There are at least two artists called "Alloy."

No love for these guys..?, August 1, 2005

Reviewer: Ferguson "blahblah" (Evolving) - See all my reviews

1. It seems Alloy are a completely forgotten group these days. I'm not sure why this is because they were fantastic and one of the best post-hardcore groups of the early 90's who included such hardcore superstars (heh) as Vic Bondi from the incredible Articles Of Faith (who were produced by Bob Mould from Husker Du) on vocals & guitar with bassist Roger Marbury and drummer Colin Sears from the original Dag Nasty lineup who recorded the classic "can i say" album for Dischord in 1986.

And that's exactly what you get here. It's an updated mix of the proto-emo-core of the 2nd Articles Of Faith album "in this life" (think Mission Of Burma meets Huskers if you want easy reference points) ,which you can find on their "83-85" discography cd, as well as Bondi's late 80's outfit Jones Very with the melancholy songwriting of the aforementioned Dag Nasty album.

This album came out around the same time that Vic's old buddy Bob Mould's new group Sugar dropped the classic "copper blue" album which i thought was kind of fitting as they were two friends who'd both come out of the same scene with a similar aesthetic to making post-hardcore music only Bob was now exploring the more melodic buzz-pop side while Vic was welding melodies into molten guitars.

"Copper blue" went on to be a success in the wake of "nevermind" and is now considered up there with the finest albums of the era like "repeater", "spiderland", "loveless" etc. "Eliminate", on the other hand, got some good reviews (i read on Bondi's site that their "untitled"/"hard rain" single was the single of the week in some British music rag and was the biggest selling independent single in Britain the week after..wow!) but didn't really make a dent and now seems to a a genuine long-lost classic which maybe deserves to be mentioned along the above albums. Bondi thinks it's the best album he ever made and he might just be right.

Which is a real pity. They coulda been contenders, they could been somebodies. Seriously. Problem was they didn't stand a chance : they were releasing records through small European import-only labels, weren't punk enough for Maximum Rock And Roll or interested in the hardcore scene (indeed, Bondi was thought of as a sellout at the time for reforming Articles Of Faith for a european tour) and too abrasive and clever for the indie press who were fawning over grunge and the likes of Smashing Pumpkins at the time. They just didn't seem to fit in anywhere. They recorded another album, an ep, and a handful of singles plus compilation tracks before slowly fizzling out around 1994. A damn shame.

New interview with Vic Bondi available here:

http://www.caughtinthecrossfire.com/music/interviews/2416

2. "Alloy" is/was a group consisting of http://www.last.fm/music/Ranger+Rick (called "Wolf" in Alloy) and his friend "Ellipse" (later signed to Astralwerks records [need citation]), who produced music in the central Illinois area in the mid-1990s and possibly still do today. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.