S.F.A. / D.M.B. - 'Live In Europe 91' 7"

Here's a lesser-known S.F.A. record, a live split 7" with German band D.M.B. It was recorded on October 6 1991 on their joint European tour at The Fabrik in Potsdam, Germany, and released on Lund Castle Core Records. It actually says 'East Germoney' on the 7" even though West- and East-Germany had reunited a year prior, but no doubt the differences between the 2 parts of Germany were still vast. Peter, the guy behind Lund Castle Core Records, was also the driver on this tour btw. S.F.A. was ofcourse an awesome hate-core band from NYC, whose first 2 albums are classics in my book, although their later output (the 'Solace' album) doesn't come close. I know very little about D.M.B., a hardcore band from Leipzig, East-Germany. They released a self-titled 7" in 1992 and appeared on a few compilations. Lund Castle Core Records did a few more records, including a Majority Of One/Intricate live split 7". As mentioned in one of the inserts, the label was planning a few more splits with bands including Yuppicide and Upfront but those never happened as far as I know.

Here's a part of the history of S.F.A. as written down by Brendan on their myspace, regarding the European tour and D.M.B.'s manager at the time:

Our first European tour was a lot of fun - booze, brawls, broads and barbiturates. We were drunk and happy every day and played every night like we were on fire. We had a support band from Leipzig called DMB on the road with us. Their manager Imad and his wife Rita came along for the whole tour. We found out several years later that Imad was a command-ranking officer in Stassi (the East German secret police.) He had been running agents who were reporting on and arresting subversives, many of whom had roots in the anti-government East German punk scene. Stassi was still active in Germany when we were on tour. Stassi didn't collapse until several years after the reunification and many of the agents weren't uncovered for years because of the billions (literally) pages of documents that had to be sifted through. That's how Imad was exposed. What I think is kind of cool is that somewhere in the tons of pages of Stassi documents is a report about S.F.A. Even if there were nothing bad about us, he would have had to mention us if just to explain where he was for so long. So you could find S.F.A. at Tower Records in some local fanzine and somewhere in a pile in the basement of Stassi headquarters. That rocks.

I unfortunately did not see (or even know) S.F.A. in 1991, I did see them however on their 1996 Euro tour with Cause For Alarm, good times, I still have an S.F.A. shirt from that tour. Anyways, I ripped the S.F.A. side of this split 7" as one track, because of the talking inbetween songs and 'I Want To Be Alone' and 'Purge' blending into each other. Enjoy!

S.F.A. / D.M.B. - 'Live In Europe 91' 7"
S.F.A. myspace