Probably the fastest, heaviest album Sanctuary Records has released thus far comes from SJR. Written over an 8 year period (when the members had time off from their main bands), Use Once & Destroy delivers 16 tracks that range from early black metal, thrash, punk, crust, grind, southern rock to doom - often in the course of one song. As far as performances go, Phil’s guitar playing is much better than his other projects and it doesn’t hurt to have the crushing riffs of Jimmy Bower to back you up either. Drummer, Joe, also does a great job of keeping up with Phil’s variety of riffs & screaming throughout the record. Lyrically the album deals with such fun topics as depression, anxiety, death, drugs, alcoholism, abuse, and hatred. Thus providing the straight-edge scene’s worst nightmare. The 1st pressing includes two allegedly “rare” demos which offer a muddy glimpse in to SJR’s sordid past. All in all, a solid debut, or is it comp of the band’s first efforts? It scores originality points for not sounding like anything from “Gothenburg”. Hopefully we’ll see a second album before Phil dies for the fourth time. (Sanctuary)