Shelter

Last pick up from the 2nd hand shop in Stuttgart. I've had two later shelter records in my collection for a very long time. I bought them when I just bought records according to descriptions and statements like "member X used to be in band Y" and so on, but I didn't really know anything about the band. Had I known that Shelter was a Krishna band, I probably wouldn't have bought them. Religion and hardcore just don't go together for me. I know that other people see that differently, and I can respect that. I also know that people always look for the greater meaning of everything in life. It's part of human nature, it's why religion and philosophy were created by mankind. If people can get something positive out of religion for their personal lives, more power to them. But to me all religions are nonsense - even if I agree with some of the tenets of the major religions that I'm familiar with - and the negative aspects of organized religion outweigh the positive aspects by far. Krishna is no exception for me. How Krishna became so huge within the hardcore scene still boggles my mind.
When I went through my records a few months ago to thin out the collection a little bit, I decided to give the Shelter records a spin. Turns out, apart from the religious aspect, When 20 Summer Pass and The Purpose, The Passion aren't really good records musically either, so I decided to get rid off them. I got to talking to a few friends about the topic and they told me I should try to keep an open mind and give the early records a chance. My buddies aren't devotees or anything like that, but they told me that they still can enjoy the music. Fair enough. Although I think it's very difficult to separate music and message of a song, especially in a genre like hardcore. I saw this first press of Shelter's first LP sitting in a bin in the 2nd hand record store for only 12€, so I decided to go for it and check it out. Some songs are pretty good as far as the music is concerned, and I think that some things he sings about certainly make sense, but the religious background, the preachy aspect in the lyric sheet, and Cappo's vocals (as usually) are hard to stomach for me.