Various - Thunderdome XVIII - Psycho Silence

By 1997, the popularity of Hardcore in Australia had gone down since its glory days of the mid 1990s, but I kept buying the vinyl and supporting events with Hardcore. Like many other Hardcore fans, I loved the Thunderdome CDs and had collected a few in the space of a few years. By 1997, only Central Station had Thunderdome CDs and charged $50 for them! For whatever reason which I cannot really explain to this day, in the latter part of 1997, Thunderdome XVIII-Psycho Silence was stocked in every music store in Brisbane! Thunderdome 17 didn't get this treatment and afterwards Thunderdome 19 did not get such a wide distribution. Anyway I bought Psycho Silence, and I was not disappointed! Hard and fast Gabber tracks which is what Thunderdome was all about. It also included some "slow hardcore" tracks, at the time I did not like them but later I realised this CD ushered in the Newstyle Hardcore movement which would later take over the Dutch Hardcore scene. I liked Shut Em Down though, and Warehouse Beats slowly grew on me. The CD includes some classics, in particular Brohymn and Shut Up by Promo, actually Promo features heavily here with two other tracks and a top remix of Madman, all four are fantastic. Almost all the tracks are very good. I was so impressed with the CD, I made it a mission to get all of them on vinyl. As it stands, out of 39 actual tracks, I have 26 on vinyl with some tracks only released for the CD. As I met more like-minded people, I found out that I was not the only one that had a copy of Thunderdome 18, and many other people appreciated "the Thunderdome 18 tracks". In many of the sets I have done, I have played one track from Thunderdome 18, which has always been well received. The distribution of Psycho Silence in Australia has baffled me, but I have met good friends because of it, and am grateful for that.