Everything you wanted to know about Glassjaw’s late Nineties period will be revealed through an upcoming rarities collection via esteemed hardcore hub Revelation Records. The label will be delivering the influential Long Island outfit’s Don Fury Sessions as a limited edition vinyl release in 2025.
Confirmation of the set arrived today (December 2nd), with both Revelation and Glassjaw noting its March 7th due date over socials. The collection features eight songs that Glassjaw cut with iconic hardcore producer Don Fury (Quicksand, Judge, Sick of It All) at his New York City studio in 1998.
A press release adds that the collection preserves the “beginning of the materialization of Glassjaw’s full depth of sound and creativity,” with many of the songs found on the sessions — from “Pretty Lush” to “Ry Ry’s Song” — eventually making it onto the band’s beloved 2000 debut album, Everything You Wanted to Know About Silence. Fury has since remastered the tracks for the impending release.
Mike Gitter, who’d signed Glassjaw back in the day as an A&R for Roadrunner Records, recalled in a statement that he’d initially written Glassjaw off as just another post-hardcore band in the Nineties, at least before seeing them. After catching a show of theirs, he thought they were great, but not “commercially viable.” But then he heard the Don Fury recordings, and that’s when things changed for Gitter.
“Even though the band was not designed for mass consumption, this was clearly something different with a will of its own that still casts a long shadow today,” Gitter explained “This demo was the fully fleshed-out utterances of a musical language that was just beginning to be spoken. Sure, there were plenty of bands who, after hearing these songs, attempted a Glassjaw-esque formula that went on to greater, albeit momentary success, but Glassjaw would outlast and outclass them all.”
While a CD-R release of these songs made it out into the public back in 2004, Revelation Records will be releasing Glassjaw’s Don Fury Sessions on vinyl for the first time. Fittingly enough, the pressing on Opaque Yellow vinyl is limited to 1998 copies.
You can find out more here.
Don Fury Sessions tracklisting:
Pretty Lush
One Eight Becomes Two Zeros
Ry Ry’s Song
Majour
Motel Of White Lotus
Matchbook Blackbook
Harlem
Train In Vain