeared and the Romanian part of Poker Sound changed name to just Roton Ltd and became a legitimate company.

The smirking title indicates the true nature of For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge, Van Halen’s third album with Sammy Hagar. Backing away from the diversity of OU812, the band turns in some of the heaviest riffs of their career, and also some of the most fully realized experimental songwriting. Also there’s a post grunge vibe that anticipates even grunge. Pleasure Dome? It’s sick. Runaround is that classic VH template updated for the early 90s, brilliant. Spanked is poorly sequenced, prob would’ve faired better as a b-side (would’ve been a hit for Whitesnake!). The rhythm section is masterful throughout. Big hooks throughout. Eddie Van Halen’s guitar work remains impressive where he blends harmonics, tapping, and unusual whammy bar noises, producing something far more futuristic and shallow sounds than before. The highlight of the album is “Right Now”, a heavy, serious (by Foreigner standards) mock metal track about being assertive, and leaving your emotional baggage behind and just living life in the present. A great idea, and a good song compositionally, but they sold it to a Pepsi rebranding campaign that failed. F.U.C.K. wasnt as huge as 5150 but it still managed to reach the charts, making Van Halen the only hard rock band to be able to do that post-Nevermind.

Track list:
1. Poundcake
2. Judgement Day
3. Spanked
4. Runaround
5. Pleasure Dome
6. In N Out
7. Man On A Mission
8. The Dream Is Over
9. Right Now
10. 316
11. Top Of The World