Description

Polish pressed music cassette. Clear Euro Star cassette with green 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. A label based in the East-Central Polish city Legionowo actually managed to make it rather big. The company was Euro Star and they started their activity in the early 90s in Poland. Around the same time, Euro Star products began to fill the Ukrainian market and by the mid-90s became the main supplier of cassette products. Probably everyone in Ukraine who bought cassettes at that time had products of this company in their collection. At the start the Ukrainan tapes were imported from Poland but over time they began to press them in Ukraine. When the Polish Parliament passed on a new copyright law in May of 1994 most Polish cassette labels disappeared but Euro Star became a cassette manufacturer for external recording companies. Around 1996/1997 the sublabel Kyiv-Eurostar started, which was a joint Polish-Ukrainian Enterprise based in Kyiv. Since 1998, Ukrainian text was printed on the inside of the cover. Euro Star also had office in Lithuania (their cartalogue numbers begins with ESMC-xxx), Albania and Russia. They also released tapes under the sublabels CD Club, Euro Sonic Production and Super Tape (catalogue ST-xxx). More than five thousand tapes was released in Poland and about two thousand tapes in Russia.

Between their first and second major-label albums, Biohazard trimmed their line-up to a trio, which had the effect of focusing their attack. Where they have had the problem of being a little too diverse in the past, ricocheting from metalized hip-hop to rap-inflected hardcore, the band has now concentrated their energies into creating a singular, piercing sound. There are still elements of metal, rap, and hardcore punk on Mata Leao, but they are fused into a cohesive whole, which makes the album more effective than the previous record. Biohazard still has a problem with writing strong riffs and convincing lyrics, but music has more power and finesse than their previous releases, and that actually sounds better than the raw, edgy chords that powered their initial indie records.

Track listing:
1. Authority
2. These Eyes (Have Seen)
3. Stigmatized
4. Control
5. Cleansing
6. Competition
7. A Lot To Learn
8. Waiting To Die
9. Modern Democracy
10. Better Days
11. Gravity
12. A Way
13. True Strengths
14. Thorn
15. In Vain