10 Obscure And Rare Hard Rock & Metal Albums
3. United Nations - United Nations (2008)
Hardcore punk outfit United Nations are an odd case. Both a collaborative collective and a at least nominally a rock supergroup, the project doesn’t have a set, official line-up. Thursday frontman Geoff Rickly is considered the face of the band, having come up with the idea in 2005, but the rest of the contributors have attempted to remain as anonymous as possible to avoid being accused of violating contractual terms and conditions and potential lawsuits.
Initially, fairly solid rumour had it that Daryl Palumbo, frontman of Glassjaw and Ben Koller, the drummer for Converge were playing with Rickly - hence the attribution of the ‘supergroup’ moniker. However, when the group actually managed to head out on tour in 2013 Rickly was joined by considerably less well-known collaborators like the Lovekills Jonah Bayer, Acid Tiger’s Lukas Previn and two of the guys from Pianos Become The Teeth.
Some scene purists have gone on record as calling the whole thing a joke - after all, when have punk bands ever let record contracts stop them from working with their mates on side projects?
Their eponymous 2008 album, however, is the real deal - a frenetic, inventive and melodic wall of screamo/grindcore, with plenty of ironic references to musical touchstones past and present. It’s genuinely brilliant… although the sleeve’s copyright-flouting appropriation of the Abbey Road cover and the band’s lawsuit-baiting name only added fuel to those ‘practical joke’ accusations.
The album couldn’t be released in stores because of the cover image issue, so only received a limited CD release back in 2008, selling a thousand copies via the label’s website. A further thousand red vinyl copies were apparently also pressed. In 2015, the record was reissued with a cover parodying a completely different Beatles album cover - which didn’t exactly reassure the band’s critics.