Vain Disintegrate Together CD Review

While I’m late, I wanted to give some coverage to one of the best Hard Rock bands to ever do it – the almighty Vain! Yes, the band released a new album in 2024! “Disintegrate Together”, was self-released both on CD and Vinyl formats earlier in 2024. I pre-ordered them both in separate packages because the record would be much later and I couldn’t wait to hear the CD, plus I need both formats – I’m greedy! The band also did the smart thing and kept the album off the streaming sites, this forced fans to purchase the album – some of them still haven’t and are still crying about it… This kind of tells you how important music is to people nowadays. I won’t get on my grandstand about the garbage that is streaming, but if you genuinely admire a band, the best thing you can do is purchase their albums directly via their sites or at a show. Music instruments aren’t free, and neither are recording studios. I don’t get the logic that music should be free when everything about it is costly. Just because you choose to pay for streaming music, doesn’t mean the bands have to put their music on those sites. Bottom line, if you’re a real fan, you’ll buy the album, and you won’t cry about it not being on Spotify.
 
Getting into the meat of “Disintegrate Together” the band picks up where they left off with “Rolling with The Punches”. There’s not much of a difference between them to me, but that’s one of my favorite things about Vain. The band can continuously release material that could’ve easily been on the previous albums. Some call this the AC/DC syndrome, not me, this is a band being true to who they are which is exhilarating to me and a few more thousand fans. You can buy the latest Vain effort without listening and know exactly what you’re going to get! On “Disintegrate” Davy Vain and the band did us a solid and finally recorded a proper version of “Holding on For Love”. This has been a long sought after track that was on their demo from ’88. So, it’s quite a treat to have it recorded perfectly for this album. It was a surprise to me, I didn’t read the song titles when my order came in, I just put it on the stereo and turned it up. I tend to do that with bands that I love, I’ll just put the album on, turn it up and listen and I won’t worry about anything else for the first listen, I just want to take it all in without distraction. The first single off the album “Cold Like Snow” was the only track that I’d heard before the album came in, the band made a video of it too. It’s a ferocious track for a single, but that’s standard for Vain. The bulk of their catalog is hungry, in your face, Hard Rock. Sure, there are some mid-tempo numbers to be had here, “Flowers”, but Vain tend to excel when they’re firing on all cylinders. One of my favorite tracks off the album is “Back In ‘89”, I feel the lyrics, and the overall direction of the track caters to that era and the riff/melody is fantastic. The track “KC Swinger” gives off some serious “No Respect” vibes, it could’ve easily been a B-side to “Beat the Bullet”.
 
Vain must be one of the best bands to never really make it big. Unfortunately, 1989’s “No Respect” was released on Island Records with little fanfare and the band got sucked up into oblivion when the 90’s thing happened. That doesn’t mean the band hasn’t released some great albums through the years, on the contrary the band hasn’t released a dud yet, if the name VAIN is on it, you can bet your bottom dollar, it’s a killer release! Most recently, the band announced on their socials that they’d pressed “Move on It” on vinyl, and it was up for sale, limited to 200 pressings. I, of course jumped on it, because it’s a great album too. Vain on vinyl is scarce, but given the band are self-releasing everything it makes it even more scarce, but it also means they’re reaping all the profits, and it helps to further the band in merch, releases and things like that. So, to the fans who are still bitching about “Disintegrate Together” not being on a streaming platform, buy the physical product or go away. This band deserves real fans and “Disintegrate Together” is worth every dime! 

~Black Angel